nst a
decision of the International Court of Justice to a higher tribunal.
Many advocates of arbitration will not hear of an appeal. In this they
may be right as regards a real arbitral decision given _ex aequo et
bono_, but their arguments lose all force before the nakedly jural
decision of a real court.

The difficulties which beset the erection of an international court and
the appointment of its members may lead to the renunciation of the
immediate establishment of an international court of appeal. But when
once the International Court is in active working, the demand for a
court of appeal will be raised and it will not be silenced until it has
been satisfied. It would be premature to make proposals now as to the
manner in which such a court of appeal ought to be composed, and as to
the way in which it could be brought into existence. It is enough to
have pointed to the need for it. Directly this need makes itself felt,
ways and means will be found for supplying it.

[Sidenote: Are international courts valueless if states are not bound to
submit their disputes to them?]

63. We next are faced by the objection, what possible value can the
establishment of international courts possess if it be optional to
states either to submit their causes to them or to rely on arms for a
decision of those causes? It is, accordingly, asserted that such courts
can only be of value if states place themselves under a permanent
obligation to submit to them all or at any rate the greater number of
their disputes. This leads to the question of obligatory arbitration
treaties, which played so prominent a part at the second Peace
Conference, and will surely come up again at the third Conference. I
have not the slightest doubt that the third or some later Conference
will agree on the obligatory reference of certain disputes between
states to arbitration, but the matter is of quite subordinate importance
so far as the erection of international courts is in question. Any one
who contemplates international life and the relations of states to one
another, without prejudice and with open eyes, will see quite clearly
that, when once there exist international courts, states will
voluntarily submit a whole series of cases to them. These will, at
first, admittedly, be cases of smaller importance for the most part, but
in time more important cases will also come to them, provided that the
jurisprudence developed in them is of high quality, and su