As Christians we believe that all the relationships binding man to man and society to society are regulated by law which is not something which changes—not something-socially tolerable in one century and socially intolerable in the next—but an immutable law rooted unchangeably in the Will of God. This idea of the law of God is the whole basis of Christian society, national and international, and it ought to be the constant endeavour of Christian peoples to bring their own local order into harmony with the eternal and unchanging order of God. Internatioal law, however imperfect it may seem now, is just an attempt to make nations live according to the Will of God. That is why international law is so important to us and of such very deep concern to all Christians.

God did not design a Lawless world; man and the sins of man made the world lawless, and it is the task of Christians to bring back society, national and international, to the rule of law in conformity with the will of God. This is the principle on which all teaching of international order is based. The teaching of Christianity on the social order is, as you know, a harmonious blending of rights and duties up from the individual citizen, through the associations needed for a full Christian life—the family, the local community, associations for work, the nation itself—right up to that community of nations, that world society which, in the last ioo years, has come into physical being for the first time. I may say in passing that I saw how completely it had come into being last year when, on my way to the United States of America, I had supper in Ireland and the next day I had tea in Baltimore.