people that the United States and Great Britain have led the way in this mode of settling disputes.

When we consider that arbitration, in its essential nature, is the foundation of nearly all modern judicial procedure, we may be convinced that there has been made some substitution for war as an international remedy, and an encouraging approach toward the judicial settlement of disputes. The laudable efforts made by the Hague Conference to establish, upon the customary principle of arbitration, a kind of supreme judicial authority, were, at least, an anticipation of a Permanent Court of International Justice.

(3) Moreover, when we take account of what has been suggested as the next progressive stage in the enlargement of the areas of peace,-namely the definition of rights and the growth of a body of law -we find that, up to the beginning of the late war, there had been developed a generally accepted body of international law. While the "Law of Nations" has been largely based upon antecedent customs, it has passed beyond the mere stage of customary law. The rights and duties of nations have been more or less clearly defined in the writings of the great publicists. Their definitions and precepts have been accepted, to a large extent, in the diplomatic correspondence of different states. They have, in a marked degree, influenced the policy of many nations in their intercourse with one another. The policy of one state, or group of states, has become a precedent for other states, until a large body of legal principles have received the practical approval, either tacit or expressed, of the civilized world.

When the customary law has seemed inadequate to meet the historic changes due to national development, it has been supplemented by the calling of congresses

and conferences, the decisions of which have taken somewhat the form of statutory legislation. International unions and corporations have also been formed to administer certain matters of general interest. As examples of the beneficent effect of these unions may be mentioned the following: the Universal Telegraph Union, formed in Paris in 1865; the Universal Postal Union, formed in 1874, the Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, (such as trade-marks, patents, etc.) created in 1883; the Union for the Protection of Works of Art and Literature, in 1885; the Union of Railroad Transportation, etc. There are said to be more than thirty of such unions; they have formed an international bond between the various interests of different countries, which may be regarded as a sort of international administrative law.

(4) It is with respect to the last mentioned agency which we have noticed as extending the area of peace, -namely the growth of a distinct political organization with a common coercive power,-that the tendency toward a permanent peace seems less apparent. There has been hitherto little disposition on the part of the Great Powers to create a common authority capable of giving an adequate guaranty to international rights. And any proposal to constitute such an authority has been looked upon by practical statesmen as little less than chimerical.

But in spite of the national prejudice against yielding up directly any sovereign powers to create a higher sovereignty, it is yet true that some steps have been taken toward the indirect recognition of some such authority. This has not assumed the well-defined character of a "super-state," so fondly projected by idealistic reformers. It has rather grown out of the

sympathetic concert of action on the part of the Great Powers in respect to matters of common concern. The acts of the chief congresses-from that of Westphalia to that of Berlin, together with the so-called "Concert of Europe," have been more or less efficient in controlling the action of disaffected states, by the treaty guarantees with which they have been accompanied. While such guarantees may fall short of those which might be afforded by a common sovereign power, their pacific significance cannot be entirely ignored.

From this review we may, perhaps, be able to see to what extent the growth of the international society has followed the principal steps that have been observed in the previous stages of social development, and the encouraging results that had been attained before the war of 1914.

§ 7. THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WORLD WAR

In the light of these facts, the question may arise: What is the real significance of the recent World War, and what are the lessons to be drawn from it? Does it, or does it not show that the world is now ready for peace? It is sometimes assumed that the international system, that existed before the outbreak of the recent hostilities, has practically broken down. It is no doubt true that the Powers that initiated the war were consciously determined to abolish the international rules already accepted by the civilized portion of mankind. A more significant fact, however, is this, that the most civilized states of the world were united in the effort to protect and maintain the principles of the law and the tendencies toward peace so far as they had already been developed.

From our present point of view, whatever may be our attitude at this moment, the late war may be resolved, as a matter of fact, into a conflict between the law-breaking and the law-abiding nations of the world. That the former group of nations, (or the governments by which they were represented) are properly designated as "law-breakers" is evident from the simple fact that they persistently refused to recognize the binding force of the accepted "Law of Nations." Long before the announcement of hostilities they had poisoned the minds of their people with the idea that the law was based not upon justice, but upon autocratic power; that obedience to its mandates was dependent, not upon the people's will, but upon the supremacy of military force. In their diplomatic negotiations they repudiated the importance of arbitration as a preventive of war, and ignored the obligations imposed by international treaties.

In the conduct of the war they spurned most of the humane provisions that had already been made for the restraint of vindictive and barbarous methods of procedure. While in the possession of occupied territory they encouraged pillage and plunder; they disregarded the legitimate rights of the subject people; they devastated and depopulated the conquered lands and destroyed the industrial resources of the country. They destroyed indiscriminately public and private property of a non-hostile character, laying wanton hands upon cathedrals and libraries and the private homes of citizens. They paid no respect, on land or on sea, to the rights of non-combatants or of the laws of neutrality. They were guilty of inhumanity toward prisoners of war. They made war upon women and children, upon the weak and the wounded, and even

upon those engaged in medical and other philanthropic service.

It must be observed that, in all these respects, the military authorities prompting the invasion disregarded and set at nought the pacific principles and humane rules of warfare that had previously been developed and accepted by the civilized nations of the world. In short, by the international adoption of a barbarous policy, by thus trampling upon the rights of humanity and ignoring the pacific tendencies of the past, they placed themselves outside the pale of civilization, and acquired the status of international bandits the common enemies of mankind. For these reasons it must be said that the recent World War can be regarded as nothing less than a destructive interruption of the cause of peace, a painful parenthesis in the course of human progress.

The world was, perhaps, never more hopeful of a rational peace than it was at the opening of the Second Hague Conference. But the refusal of the Kaiser to permit his delegates to take part in the discussion relating to the limitation of armaments threatened to obstruct the further progress of mankind, so far as it concerned the amelioration of war. The world was, perhaps, never more anxious for the future than when renewed hostilities broke out at the invasion of the neutralized territory of Belgium. And, perhaps, the world was never more cast down and depressed than when it witnessed the havoc wrought by the devastations of the war. Men were inclined to question whether there were any fragments left from the previous peace of Europe, or whether the previous hope of the world had not vanished in a hopeless ruin.