A

COURT is created for the purpose of administering justice, under law.

"This then is the general significance of law, a rule of action dictated by some superior being." And then the great teacher of the English Common law lays down the principles of the moral law "that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due'; and of the law of nature "that man should pursue his own true and substantial happiness," adding, "that this is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law; for the several articles into which it is branched in our systems amount to no more than demonstrating that this or that action tends to man's real happiness, and therefore very justly concluding that the performance of it is a part of the law of nature or, on the other hand, that this or that action is destructive of man's happiness, and therefore that the law of nature forbids it."

From these two prior laws he derives the "third kind of law to regulate this mutual intercourse, called the 'law of nations,' which, cannot be dictated by any, but depends entirely upon the rules. of natural law, or upon mutual compacts, treaties, leagues, and agreements between these several communities: in the construction also of which compacts we have no other rules to resort to, but the law of nature; being the only one to which all the communities are equally subject."

The "natural law" is no longer the controlling "law."

That which most promptly suggests itself to the mind of the ordinary man, when law is talked of, is not the moral law or the natural law, but municipal law, "a rule of

civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong."

The tendency towards the enactment of man made statutes has magnified the "municipal Law," until it is in the way of becoming the only law, and as it overshadows, then the principles of the moral law and the law of nature gradually are dwarfed, and become atrophied. The law of commerce is the "municipal law"; and as the commercial instinct becomes greater, the municipal law becomes the prevailing law. Statutory law takes the place of "common law." Ethics are replaced by written inhibitions. The moral law becomes evanescent; men consult the revised codes to find the boundaries of that search for happiness, instead of consulting their inner consciousness.

It follows that there is left no such law as "international law," for there are no statutes to bind nations and no supreme power to enforce a rule of conduct, and the ethics of natural law are not a world restraining force.

The evil of statutory law-necessary as it is lies in the fact that man becomes prone to look to the numerous volumes to find a guidance of conduct. Nations are formed of members of society. If the units of the nations have become trained to look to the statutes for the control of actions, and feel at liberty to do those things which are not forbidden therein, they, as part of the nation, will refuse to be guided in their relationship with other nations by anything except their personal inclinations; moral ethics as a rule of conduct having disappeared.

Instead of the restraint of respect and love a new controlling sense is established, that of fear.

A court is created as a means by which to administer justice. Without the power to compel the observance of its decrees a court is but a comedy.

If there be no supreme power, there can be no supreme court. For without a supreme power there can be no way of establishing a responsible force having vested in it the duty of compelling the observance of the decrees of a supreme tribunal.

If a Supreme Court of International Justice be established and there be created an international force to enforce the decrees thereof, the units of that force will be responsible to the nations from whom they are taken, and not to the Supreme Court, unless that Supreme Court become more than a judicial body; it must become also a supreme administrative body of the United States of the World. Enforcement of a decree is impossible unless there is unity of force back of it. If a majority be relied upon, then the majority may be found to change. Government can only prevail when the opinion of the majority. becomes the accepted doctrine of the whole. Otherwise revolution.

The Supreme Court of International Justice, to be of practical use, must pass from its position of Supreme Court to Supreme Controlling body. An utopian dream, which may in the generations to come be a reality. But not for generations.

Without a supreme controlling body there must be something to substitute in moral effect. There has existed a something which has been one influence to prevent nations from being always at war, when their individual advancement was opposed.

Dread; a greater controlling power than fear.

Dread of devastation; dread of wanton destruction; dread of extermination.

War is undertaken by a weaker power only when the alternative is dread of something even greater than devastation or wanton destruction-dread of extermination.

But the dread of war has ceased to Drevent war; because the horrors of war I lost their vividness.

If

That universal peace will some day reign supreme must be accepted by all who believe in a progressive civilization. This includes all the thinking world. there is to be universal peace, and if it is not to come through a consolidation of all nations, which is extremely improbable, then it must come from some controlling feeling, which will in itself create the administrative branch of the Supreme Court of International Justice.

The police force to compel observance with the decrees of this Supreme Court will be incorporeal: It will be Dread.

There never will be established an international corporeal force capable of enforcing the obedience to the decrees of this Court. That means the establishment of a war force to prevent war; it is foolish in its conception. The power against which a decree is to be enforced will withdraw its representatives from the international force, and by the establishment of alliances, just as at present, meet with arms the force of arms.

If it be a weak nation; it will do, as it does now-obey the mandate through fear, unless the mandate means extermination, when it will fight. National extermination, while fighting, is better than extermination without resistance.

The first power for enforcement will be "Dread." A greater dread than exists to-day, because of a greater object lesson of horror than has existed heretofore.

All things, that are, have a reason for their existence. The present conflagration must have its raison d'être. In orderly evolution it is not to be presumed that the reason is for the world control by any one power. That suggestion might meet the conceit of a nation, but would not meet the approbation of the world.

Nations having deviated from the moral law, the individuals thereof having gradually become accustomed to written rules of regulation, it has been necessary to substitute something for the moral code, for the present, until the moral code can once more take its rightful place.

Dread will be enthroned as the enforcer of agreements. Dread of war will prevent

war.

of sails and the discovery of the mariner's compass, which made it possible to transport many of the conveniences of life, which affected increasing numbers. The third, and present, great stage of commerce began when railways brought the produce of continents to the seaboard, and the triple expansion engine made great merchant vessels possible. As a result, the necessaries of life are now transported in immense quantities, which fact vitally affects the entire people. These conditions have created an interdependence of the nations from which there is no escape. If a nation is agricultural, it is dependent on others, both for markets and for manufactures; if it is a manufacturing nation, it is dependent on others, both for markets and for food.

When an agricultural people attempt to make themselves independent of other nations by establishing their own manufactures, they soon discover that by a sort of mechanical Malthusianism machinery inevitably increases several times as fast as population; hence the nation no sooner becomes independent of those who wish to sell than it becomes dependent on those who wish to buy. The only possible way to avoid such national interdependence is to adjure modern civilization.

The differentiation and organization of a world industry, which necessitates an ever-increasing international dependence, has created this new world life. In earlier ages, when nations were economically independent, political independence was natural and inevitable. Of course there could be no world-consciousness when a common world life did not exist, and each sovereign nation was sufficient

But as the world's economic life becomes more nearly one-as it certainly will under the quiet compulsion of economic law-the increasing interdependence of nations places the well-being of each increasingly in the keeping of others; and their relations to each other become more and more vital until their mutual service becomes a matter of life and death. If, for instance, all other peoples should make and enforce a de

claration of non-intercourse with Great Britain, that nation would literally perish in a few months.

Evidently, the increasing interdependence of the nations is creating new international rights and duties, but there is no World Legislature to recognize and legalize them; there is no World Court to interpret and apply them; and there is no World Executive to enforce and vitalize them. Precisely here appears one of the most obscure and, at the same time, one of the most potent causes of the war.

The economic and industrial organization of the world has far outgrown the political organization of the world. And in spite of all efforts to keep the peace, this will continue an active cause of war until there has been provided for the new world life an adequate body politic. Until then governments will undertake, by military power, to make, interpret, or enforce a law of nations to please themselves; and this seizure of civil functions on the part of armed force is war; it is an attempt to make might right; it is the law of the jungle; it is the abnegation of civilization; it is anarchy between nations.

Now that the world is coming to selfconsciousness, it must accept the responsibility of its future, and take intelligent direction of it. The new tendency toward world integration is permanent because it is due to new conditions which are permanent. This cosmic movement toward coördination and integration is the very essence of the new civilization which is reshaping the world. Nations and individuals have unconsciously, and, therefore, unintelligently, and slowly adapted themselves to these changed and changing conditions. Now is the accepted time to undertake a readjustment which shall be conscious and, therefore, intelligent—a broad-minded “coöperation with the real tendency of the world." which Carlyle called the "insight of genius."

The new world life means, sooner or later, a world consciousness, a world conscience, a world ethics, and a World Court, together with the other departments of an organized political life embodied in a Federation of the World.

N THE Annual Reports for 1914 of the Federal Council of the Churches of Chrst in America, there are some interesting data upon the social effects of Coöperation in Europe. This report was prepared by the Rev. Chas. O. Gill, Field Investigator for the Commission on the Church and Social Service. In making his investigations he visited no less than twelve countries and gained information as to two others from members of the Commission who visited them.

In a previous volume entitled, "The Country Church," Mr. Gill had pointed out that there is no satisfactory solution of the problem of rural life apart from the reorganization of rural business. For this reason it was determined to make a study of European countries that had given serious attention to the organization of farmers for business purposes. One object of the study was to learn what part the rural churches should take in a movement necessary for the preservation of a high standard of country life and for insuring the possibility of a successful rural church.

It was found that in most of the area covered the cooperative movement had passed beyond the experimental stage. Rural cooperation in Europe is more than half a century old.

Probably the best known example of the success of rural coöperation is found in Denmark. Much has been written. about the wonderful transformation wrought in that country by union of effort among her farmers. Coöperation has been one of the most essential factors by which the people of Denmark have rescued themselves from a condition of extreme economic distress and attained a prosperity which, considering Denmark's limited natural resources, is most remark

able. It is due chiefly to this that Denmark has more wealth per capita than any other country in Europe.

In Italy, the business of the Federation of Coöperative Agricultural Associations has grown since 1895 not less than 43 per cent. in any five year period, while the number of its agricultural societies grew from 1892 to 1910 no less than ten-fold. The business of its coöperative credit institutions more than doubled in the four-year period from 1908 to 1912.

The movement has also been successful in Hungary. In 1912 there were 8,000 parishes into which the activities of cooperative societies extended. Up to the outbreak of the war coöperation had also made great progress in Belgium, while in Holland the coöperative idea has been making leaps and bounds during the past ten years. Here, as in other countries, including Austria, Russia, France, and Switzerland, it has been demonstrated that coöperation is a necessary condition of general agricultural prosperity.

But Germany affords the best example of agricultural cooperation on a large scale. In the twenty-year period from 1890 to 1910 the number of German cooperative agricultural societies grew from 3,000 to 25,000. From 1892 to 1908 the membership of coöperative societies for collective purposes grew from 12,000 to 213,000, and the membership of coöperative dairy societies from 51,500 to more than 1,250,000. Mr. Gill remarks: "It is due to cooperation more than to any other one thing that Germany has been able to increase her agricultural productivity fifty per cent. in fifty years, until now, though smaller in area than our state of Texas, it produces 95 per cent. of the food of 66,000,000 people.”