of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of
degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist
that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of
sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are
curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an
idle abstraction.

When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and
consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some
form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less
revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties,
conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations
for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences,
were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by
all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were
codified and brought under the surveillance of some single
representative court or council,--we should discover that there existed
already the substance of an international government, not indeed
adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the
Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other
intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic
Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms
required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative,
judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But
it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and
exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown
itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government,
viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an