THE ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sia,—Looking at the course of events, from the constitution of the League of Nations to the Conference at Washington, as tending to ensure the future peace of Europe, I cannot, I think, be wrong, nor shall I, perhaps, be alone, in feeling that some grateful tribute may well be paid to that visionary, but not altogether unpractical thinker, the Abbe de. Saint• Pierre, the author of the Projet de Paix Perpetuelle. His Projct appeared in 1713, when the Grand Monarqne was still sitting on the throne of France, and by a strange coincidence it was published at Utrecht in the year in which the Peace of Utrecht was signed. The five articles, embodying, the policy of his suggested Joint Confederation of European Powers,, contain the germ of such measures as are now being taken. for the pacification of the world. It will be enough to quote from the first of them the words :- "Les sonverains contractants etahliront entre err tine alliance perpetuelle et irrevocable, at nommeront des pleni- potentiaires pour. tanir, dans un lieu determine, am dicta om an congres permanent, dans lequel tons les differents des parties contractantes seront regles et termines par voie d'arbitrage ou de jugement."
And from the fourth the words :-
" On sped& les cas oh tont allio infracteur du traits .seroit mix an ban de l'Europe, et proscrit comma ennemi public; asavoir, s'il refusoit d'executer les jugements de la grande alliance, qu'il fit des preparatifs de guerre, qu'il negociat des traites contraires a la confederation, qu'il prit les armes pour lui resister on pour attaquer quelqu'un des allies."
It was of this Projet de Paix Perpetuclle, so fantastic a dream as it must have appeared to the Abbe's contemporaries, that Rousseau wrote :- " Si jamais verite morale fut demontree, it me semble quo c'est generale at particuliere de ce projet."—[Oeuvres de J. J. Rousseau (1823), Tome V., pp. 29-21 and 42.) The Deanery, Durham.
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