in 1873), composed of sixty leading international jurists and sixty associates, has done invaluable work. So have the International Law Association, and the more recently formed but vigorous InterParliamentary Union, whose labours are now subsidised by interested States. The Carnegie Peace Trust is also applying its great resources to the same end.

There seems no valid reason why completer codification should not eventually do for International Law what it has already done to render efficacious the laws of separate nations. If, as some think, this "pre-supposes the concurrent development of a World-State which shall, like the National State, enforce the decisions and penalties of its Courts; " then that is but a fresh argument for international Federation, which, because it affords the most definitive means of assuring Universal Peace, is perhaps the most important goal of pacifist endeavour.

"Until the States of the world," says The Spectator,1 "place themselves in the hands of a universal policeman, like the Roman Empire in old days, or like the British Empire in India in our time; or organise some sort of international committee which shall be the real sovereign of the world; it is idle to think of Arbitration as if it were a panacea for stopping wars. In the world of international affairs, right is still might."

That last sentence is, of course, intended to define the logical ground upon which the previous statements rest. And it would actually do this, if the words ran-" might is still right."

1 October 14, 1911.

For that is of course the real position assumed at present, and also the position against which it is the main object of these pages to protest. But The Spectator was careful to avoid so bald a statement; and I claim that very avoidance in justification of an uncompromising attitude toward the present entirely non-moral foundation for the whole structure of international affairs. Until that is altered, I agree that no form of arbitration can be "a panacea for stopping wars.' But that arbitration would so act, if "right were might," if Justice were given the authority now yielded to brute force, I confidently assert. And whether Right shall become Might on this earth, on this side Doomsday, simply depends on the progress made by Public Opinion towards a resolute acceptance of the sovereign supremacy of Moral Forces.

Meanwhile, even as things now are, the services already possible for a properly constituted Arbitration Court, are more than sufficiently great to make the " sane man," invoked by The Spectator, desire earnestly its wider recognition. The Court is useful for the authoritative interpretation of obscure or undetermined points of International Law. It is useful for giving the form and force of Law to accredited diplomatic opinion. It is useful for enabling nations which have got into a tangle to get out of it without loss of self-respect. Above all, it is useful-and may easily be made more so-in cases where the subjectmatter of disagreement is felt to be not worth a war, and yet no agreement can be reached by means of diplomatic "conversations." From these generally admitted uses will grow the supremacy desired by

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those who hold almost no disagreement worth a War.

It is commonly argued against the principle of universal compulsory arbitration, that it would, for practical purposes, mean the petrifaction of the present status quo among nations. If it did mean this, it would be a very damaging objection. But why should it? The whole raison d'être of the Arbitral process is not to stereotype existing international conditions, but to remove friction by adjusting them more equitably;-an adjustment seldom if ever attained by the alternative method of fighting. This process of adjustment is the continual occupation of Diplomacy. When diplomatic conversations fail, shall the final decision be referred to a Court of the best Jurists the world can produce, or to the voices of the biggest guns which each dissatisfied country happens to be able at the moment to supply? That is the real question which the common sense of civilised mankind is everywhere beginning to ask.

While not denying that there may be, among the countless subjects of international contention, a residuum of non-arbitrable matter; I submit that this residuum is already small, and also constantly tending to diminish. And I therefore urge that its existence ought not for an instant to delay a universal effort to perfect the present arbitral machinery, and to promote recourse to its authority.

Objections which have been made to Arbitration on the score of the actual constitution of the Court, seem much less serious than perverse. No sooner is it seen that the gradual codification of international Law will furnish the required corrective to any

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possible personal bias on the part of the Judges, than the ground of objection is reversed. The Tribunal is disparaged as an extraneous Court of unsympathetic strangers; " and it is insisted that a sympathetic intuition of national difficulties is absolutely necessary to ethical fairness. The dilemma is pushed to the point of absurdity on this wise either the Arbitral Body proposed is sympathetic, or it is not. If it is, it will be prejudiced: if it is not, the intuition essential to equity is wanting.

Now from such hypercritical niceties being brought into the argument, one might naturally expect to be invited to weigh Arbitration against some rival Justiciary of superlative rectitude. But instead of this, we are asked to adhere to the arbitrament of an ordeal so notoriously uncertain and unjust that it already revolts the sense and conscience of civilised man. It is therefore only necessary, in order to convince ourselves of the inherent perverseness of such cavilling, to call to mind one or two prominent features of the present alternative method of settlement, namely,-War. It is simply ludicrous to turn from these largely hypothetical defects in the working of Arbitral machinery to the pages of some military expert, and read his account of the actual working of the only alternative process for reaching international agreement.

We knew before, of course, that War was intrinsically barbarous and unjust, compared even with the most imperfect judicial substitute. But we always understood that, although War's verdict could by nature have no kind of relation to Justice, yet at least it might be relied on to determine correctly the

respective values of the violences engaged. If it were not so, what justification would remain for the mad race for armament precedence?

Yet so far from even this being assured, the most expert evidence gives a surprisingly equivocal report of the actual working of the War-machine, regarded purely as a test of superiority in physical force. Considered solely as two forms of ordeal,-all question of Justice and Violence, or of Right and Wrong, wholly apart-War is simply nowhere in comparison with Juridical decision. "War," says Clausewitz, "is the very province of uncertainty. Three-fourths of those things upon which action in War must be calculated, are hidden more or less in the clouds of great uncertainty." Take, for threefold illustration, the parts played in War, (1) by the effects of mere bodily Fatigue; (2) by the trickiness of Weather; and (8) by the still greater trickiness of Information.

1

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1. To the first of this trinity of incalculable contingencies you may put down the transformation of La Grande Armée into a dwindling horde of stragglers; the break-up of Kutusof's hosts in 1812; and the ruin of Napoleon's splendid regiments in 1813. Against this single element in the verdict, which puts fetters on the action of the mind and wears out in secret the powers of the soul," no genius in a General is proof. Witness Benigsen at Eylau, after thirty-six hours in the saddle; or Napoleon, losing all the results of his victory at Dresden.'

2. Or take the second: the mere effect of Weather

1 On War, bk. i., ch. iii.

2 Instances given in The Reality of War, by Major Stewart Murray.