scraps of paper,” to act as a guarantee that restitution shall be made for wrongs done, to check the revival and extension of the enemy’s armaments, to make the German people feel the disadvantages and loss caused by their action, and the desirability of joining with others in repudiating war as a means of settling disputes or asserting national claims. (c) It may mean a sanction for breach of the stipulations contained in the agreement on which the League of Nations is founded, i.e., a punishment to be inflicted on anyone who infringes the agreement he has made—­a means of insuring performance of its terms.  It is in this last sense that it is used in the present discussion.

(2) The second sanction proposed in the scheme is of a still more serious character.  The clause to embody it runs as follows: 

“Certain members of the League specified in a schedule and to consist of the chief military and naval powers, should agree, if required to do so by a resolution of the League, to commence war against the guilty nation, and to prosecute such war by land and sea until the guilty nation shall have accepted terms which shall be approved by the League.”

This proposal might more effectually prevent wrong-doing, but, even if carefully guarded as Lord Parker proposes, appears open to serious objections.  There seems grave reason to fear that while intended to prevent war, it might really be the cause of disputes, and possibly of war of the most deadly kind.  Such a stipulation might cast a terrible burden on a strong naval power like Great Britain, and have most disastrous consequences.  We are bound to maintain a strong navy to keep open communication between the different parts of the Empire and also to protect our food supplies.  Without sea power Britain could in a few months be starved into submission to any terms in case of war, but to maintain a large navy to be at the beck and call of a Council representing all the nations who cared to join the proposed League would be intolerable.  Suppose, for example, the United States demanded satisfaction for some outrage on American subjects, or suppose American subjects were threatened with massacre in some unsettled country such as Mexico, and in order to obtain satisfaction or to protect its subjects sent some warships to a Mexican port and landed an armed force, not with any object of aggression, but to prevent irreparable injuries.  Suppose Great Britain was of opinion that the American demand was amply justified, but that a majority of representatives of the League, or even, as Lord Parker’s scheme suggests, a majority of the powers named in the Schedule, took a contrary view and called on Great Britain to fulfil the agreement to use her naval force and commence and prosecute to the bitter end a war against the United States because its Government had acted at once instead of waiting while the representatives of a score of other nations were discussing whether