It is evidently contained in the premises that the projected league must be all-inclusive, at least as regards its jurisdiction and surveillance.

The argument will return to this point presently.
The purpose of the projected league is peace and security, commonly spoken of under patriotic preconceptions as "national" peace and security.

This will have to mean a competent enforcement of peace, on such a footing of overmastering force at the disposal of the associated pacific nations as to make security a matter of ordinary routine.

It is true, the more genial spokesmen of the project are given to the view that what is to come of it all is a comity of neutral nations, amicably adjusting their own relations among themselves in a spirit of peace and good-will.

But this view is over-sanguine, in that it overlooks the point that into this prospective comity of nations Imperial Germany (and Imperial Japan) fit like a drunken savage with a machine gun.