Yet what better can we do to-day? If the nations joining the league would be willing now to establish an international executive council with power to enforce such agreements and to raise an international army for that purpose we would be taking a long step toward a really efficient union. But at this moment the composition of such an executive council would be beset by very great difficulties. Even if that question could be settled, how many nations to-day would be willing to surrender any part of their ultimate sovereignty to a federal union? Is it not evident that the world is no more ripe for such a union now than the thirteen colonies were ripe for our own federal constitution, while they were still carrying on the War of Independence?
But it was during that war that our first league of American states was formed—imperfect and inadequate—but a precursor of better things. It was at the outbreak of the present war that an alliance was made among a number of the great powers. It is at the conclusion of this war that we may hope for a league among many of the most powerful nations for the maintenance of peace;—a league, imperfect and rudimentary at the beginning but which may well develop, when its imperfections have been realized and the necessity of a “more perfect union,” becomes clear into a world wide confederacy, which shall have a full dominion over the nations that compose it as our federal union now has over the states of the American republic.
But even then the whole work will not be done, insurrections and rebellions, like our own civil war, may be required to consolidate that union more and more firmly before the time shall come when nations shall not take up arms against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
HOW LARGE IS A ROSE?
I said to a gardener old one day,
“How large is a rose; how large is a rose?”
He measured an inch and a half each way
And kindly smiled as a gardener may:
“Measured by inches I should say
That that’s the size of a rose.”