CHAPTER II.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS--THE NEED _Unless a nation, like an individual, have some purpose, some ideal, some motive which lies outside of and beyond self-interest and self-aggrandisement, war must continue on the face of this earth until the day when the last and strongest man shall look out upon a world that has been depopulated in its pursuit of a false ideal._--NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
Paramount in importance above everything else is the establishment and maintenance of peace between nations.

No remedies for disease, no rules for healthy life will avail, if the arteries through which the life-blood is pouring away remain open still or are only temporarily closed and liable after a brief interval to burst out anew.

The vitality of the nation would be gone beyond recovery if another generation of its best manhood were to be sacrificed and its materiall resources again squandered to meet the necessities of a great war.
Every day that the War lasts forces on us more clearly the fact that Science, not only natural science--physics and chemistry--but also the scientific organisation of the State as an instrument of war, has so developed the means of destruction as either to blot out humanity or to leave the greater part of mankind in abject and bitter slavery to the powers that can wield most effectively the instruments of death and of torture, if war between the leading nations breaks out again after an interval of seeming peace.

How warfare has changed within living memory! Five-and-twenty years ago the highest authority on naval construction spoke with contempt of the submarine as a factor in war at sea.

No one then had solved the old world problem of aerial flight.