(1 U. S.), in which the State of Wisconsin sought to enforce against a Louisiana Insurance Company a judgment rendered in a Wisconsin court for penalties by a Wisconsin Statute upon Foreign Insurance Companies for failure to comply with statutory regulations of its business. It was held that neither under international comity nor law was one nation required to enforce extraterritorially the criminal law of another nation and therefore that the controversy presented was not one of which, as between the states of the Union, the Supreme Court could take cognizance. Again in Louisiana v. Texas, 176 U. S. 1, Louisiana sought to restrain the Governor of Texas from so enforcing a quarantine law as to injure the business of the people of Louisiana. The law itself on its face was a proper one for the protection of Texas. In dismissing the suit the court said:

"But in order that a controversy between states, justiciable in this court, can be held to exist, something more must be put forward than that the citizens of one state are injured by the maladministration of the laws of another. The states cannot make war, or enter into treaties, though they may, with the consent of Congress, make compacts and agreements. When there is no agreement, whose breach might create it, a controversy between states does not arise unless the action complained of is state action, and acts of state officers in abuse or excess of their powers cannot be laid hold of as in themselves committing one state to distinct collision with a sister state.

"In our judgment this bill does not set up facts which show that the State of Texas has so authorized or confirmed the alleged action of her health officer as to make it her own, or from which it necessarily follows that the two states are in controversy within the meaning of the Constitution."

Controversies between independent nations suggest themselves which are not capable of judicial solution and yet are quite capable of leading to war.

Thus suppose C nation in the exercise of its conceded powers admits to its shores and indeed to its citizenship the citizens or subjects of A nation and excludes those of B nation from both. The discrimination is certainly within the international right of C nation, but it may lead to acrimony and war. This is not a justiciable question nor one that could be settled by a court.

The so-called General Arbitration Treaties negotiated by Secretary Knox with France and England used the word "justiciable" to describe the kind of questions which the parties bound themselves to submit to arbitration. They defined this to include all issues that could be decided on principles of law or equity. The issue whether a question arising was justiciable and arbitrable was to be left to the decision of a preliminary investigating commission. The term justiciable and indeed the whole scheme of these treaties were suggested by the provision for settling controversies between states in the Federal Constitution and the construction of it by the Supreme Court. The controversies between states, decision of which was not determined by rules furnished by the Constitution or by congressional regulation, were strictly analogous to questions arising between independent nations and were to be divided into justiciable and non-justiciable questions by the same line of distinction.

The treaties were not ratified but their approval by England and France and by the Executive of this country constitute a valuable and suggestive precedent for the framing of the constitution and jurisdiction of an arbitral court to be one of the main features of a League of Peace between the great nations of the world.

Is it idle to treat such a league as possible? Well, let us

take England and Canada. For a hundred years we have been at peace. For that period of time the frontier between us and Canada, four thousand miles long, has been entirely undefended by forts or navies. We have had issue after issue between the two peoples that, because of their nature, might have led to war. But we have settled them by negotiation or, when that has failed, by arbitration, until now it is not too much to say that the "habit" of arbitration between us is so fixed that a treaty to secure such a settlement in future issues would not make it more certain than it is. I concede that conditions have been favorable for the creating of such a customary practice. The two peoples have the same language and literature, the same law and civil liberty and the same origin and history. Each has had a wide domain, in the settlement and development of which their energies and ambitions have been absorbed. The jealousies and encroachments of neighbors in the thickly populated regions of Europe have not been present to stir up strife. And yet we ought not to minimize the beneficent significance of this century of peace by ignoring the fact that many of the issues which we have settled peaceably seemed at the time to be difficult of settlement and likely to lead to The Alabama Claims issue and the Oregon Boundary dispute were two of this kind.

war.

It is interesting to note that we now have two permanent arbitral English-American Commissions settling questions. One of them is to determine the equitable rules to govern the use of waters on our national boundary, in which both nations and their citizens have an interest, and to apply them to causes arising. The analogy between the function which the Supreme Court performed in the Kansas and Colorado case in regard to the use of the Arkansas River and that

of this Commission in respect to rivers traversing both countries and crossing the border is perfect. Having thus reached what is practically the institution of a League and Arbitral Court with England and Canada for the preservation of peace between us, may we not hope to enlarge its scope and membership and give its benefits to the world?

Will not the exhaustion in which all the belligerents, whether victors or vanquished, find themselves after this awful sacrifice of life and wealth make them wish to make the recurrence of such a war less probable? Will they not be in a mood to entertain any reasonable plan for the settlement of international disputes by peaceable means? Can we not devise such a plan? I think we can.

The Second Hague Conference has proposed a permanent court to settle questions of a legal nature arising between nations. But the signatories to the convention would, under such a plan, not be bound to submit such questions. Nor were the conferring nations able to agree on the constitution of the court. But the agreement on the recommenda

tion for the establishment of such a court shows that the idea is within the bounds of the practical.

To constitute an effective League of Peace, we do not need all the nations. Such an agreement between eight or nine of the Great Powers of Europe, Asia and America would furnish a useful restraint upon possible wars. The successful establishment of a Peace League between the Great Powers would draw into it very quickly the less powerful nations.

What should be the fundamental plan of the League?

1

1 This is the earliest public utterance of these four principles which correspond to the four articles of the program of the League to Enforce Peace as formally adopted at Phila., June 17, 1915. The principles were worked out at a series of meetings the last of which,

It seems to me that it ought to contain four provisions. First: It ought to provide for the formation of a court, which would be given jurisdiction by the consent of all the members of the League to consider and decide justiciable questions between them or any of them, which have not yielded to negotiation, according to the principles of international law and equity, and that the court should be vested with power, upon the application of any member of the League, to decide the issue as to whether the question arising is justiciable.

Second: A Commission of Conciliation for the consideration and recommendation of a solution of all nonjusticiable questions that may arise between the members of the League should be created, and this Commission should have power to hear evidence, investigate the causes of difference, mediate between the parties and then make its recommendation for a settlement.

Third: Conferences should be held from time to time to agree upon principles of international law, not already established, as their necessity shall suggest themselves. When the conclusions of the Commission shall have been submitted to the various parties of the League for a reasonable period of time, say a year, without calling forth objection, it should be deemed that they acquiesce in the principles thus declared.

Fourth: The members of the League shall agree that if any member of the League shall bring war against any other member of the League, without first having submitted the question, if found justiciable, to the arbitral court proApril 9, 1915, was attended by Mr. Taft- were formulated by a small group on April 10th and immediately submitted to Mr. Taft who gave them the final form substantially embodied, later on, in the Phila. platform. (Editor.)