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Is there any nation with so fierce a patriotism as she who is Supernational? Earthly kings speak from their thrones and what happens? And an old man in Rome who wears three crowns on his head speaks from his prison in the Vatican and all the earth rings with it. Has her policy, then, been so suicidal after all? From the world's point of view it has never been anything else.
To me it seems that without a supernational army, under the direct orders of the League, it might under conceivable circumstances become impossible to uphold the decisions of the tribunal, and that, on the other hand, the coexistence of such a military force with national armaments would condemn the undertaking to failure.
Mahomed Ali on this point. Speaking at the Essex Hall meeting Mr. Mahomed Ali distinguished between Popedom and Caliphate and clearly explained what Caliphate means. He said: "Islam is supernational and not national, the basis of Islamic sympathy is a common outlook on life and common culture.... And it has two centres. The personal centre is the island of Arabia.
This arrangement is a substitute for a supernational army, as though prevention were not better than cure; that it will prove efficacious in the long run very few believe. One clear-visioned Frenchman writes: "The inefficacy of the organization aimed at by the Conference constrains France to live in continual and increasing insecurity, owing to the falling off of her population."
Personally, I am profoundly convinced, with Mr. Taft, that a genuine league of nations must have teeth in the guise of supernational, not international, forces.
His actions speak for themselves. On 14 June, 1848, in a famous speech to the National Democratic Association, Wagner violently attacked the organisation of society itself, and demanded both the abolition of money and the extinction of what was left of the aristocracy. In Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft he showed that beyond the "local nationalism" were signs of a "supernational universalism."
On one or other of these alternative lines the resettlement must be devised. To combine them would be ruinous. Now of what practical use is a league of nations devoid of supernational forces and faced by a numerous, virile, and united race, smarting under a sense of injustice, thirsting for the opportunities for development denied to it, but granted to nations which it despises as inferior?
A defensive force of this kind would not have the character or the aims which make a great professional army a menace to peace. Lastly, it is undesirable and would be futile to attempt to set up a "supernational sovereign authority."
Now it is time to prepare the advent of the organic age which must necessarily follow. The most salient fact observable in history is the continual extension of the principle of association, in the series of family, city, nation, supernational Church. The next term must be a still vaster association comprehending the whole race.
In view of the fact that it is impracticable here to leave the various peoples concerned to settle their own destinies it is suggested that the interests of humanity would be best served by the full and frank abandonment by all the belligerents of any dreams of an African Empire; the transfer of the present colonies of the European Powers in tropical Africa, however, and the limits of this area may be defined to the proposed Supernational Authority, or League of Nations."
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