Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
From the end of the religious wars to the First World War, the modern state system was kept together by the intellectual and moral tradition of the Western world. That tradition imposed moral and legal limitations on the struggle for power on the international in a certatin measure, maintained order in the international community and secured the independence of its individual members. What is left of this heritage today? What kind of consensus unites the nations of the world in the period following the Second World War?
1 New York Times, July 29, 1946, p. 1Google Scholar; cf. for later speeches, ibid., June 30, 1947. p. 1; July 10, 1947, p. 3.
2 A Study of History, Volume III (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 302.Google Scholar
3 Oeuwes, Vol. III (Paris: 1870), p. 349–50.Google Scholar
4 This paper, in a slightly altered version, forms part of a systematic treatise which, under the title ‘Politics among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace,’ will be published by Alfred A. Knopf.