ABSTRACT

The great majority of those who have considered the conditions for secure peace are persuaded that the most important of these conditions is the creation of an International Authority with power to enforce its decisions. This, however, remains for the present a merely academic opinion: while the East-West tension retains anything like its present acuteness, neither side would submit to any International Authority unless it could dominate it. The question at issue is, at bottom, one of great simplicity: would you rather have a world in which both friends and foes survive, or a world in which both are extinct? Put in these abstract terms, most people would prefer the survival of their friends to the extinction of their foes. But when it is pointed out to them that this choice, if made in earnest, requires some very distasteful measures, they will refuse to admit the necessity of such measures and will persist in the course leading to universal death. In this chapter, I wish to suggest comparatively painless steps by which an International Authority could gradually come

into existence. These steps will only be possible after the measures of conciliation considered in earlier chapters; but if these measures have been adopted, the further steps that I am about to suggest may be accepted as a natural and logical sequel.