ch as to give
states a guarantee for decisions at once impartial and purely jural and
free from all political prepossessions. _It is the existence of the
institution which is the vital question now._ Once the machinery is
there, it will be utilized. In all states of the world there are
movements and forces at work to secure the ordered and law-protected
settlement of international disputes. The existence of an international
court will strengthen these movements and forces and render them so
powerful that states will scarcely be able to withdraw themselves from
their influence. And the time when states were ready to draw the sword
on every opportunity belongs to the past. Even for the strongest state
war is now an evil, to which recourse is had only as _ultima ratio_,
when no other way out presents itself.

[Sidenote: What is to be done if a state refuses to accept the decision
of an international court?]

64. In conclusion the great question is, what is to happen if a state
declines to accept the decision of the international court to which it
has appealed?

Important as this question may be in theory, it is a minor one in
practice. It will scarcely happen in point of fact--assuming that there
is an international court of appeal above the court of first
instance--that a state will refuse a voluntary acceptance of the award
of an international court. Only slowly, and only when irresistibly
compelled by their interests so to do, will states submit their disputes
to international courts. But when this is the case these same interests
will also compel them to accept the award then made.

[Sidenote: Executive power not necessary for an international court.]

65. We have neither desire nor need to equip these courts with executive
power. In the internal life of states it is necessary for courts to
possess executive power because the conditions of human nature demand
it. Just as there will always be individual offenders, so there will
always be individuals who will only yield to compulsion. But states are
a different kind of person from individual men; their present-day
constitution on the generally prevalent type has made them, so to say,
more moral than in the times of absolutism. The personal interests and
ambition of sovereigns, and their passion for an increase of their
might, have finished playing their part in the life of peoples. The real
and true interests of states and the welfare of the inhabitants of the