76. We have reached the end. I have conducted the reader over wide areas, and have put before him aims which cannot be immediately attained. But these aims are not on that account nebulous and Utopian. We are already on the way which leads to them, even though a long time will still be required before we draw quite near. This hope may be with certainty indulged in, because the forces at work for the organic development of the community of states are ever gathering strength. The governments of states may continue an obstinate opposition to these forces, but in the end they must give way. Economic interests primarily, but many others also, prevent individual states from allowing the international community of states to remain unorganized any longer. Slowly indeed, and only by degrees, and to a large extent unwillingly and of compulsion, but nevertheless step by step, states will be impelled onwards towards a goal still in part unknown. It is amusing to observe the parts which individual states play in this process of development. At one time it is one power, and at another time another power, that is led by its interests to seize on the leading rÔle, and make progressive proposals. At one time a progressive proposal is joyfully welcomed, at another it is declined, at another time it meets with partial assent and partial dissent. In the matter before us the United States of North America play a very prominent part; they have the merit of having taken a most conspicuous share in the development of the law of nations, especially of the law of neutrality. It was America that moved for the erection of a permanent international court, and in any event she will not give up the idea even if she cannot secure its speedy realization.

77. Favourable as the auspices are for continuous progress, there are not wanting, on the other hand, influences and circumstances opposed to progress.

In the first place, there is national chauvinism, to which the existence of a law of nations is hateful, and which represents unlimited national self-seeking. Where it obtains the upper hand, international conflicts are unavoidable, and cannot be composed by a judicial sentence. In the second place, there is the fact that the political equilibrium, on which the whole law of nations rests, presents itself as a system liable to gradual as well as to sudden alteration. Were the earth's surface permanently divided between equally great and equally powerful states, the political equilibrium would be stable, but it is rooted in the nature of things that this equilibrium can only be unstable. The reason is that individual states are subject to a perpetual process of evolution, and thereby to perpetual change. This evolution is for one state upwards, for another downwards. No state is permanently assured against break-up, and it is the break-up of existing states and the rise of new states that threaten the permanent organization of the international community of states with danger. There is also another factor demanding attention, and that is the opposition between West and East, although the glorious example of Japan shows that the nations of the East are indeed capable of putting themselves on the plane of Western civilization, and of taking a place in the sun in the international community of states.

However this may be, we must move onward, putting our trust in the power of goodness, which in the course of history leads mankind under its propitious guidance to ever higher degrees of perfection.