The Dogma of Sovereignty and the Idea of the League of Nations

Abstract

In Italy, as elsewhere, associations and congresses are seeking to clarify and spread the idea of the League of Nations, which has been put forward by the American President. However, in order for that idea to be put into effect — and to ensure that once in effect it truly bears the fruits its apostles are hoping to reap — its meaning must be made crystal-clear and the results it can be expected to help us achieve should be unambiguously spelled out. There is an infallible method to test whether the avowed support for the idea of the society of nations that is pouring in from all sides is or is not sincere. Note, first of all, that such support is partly, indeed perhaps overwhelmingly, attributable to promptings by those who until no later than yesterday believed in the invincibility and divine mission of Germany, and who today believe, or feign to believe, that German social democracy, which has ushered in a new state to take the place of the imperial state, is entrusted with the task of renewing the social and political fabric of Europe. The method for testing their sincerity consists in inquiring to what extent the latter-day neophytes are prepared to relinquish the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the imperial, democratic or proletarian state.

Letter published in Corriere della Sera on 28 December 1918, and reprinted in Junius, Lettere politiche (Bari: Laterza, 1920).