ly detrimental to an aspiring
people, which has not yet reached its political and national zenith, and
is bent on expanding its power in order to play its part honourably in
the civilized world. Every Arbitration Court must originate in a certain
political status; it must regard this as legally constituted, and must
treat any alterations, however necessary, to which the whole of the
contracting parties do not agree, as an encroachment. In this way every
progressive change is arrested, and a legal position created which may
easily conflict with the actual turn of affairs, and may check the
expansion of the young and vigorous State in favour of one which is
sinking in the scale of civilization.

These considerations supply the answer to the second decisive question:
How can the judgment of the Arbitration Court be enforced if any State
refuses to submit to it? Where does the power reside which insures the
execution of this judgment when pronounced?

In America, Elihu Root, formerly Secretary of State, declared in 1908
that the High Court of International Justice established by the second
Hague Conference would be able to pronounce definite and binding
decisions by virtue of the pressure brought to bear by public opinion.
The present leaders of the American peace movement seem to share this
idea. With a childlike self-consciousness, they appear to believe that
public opinion must represent the view which the American plutocrats
think most profitable to themselves. They have no notion that the
widening development of mankind has quite other concerns than material
prosperity, commerce, and money-making. As a matter of fact, public
opinion would be far from unanimous, and real compulsion could only be
employed by means of war--the very thing which is to be avoided.

We can imagine a Court of Arbitration intervening in the quarrels of the
separate tributary countries when an empire like the Roman Empire
existed. Such an empire never can or will arise again. Even if it did,
it would assuredly, like a universal peace league, be disastrous to all
human progress, which is dependent on the clashing interests and the
unchecked rivalry of different groups.

So long as we live under such a State system as at present, the German
Imperial Chancellor certainly hit the nail on the head when he declared,
in his speech in the Reichstag on March 30, 1911, that treaties for
arbitration between nations must be limited to clearly ascertainab