have grouped themselves to further their own interests, we may expect the same phenomenon to appear in the operation of the Society now headed by the League. In fact, this new organization will give more opportunity to the Great Powers, and lessen the influence of the weak, if a counteracting influence is not nourished.

It is a matter of observation in the case of private corporations that men and interests which forge to the front under a loose organization have increased power when a closer organization is effected. The small holder who votes by proxy has little influence unless actual wrong-doing can be brought home to the leaders. Then an appeal to the law gives, in recent years, adequate remedy. The League will bring to the lesser states a formula for protest and appeal for justice and redress; but this will not be sufficient. The spirit of coöperation must make itself manifest. As will be shown later on, international coöperation has organized itself in many ways both official and unofficial, and has tended to offset the dangers of unrestrained state ambition. Much less emphasis has been placed by protagonists of the League on the organization of international coöperation than on matters of more immediate interest, e. g., the prevention of war, disarmament, arbitration, a court of justice, and the Assembly, Council, and Secretariat. The organization of peaceful daily state intercourse may turn out to be much more important. Coöperation is not essentially a matter of law; it is a matter of policy, self-interest, and spiritual attitude. Its organization, forms, and agencies are already partly law, and may become much more so under the leadership of the League. If this organization does not itself become stereotyped and lifeless, on the one hand, or a mere handmaiden of political statecraft on the other, it may solve what has been the insoluble problem under the old Society of Nations, and which is equally a problem under the League. This problem is summed up in the word Sovereignty, with its synonyms Independence and Equality, and the logically deducible right to declare war. This right has never been relinquished by the world of states. Sporadic attempts have been made; two states at a time, as for instance the United States and France, and small groups, such as the Central American states, have mutually

agreed to a limitation of the right. Such attempts, however, have been and will ever be ineffective. The agreement must be general. Even where agreement has been reached, except in one notable group of treaties, the relinquishment has excepted matters involving national honor and vital interests. These terms are difficult to define, and leave wide latitude to any state in interpreting its obligations. They are differently defined at different times by the same state, and they vary with a state's conception of the word Sovereignty.

Now Sovereignty, with some meaning or other, is so firmly fixed in the minds of men and the consciousness of states that we may not expect it to disappear. Moreover, no assembly of representatives of states will attempt to re-define it; and even less will any single state venture to limit by positive statement its right to appeal to the attribute of sovereignty. It will be only in practice that modifications of the extreme doctrine will appear, and these without legally limiting it. Just as the weaker states have found it expedient to relinquish the exercise of some of their legal rights, under the form of voluntary agreement, so the Great Powers, under the lash of a great need and with the conviction that the time for unrestricted competition has passed, will coöperate, here and there, piece by piece, in limiting the exercise of their sovereign rights. And among these Great Powers the example must be set by the most powerful few.

REFERENCES FOR CHAPTER I

OPPENHEIM. International Law, 1912, 1:3-20. The League of
Nations, p. 4-11.

STOWELL AND MUNRO. International Cases, 1:153-168.
WILSON AND TUCKER. International Law, p. 45-54.

LAWRENCE, T. J. The Society of Nations, p. 1-57.

WULF, MAURICE DE. The Society of Nations in the Thirteenth Century.

(International Journal of Ethics, 29:210-229, January, 1919.) DUGGAN. The League of Nations, p. 161-183 (Chapter by H. E. Barnes).

CHAPTER II

THE BALANCE OF POWER AND THE CONCERT OF EUROPE

THE old Society of Nations has no constitutional organs, and the Primacy of the Great Powers in it is without legal standing. It is, however, an historical and ever-present fact. In all international conferences and in all important international affairs during both peace and war, it is the Great Powers that control. Only Great Powers are able to acquire spheres of influence in other states; no minor powers are represented in the consortium to finance the new Chinese Republic1; the Great Powers controlled in the prosecution of the European war; made the terms of the armistice; organized and controlled the Peace Conference; were chiefly responsible for the League of Nations Covenant; and will have the dominant position in the League itself. The Great Powers, when acting together, form a rudimentary organ of government, control and administration-an organ which has sometimes operated effectively, and at other times failed completely. The failures came because unity of purpose was lacking; because consistent, continued cooperation cannot be had without a highly developed organization. Organization places artificial restraints on self-interests which shift and fluctuate according to natural laws.

In following the operations of the Great Powers in the Society of Nations, we may therefore expect to find few evidences of concerted action for the benefit of all members, and equally few of consistency as regards themselves alone. Following inevitable tendencies, states as naturally as men form themselves into groups according to their predominant interests. From the beginning of

Moore, F.: Control of Foreign Loans and Concessions in China (The Messenger of the New York Peace Society, v. 2, no. 1, December, 1918).

as well as the strong, have flowed consequences not at all anticipated. This may be illustrated by the development of the do trine of the equality of states.1

For almost three centuries writers on international law have included among fundamental principles the juristic equality of states. "All sovereign states," they say, "without respect to their relative power, are, in the eye of international law, equal, being endowed with the same natural rights, bound by the same duties, and subject to the same obligations." The doctrine is said to possess both a philosophical and historical sanction, and its truth until recent years has seldom been questioned.

Philosophically, the principle was given form by Hugo Grotius. Universal sovereignty having ceased to be even theoretically possible, national states emerged, warring with each other for supremacy, and with no restraint except physical weakness. To relieve this situation Grotius invoked the so-called law of nature. As people were said to have been in a state of nature before the organization of governments, and though free, to have obeyed certain laws discovered to them by their own reason, so states, freed from any control from above, were now in a state of nature with respect to each other. By analogy the law of nature was applicable to the relations of states. To explain the meaning and content of the law of nature, recourse was had to the Roman law in which the jus gentium and the jus naturale were identified. A favorite dogma of the jus gentium was the equality of men. Grotius adopted this conception and so made the absolute equality of states a fundamental principle of his legal system.

Modern political theorists have satisfied themselves that historically there never was a state of nature such as Grotius premised. There certainly never was a law of nature that could be treated as a positive code; and the equality of men living according to a law of nature was a misconception. Liberty and equality for men did not exist until the organization of political communities. Until that time men had only such liberty as they could win from nature

'Summarized from the author's address printed in the Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1909, p. 238-247.

nd each other by the exertion of powers. Equality is not, thereYe, really a postulate of the law of nature and could not properly be said to become an attribute of states on the philosophical grounds which Grotius laid.

But the doctrine doubtless would never have been accepted by the world of the seventeenth century had it not been for this erroneous appeal to the law of nature. The adoption of any principle by all states was a great stride in the world's progress, tending to bring order out of chaos, and set up standards of conduct which to this day are viewed with respect. Judged by its results in the years immediately following its promulgation, its justification is so strong that it should not be discredited merely by abstract reasoning. It gave to weak states an admitted principle to which to appeal when dealing with strong states, and stayed the hand of those accustomed to crush without mercy.

Yet there came a time when states began to find numerous occasions for disregarding the principle. The law of nature seemed less and less a valid reason for a steadfast recognition of equality. It was then that there was brought forth the alternative and supplementary ground for equality which the far-seeing Grotius had advanced. He had asserted that states are bound by rules which have received the assent of all or most of their number. Whatever might have been the ground for the original consent, an appeal to history cumulating examples amounting to a custom was sufficient to establish the validity of a rule. Thus, the great states of the world having agreed among themselves that recognition of the sovereignty of a state carries with it all the international rights and duties which they possess themselves, the rule is binding and cannot be controverted. This undoubtedly is the sounder reason for asserting that all sovereign states are equal in international law. It is, in fact, a statement of the modern doctrine that international law is based on practice. Sovereignty having been defined as the absolute political independence of a state, the recognition of this attribute theoretically establishes the equality of states and admits them into the Family of Nations.

Now it is undoubtedly the practice of statesmen to assert that