If there is to be a permanent peace of the world, it is clear that
there must be some permanent means of settling disputes between Powers
and nations that would otherwise be at war. That means that there must
be some head power, some point of reference, a supreme court of some
kind, a universally recognised executive over and above the separate
Governments of the world that exist to-day. That does not mean that
those Governments Have to disappear, that "nationality" has to be given
up, or anything so drastic as that. But it does mean that all those
Governments have to surrender almost as much of their sovereignty as the
constituent sovereign States which make up the United States of America
have surrendered to the Federal Government; if their unification is to
be anything more than a formality, they will have to delegate a control
of their inter-State relations to an extent for which few minds are
prepared at present.

It is really quite idle to dream of a warless world in which States are
still absolutely free to annoy one another with tariffs, with the
blocking and squeezing of trade routes, with the ill-treatment of
immigrants and travelling strangers, and between which there is no means
of settling boundary disputes. Moreover, as between the united States of
the world and the United States of America there is this further
complication of the world position: that almost all the great States of
Europe are in possession, firstly, of highly developed territories of
alien language and race, such as Egypt; and, secondly, of barbaric and
less-developed territories, such as Nigeria or Madagascar. There will be
nothing stable about a world settlement that does not destroy in these
"possessions" the national preference of the countries that own them and
that does not prepare for the immediate or eventual accession of these
subject peoples to State rank. Most certainly, however, thousands of
intelligent people in those great European countries who believe