The changing organism needs a new form of international executive.
This need cannot be satisfied by the original fiat of the International Conference: it can only be met by the appointment of a standing international committee with executive powers, empowered, that is, to administer and interpret the contracts to which the members of the Conference have originally subscribed. Our third type of guarantee has thus presented us with the clue we sought. The letter of international law has proved ineffective hitherto because it has lacked the inspiration of a living spirit, and this spirit can only be breathed into it by a human organ of international authority.
The executive and the guarantees.
Supposing that such an organ were called into existence, what kind of international relations would naturally fall within its scope? We can analyze its probable sphere of activity into several departments.
(i.) The first branch would of course be those guarantees of national minorities which have just taught us the necessity for its existence.
(ii.) The second branch would include the two subjects of guarantee we dealt with first, namely, “Political Independence” and “Rights of Way.” We can see now that their administration by a representative international executive would eliminate that defect of rigidity which has always proved fatal to them heretofore.
Between them these two branches would cover all the machinery we have suggested for our regenerated European organism. Are there any further spheres of national interaction over which our international organ might properly assume control? It would be logical to assign to it, if possible, all relations between sovereign national States which are peculiarly subject to change.
Change is a harmonization of two rhythms—Growth and Decay. Some sovereign units are continually waxing in population, material wealth and spiritual energy: such are Great Britain and Germany, France and the Russian Empire. Others, like the Ottoman Empire or Spain, are as continually waning in respect of the same factors.
This ebb and flow in the current of life causes, and must cause, a perpetual readjustment of the relations between units in the two complementary phases. Units in the positive phase inevitably absorb the fibers and trespass upon the environment of those which have passed over into the negative rhythm. We cannot arrest this process any more than we can abolish change itself: what we can do is to regulate it on the lines of civilization, instead of letting it run riot in a blind struggle for existence.
The current radiates in an almost infinite variety of interactions. Great Britain, Germany, and India are discharging surplus population into the empty lands of the New World; Great Britain and France are applying surplus wealth to evoke the latent resources of countries with no surplus of their own; Great Britain and Russia are putting forth spiritual energy to inspire primitive peoples with the vitality of civilization.