The results of the Conference as regards the common interests of trade and commerce, etc., will only be felt gradually, since many of these matters are of intricate character, and in some instances require entirely fresh international transactions. But as regards the chief thing—viz., the establishment of a permanent tribunal of arbitration—the object was achieved.
Congress almost unanimously[36] adopted the resolution of the report of the committee respecting the election of such a supreme judicial authority in case of any menacing international disagreement.
The members of the Conference were not authorized to conclude binding treaties. Their task was confined to deliberating upon affairs which might have a reciprocal interest in various countries, and then laying before their governments such resolutions as in the opinion of the Conference might best promote the well-being of all the States.
Nevertheless the majority of the States later bound themselves to the conclusions of the congress. Indeed, a week before the assembly broke up the respective members for Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia, Equador, Guatemala, Hayti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Salvador, were empowered to sign at Washington the arbitration-treaty adopted by the Pan-American Conference; and the other governments have since in the same way sanctioned it.[37]
When this document has been fully confirmed, a quarter of the inhabited world will be rendered inviolate, and 120 millions of men set free from the chronic frenzy of war.
If minor breaches of the peace possibly may not thereby be for ever prevented, yet certainly the irresponsible system of violence will become powerless against the force of civilization which is spreading over the whole Western hemisphere.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] As an adherent of the Conservative party, he has always held to a strong armed force, and hardly ever supported peace efforts.
[28] That he does not take in the Scandinavian peninsula, must be because he regards the position of the northern kingdoms as too remote from the continental quarrels to be sensibly disturbed by them; or because he has not a high opinion of the fitness of their military forces for attack, which is here alluded to.