Excerpt from The League of Nations and Freedom of the Seas The explanation is not far to seek. A glance at the history of the whole movement reveals it at once. It is that the more recent development of the old idea of a League of Nations is the result of a fusion of two schools of thought. The older one, Whose object was a league to prevent war, culminated in the Holy Alliance. The newer one is that which grew up after the failure of the Holy Alliance had led men to despair of finding a means for the prevention of war. The new school, whose harvest was the Declara tion of Paris and the Geneva and Hague Conventions, sought the more modest goal of mitigating the horrors of war. It is to this school of thought and not to the older one that the idea of Freedom of the Seas belongs. It indeed represents the high - water mark of what may be called the Hague school. It is the creed of its most advanced and enthusiastic advocates. Naturally these men were also among the most earnest and convinced advocates of the revived move ment for a League of Nations. Their support was needed to give it life. The price of their support was the incorporation of their special policy in the new programme. The price was gladly paid; but, at first, it certainly was not measured. The failure to diagnose the full meaning of Freedom of the Seas, and the even deeper failure to penetrate the actualities. Of Naval Warfare, prevented men observing how far the two conceptions were incompatible, if not mutually destructive. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.