the League, and for its ends. Further, there is need of a supra-national force, need of a 'sanction' that is supra-national. A supra-national disposition, a supra-national League, and a supra-national force: these are all essential. But the most essential of these is the supra-national disposition. Without this there can be no true League. Without it force will be used neither in the right way nor for the right end. With the supra-national disposition fully and freely working there would be no need of force; the indwelling energy of the spirit of the Federation would make the use of force unnecessary. Yet the necessary means of using force for right would always be in reserve and always available against wrong threatened and a wrong done.
The whole question of the relation between Politics and Ethics is involved in this inquiry; and that has been an interminable theme for writers, and for such especially among them as treat of principles apart from the conditions that must shape policy, and discuss ends without making any due allowance for the imperfection of the instruments. The conclusions of two recent English writers may here be cited.
'Just so far as States are thoroughly formed,' said T. H. Green,[1] 'the diversion of patriotism into the military element tends to come to an end.' Will, not Force, is the true basis of the State. This diversion of patriotism into the military element is 'a survival from a condition of things in which, as yet, the State, in the full sense, was not; in the sense, namely, that in each territory controlled by a single independent government, the rights of all persons, as founded on their capacities for contributing to a common good, are equally
- ↑ Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (1895), pp. xxiv + 252, reprinted from his Philosophical Works, vol. ii. See the whole of the chapter entitled 'The Right of the State over the Individual in War'. The lectures were delivered during 1879–80.
