There are four ideas or stages in the conception. The first is simply a true court of justice to which nations may refer their disputes, if they see fit to do so. This is the court called for by The Hague Convention of 1907 under the name of the Court of Arbitral Justice. It is the court which the Judicial Settlement Society was organized to promote. It is the court which we are endeavoring to get realized—simply a voluntary institution. Now, why did the World Court Congress plan to confine its efforts, its propaganda, to this voluntary institution, free from any element of force? I repeat, it is because there is unanimity of opinion as to the desirability of the project. You find no objectors to it. Practically all the Governments of the world have endorsed it, peoples have endorsed it, experts and plain men have endorsed it. In other words, it is a realizable project.
Now, the second stage of the larger and more problematic project is a league in which the element of obligation enters to this extent, that the members of the league, if you call it such—parties to the treaty—should obligate themselves to resort to the court. At present there is no obligation embodied in The Hague Convention. Like all our other international institutions, it is there for the nations to use or not, as they like.
In the third stage, the element of obligation is extended to forcing the nations into court. That is to say, if war threatens, we say to the disputants, “You must refer this dispute to the court. We will not force you to carry out the award nor do you bind yourself to do so, but you must go into court and have a hearing.”
Now, many men have come to realize that publicity is three-quarters of the battle for justice. Very often simply bringing out the facts stops not only illegal practices, but also unjust practices not covered by the law, and does it without resort to a court or even to arbitration.
The fourth stage is enforcing the award admittedly giving rise to the danger of oppression unless you have all the progressive nations in the league so that substantial justice would result from its action. The meeting of April 9th, to which I have referred, was unwilling to accept the fourth stage of this plan, namely: enforcing the verdict. Men like Mr. Taft, with his wide experience, Mr. Lowell, who has made a study of governmental institutions, in fact all except two out of the twenty eminent and experienced men gathered at that meeting, were willing to adopt the first three stages of the plan as a “realizable” project, namely, the court, for which this convention stands, the obligations of the States to each other to go into court, and the obligation of the league to force the nation law-breaker into court if recalcitrant.
If there is no obligation on the part of the nation entering the court to abide by the verdict and the league itself will not enforce the verdict, surely no oppression can result from the demand for a hearing. It is a reasonable demand as applied to any controversy whatsoever, whether it be a justiciable controversy or a controversy arising out of a conflict of political policies. The league would simply act as an international grand jury to hale the nation law-breaker into court for a hearing. That is as far as the meeting of April 9th was willing to go, and that is the project, represented in the recent World Court Congress. By starting with this minor project we get something which is practicable and out of the minor project, the larger plan may grow of its own accord.
THE WAR’S POSSIBLE DURATION
THE PROBLEM OF THE EXHAUSTION OF THE NATIONS ENGAGED—THEIR ENORMOUS RESOURCES AND COMPARATIVELY SMALL EXPENDITURE OF WEALTH AND MEN
BY
GEORGE K. SHAW
As bearing upon the question of the ability of the warring nations to continue the war indefinitely, Hudson Maxim’s book, “Defenseless America,” contains some interesting figures and comparisons. “We hear,” he says, “Much about the tremendous burden of the present conflict. The pacifists tell us that the nations engaged are destined to exhaust themselves, and that, when the war is over, we need have no fear of any one of them or of a coalition of them, because they will have neither men nor money with which to fight.”