So why shouldn’t business, which has been binding the world more closely together for centuries, be employed to protect the world against the waste and loss of war? Hague Conferences have sought earnestly for penalties that would save their Conventions from being treated as mere “bits of paper.” Penalties that every nation would be bound to respect could be enforced through economic pressure. The loss in trade would be small or great in proportion to the amount and duration of the pressure; but it would be at most only an infinitesimal fraction of the loss caused by war.
THE WORLD COURT CAN BE ESTABLISHED
The Chairman reminds me that my twenty minutes is expiring. So let me briefly refer in conclusion to that wonderful address made by Rabbi Silverman yesterday. In it he seemed to say that religion had broken down because the war had come. As he spoke I was reminded of going across Illinois a week ago this morning. I lifted the curtain of my sleeper berth and there in a little town we were passing through stood a church with the cross shining above it in a golden radiance across the great green stretches of the valley—a scene of peace. Then I thought how the cross and the temple and the mosque were looking down that very May morning in the valleys of the Vistula, the Marne and the Rhine on guns, on soldiers and armed camps—a scene of war. Then I thought that the other strong spiritual forces of the world had not been sufficiently powerful to bring wars to an end. In the great Public Library here in Cleveland and in the Libraries of all the warring nations are the works of Goethe and Schiller, of Hugo and Balzac, of Shakespeare and Milton, of Tolstoi and Turgenieff—all imperishable contributions to the world’s intellectual life, but still they have not ended war. Your orchestras as well as those of Paris, Berlin and London, play the music of Beethoven, Tschaikowsky, Berlioz and Haydn, and music is one of the most spiritual of the arts, but it has not ended war. Painting and sculpture are part of the common heritage of mankind but they have not ended war. Isn’t it possible that the world has depended too much on these spiritual forces? By that I mean, the world has not yet been brought to the stage of civilization by these forces where it can depend on them wholly to end war. The world has had churches and schools and libraries and galleries—but the world like this great city and this country and every other city and country needs a Court House. To my mind, all these spiritual forces have been working through the generations toward a time, toward this very time, when the world would be ready for a World Court. That Court is within our grasp. What is needed is to give it force and power through economic pressure that will compel its use and it will forthwith become a mighty bulwark of civilization, protecting the world from the waste and futility and the utter tragedy of war.
THE WORK OF THE WORLD COURT CONGRESS
CONDENSATION OF AN ARTICLE BY JEREMIAH W. JENKS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, IN THE JUNE “REVIEW OF REVIEWS”
One of the catchwords of the great World Court Congress held in Cleveland in May was “In time of war prepare for peace.” There can be no doubt that the accumulating horrors of the present war are turning the minds of the people of all countries, neutral as well as belligerent, toward peace as never before. As the war drags on and it becomes more and more evident that there is to be no crushing victory for either side, belligerent and neutral nations alike are casting about for methods, other than the absolute weakness of a vengeful or greedy rival, that should be sure decidedly to lessen, if not absolutely to prevent, the evils of war in the future.
Mr. John Hayes Hammond, as chairman of the one hundred distinguished leaders of thought, business and government, has taken up the idea of an International Court before which the governments of the world may appear to find a solution for their international justiciable problems. It seems eminently reasonable and probable that plans well thought out may be not only acceptable, but welcomed at the close of the war, by a sufficient number of states to insure a permanent establishment of such a Court, whose decisions would settle finally all questions of a justiceable nature.
In the great meeting at Cleveland Judge Alton B. Parker, in a significant address lauded the patriotic endeavors of Former President Taft to forward the movement toward the lessening of war by arbitration treaties, and introduced Mr. Taft, whose learned and eloquent address made the plan for a World Court appear eminently practicable through its close analogy to the United States Supreme Court and that court’s treatment of the questions that are justiceable.
In subsequent meetings of the World Court Congress the growth of the judicial element in international arbitration was carefully traced. The much-disputed question of the composition of the World Court and the best form for the organization were fully treated, by Theodore Marburg, the former United States minister at Brussels, and by Mr. Emerson McMillin, of New York City, who presented a detailed plan providing for the selection of judges by an electoral college to be chosen by the different nations who should have an equal representation as regards their sovereignty, but have further representation in the electoral college in proportion to their population and the extent of their commerce.
The eloquent addresses not only stirred the enthusiasm of the great audiences, but men of statesmanlike minds were looking forward to practical definite results. Before the World Court Congress adjourned steps were taken to make the Committee of One Hundred a permanent body, and so to organize public opinion, with the aid of other associations, of legislative bodies, and of the press, that it will prove of distinct assistance to the administration at Washington, which has seemed ready at any fitting moment to support the movement practically.