The Permanent Court of Arbitration the nucleus of the future organization of the family of nations.
[24.] I said, we have the beginning of the development before our eyes. It consists in the erection of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, and in the permanent Bureau attached thereto. Here we have an institution belonging not to the individual contracting states but to the international society of states in contrast to the individual members, and it is open to the use of all the individual members. If the Declaration of London be ratified, and if (which scarcely admits of doubt) it be adopted by all the states which were not represented at the Conference of London, then the International Prize Court, which was decided on at the second Hague Conference, will become a fact. This Court will also become an organ of the international community. Mention must also be made of the so-called international bureaux of the so-called international unions, which have come into existence in the period beginning with 1874; for some at least of them will develop into organs of international society, although they so far are only organs of the respective special international unions.
The Hague Peace Conferences as organs of the family of nations.
[25.] Reference must in conclusion be made to the Hague Peace Conferences themselves, for it is to be expected that such Conferences will assemble periodically in the future. If success attends the effort to bring all members of the international community to an agreement, in virtue of which a Hague Peace Conference assembles at periodic intervals without being called together by this or that power, then an organ of international society will have arisen, the value of which none can decry. It will then be possible to say that the international community has become an actually organized society, and it will then be no longer open to doubt that the organization of this society will gradually become more and more developed. Before everything else this at least will then be attained, that an organ of the international society of states, comparable to the parliaments of individual states, will have come into existence, which can attend to international legislation as the needs of the time require, and can cause a continuous growth in the range of matters submitted to international tribunals. All the same, I yield myself to no hot-blooded hope of a speedy realization of Utopian schemes. Even when this organization is already there, progress will be but slight and gradual, and will encounter unceasing opposition. Progress in this department has always to reckon on a conflict with adverse interests and efforts, and it must be expected that in the continuous struggle between international and national interests the latter will only slowly prepare themselves to yield.
Outlines of a constitution of the family of nations.
[26.] It is not, however, enough that agreement should make periodic Peace Conferences a permanent institution. The international community must provide itself with a constitution, the ground-plan of which would be something like the following:
1. The society of states is composed of all sovereign states which mutually recognize each other's internal and external independence.
2. Every recognized sovereign state has the right to take part in the Peace Conferences.
3. No state taking part in the Conferences is bound by the resolutions of the Conferences without its assent. Majority resolutions only bind the members of that majority. On the other hand, no state is entitled to require that only such resolutions be adopted as it assents to.
4. Every participant state has the right to be heard at the Conferences, to bring forward proposals, to make motions, and to speak on the proposals and motions of other participants.