Unable to accomplish anything definite in this respect because of the vigorous opposition headed by Germany, the delegates turned their attention toward giving official recognition and concrete form to ideas which had already obtained in the settlement of international disputes, and toward the formation of a court before which the nations might have their differences adjudicated. The principles embodied in good offices and mediation and commissions of inquiry have given gratifying evidence of their efficiency, each in its respective capacity. The original achievement of the conference, however, was the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The composition of this court was to include not more than four persons from each of the signatory powers; from which panel, in case of an appeal to arbitration, each party was to select two judges, who, in turn, should elect their own umpire unless otherwise provided by the disputants. That it would be subject to criticism might have been expected. That twenty-six nations could unanimously agree upon any court whatever was the real occasion for surprise. The four cases arbitrated during the eight years intervening between this and the Second Hague Conference served to bring out its defects, chief of which were its decentralized and intangible nature. Nominally a court, in reality it was but a panel scattered all over the world from which a court could, with great difficulty and expense, be selected. Nominally permanent, in reality it had to be re-created for each case to be judged.
The Second Hague Conference, working on a basis of this short experience, undertook to remedy these inherent defects in the arbitral machinery by leaving the Permanent Court just as it was, and by creating besides an International Court of Prize to serve a special function indicated by its name, and a court of Judicial Arbitration to supplement the work of, if not eventually to supplant, the former court. To insure greater impartiality and also to encourage the weaker powers the expenses of the new court, instead of falling upon the litigants in each case, were to be prorated among the ratifying powers. To insure greater tangibility and permanency the new court was to be composed of only seventeen members, each to serve a term of twelve years at a salary of $2400 per annum, with an additional $40 for each day of actual service. Furthermore, the court was to meet once a year and to elect each year a delegation of three of its members to sit at The Hague for settling minor cases arising in the interval between regular sessions, having the power also to call extra sessions of the entire court whenever occasion should demand. To insure a more judicial personnel the convention specifies that members shall be qualified to hold high legal posts in their respective countries. The method by which members of the court were to be appointed—the one point upon which the delegates were unable to agree—was deferred for subsequent determination.
This, in addition to the one hundred and fifty-odd treaties privately entered into by two or more nations, many of which contain pledges to submit certain classes of disputes to the Permanent Court, is, in brief, what has been accomplished by way of constructive political organization by the modern peace movement.
How much does this signify? In view of the present attitude of the social mind, what are we to infer from this as bearing upon the ultimate outcome of international arbitration? It shall be the purpose of this paper to answer that question.
In an address before the Mohonk Conference of 1911 Dr. Cyrus Northrup, ex-president of the University of Minnesota, said: "What is really wanted is not continued talking in favor of peace with the idea of converting the people; for the people are already converted! They are ready for peace and arbitration!" In the October number of the Review of Reviews for 1909, Privy Councillor Karl von Stengel, one of the German delegation to the First Hague Conference, is quoted as follows: "It must be stated emphatically that in its ultimate aims the peace movement is not only ... Utopian, but ... dangerous...." These quotations are given as typical of the attitude manifested by the two extremes, the injudiciously optimistic and the ultraconservative, toward every social reform. All true progress pursues a course intermediate to these two.
The idea entertained by so many enthusiastic peace advocates, that the world is ready for peace if we but had institutional facilities adequate to carry out the will of the people, is erroneous. In all democratic states political institutions are but a concrete expression of the social mind, the media created by the people, through which society executes its will. "With a given phase of human character ... there must go an adapted class of institutions."[1] Therefore, I submit that if the people were ready for peace they could easily provide the means necessary for its accomplishment.
[1] Herbert Spencer, "The Study of Sociology."
The first gentleman quoted above drew his conclusion from the indications that of the two million inhabitants of his state, one million nine hundred thousand would favor arbitration as shown by the enthusiasm manifested at a meeting of the state peace society a few weeks before. Similar conditions in other parts of the country, he thought, would corroborate the application of his assertion to the entire country. Such a conclusion is fallacious in that it fails to consider three essential facts about the people of the United States which largely determine the attitude of any people toward war. First, they have no grievance. Second, no appeal is being made to their patriotic bias. Third, their emotions and passions are quiescent.
The first of these needs only brief mention. No people in this enlightened age wishes to fight as a matter of course, regardless of any reasonable pretext. If nations never had any personal interests involved, there would, of course, be no more war. In this respect the people of the United States are not ahead of the other parts of the civilized world. Disinterested parties have been in favor of peace for two thousand years.
The other two facts deserve more extended consideration.