Page:Political and legal remedies for war.djvu/105

lish followers have demonstrated and might not be without a value of its own, yet it must wait to be adopted in toto by all those States which are concerned, before the attainment of so much of its object as appertains to the abolition of War can be, even in a minute degree, reached. Thus the first condition of engaging in a hopeful search for remedies for War, is that of believing it is an evil ir of so great and preponderant a magnitude as to remc- justify the diversion of a vast amount of political activity to the solitary end of reducing the fre- quency of War. If such a course is resolved upon by any sin- gle State, the meaning of the word remedy is then plain for that There is not a single empirical device which, if adopted, can be a security against all War. There may be some settled plan of continuous policy, having divers branches, each of them -sed to one or more of the special group of circumstances which may be called in a peculiar sense causes of War, the adoption of which policy by any one State tends largely to re- duce the chances of War, and the adoption of which by ft or by all States tends, proportionately, to render the occurrence of War impossible. In prosecuting an inquiry, then, into remedies for War, it is, Abolition of m the m ' st place, assumed that War is looked COM!| "P 011 M an cv ^ f ^ IC m ' st magnitude, and that !alni * ai. hidi is sincerely in search of remedies f..r it U) make the abolition of War a distinct object i.f tin- m'-t serious and unresting political concern, to the at- tainment of which object the conduct of its international n-la- ThemennMo tions, in all its departments, shall steadily and uni- ilfvl. formly converge. In the second plav. the-.,- n 111- edies an- numerous and ftm mutually inter-de- nt, so that reliance cannot be pla.-ed on a resort t f them by itself, or even 00 * t any nuin I !. '.' . In the third place. | nedies