We may recognise, however, that this second stage of the pacifist programme has, undoubtedly, made large advances.  But of course it must necessarily be followed by its consequence, a third stage which shall ensure respect for, and obedience to arbitration verdicts.  Recalcitrant states will have to be coerced, and the one thing that can coerce them is an international police administered by an international executive power.  That is to say, we must have a parliament of parliaments, a universal parliament, the representatives of which must be selected by the different constituent members of the United States of Europe.  When this has been done, and only when this has been done, can we arrive at a fourth stage, that of a general disarmament.  In the millennium that is to be it is only the international police which shall be allowed to use weapons of war in order to execute the decrees of the central parliament representing the common European will.

DEMOCRATIC UNANIMITY

Here we have all the old difficulties starting anew, and especially the main one—­democratic unanimity.  How far the democracies of the European Commonwealth can work in unison is one of the problems which the future will have to solve.  At present they, obviously, do not do so.  The Social Democrats of Germany agreed to make war on the democrats of other countries.  Old instincts were too strong for them.  For it must always be remembered that only so far as a cosmopolitan spirit takes the place of narrow national prejudices can we hope to reach the level of a common conscience, or a common will of Europe.  And are we prepared to say that national prejudices ought to be obliterated and ignored?  The very principle of nationality forbids it.

I do not wish, however, to end on a note of pessimism.  The mistake of the pacifist has all along been the assumption that bellicose impulses have died away.  They have done nothing of the kind, and are not likely to do so.  But, happily, all past experience in the world’s history shows us that ideas in a real sense govern the world, and that a logical difficulty is not necessarily a practical impossibility.  In this case, as in others, a noble and generous idea of European peace will gradually work its own fulfilment, if we are not in too much of a hurry to force the pace, or imagine that the ideal has been reached even before the preliminary foundations have been laid.

CHAPTER III

SOME SUGGESTED REFORMS