no legislatures to make the law, and there are no judicial decisions to establish by precedent what the law is. One great weakness of international law has been that, to ascertain what it was, you have to go to text writers and to a great variety of statements, differing, inconsistent, many of them obscure and vague, capable of different interpretations, so that the instant that the occasion for the application of a law comes, there is pressed upon conflicting nations the question as to what the law is, without any clear and defi

nite standard from which to ascertain it.

All international law is made, not by any kind of legislation, but by agreement. The agreement is based upon customs, but the ascertainment and recognition of the customs is the subject of the agreement; and how can there be agreement unless the subject matter of the agreement is definite and. certain?

I say that recent events indicate that we must press forward codification. I The can go a step further than that. changes in the conditions of the earth, the changes in international relations, which have been so rapid in recent years, have outstripped the growth of international law. I think it quite right to say that the law of nations does not come so near to covering the field of national conduct to-day as it did fifty years ago. The development of international relations in all their variety, in the multitude of questions that arise, goes on more rapidly than the development of international law; and if you wait for custom without any effort to translate custom into definite statements from year to year, you will never get any law settled except by bitter controversy.

of international law is made necessary by the swift moving of events among nations. We cannot wait for custom to lag behind the action to which the law should be applied.

For All Mankind

The overwhelming body of the American people love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it for all mankind. We believe that nobility of spirit, that high ideals, that capacity for sacrifice

are nobler than material wealth. So long as the spirit of American freedom. shall continue, it will range us side by side with you, great and small, in the maintenance of the rights of nations, the rights which exist as against us and as against all the rest of the world.

During all the desperate struggles and emergencies of the great war, the conflicting nations from the beginning have been competing for the favorable judgment of the rest of the world with

Some of us believe that the hope of the world's progress lies in the spread and perfection of democratic self-government. It may be that out of the wrack and welter of the great conflict may arise a general consciousness that it is the people who are to be considered, the rights and liberties to govern and be governed for themselves, rather than rulers' ambitions and policies of aggrandizement. If that be so, our hopes will be realized, for autocracy can protect itself by arbitrary power, but the people can protect themselves.

The pressing forward of codification only by the rule of law.

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH.

What shall we say

When twenty million men,
Who yesterday

Ploughed, builded, trafficked, traveled lands and seas,
Laughed, chatted, loved their fellows, took their ease,
Cherished their homes and fondled wife and child,
And at the shadows of war-clouds smiled,
Boding no ill, to-day

Tramp the earth's face in murderous array,
Crush her broad, fruitful breast in bloody mire,
With bomb and mine and mortar blast
The priceless treasures of the age-long past,
And with insensate ire

Slay one another, slay and slay and slay,-
If they and theirs, not knowing why they die,
Should ask us why,

What shall we say?

Kaiser and King and President and Tsar,
Answer before high heaven for this war!
What shall we say,

When the great war-lords do not shrink
To swear the awful crime upon some fellow-King;
When diplomatic spiders blink

And twist their sapient heads
And spin the web of chance into a ring
Of steel necessity, whose vicious threads
Constrain each government to violate
The peace and safety of its neighbor state,
Or roll the burden of the blame
Upon a class, or clique, or system, yea,
Upon Almighty God?

Kaiser and King and President and Tsar,
Who always send, but never go, to war,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked,
Nor His eternal purpose balked
By eikons, like grim mascots borne,
Or patriot oaths upon the symbols sworn,-
From the red sod

Cries out your brothers' blood; the curse of Cain
Falls millionfold on him who could restrain

The avalanche of death, yet bade his hand refrain.

What will you say,

When little children, who had no defence
Against your war-lords and your diplomats,-
Millions of little children, they

Whose fathers you have called away
Not to return, not to return,

But in the shambles to be hurried hence,
Victims of your insatiate truculence,-

When these, grown older, learn.

Who made them orphans, and shall follow you
With questioning eyes at guard-mount or review,
And dumb set lips, with portent worse
Than any spoken curse;

Or when in night's small hours, the eyes forever quenched
By your decree

Open again to haunt you, asking why

They from their hearths were wrenched
Your substitutes to be,

For you, not for themselves and theirs to die,
What will you say?

What shall we say,

For whom the Tree of Life

Was planted and put forth its bloom;-
We, the great moiety of mankind,
Who, 'mid the murk and din of gloom.
In this incredible fray,

See light and groping find
Nought but a tomb?
We, who in miry trenches make our bed,
Drenched in the blood by comrades shed,
When in night watches we essay
To think who sowed the seed of strife?
We did not rattle sabers;

We had no quarrel with our neighbors;
There was room

In Europe for us all to sow and reap,
To eat and sing a little and sleep;—
Then on a sudden, in a day

Peace and good will were changed to hate;
Hell had its awful way;

Heaven held its breath in horror while
We rushed to clasp our fate,

Let drum and fife our tiger-selves beguile,

Followed the world-old call, slaying and to be slain.
But weeks in bloody mire have made it plain;

Now by the grace of God we see,
We who made war for others, we
This much will say:

Kaiser and King and President and Tsar,
Yours to give answer at God's judgment-bar.

This we will say:

We have found tongue at last:
Blindfolded, dumb and dazed no more,
No more as in a cloud we walk,-
The fog is lifted and at last is seen
Behind the web the weaver,

Back of the intricate machine

The hand that moved the lever.
This much at last is clear,

It matters not a straw

Who built the engine or designed its plan;-
The engineer,

And not his engine, answers to the law;
Without a doer there is no deed,
Nothing without a voice or pen decreed,
Kaiser, or King, or President, or Tsar,
Thou hast to answer for this monstrous war;

The mouth that spoke our doom was thine
And the fatal fingers that did sign,

Wherefore with one accord we all curse thee,-
Not fate, nor systems, nor other men, but thee.

Be this thing further said:
Your game is played;

You and your works are weighed;

We have tracked the dragon to his den
Who battens on the bones of men,-

Your day of dominance is done.

We see not all the onward path;
Strands of the ancient snare
Still lie about our feet;

But with wide eyes and in our solemn wrath
Before the face of God we swear:
As life is good and sweet,

Under the sun

This horror shall not come again;
Never, never again

Shall twenty million men,

Nor twenty, no, nor ten,

Leave all God gave them in the hands of one,

Leave the decision over peace and war

To King or Kaiser, President or Tsar.

BY

RICHARD CONRAD