purpose, namely, the establishment of a great World Court as the first and feasible step for the securing of peace among the nations of the World. In that great Congress little was said concerning the titanic struggle now raging in Europe. The thought was, not as to the ending of the present war, but rather as to the best ways of preventing future conflagrations among the nations of the World. The men there sitting were not mere sentimentalists and and dreamers. Rather were they hard-headed men of business; men of vast experience in the conduct of human affairs, men of broad vision, and resolute purpose, men to whom the establishment of a great World Court was a business proposition, rendered necessary by the crowding developments of the great age in which we are living; men who knew that business stability and prosperity cannot be secured so long as the energies of men are devoted to the destruction of life and property; that construction, the building up of great enterprises, the conservation of wealth, and, above all, of human life, not destruction, is essential both to public and private welfare; men who realized that hard and stern work must first be done if the torrents of human greed and passion now sweeping over the earth are to be stayed in their courses; that the peace the world desires, and must have, is not a matter of sentiment and rhetoric, a problem to be solved by the dreamers of the world, but, rather a problem to be solved by men of clear vision, cool judgment, and resolute will; a problem not of sentiment, but of reason, of law, and of justice.

Fundamental in every address was the thought of a World Court for the settlement of International disputes justiciable in their character. To that project every man present gave adhesion.

The Hon. Alton B. Parker called attention to the fact that the creation of such a Court had already had the careful consideration of the forty-four sovereign States comprising the Second

Hague Tribunal; by the Institute of International Law; by The American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes; by nearly every Peace Society of Europe and America, and by leading publicists and statesmen throughout the world. Emerson McMillin declared that such a Court is the paramount necessity of the age, a necessity so apparent that discussion is unnecessary; it must come. Senator Pomerene startled his auditors by declaring that at the end of the first year of the present horrible war not less than 6,000,000 human lives had been lost to the world; that the number already lost would exceed by a million the entire population of the great State of Ohio. and, were he speaking to-day, he would say that the number already lost-killed, wounded, and missing-would probably exceed the entire population of the great State of Pennsylvania with her more than seven millions of people, and, possibly, New York with her more than eight millions of men, women, and children.

To prevent in the future a similar horrible slaughter a World Court is absolutely necessary. Had such a World Court been in existence in August, 1914. the present terrible struggle would probably never have occurred. Unfortunately for Europe, unfortunately for the World, it was not. How such a Court may be created, whether by action of four or five of the mightiest of the nations of the World, or by the common agreement of all nations, of how many judges it shall be composed, the methods to be pursued in the selection of judges, the powers to be vested in the Court, the kind of disputes which may properly come under its jurisdiction, above all, the grave question as to the methods through which the solemn decisions of the great Tribunal shall be enforced, whether by the creation of a great International Police force, backed by the combined armies and navies of the World, or through economic pressure brought to bear upon a

recalcitrant nation-a pressure that might easily become more effective than force of arms-are questions concerning which men hold varying opinions and, surely, this is neither the place, nor the hour, for their discussion.

Our simple contention is that the establishment of a great Court of the Nations is a project the feasibility of which few men now question, and the necessity of which still fewer will deny. War must be prevented. Upon that proposition all men, save those who believe that war is a necessity for the preservation of a nation's virility, are beginning to unite. For it every Church in America, every Peace Society in the land, every man, every woman, familiar with the horrors of war, would stand up and be counted.

Such a Court for the trial of cases decided to be justiciable, that is, cases purely legal in character, supplemented by International Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, and of International Congresses or Conventions for the determination of the questions proper to be submitted to the Tribunal, and by the creation of some body charged with the execution of the decisions of the Courta work the Court could not of itself perform-would, in our judgment, as a World Court, soon acquire the dignity, the prestige, the authority, the respect, the obedience associated in the thought of America and the World with The Supreme Court of the United States of America-the greatest Court of the World to-day.

But, however desirable, however feasible, however necessary, such a Court may be for the peace of the World, nothing is clearer than the fact that under present conditions it cannot be brought into being save at tremendous cost of money, energy, and time.

Not in a day, not without tremendous effort, can the old ideas that, from time immemorial have obsessed the minds of men, be displaced. Not without campaigns of education, not until the great

ideas of the majesty and supremacy of law, for nations as well as for individuals, shall be more fully recognized, not until righteousness shall be more fully enthroned in the minds of men, not until the great maxim of “equal justice to all, to rich and poor alike, to the strong and to the feeble-'the square deal for every man'"-shall have taken deeper root in the life of the nations of the World, will nations do what individuals refuse to do, namely, submit to law, whether national or international.

The great trouble with the world today is that it is still so largely unrighteous in spirit and in conduct, and unrighteousness, whether on the part of the individual, or the nation, does not, and cannot, make for peace; only righteousness can do that. Then, and only then, shall "the work of righteousness be peace, and the effect of righteousness. quietness and assurance forever."

But to be righteous men must first be just, and with justice the world has had after all but little to do.

Greece exalted justice, but Greece, even in the days of her greatest development, was never just, even to her own citizens. Had she been, Socrates, the wisest of her sons, would never have been compelled to drink the cup of hemlock. Rome also, in theory, deified justice. Cicero, the greatest of her lawyers and orators, gave to the world a word painting of the blind goddess never, perhaps, surpassed, and worthy of repetition here: "The law of Justice," says the great orator, "is right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. It is uncontradicted by any other law, and is not liable to derogation or abrogation. Neither the Senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than one's own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another thing at Athens; one thing to-day, and

another thing to-morrow; but in all times, and among all nations, this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor over all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer. He who does not obey it, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man." With such conceptions of the majesty of law, of justice, of public order, Rome should have stood forever, and would have stood for ages longer than she did, but for the fact that Rome relied upon law alone for the perpetuity of her institutions.

Gibbon who wrote "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" declares that the government of Rome, in the second century of the Christian era-under the five great emperors, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and the like, "was the most perfect government the World has ever known." Yet Rome fell, and fell because with all her magnifying of law, her exaltation of Justice, she was never just. Of equality, of liberty, of fraternity she knew nothing. What justice she had was for her own citizens, her privileged classes, not for her vast proletariat population, not for the Jews congregated in her wretched Ghetto, not for the slaves crowding the greatest slavemarket the World has ever known, nor for the citizenry of the nations beaten down by her mailed fist, or trampled beneath the feet of her triumphant and invincible cohorts. The famous opinion of Chief Justice Taney to the effect that under the Constitution no black man had any rights which a white man was bound to respect-unquestionably good law from a purely legal standpoint, however contrary to humanity and the higher law of God-if pronounced in Rome would have made him the hero of the Roman World. Rome was not just simply because she was unrighteous, because she had no moral life, and had no moral life because she had a religion which was not respectable even in the eyes of its own adherents, a religion over which even its

priests laughed as they passed each other in the streets; and when she had a chance to change her religion for a better one, crucified its founder and burned its adherents at the stake.

So, too, France in theory exalted justice, gloried in liberty, fraternity, and equality, but like Rome was never really just. Had she seen the horrors of her Revolution, that frightful upheaval of human hate and passion so vividly described by Carlyle, would have never occurred.

Had England been just-had she valued human life above the rupees gathered on her Indian poppy fields-she would never have stained her honor by forcing the hateful and destructive opium weed upon an unwilling and protesting people.

Had the men who framed the Constitution of the United States really believed the doctrine of the immortal Declaration, "we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created free and equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," they would never have given the sanction of that great Constitution to the abhorrent system of human slavery a wrong righted only after the Republic had been torn and rent by Civil War, and her fields drenched with fratricidal blood.

Had the great law of justice-the law of which-quoting once again the great words of Cicero-"God himself is the author, the promulgator, and enforcer," prevailed in Europe in 1914, Belgium would not to-day be in ruins, nor the nations plunged in the most hideous and awful war the World has ever known. But Europe was not just; her Kings and her Emperors were not just. A great World Court in actual operation might have saved it all.

But there was no World Court, no great Tribunal before which the nations might have presented their disputes, no Boards of Arbitration and Conciliation

effective for the work in hand, and so the dogs of war were turned loose. Millions of men have perished, billions of wealth have been destroyed, and to-day millions, ten or twelve at least, of unfortunate men and women in Belgium, in Poland, in Serbia, in Armenia, in other States, are on the verge of actual starvation.

A World Court, we repeat, might have prevented the hideous spectacle now presented to the World.

Had men worked for justice, for righteousness, as they have worked for greed and gain, "the work of righteousness would have been peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever."

Let men, therefore, learn to work for righteousness, more than that, let them be righteous. Let them learn in the household, in the schools of the Nation, in the realms of business and professional life, in all the relations of life, whether individual, national, or international, to reverence law. Let them enthrone justice. Let them learn afresh that the Golden Rule, as the great rule of human conduct, is not obsolete. Let them insist upon a World Court as the agency for the administration of international justice, and the World will have taken its first step in the new order,

destined everywhere to prevail, when the roar of guns, the floods of asphyxiating gases, the streams of liquid fire, the assassinations of the seas, shall have passed away, and, as we trust, have passed away forever, and the dawn of a new and better day shall have reddened in the horizon. For the accomplishment of this great end, let all good men, all good women, unite. Let them work for peace, even as they pray for peace, and the new heaven and the new earth for whose coming the prophets and bards of the World have ceaselessly prayed, will soon begin to appear-the new earth wherein righteousness shall dwell, the earth wherein "the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever." Of the coming of this new and better day, this dawn of a new era in the World's history, the era of law and international justice, let no man despair. 'Tis coming! Quoting the noble and jubilant lines of Gerald Massey

""Tis Coming up the steeps of time

And this old World is growing brighter; We may not live to see its dawn sublime But high hopes make our hearts feel lighter; We may be sleeping in the ground,

When it wakes the World in wonder, But we have seen it gathering round And heard its voice of living thunder;'Tis Coming! Yes, 'Tis Coming!"

-Plutarch.

P

RESIDENT Taft said in an address before the Economics Club of New York, while his arbitration treaties were pending, that arbitration will succeed to the extent that the nations become judicially minded. Nations as well as persons must learn to submit to an award, whether it goes for them or against them. We cannot expect this attitude to come about at once.

The judicial habit of mind as displayed in private concerns has been a result of centuries of change; and the evidence lies all about us that the process is far from complete.

Violence against the law is of constant occurrence and democracy and self-government seem to furnish its opportunity rather than its cure. Obedience to the law must be established through absolutely sovereign habit; it will never come as a result of intellectual choice or of studied volition.

A new stage of civilization is reached when litigants accept a mandate of a

court.

The analogy used by Mr. Taft is worth following further. The old "feud" that ruled in private affairs gradually yielded to judicial methods. In primitive culture all the members of a community participated in a settlement, although only remotely interested. Gradually this form of community or corporate liability vanished, and through

custom laws and decisions the facts of individual liability, individual wrong. and and individual satisfaction emerged. The idea of neutrality developed and the status of immunity was recognized. AMERICA'S PART.

This preliminary stage of differentiating causes and parties in national controversies has been passed. America played a most conspicuous part in that process whereby nations which, using Washington's famous phrase, find themselves in a controversy which has for them only remote interest, may without prejudice remain neutral. The rights that developed as the status of neutrality became established are among the clearest in the field of international law and their violation constitutes the most direct and flagrant violation infractions of legally established principles.

It is natural that in this sphere of neutral rights the sense of fairness and the legal mindedness of parties to a controversy have been most severely tried. Belligerents have pleaded and today plead necessity in justification or palliation of what are clear violations of treaties and infringements of the wellestablished rights of neutrals.

Indeed too much cannot be expected in such times. War and violence always play havoc with private rights and the rather flimsy barriers of legal protection fare ill when howitzers and

sub