Provision should be made also for permanently meeting the cost of such projects, by agreement that a definite percentage of national taxes be set aside for the use of the world organizations created by the treaty. In short, an authoritative and intelligent beginning toward world-organization should be made at the close of the present war. _A. A. Tenney, “Theories of Social Organization, and the Problems of International Peace,” Political Science Quarterly, March, 1915._ PART III TOWARDS THE FUTURE THE NEW OUTLOOK [Sidenote: The war, a Katharsis for humanity.] No one dare predict just what the end of this world war will be, or when that end will come. It is possible, of course, that this cataclysm marks the end of centuries of progress, and it is possible that man in 1914 crossed over the watershed of civilization and is now to descend on the other side towards steadily growing barbarism and the steadily extending rule of force. That I say is possible; but I for one am an unconquerable optimist. I prefer to read history differently and to see in this appalling catastrophe what the Greek called a _katharsis_, a cleansing of the spirit. I prefer to think of it as history’s way of teaching beyond peradventure or dispute the fallacy and the folly of the old ways and the old policies. Surely that struggle for the balance of power which the historian Stubbs described as the principle which gives unity to the plot of modern history,—surely that struggle has proved its futility. Surely we can see the vanity of Ententes and Alliances and of a division of the world into heavily armed camps each waiting for an opportunity or for an excuse to pounce upon the other. Surely the international politics of a Palmerston, or a Disraeli, or a Bismarck, striking and splendid as they were in their own way,—surely those policies are put behind us and are outgrown forever. A democratic federated people can teach the world democracy and the use of the federative principle. A people devoted to civil liberty and to international honor, no less lightly held than the honor of an individual—that people can teach the world the foundations upon which to rebuild the shattered fabric of international law and of broken treaties. [Sidenote: We must think internationally!]