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man will attempt in one day to ingraft new institutions in the life. of a nation, and require the nation to submit at once to new ideals, to accept at once new habits of thought, new customs of every-day life. A nation on the eve of a great reform may be compared to a railway train that is about to make a very remarkable change in its course, to enter upon a new road and travel in a new direction; it must slacken speed before it can take the new route. If the enginedriver tries to make the change suddenly, there will probably be a very frightful accident. In the same manner, a nation m not be required to change its course in a day, without any previous preparation, else there will be revolutionary violence. For a nation is a very delicate machine; it is fraught with inherited passions and prejudices, instincts and impulses, and is always acting in accordance, more or less, with certain creeds, customs and formulas, and is often led by the heart rather than by the head. He who would be a great reformer must first become a careful student of human nature, and must know that wariness is inseparable from wisdom.

The advocates of peace are well aware of this, and they are not trying to reform the world in a day. They are not idle theorists planning the creation of a new mankind, but practical statesmen fully sensible of the limits of human ability; they are not trying to beatify human nature, but to ameliorate human conditions. Their great work was begun at the First Peace Conference of The Hague in 1899, which prepared the way for the Second Peace Conference, and for all the peace conferences that may ever meet, until the last and grandest of these conventions shall exhibit to a reformed, intelligent, and aspiring world the sublime spectacle of the ultimate triumph of peace. That conference if we may indulge for a moment in prognosticating so far a result so far a result that great body, having new functions, using new means to accomplish the most far-reaching plans, will have its power based on the respect and gratitude and common sense of mankind.

The Second Peace Conference of The Hague, which was first suggested by the President of the United States, and to which the Czar invited the representatives of all the nations, marked a decided advance in the work of the advocates of peace.

The First Conference had established a court of arbitration with

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power to pronounce decision in any dispute that might arise between two or more of the nations. But this court was permanent only in name; it had no fixed residence anywhere, and whenever prompt action and summary proceedings were necessary it proved to be inefficacious.

In the Second Conference of The Hague, the Americans proposed to establish a judicial court of arbitration, which should be composed of the representatives of all the nations that signed the protocol. It was intended that in the bosom of this court should be deputed a tribunal of delegates having a permanent residence, being always ready to attend to every new matter at the earliest possible date, so that the court of arbitration might be able to deal with it in a business-like manner. We are confident that the future peace conferences will recall this motion with deep interest and sympathy, and that it will become at last the ultimate law of the nations.

On reviewing the history of mankind it may seem strange that, after a series of so many great improvements, after so many salutary reforms and spirit-stirring revolutions, the civilized nations. should be, in one very important respect, almost on a par with the ancient savages. We have made amazing progress in all the physical sciences, and wherever we turn we see the domination of man over matter. We have wrested precious secrets from the bosom of nature; we have made the elements subservient to our wishes; we have analyzed the component parts of the material universe; we have detected the existence of the infinitesimal worlds around. us; we have attempted to bring the planetary system within a few leagues of our observation; we have tried seriously to penetrate the veil that conceals the Infinite and Eternal; we have reached a very high grade of government and law, of civil and intellectual liberty. But, in spite of all this, we still see the fiends of rivalry and jealousy on the frontiers that separate the political entities, and as ready to make havoc and destruction among them as in the warlike days of old.

But in truth we are going farther and farther from the savage state; and, if war is lasting longer than other barbarous customs and practices have lasted, it is because the desire to fight and to dominate by physical force and by cunning is more deeply implanted

in our nature than many other desires; therefore it is that it must be very resolutely and uncompromisingly combated. When the Renaissance dawned in Europe it was no longer possible for "Arma virumque" to be the central subject in the universe, and to-day an up-to-date Virgil would sing "Arts and the Man," or Thoughts and the Man," or, better yet, "The Works of Man."

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Arbitration is an excellent medium for preserving peace and good will, and international arbitration may be considered a heavenly blessing to man. It is the only institution that can and will be successful in the campaign against warlike customs and theories.

But it must be impartial, free from motives of petty interest; it must be invested with incontrovertible moral authority, and must have the profound respect of the nations; it must be a high court of justice against whose decisions there can be no appeal; it must be free from corruption, and from suspicion of corruption. The circumstance that many statesmen of our day have conceived the idea of such arbitration says much for the wisdom that is to be found in modern statecraft; and among those statesmen who have distinguished themselves by their zeal and their exertions in the cause of peace Mr. Elihu Root, the eminent American Secretary of State, holds a very conspicuous place.

- In having had the honor to be a factor in establishing the first international court of justice, Central America has been singularly fortunate; but the glory of having initiated this beneficent idea will be forever associated with the names of the American delegates at the Second Peace Conference of The Hague, whose great project still stands, and, we venture to say, will never be forgotten.

We feel certain that the next international peace conference of The Hague will find the Central American Court of Justice established on a firm foundation, performing all its high duties in a manner honorable to itself and to the republics of the Isthmus, continuing, with unabating zeal, the noble work of union and consolidation, revered as a sacred depository of wisdom and learning, virtue and truth, administering justice with equal hand, and universally acknowledged to be the representative of the conscience of civilized humanity.

LUIS ANDERSON.

BOARD OF EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL

OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, State University of Iowa.

ROBERT LANSING, Watertown, N. Y.

JOHN BASSETT MOORE, Columbia University.

WILLIAM W. MORROW, San Francisco, Cal.
LEO S. ROWE, University of Pennsylvania.
OSCAR S. STRAUS, Washington, D. C.
GEORGE G. WILSON, Brown University.
THEODORE S. WOOLSEY, Yale University.

DAVID J. HILL, The Hague, European Editor.

Managing Editor,

JAMES BROWN SCOTT, George Washington University.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

LOUIS RENAULT.

On December 10, 1907, the Nobel Prize was awarded to M. Louis Renault, of France, and Ernesto Teodore Moneta, of Italy, President of the Peace Society of Italy.

By his will Alfred B. Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, bequeathed his fortune, estimated at $9,000,000, as a fund, the interest of which should be distributed yearly to those who had signally contributed to the good of humanity. The interest is divided into five equal shares, of which one is awarded "to the person who in the domain of physics has made the most important discovery or invention, one to the person. who has made the most important chemical discovery or invention, one to the person who has made the most important discovery in the domain of medicine or physiology, one to the person who in literature has provided the most excellent work of an idealistic tendency, and one to the person who has worked most or best for the fraternization of nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the calling in and propagating of peace congresses."

The peace prize, with which this note is concerned, has been awarded,

since the institution of the prize, as follows: In 1901, to Henri Dunant (Swiss) and Frédéric Passy (French); 1902, to Elie Ducommun and Albert Gobat (both Swiss); 1903, to W. R. Cremer (English; Sir William Randall Cremer, M. P., created Kt., 1907); 1904, to The Institute of International Law, the first award to an institution; 1905, to Baroness Bertha von Suttner (Austrian); 1906, to Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States; and in 1907 it was divided between Louis Renault (French) and Ernesto Teodore Moneta (Italian).

While the recipients of the prize have in various fields of activity amply justified the great honor conferred upon them, the award of 1907 appeals with peculiar interest to students of international law, for it is the first award made to a professor of the science, thereby justifying the claim of its votaries that international law makes for peace.

More fortunate than Grotius, the founder of international law, who, driven from his home, found honor and employment in Sweden, the recognized head of our modern science has not only come to honor in Sweden, as did the founder, but is idolized by his fellow-countrymen at home.

The year 1907 has been a year full of honor for Louis Renault. On the 10th of March, 1907, his colleagues and friends, students and former students of the Faculty of Law of Paris and of the Free School of Political Sciences, presented him with a beautiful medallion bearing upon the one side the portrait of the gentle and genial teacher and friend, and on the other the inscription, "To Louis Renault, in testimony of services rendered in the teaching and practice of international law: his students, his colleagues, his friends."

A few months later to be accurate, from the 15th day of June to the 18th day of October- he dominated the Second Hague Conference, not as a Frenchman or as a member of the French delegation, but as a citizen of the world, the trusted friend and adviser of his colleagues.

On the 10th day of December the Nobel prize committee publicly proclaimed him the friend of humanity.

SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW

The American Society of International Law will hold its second annual meeting at Washington in the New Willard Hotel, on April 24 and 25, 1908. The tentative program adopted by the Executive Committee follows:

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