ts unlimited national
self-seeking. Where it obtains the upper hand, international conflicts
are unavoidable, and cannot be composed by a judicial sentence. In the
second place, there is the fact that the political equilibrium, on which
the whole law of nations rests, presents itself as a system liable to
gradual as well as to sudden alteration. Were the earth's surface
permanently divided between equally great and equally powerful states,
the political equilibrium would be stable, but it is rooted in the
nature of things that this equilibrium can only be unstable. The reason
is that individual states are subject to a perpetual process of
evolution, and thereby to perpetual change. This evolution is for one
state upwards, for another downwards. No state is permanently assured
against break-up, and it is the break-up of existing states and the rise
of new states that threaten the permanent organization of the
international community of states with danger. There is also another
factor demanding attention, and that is the opposition between West and
East, although the glorious example of Japan shows that the nations of
the East are indeed capable of putting themselves on the plane of
Western civilization, and of taking a place in the sun in the
international community of states.

However this may be, we must move onward, putting our trust in the power
of goodness, which in the course of history leads mankind under its
propitious guidance to ever higher degrees of perfection.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Future of International Law, by Lassa Oppenheim

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ***

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