party. The litigant parties should not select the judges, but an ample right of challenge should be preserved.

At present questions of "independence," "honor" and "vital interests" are often reserved from compulsory arbitration. Independence is a postulate-not a matter for discussion. We may remember that in the nature of things questions of national independence cannot be considered arbitrarily any more than can the freedom of a man not charged with crime in a nation where all are equal before the law, and so remembering, this reservation becomes meaningless between nations recognizing mutually their equality by treaty. "Honor" is not a justification for private killings, and still less can it be for public ones. "Vital interests" spell out either the privilege of harrying another nation or of protecting one's self against harrying, while, were all nations obliged to submit all differences to the Hague court without any qualification as to "vital interests," there could be no harrying on the part of any nation.

With the development of a truly independent judiciary at the Hague whose deliverances were recognized as of necessity based only upon immutable principles of justice, the existing bounds set to arbitration would ere long become obsolete.

Washington, D. C.

JACKSON H. RALSTON.

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

The distinctive features of human progress in the nineteenth century were the advancement of natural science, discovery and invention, the growth of human freedom and political liberty, the unifying and nationalization of races into independent states and the development of the principle and the extension of the practice of international arbitration.

If the experiment of international arbitration had not been madeeven in a rudimentary form-in ancient or medieval times, it would have been discovered and tried by force of political conditions and exigencies among modern nations, rapidly growing in wealth, population and power; commercially and politically active and enterprising; brought into intimate relations with one another; each having its own set of interests, its own diplomatic agencies, its own system of jurisprudence, its own tribunals for the determination of public and private controversies. Out of these multifarious relations and experiences would naturally have come suggestions of mediation, of conciliation, and of friendly arbitration.

In its origin and development, arbitration was resorted to rather as an expedient than upon principle; it was a function more or less religious or quasi religious and political in character rather than a judicial proceeding. Gradually, down to the middle of the nineteenth century—and more rapidly during the latter half of the century-it grew into final recognition as a principle of justice and high policy to be invoked and tested between differing states in all controversies not of a vital nature.

Adopted first as a simple expedient, next as a matter of policy and justice, and rarely as a matter of simple justice, it was finally developed into a permanent international institution of judicial justice by the Hague convention of 1899.

Among the institutions of human society, it has been the slowest and longest in maturing, the latest in its formal and permanent establishment. Its foundations have yet been barely laid. Its completion

involves the grandest problems, and will evoke the highest and noblest efforts of the practical statesmanship of the present and the future. The process of development of the original idea into the more complete present conception of arbitration as a principle, by a supreme judicatory of nations, was retarded by prejudice.

First there was the prejudice of the most civilized of the ancient European states that the human race consisted of Greeks and nonGreeks or barbarians, the latter terms importing notions of inferiority and hostile contempt. By later ages these terms were transformed and expanded into others only a little broader-Christians and nonChristians, or heathen-the civilized and the uncivilized, or barbarians.

Less than a half century ago the words "civilized," "semi-civilized," and "barbarous" were printed on the maps used in the public schools in the United States. The word "civilized" appeared on the maps of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and some other European countries. But certain European and Oriental lands were not favored with this ideographic distinction. Ignorance and the prejudices of ignorance were, as ever, more or less systematically taught as a part of the juvenile learning.

This general idea was carried into and generally practiced in the relations of states. There was no just conception of the civilization of states lying outside of the territorial confines of the Roman Catholic Church, including its Protestant offshoots. There was no conception of arbitration as a principle of justice rigorously applicable to all states as to individuals.

The academic growth of the idea of impartial arbitration between all nations has also been retarded, in some measure, by the much labored question of sanctions. The question, as generally stated, implies that behind international law and arbitration some phys cal force, some compulsory process to insure the observance of the law and the performance of the award, is vital. This conception of the idea of sanctions is erroneously narrow. But all the while this question has been under discussion and acting as a deterrent to the recourse to arbitration, it has been slowly working out its own solution through the agency of a superior power-the most potential and fearful of all human forces the force of an enlightened and resourceful public opinion before which the most powerful governments, in presence of a great international injustice, stand in awe.

The growth of the idea has also been retarded by the inveterate practice of withholding from arbitral tribunals their proper judicial character through the appointment by governments of their own nationals, and therefore more or less interested partisans, as arbitrators to hear and decide controversies to which they were parties. This vice in the composition of the tribunal thus appointed, besides its various immediate harmful consequences, has brought arbitration into measurable discredit, has shorn it of its due credit as a judicial process, with the result that although there have been a large number of arbitrations, they have contributed little to the development of a consistent body of principles.

If arbitrating states adopt the rule of selection of completely disinterested arbitrators, competent and disposed to decide causes after the fashion of the higher courts of all civilized states, we may confidently expect the gradual improvement and development of a system of international jurisprudence in the same way as the municipal law has been improved by the higher courts of the United States, Great Britain, Germany and other nations.

The progress of arbitration has also been retarded by the spirit of military conquest, kept alive by the enormous and increasing numbers of the professional classes in the art of war; and by the distrust of arbitral tribunals; and by the positive unwillingness of ruling statesmen to forego opportunities to increase the territory and power of their own country.

How is it possible to deal with the practical problems of international arbitration, having as its object the preservation or restoration of peace, on the pure principles of abstract justice, without laying the spectre of military armaments which

With head uplift above the wave and eyes
That sparkling blaze,

menaces the peace of nations?

In essence, the real but non-ostensible intent and end of the overgrown armaments of today is absolutely the same as it was in the ages of Philip, of the Cæsars, of Louis XIV. and Napoleon. The real object was then, thinly disguised, to make war; the declared object now is to prevent war. The plans, the preparations, the tendencies, the results "are very similar, as things not admitting of nice distinction in language."

In modern, in medieval and even in ancient times a sovereign never made war except in spite of himself, and only after he had exhausted all efforts to avoid it.

The story familiar to every school boy of the professions of peace by the embassy of the Roman Senate to Carthage, of Cæsar and Pompey, of Napoleon and Metternich, of Napoleon III. and Bismarck, of Russia and Japan in 1903, can, in the light of events, leave no doubt of the actual significance of excessive military armaments.

Had it not been for her vast military armaments, Russia would doubtless have composed her differences with Japan in 1903. Her mighty armaments led her directly to the abyss into which Russia has fallen.

In the light of events, the circular letter of the Russian minister of foreign affairs, of January 11, 1899, has today a sorrowfully prophetic accent:

In proportion as the armaments of each power increase, so do they less and less fulfil the object which the governments have set before themselves. The economic crisis, due in great part to the system of armaments, a l'outrance, and the continual danger which lies in this massing of war material, are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden which the people have more and more difficulty in bearing. It appears evident, then, that if this state of things were prolonged, it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert. It came and by that route.

The overgrowth of the modern military system is but a revival of similar phenomena witnessed in the past, the prelude to colossal conflicts and disasters from the age of Alexander, of Hannibal and the Scipios to Waterloo and Mukden.

"The maintenance of general peace," said the Czar in his rescript," and a reduction of excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations, present themselves in the existing conditions of the world, as the ideals toward which the endeavors of all governments should be directed."

The Greek idea of arbitration for the settlement of differences between Greek cities or states was passed on as a heritage to the medieval and even to modern times, transformed and enlarged only so far as to embrace all the Christian nations, whose numbers and power and religious faith compelled a wider application of the principle. No more among the western nations was the notion of arbitration conceived in the principles of humanity and abstract justice than it was among the petty republics of ancient Greece.