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Projects of Perpetual Peace
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be said that we have been moralized. Schemes of external aggrandizement are evidence of this imperfect condition. It is clear, therefore, that the perfecting of international relationship must be preceded in States by a process, and perhaps a long process, of internal improvement, for, without the appropriate disposition—the morally good disposition—on the part of the several commonwealths and their members, there cannot be a true and lasting League of Nations; there will be mere illusion and glittering misery.

When we are thinking of the end that should be, and is, set before humanity, right must not be conceived in compromises. We must not break right in halves, or place it somewhere between justice and utility. Nor should we permit ourselves to be deflected in our thought, and from our purpose, by the emphasis which the historian puts, almost exclusively, upon results and by the historian's definition—not merely his interpretation—of facts in the life of men in society. The 'result' usually becomes mixed up with principles of right. The result is uncertain: what the historian takes to be the result may not be the conclusive event. But, whereas the result, in the historian's sense, is uncertain, principles of right are always certain in themselves.

Little reflection is needed to see that a lasting universal Peace on the basis of the Balance of Power is a mere chimera. It would be like the house described by Swift, which the architect constructed so perfectly in conformity with the laws of equilibrium that when a sparrow lighted on the house it at once fell. No: the only remedy against so great evils is a system of International Right, founded upon public laws, and secured by power to enforce them, power to which every State must submit just as the several members of a State submit to the order of civil and political right established. 'Every people, for the sake of its own security,