348 J.-A. PEMBERTON
overwhelming it could not be ‘successfully challenged by America or
Russia in most quarters of the globe.’ Schumann thought that it was
very unlikely that this coalition would become permanent or transform
itself into a confederation because of the totalitarian state’s exaltation
‘racial and national fanaticism’ and its contempt for the ideal of interna-
tional cooperation and organisation: the more likely outcome of fascist
aggression were wars of resistance and counter-revolutions.^384
Thus, the defeat of France and Britain, Schumann maintained, would
entail the ‘end, at least for this generation, of any possibility of organized
international peace in the world to come.’^385 Presuming that the United
States would in fact eventually join the war against Germany and that
the latter would be defeated, Schumann concluded that the task that lay
ahead was that of transforming the grand alliance of the victorious pow-
ers into a new order: a permanent coalition or league of nations ‘whose
members will act in unison to enforce their collective will upon any
member violating its covenants or upon any outside aggressor’.^386
As Schumann’s analysis suggests, the idea of a permanent system of col-
lective security was firmly back on the agenda from the outset of the war:
the idea of an enduring organisation enjoying an overwhelming prepon-
derance of power. As to the fate of the debate on peaceful change, it died
against the background of the war. Esko Anatola has suggested two possi-
ble reasons for the death of this debate. First, the debate was ‘too closely
connected with the experiments of the League,’ the negative sentiments
towards which tainted the peaceful change tradition. Second, the debate
was not sufficiently theoretical and was ‘too much oriented towards actual
problems of the international system of the 1920s and 1930s.’^387
Anatola’s first explanation as to why the debate on peaceful change
evaporated might hold to the extent that post-World War II, much that
had an association with the League was tainted. However, it must be said
that the association between peaceful change and the League was of a very
thread-bare nature. Indeed, it should be recalled that a major criticism of
the Covenant of the League in the interwar years was that although it pro-
vided for an elaborate system of sanctions in order to maintain a peace, it
(^384) Ibid., 77.
(^385) Ibid., 77–78.
(^386) Ibid., 76.
(^387) Anatola, ‘Theories of Peaceful Change,’ 238.