institution can furnish is in its decision of particular cases. That is frequently of high importance because, however unimportant in itself the question decided may appear to be, such questions are frequently the origins of general ill-feeling. They frequently halt the whole progress of diplomatic effort toward a good understanding. One of the curious human features of international affairs is that two peoples will accept without irritation an impartial decision upon a question between their two countries when if the foreign minister of either country had agreed to the same thing voluntarily he would have been hung in effigy.

IMPORTANCE OF JUDICIAL DECISION

You will recall that in 1898 a Joint High Commission was created by Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of disposing of a great number of pending controversies between the United States and Canada. The Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Herschell, came over to head the British section and VicePresident Fairbanks headed the American section. They met alternately in Ottawa and Washington; they appointed committees; they discussed the numerous questions at issue, and they separated without being able to settle anything whatever, because neither party could yield upon the Alaskan boundary question. The Alaskan boundary question was determined by the decision of the tribunal which sat in London in 1903, and thereupon progress toward settlement of controversies began all along the line, and before the World War came, in 1914, every question had been settled; so that no controversies remained on the diplomatic calendar to hinder alliance between all the Englishspeaking peoples. It frequently happens in this way that a judicial question upon which neither side can yield without a sense of humiliation is like a key log of a jam, the removal of which sets free the whole mass to follow its natural course down the stream. In such a case it may be of vast importance to both countries to have a question decided, while it may be quite unimportant which way it is decided.

More important is the part that the existence of adequate machinery for judicial settlement plays as a necessary feature of any process toward the outlawry of war. No one can expect a

world free from controversy. Disputes will constantly arise so long as human nature remains the same. They must be settled in some way. If not settled peaceably, then from time to time, when they are important and exciting, they will lead to force. That can not be prevented by mere negatives. The only practical recourse is by furnishing some adequate means of peaceable settlement; and, throughout the entire field of disputes arising upon claims of right, human experience has devised no means of peaceable settlement so effectual as the opportunity to secure the judgment of a competent and upright court of justice.

More important also is the value of an international court as an agency in the development of international law, for there lies the path of progress. It is only by advance in the establishment of law that the peace-loving peoples of the world can move forward toward the permanent establishment of the rule of public right in lieu of impulse and selfishness and brutal force.

Consider the underlying conditions which make it difficult to maintain peace. Chief among these are the essential differences of temperament and character, and traditions and preconceived ideas, and inherited modes of thought and feeling and action, and differing conceptions of what is just and right and permissible in conduct. Out of these arise inevitable misunderstandings and opposing views of national rights and national duties. In this field interested motives find fertile soil for the cultivation of prejudice and passion and the determination of patriotism on both sides to insist on one country's supposed rights at all hazards, while one side or the other is surely mistaken. This process goes on among civilized peoples, the vast majority of whom on both sides are sincerely in favor of peace.

RENDERS PUBLIC OPINION EFFECTIVE

The one force which civilization possesses capable of checking this process toward conflict is this public opinion in favor of peace. How can that opinion be made effective? Why has it not been more effective in the past? The plain answer is that public opinion, when called upon to address itself to the living questions of the moment, is uninformed. It is ill-informed. It is frequently misinformed. It is differently informed in different countries,

and if required to argue out in the heat of controversy, from first principles, the right and wrong of national action, or proposed action, it becomes confused and ineffective; it has no adequate force of crystallization. The plain remedy is to secure general agreement upon rules of right conduct between nations upon which the public of all civilized countries may base their judgment, so that universal opinion may be clear and potent. The rules must conform to the common conceptions of morality, but they must not be mere moral truths. They must translate moral truths into terms of action. They must be definite and certain, to be effective tests of conduct. Their formulation and acceptance must inevitably be a long, slow process; but all advances in civilization have been by long, slow processes. It has been by such a process that the law of nations in its present extent has been built up. For centuries governments have been gradually discussing with each other the ways in which nations ought to act under such and such conditions, and rescuing from the great mass of temperamental differences certain matters of international relation upon which all nations could agree, and formulating rules which all nations could accept; and thus very gradually the field of difference has been narrowing and the field of agreement has been enlarging. These rules constitute the law of nations.

We sometimes hear the remark that the World War has destroyed international law. The future would be dark indeed if that were so. But it is not so. It is true that many of the rules of international law designed to regulate the conduct of war were grossly violated. Upon this two observations suggest themselves: One is that the whole field of international law to regulate the relations of nations in peace is unaffected. The other is that you can not destroy a law by breaking it. The whole community of individuals or of nations can destroy a law by acquiescing in the breaking of it, but no lawbreaker can destroy the law he breaks. There has certainly been no acquiescence in the wholesale violation by Germany of the law relating to war. On the contrary, it was the testing of Germany's conduct by these rules of international law which led the civilized world outside of the Central Powers to condemn Germany and was the chief element in forming the clear and definite public opinion which ranged

against her the forces that led to her final defeat; and the essential basis of the reparations by the infliction of which Germany is being punished now is the German violations of law in beginning and carrying on the war by land and sea. The public opinion of the civilized world found in the clear rules of the law which it had established a certain basis for its judgment, and it has reasserted and re-enthroned the law which was apparently overwhelmed for the moment.

Democracies can not live without law. Autocrats can issue commands, but democracies must govern themselves by public opinion, and there can be no effective public opinion without established rules of conduct. A world of democracies must be governed by public opinion in support of law or it will be a world of anarchy.

In this modern world of rapid change, the development of international law by the old processes of diplomatic correspondence has not kept pace with the changing conditions calling for the application of law. Within our lifetime two new methods of expediting the process have been devised. The first is the holding of conferences for the purpose of discussing and agreeing upon additional and more effective rules-a process which ought to be resumed without any avoidable delay. The other is the establishment of this permanent court to pass upon questions of international law in dispute between nations and which, according to all human experience with courts of justice, will inevitably develop the law as it decides cases under the law.

Dangerous as analogies are, when I hear expressions of little esteem for the slow processes of international law because they do not prevent excited peoples from the use of force, I can not help thinking of the relation between curative and preventive medicine. When a patient is laid low by an acute disease, it does not help him for the physician to talk about sanitary science. Medicine and surgery must deal with that case as best they can at the moment. Nevertheless, if future cases of disease are to be prevented, if the community is to be more healthful, if the death rate is to be lower, if there is to be less tuberculosis, less yellow fever, less typhoid, rules of sanitary conduct of life must be established and understood and followed and enforced by public opinion. The place to begin is in the beginning, before disease has taken possession and become acute.

SELF-RESPECT ENJOINS PARTICIPATION

The question now presented is whether the United States shall take part with the other civilized nations in supporting the International Court of Justice, which the United States has so long urged those same nations to join her in creating.

Manifestly, the presumption is in favor of the United States supporting the court. Both self-respect and self-interest require that the United States should stand by its own policy. We can not decently urge the creation of such a court as this upon the rest of the world through a long series of years and then repudiate the court when they consent to it, unless we offer some adequate : reason. Is there any such reason?

Several suggestions have been made:

(1) It is said that the court originated in the League of Nations and should therefore be avoided.

The court did not originate in the League of Nations. It originated in the proposal of the United States to the First Hague Conference of 1899. Upon the urgency of the United States in the Hague Conference of 1907, the project was worked out and agreed upon in its essential features, except the method of selecting the judges, and that conference adopted a resolution in these words:

The conference recommends to the signatory powers the adoption of the annexed draft convention for the creation of a court of arbitral justice and the bringing it into force as soon as an agreement has been reached respecting the selection of the judges and the constitution of the court.

The difficulty which prevented a complete agreement upon the court in 1907 was very simple but very stubborn. The community of nations which was represented in the Second Hague Conference consisted of a small number of large and powerful states and a large number of small and physically weak states. Upon any question to be determined by a vote of states, the small states would have complete control. Yet the large states had greater population, greater interests to be affected by the court, and, as compared with the majority of the small states, greater experience and familiarity with the kind of questions the court would have to pass upon. The small states were jealous of their equal sovereign rights and would not concede superior rights of