Most important for dealing with immediate danger to international peace is a system of international conferences upon questions of international policy. This is a natural growth from experience. The Algeciras Conference is a type. The Conference in London, which limited the effect of the Balkan wars, is another. It is a general belief that if Sir Edward Grey had secured the conference he sought in July, 1914, the war would have been averted. Whether it be by dispelling misunderstandings, allaying fears, soothing irritation, or by the repressive effect of general adverse opinion, a formal general conference of the principal nations ordinarily leads to a situation in which it is extremely difficult for any nation to begin war.

The weakness of the practice hitherto has been in the fact that no one had a right to insist upon a conference; no one was under obligation to attend a conference. The step in advance plainly indicated as the natural development of this most useful practice into a systematic institution, is to establish an administrative agency whose duty it shall be to call such a conference in time of threatened danger on suitable request, and to place all nations under obligation to attend the conference when called. Upon the substance of this there is no disagreement. The Council of the League does this and something more, and the difference is over the something more. The Council of the League is a perpetual, permanent conference, as distinguished from conferences ad hoc, to be called automatically whenever grave cause arises. No one seems to question that in one way or another there should be obligatory conferences.

Such conferences, however, deal with policy in particular exigencies, and they proceed upon motives of expediency. They are not steps in the development of the rule of right among nations. In that direction also, however, we find elements of general agreement.

The Covenant of the League of Nations in its preamble states one of its objects to be "in order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security

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by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments"; and in the 14th article it provides: "The Council shall formulate and submit to the members of the League for adoption plans for the establishment of a permanent court of international justice."

The American Congress in a statute enacted August 29, 1916, expressed the American view in the most solemn form. The statute says:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to adjust and settle its international disputes through mediation or arbitration, to the end that war may be honorably avoided.

In view of the premises, the President is authorized and requested to invite, at an appropriate time, not later than the close of the war in Europe, all the great Governments of the world to send representatives to a conference which shall be charged with the duty of formulating a plan for a court of arbitration or other tribunal, to which disputed questions between nations shall be referred for adjudication and peaceful settlement.

The latest message of the President of the United States to Congress on the 12th of the present month, said:

The American aspiration, indeed the world aspiration, was an association of nations based upon the application of justice and right, binding us in conference and cooperation for the prevention of war and pointing the way to a higher civilization and international fraternity in which all the world might share. In the national referendum to which I have adverted, we pledged our efforts towards such an association, and the pledge will be faithfully kept.

The pledge to which the President plainly referred in the paragraph just quoted, was contained in the Republican Platform, in these words:

The Republican Party stands for agreement among the nations to preserve the peace of the world. We believe that such an international association must be based upon international justice, and must provide methods which shall maintain the rule of public right by the development of law and the decision of impartial courts, and which shall secure instant and general international conference whenever peace shall be threatened by political action, so that the nations pledged to do and insist upon what is just and fair may exercise their influence and power for the prevention of war.

While this pledge was in the platform of one party, it was not, in fact, the subject of party controversy, and the enormous majority of over seven million votes given to the candidate standing by that platform justifies the assertion that these words state the true attitude of the American people, as that attitude is now certified in the passage which I have quoted from the President's message to Congress.

It is apparent that the attitude of the League and the attitude of America toward this subject do not differ in substance, however much they may differ as to the specific modes of effectuating the common purpose.

The duty imposed upon the Council of the League, "to formulate and submit plans for the establishment of a permanent court of international justice," has been performed, and a convention establishing such a court has been adopted by the League and has already been ratified by many of its members. It provides for a permanent court of judges elected for fixed periods, paid fixed salaries, engaging in no other occupation, and bound to proceed under an oath which imposes upon them judicial obligation as distinguished from a sense of diplomatic obligation. To this court all nations may repair for the adjudication of their differences.

So much for the nations in the League. It is also true that this court is in substance, in everything essential to its character and function, the same court which under Mr. Roosevelt's administration was urged by the United States upon the Second Conference at The Hague in 1907, and which, at the instance of the United States, was provided for in subsequent treaties between the United States and the principal European Powers, negotiated under Mr. Knox as Secretary of State in Mr. Taft's administration, but not finally consummated when the war intervened.

Here plainly there is agreement in substance, and the difficulties are formal.

The technical commission which in the summer of 1920 drafted the plan for a permanent court that has been adopted by the League, accompanied the plan by a unanimous recommendation as follows:

The Advisory Committee of Jurists, assembled at The Hague to draft a plan for a Permanent Court of International Justice,

Convinced that the security of states and the well-being of peoples urgently require the extension of the empire of law and the development of all international agencies for the administration of justice,

Recommends:

I. That a new conference of the nations in continuation of the first two conferences at The Hague be held as soon as practicable for the following purposes:

1. To restate the established rules of international law, especially, and in the first instance, in the fields affected by the events of the recent war.

2. To formulate and agree upon the amendments and additions, if any, to the rules of international law shown to be necessary or useful by the events of the war and the changes in the conditions of international life and intercourse which have followed the war.

3. To endeavor to reconcile divergent views and secure general agreement upon the rules which have been in dispute heretofore.

4. To consider the subjects not now adequately regulated by international law, but as to which the interests of international justice require that rules of law shall be declared and accepted.

II. That the Institute of International Law, the American Institute of International Law, the Union Juridique Internationale, the International Law Association, and the Iberian Institute of Comparative Law be invited to prepare with such conference or collaboration inter sese as they may deem useful, projects for the work of the Conference to be submitted beforehand to the several Governments and laid before the Conference for its consideration and such action as it may find suitable.

III. That the Conference be named Conference for the Advancement of International Law.

IV. That this conference be followed by further successive conferences at stated intervals to continue the work left unfinished.

Plainly, these recommendations can not receive effect now, nor until the present emergencies of an unsettled war have been disposed of. But when the time comes, they will point the way to the performance of the object of the League "for the firm establishment of the understandings of international law," and the identical purpose of the people of the United States, so often declared by their representatives.

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It is to be observed that these two-the establishment of a permanent court and the restoration of the authority of international law-are correlative parts of the same world policy, upon the substance of which the civilized nations are in agreement.

There can be no real court without law to control its judges, and there can be no effective law without institutions for its application to concrete cases. This is the traditional policy of the United States-to establish and extend the law declaring the rules of right conduct accepted by the common judgment of civilization and to substitute in international controversies upon conflicting claims of right impartial judgment under the law in the place of war.

The existing situation presents difficulties and embarrassments in arriving at a common understanding regarding the precise modes in which this general world policy shall receive effect; but I, for one, am not willing to assume that the patience and good sense of the diplomacy of the world, including our own country will be unequal to the task of so disposing of the formal difficulties as to achieve the great object upon which all are agreed.

It is further to be observed that conference upon matters of policy, either permanent or occasional, on the one hand, and the establishment of law and judicial disposal of questions of right, on the other hand, are not alternative and opposing methods. They are mutually supplemental parts of one and the same scheme to prevent war. Both are methods of bringing the public opinion of the world to bear upon the settlement of controversies. Neither covers the field without the other. Never before has there been such evidence of the power of public opinion as has been afforded by the vast propaganda through which the contending nations in the great war have tried their cases at the bar of public judgment of the world, and have sought to commend their conduct to the peoples of other nations.

The idea that any formula can be devised under the working of which the world can be made peaceable by compulsion, is