Individual human beings. To any American all this may be a platitude, but

not to any European. Hence we may hope that the fight against war will find

strong support among Americans.

And now for the Disarmament Conference. Ought one to laugh, weep, or

hope when one thinks of it? Imagine a city inhabited by fiery-tempered,

dishonest, and quarrelsome citizens. The constant danger to life there is

felt as a serious handicap which makes all healthy development impossible.

The magistrate desires to remedy this abominable state of affairs, although

all his counsellors and the rest of the citizens insist on continuing to

carry a dagger in their girdles. After years of preparation the magistrate

determines to compromise and raises the question, how long and how sharp the

dagger is allowed to be which anyone may carry in his belt when he goes out.

As long as the cunning citizens do not suppress knifing by legislation, the

courts, and the police, things go on in the old way, of course. A definition

of the length and sharpness of the permitted dagger will help only the

strongest and most turbulent and leave the weaker at their mercy. You will

all understand the meaning of this parable. It is true that we have a League

of Nations and a Court of Arbitration. But the League is not much more than

a meeting-hall, and the Court has no means of enforcing its decisions. These

institutions provide no security for any country in case of an attack on it.

If you bear this in mind, you will judge the attitude of the French, their

refusal to disarm without security, less harshly than it is usually judged

at present.

Unless we can agree to limit the sovereignty of the individual State by

all binding ourselves to take joint action against any country which openly

or secretly resists a judgment of the Court of Arbitration, we shall never

get out of a state of universal anarchy and terror. No sleight of hand can

reconcile the unlimited sovereignty of the individual country with security

against attack. Will it need new disasters to induce the countries to

undertake to enforce every decision of the recognized international court?

The progress of events so far scarcely justifies us in hoping for anything

better in the near future. But everyone who cares for civilization and

justice must exert all his strength to convince his fellows of the necessity

for laying all countries under an international obligation of this kind.

It will be urged against this notion, not without a certain

justification, that it over-estimates the efficacy of machinery, and

neglects the psychological, or rather the moral, factor. Spiritual

disarmament, people insist, must precede material disarmament. They say

further, and truly, that the greatest obstacle to international order is

that monstrously exaggerated spirit of nationalism which also goes by the

fair-sounding but misused name of patriotism. During the last century and a

half this idol has acquired an uncanny and exceedingly pernicious power

everywhere.

To estimate this objection at its proper worth, one must realize that a

reciprocal relation exists between external machinery and internal states of

mind. Not only does the machinery depend on traditional modes of feeling and

owe its origin and its survival to them, but the existing machinery in its

turn exercises a powerful influence on national modes of feeling.

The present deplorably high development of nationalism everywhere is,