The first assumption is that the necessary instruments through which the nations must establish their League are their existing political governments. It is as politically organized units that the nations enter the League, whose joint action then becomes political action, analogous to that of each of the units. In other words the governments, or their representatives, are the efficient agents to establish the League in the first instance, and to work it in the second. The possibility of acting through any other medium, for example the Church, is not contemplated, and in these days would probably be dismissed as absurd, though it would have seemed wholly reasonable in the fourteenth century. On what other terms, indeed, is the League possible? Can we conceive of our own, or of any nation, entering the League, and operating within it, except by the act of its political government, signed, sealed, and delivered by the political chiefs for the time being? Should we not feel a shock of surprise i

All which seems self-evident enough. But the word 'representation' is full of traps for the unwary; and most unquestionably we fall into one of them when we argue in this way. Souls, and national souls most of all, are extremely difficult things to 'represent.' Official machinery can never represent them, not even when the official machinery employed for the purpose bears the august name of government: the reason being that the nature of the soul and the nature of the machine are antithetic. There is a notion abroad that, if a people puts in enough votes at one end of the democratic machine, its soul will come out at the other. That system has its uses, no doubt; but as a process for the extraction of national souls it should never be thought of. Many national souls have been lost in that way. None have been found.

That astonishing document, the Treaty of Versailles, becomes intelligible enough when we think of it as achieved by a group of governments which had lost touch with the souls of the nations on whose behalf they professed to act -- lost touch, that is, with the deeper qualities of national character revealed in art, in literature, in domestic life, in moral idealism, in religion, and even in sport.

It is said that ex-burglars make good policemen, and ex-poachers good preservers of game. We can well believe it. In the same say, one may suppose, ex-brewers would make good prohibitionists, ex-slave-owners good antislavery men, ex-bookmakers good suppressors of gambling, ex-pagans good promoters of Christianity, ex-sinners good champions of the moral law. Reasoning from analogy, the conclusion would be that ex-governments represented by ex-prime ministers make good preservers of the peace. All turns on the 'ex.' The burglars, the poachers, the brewers, the slave-owners, the bookmakers, the pagans, the sinners, the governments, and the prime ministers, must all prove their conversion, before we can safely dispatch them on their respective errands. Short of that, what do you propose? League them, do you say? But to what purpose? Will the poachers preserve your pheasants by poaching in a band? Will the brewers turn their beer into a nonintoxicant by pouring it into a single vat? Will the sinners establish virtue by pooling their sins? Will the pagans promote Christianity by appointing a common dance round the Golden Calf? Will the bitter fountains of nationalism become the sweet waters of humanism by connecting the taps? A league of ex-prime ministers, if you will, but a league of prime ministers -- no!

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To its own subjects it turns the other face, or, shall we say, the inner side. They see it, not as a fighting institution, but as a repressor of domestic strife, substituting civil procedure for the lawless and violent clash of conflicting aims. They see it occupied with interests that are not combative, promoting education, fostering the arts and sciences, legislating for the public health, mediating in conflicts between labor and capital, and attending, as best it can, to economic prosperity. Normally, the citizens are unaware of any connection between this side of the government and the other, though they know, of course, that the other exists. Now and then, however, they discover the unpleasant fact that all these pacific goods are liable to sudden conscription for the combative purpose.

None the less, they serve to show us where the analogy fails which has so often been drawn between the suppression of private violence in a single state and the suppression of national wars between a group of states. The history of law and order in the single state is the history of the struggle between two elements -- one law-abiding, the other lawless -- in which the first has gradually gained control over the second, the good citizens imposing their will on the bad ones, or winning them over to the adoption of their ways. Thus, the suppression of dueling was n

Some common words found in the essay are:
League Nations, Golden Calf, German Government, Holy Alliances, World Unite, Treaty Versailles, Roman British, , British Election, Covenant League, league nations, combative nationalism, league governments, prime ministers, treaty versailles, nations league, nations league governments, prime minister, own subjects, souls nations, national souls, league nations league, idea league nations, prime ministers foreign, canterbury prime minister,
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Approximate Pages = 25 (250 words per page double spaced)