Ultimately, it is a Supreme Tribunal that Dante yearns for, albeit he conceives that Tribunal as personified—incarnate in the “Roman Prince”.[68] It is impartiality,[69] above all, that Dante looks for; an impartiality to be guaranteed by that absence of ambition which an undisputed, world-wide supremacy might carry with it, “leaving nothing to be desired.” The authority that is free from taint of greed and self-interest, and so from the temptation to use human lives as means for its own ends, will most effectually display that “charity or love which gives vigour to justice.” For “Charity, scorning all other things, seeks God and man, and, consequently, the good of man.” Surely such impartiality and such human consideration might be looked for in a representative tribunal at least as hopefully as in a fallible individual like that Henry VII, on whom, in life, he built such soaring hopes,[70] and for whom, beyond death, he prepared so high a seat in Heaven?[71] That it is a _Tribunal_ that Dante is really seeking, is clear from the Tenth chapter of the First Book of the _Monarchia_. And it may be permissible to adduce in this connection a note on that chapter by an eminent Dante scholar (to whom not a few of the thoughts in this Essay are indirectly due), written at least ten years before the outbreak of the World-War. “Nothing,” says Mr. Wicksteed, (_ad loc._ p. 149), “could better help the student to distinguish between the substance and the form of the _De Monarchia_, or to free himself from slavery to words, than reflection upon this chapter. He will see that Dante’s ‘imperialism’ does not mean the supremacy of one nation over others, but the existence of a supreme law that can hold all national passions in check; so that the development of international law and the establishment of arbitration are its nearest modern equivalents; and the main difficulty is found in the want of any power of compulsion by which the nations can be made to refer their quarrels to the supreme tribunal and accept its awards, whether it sits at Rome or at the Hague.”[72] What shape, we may ask, would Dante’s theory of the Temporal and Spiritual Authority have assumed, had it seen the light in the Twentieth Century instead of the Fourteenth? How would he shape it now?... How, perchance, _does_ he shape it now if he looks down from “an eternal place” upon this “little plot” of an earth which has so often been the cockpit of international ferocity— L’ aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci.[73]