of Guilford College, North Carolina, a senior in Guilford
College at the same place, whose essay follows. The judges were
Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown of New York University, Rollo Ogden,
editor of the New York _Evening Post_, and Lieutenant General Nelson
A. Miles, U.S.A., retired.

Each winner is invited to the Lake Mohonk Conference next following,
where he publicly receives the prize from its donor, Mr. Pugsley.

THE PRESENT STATUS OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

The first concerted effort looking toward an eventual world-wide peace
was the Hague Conference of 1899, where representatives of twenty-six
nations assembled in response to a rescript from the Czar of Russia,
whose avowed purpose, as set forth in the rescript, was to discuss
ways and, if possible, devise means, to arrest the alarming increase
in expenditures for armaments which threatened to bankrupt the
national governments.

Unable to accomplish anything definite in this respect because of the
vigorous opposition headed by Germany, the delegates turned their
attention toward giving official recognition and concrete form to
ideas which had already obtained in the settlement of international
disputes, and toward the formation of a court before which the nations
might have their differences adjudicated. The principles embodied in
good offices and mediation and commissions of inquiry have given
gratifying evidence of their efficiency, each in its respective
capacity. The original achievement of the conference, however, was the
Permanent Court of Arbitration. The composition of this court was to
include not more than four persons from each of the signatory powers;
from which panel, in case of an appeal to arbitration, each party was
to select two judges, who, in turn, should elect their own umpire
unless otherwise provided by the disputants. That it would be subject
to criticism might have been expected. That twenty-six nations could
unanimously agree upon any court whatever was the real occasion for
surprise. The four cases arbitrated during the eight years intervening
between this and the Second Hague Conference served to bring out its
defects, chief of which were its decentralized and intangible nature.
Nominally a court, in reality it was but a panel scattered all over
the world from which a court could, with great difficulty and expense,
be selected. Nominally permanent, in reality it had to be re-created
for each case to be judged.

The