LEAGUE OF NATIONS TO STOP WAR

The Hon. Theodore Marburg, former ambassador to Belgium, lectured last evening on the logic and machinery of an international league. "In advocating peace," said Mr. Marburg, "we must emphasize the inevitable injustices which are the results of war." Belgium is a vivid example of this, but by no means the only one. There are private injustices as well as public.

"The present condition of Europe proves a lack of intelligence in the world," he said. "No one reform can eradicate such ignorance more completely than to bring home to people's minds the fearful horrors of war."

That an international league is possible is shown by the continual union of once unfriendly countries occurring down through history. No fact is more significant, moreover, of the tendency to unite than the hundred years of peace of England with two nations, France and the United States.

Alliances in the past have not succeeded in establishing permanent place because of the narrowness of the circles forming them. With all the progressive and internally just nations as members of the union a sound enduring league would be formed. This is the more inevitable because with the abandonment of armed diplomacy most of the suspicion and distrust would be forgotten.

An international court, an international legislature, of which the present Hague Conference would serve as an upper house, and an international police system are the bodies necessary for the machinery of a world league. It could not give ideal justice, perhaps, but the sacrifices would be slight in view of its great benefit to all the nations of the world.

In short, history points toward an international league, justice confirms it, and there is needed only the enlightened statesmanship of a few great nations to establish and organize it.