citizens is the necessity for security, the obligation of self-defence,
which arises from the fact that outside the State there are other
States, each endowed like itself with sovereignty, each of them
maintaining by force its conception of right. The power of the State
over its own subjects is thus in the last resort a consequence of the
existence of other States. Upon the competition between them rests the
order of the world. It is a competition extending to every sphere of
life and in its acute form takes the shape of war, a struggle for
existence, for the mastery or for right.




IV.


ARBITRATION AND DISARMAMENT

To some people the place of war in the economy of nations appears to be
unsatisfactory. They think war wicked and a world where it exists out of
joint. Accordingly they devote themselves to suggestions for the
abolition of war and for the discovery of some substitute for it. Two
theories are common; the first, that arbitration can in every case be a
substitute for war, the second that the hopes of peace would be
increased by some general agreement for disarmament.

The idea of those who regard arbitration as a universal substitute for
war appears to be that the relations between States can be put upon a
basis resembling that of the relations between citizens in a settled and
civilised country like our own. In Great Britain we are accustomed to a