all sovereign states are equal. By Article 81 of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany "recognizes the complete independence of the Czechoslovak State", and thus concedes that in law the new state is equal to all others in the Family of Nations. But beyond this formal recognition, practice is far from uniform. It was said in 1907, concerning the equality of states, that "a crowd of international incidents goes to prove the principle to be one almost more active and better known in its breach than its observance," and the last twelve years have furnished many more examples. Nevertheless, in our own courts from Chief Justice Marshall down, the doctrine has served as the basis for decisions involving states; and it has recently been solemnly reasserted by the American Institute of International Law. Article 3 of the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Nations, adopted by the Institute at its Washington meeting on January 6, 1916, says that "Every nation is in law and before law the equal of every other nation belonging to the Society of Nations, and all nations have the right to claim and, according to the Declaration of Independence of the United States, 'to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them.""" It is the weak states that are most anxious that the doctrine shall not be lost sight of. At the Hague Conferences, and at the Paris Peace Conference, it was the so-called minor powers that appealed to the principle, when representation on courts and committees was under discussion. In a dispute between a great and a minor power the latter has found legal equality to be of little avail; nevertheless it has been the only safeguard of the smaller states. They have been obliged to save their amour propre by acquiescence, with or without a show of force by their powerful opponents. For instance, Colombia found it best to agree to the creation of Panama as an independent state, protesting at the same time that an act of injustice had been done. Some states owe their very existence to agreement to a virtual limitation of their sovereignty and equality.

'American Journal of International Law, 1:419.

Scott: The American Institute of International Law: Its Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Nations, p. 88.

Cuba is legally equal to the United States, but she obtained this recognition only by agreeing to the so-called Platt amendment, which was embodied in the treaty of May 22, 1903.1 By this treaty the exercise of Cuba's sovereign powers was by "voluntary" agreement materially restricted. The practice of the past shows that the doctrine of equality is effective chiefly when two powers are nearly equal in fact, whether the two be Great Powers or minor powers. As between a Great Power and a small power, it has seldom prevented the former from accomplishing its object, but has left a basis for a subsequent claim by the latter which under certain conditions may be effectively asserted. And all of this has been done under the forms of equality, jealously guarded by the minor states. There is no evidence at the present time that the assertion of the principle of equality is to be discontinued; and it may be that at last practice and theory are about to be united. The unrestricted right to declare war was the logical result of the doctrine, and at the same time its chief enemy. With war restrained and held only as an ultimate recourse, equality may become in some true sense a fact. As in a society of individual persons, freedom, liberty, equality of opportunity come only by limitation of extreme claims, so also with a society of individual states. Actual equality comes only from innate characteristics. But states, though unequal in power and influence, may under an agreed rule have equal opportunity of presenting their claims and demanding recognition of rights which the facts support. They may have equal access to the formularies and rules of procedure by means of which intercourse is maintained. It is possible that, freed from the fear of sudden and unprovoked war, even the Great Powers may now do from another motive that which the minor powers have been forced to do, and without discarding their ultimate sovereign and equal rights, consent to forego the extreme exercise of them.

Such was not the situation in 1914. The sovereign states in the Family of Nations did not stand on equal ground, and the doctrine conceived as the succor of the weak had become the excuse for oppression. Not power in the aggregate, not the collective power Malloy: Treaties, 1:362–364.

of a world society, but power concentrated in individual states was the ruling force. And since power so placed was the ultimate sanction or enforcing power in the Society of Nations, it was inevitable that this family of legally equal states should in practice be ruled on matters of policy by a few powerful states, whose position is well described by the phase, the "Primacy of the Great Powers". When the European war broke out the Great Powers were Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States of America. Japan was recognized as a Great Power early in the twentieth century. Spain, in the day of her strength as an exploring and colonizing state, was a Great Power. Russia, still with enormous territory and population, is no longer a Great Power. China, more populous than any other, never has been considered a Great Power. An example of the Great Powers ruling the lesser is that of Austria-Hungary in 1908 annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in violation of Article 25 of the Treaty of Berlin. Two minor powers, Serbia and Montenegro, protested, not as parties to the treaty, but as sovereign states whose interests were affected. Austria refused to receive the protests, and the Great Powers did not intervene.

It should not be inferred, however, that the control of the Society of States was effected solely by combination of Great Powers opposed to the minor powers. The Great Powers themselves needed some restraints, and since there was no organized power above them, that restraint naturally developed through groupings within the eight powers, each group being supported by an alignment of the minor powers. Thus in 1914, the European leadership was divided between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy on the one hand, and Great Britain, France, and Russia on the other. In Asia, Japan was the predominant power, and in the Western Hemisphere, the United States. There was supposed to exist an equipoise in interstate relations by which no state or group of states could obtain an unfair advantage over the others. This equilibrium is known as the Balance of Power.

The Society of Nations which we have been describing is not politically organized. It lacks nearly all of those elements which

are associated with the conception of government. It is a headless association which is the outgrowth of evolution. It therefore has no controlling conscience, and no common purpose to which its members are devoted. Furthermore, it should be reiterated that it is not intended to prevent war. On the contrary, it could not exist without contemplating war as always not far in the background, the ultimate recourse and sanction. This does not mean that exponents of international law advocate war; with few exceptions they look for the time when occasions for war will have disappeared. Every state exists with revolution as a possibility; but revolution is not recommended as the customary means of recording state action.

What then justifies the statement that there already was and still is a Society of Nations distinct from the League? First, that there is a generally accepted body of international law; second, that there is a well-organized official means of intercourse for the ordinary relations of states, viz., the diplomatic services; third, there is a well-tried means of settling certain classes of differences without recourse to war, viz., arbitration and commissions of inquiry; and fourth, there are rules for the conduct of war.

As a Society, it has been most successful in carrying on intercourse during peace. Its chief weakness lies in the fact that nothing but self-interest can, under the theory of absolute sovereignty, restrain a powerful state from declaring war. And war, once begun, removes most of the value of the Society, for the time being, even for those states which are not concerned as belligerents. Its value to the world is seen in the general advance in civilization which has come from legitimate rivalry between states. The world has gone forward faster because of the era of national competition which culminated finally in the European war, since no means, save war, existed for limiting the aspirations of one state within reasonable bounds.

Has the era of unbridled state competition now come to an end, to be followed by a rational era of coöperation? The same question has been asked at the end of each cataclysmic war. After the Napoleonic wars, the answer was made by a renewed appeal by

European states to the Balance of Power as a practical means of control. But this did not go to the root of the matter, namely the right of a powerful state in virtue of its sovereignty to declare war, being itself legally the sole judge whether the war was in support of law or in violation of it. In 1919 the attempted answer was the League of Nations, but let us not imagine that this is a new conception produced by the latest necessity for something better than had yet been devised. The hopeful thing about the old Society of Nations is that, like all living organisms, its members have never been satisfied with it, and they have never ceased to seek some means of removing its manifest imperfections. For four hundred years leaders of thought have been seeking remedies, proposing substitutes, and on paper erecting systems of intercourse and international settlement; and for a shorter period states have been coming to agreement on details which have been put into practice. These experiments have met with varying degrees of success; some have failed absolutely, others have been satisfactory within a limited field, and all have added to the experience of the world in international statesmanship, without which a successful league of nations I could not be maintained.

It is for this reason that a preliminary chapter on the Society of Nations has been thought necessary. In the study of the League Covenant, the existing law so far as it is unchanged by positive declaration must be kept constantly in mind. Moreover, and this is perhaps more important, we must expect to find most of the old elements of policy persisting. The war, overwhelming as it is in its lessons, has probably not essentially changed the nature of man, nor the aspirations of states. The same dangers are to be guarded against, and the same forces will be at play. Fervently desiring, as well-thinking men and women, that the League may succeed, we shall make this more possible if we do not immediately expect too much of it. Considering facts alone, and not merely aspirations, we must see the League as a new manifestation of the desire to give more definite organization to the existing Society of Nations upon which it is based and out of which it has grown. For instance, observing that since the advent of national consciousness, states