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582 The Ideal of Human Unityeasily or swiftly made, must yet be undertaken and the frustrationof the world’s hope prevented at any cost. There is no otherway for mankind than this, unless indeed a greater way is laidopen to it by the Power that guides through some deliveringturn or change in human will or human nature or some suddenevolutionary progress, a not easily foreseeable leap, saltus, whichwill make another and greater solution of our human destinyfeasible.In the first idea and form of a beginning of world-unionwhich took the shape of the League of Nations, although therewere errors in the structure such as the insistence on unanimitywhich tended to sterilise, to limit or to obstruct the practicalaction and effectuality of the League, the main defect was inherentin its conception and in its general build, and that againarose naturally and as a direct consequence from the conditionof the world at that time. The League of Nations was in factan oligarchy of big Powers each drawing behind it a retinue ofsmall States and using the general body so far as possible forthe furtherance of its own policy much more than for the generalinterest and the good of the world at large. This charactercame out most in the political sphere, and the manoeuvres anddiscords, accommodations and compromises inevitable in thiscondition of things did not help to make the action of the Leaguebeneficial or effective as it purposed or set out to be. The absenceof America and the position of Russia had helped to make thefinal ill-success of this first venture a natural consequence, ifnot indeed unavoidable. In the constitution of the U.N.O. anattempt was made, in principle at least, to escape from these errors;but the attempt was not thoroughgoing and not altogethersuccessful. A strong surviving element of oligarchy remained inthe preponderant place assigned to the five great Powers in theSecurity Council and was clinched by the device of the veto;these were concessions to a sense of realism and the necessity ofrecognising the actual condition of things and the results of thesecond great war and could not perhaps have been avoided, butthey have done more to create trouble, hamper the action anddiminish the success of the new institution than anything else in