NATIONS STILL IN THE CAVEMAN ERA
While international law has by agreement laid down certain rules regarding the conduct of war, it is recognized that there exists no central authority that is able to enforce compliance with these arguments. But, as regards the right of a nation to declare war for any reason, even for openly alleged plunder and conquest, there is no precept of restraint and no recognized right of interference. Although the right to invade, subdue and appropriate without provocation cannot be established as a right to inherit in any sovereign state by any process of juridical reasoning, nevertheless it is a recognized prerogative which international law does not, and under existing conceptions of sovereignty cannot, forbid. One of the greatest authorities on the subject says: “Theoretically, international law ought to determine the causes for which war can be justly undertaken—in other words, it ought to mark out as plainly as municipal law what constitutes a wrong for which a remedy may be sought in law. It might also not unreasonably go on to discourage the commission of wrongs by investigating a state seeking redress with special rights, and by subjecting a wrong-doer to special disabilities.” But in fact it does nothing of the kind. International law accepts war, independently of the justice of its origin, as a relation which the parties to it may set up if they choose, and which any nation may, if it chooses, impose upon another against its will. The law confines itself to nominally regulating the effects of the relations.—Dr. David Jayne Hill in Review of Reviews.
The above declaration from a well known authority upon international law shows how unsatisfactory is the present status of the recognized law of nations, and how inadequate, not to say impotent, it is to preserve the peace among nations. We glean from other authoritative writers on the subject that the Moral Law which is almost universally held to be binding upon the individuals of a nation with respect to internal affairs must, in the case of the nation as a whole, give way to the necessity of self-preservation, and that under this rule everything deemed necessary to the preservation of the life of the nation is justified. Dr. Hill remarks that even the control of international law upon the conduct of war is wholly illusory, as is evident from the fact that the so-called laws of war cannot be enforced by a non-belligerent co-signatory of the convention in which the agreement is made without the non-belligerent itself going to war to execute such enforcement.
Therefore the nations of the world, regarded as individual entities, are in precisely the same relation to each other as were the individual cave-men of the prehistoric era. Each cave-man was a law unto himself and existed by virtue of his strength and cunning. If one cave-man made a compact with another to unite for mutual defense there was no outside power to make either one keep the agreement save by compulsion, or to respect the life and property of friend or enemy. There was no moral law among the cave-men, and there is at present no enforceable law among nations.
The plan of a World Court for Judicial Settlement proposes to introduce among nations enforceable international laws which would tend to prevent war altogether by compelling nations to live up to the recognized rules of international morality. It would do for nations what civilized institutions have done for the individuals of nations.