Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/125

109 EIGHTY YEARS OF ARBITRATION. 100 port, bid his fellow-citizens defend their fatherland. National pride, jealousy, resentment, and ambition, it is needless to say, help to make war the natural solution of quarrels. Against the strong push of these many instincts and impulses is set a force dependent solely on good-will in its inception and good faith in its execution. An appeal to man's higher nature alone can bring arbitration into play, and the same appeal must be effective to induce the loser to abide by the arbitral decree, for a refusal to do so places the parties simply in their former condition. These inherent defects weaken arbitration as a precedent by making its application limited and uncertain, and consequently weaken its support. For it was only urged as a means of avoid- ing war, and as its limitations become apparent, its friends must recognize the necessity of advancing to a wider and more perma- nent scheme. Several writers have outlined plans for permanent international tribunals capable of enforcing their decrees, or for a federation based on a EuroJDcan citizenship. At first blush such notions appear highly chimerical, and the objection is made immediately that the world is not ripe for them. But it is in preparing the way for some such permanent and powerful institution that arbi- tration has, in my opinion, had its greatest and most Valuable effect. Within the last half-century it has become a factor in international law. Regarded at first as an impractical if not impossible scheme, it has now become a familiar method of settling a certain class of controversies. When an international dispute arises the people no longer regard war as an inevitable necessity. Their former attitude of resignation has changed to one of hope for a better solution of the difficulty. They expect arbitration to be tried or some reason for its inadequacy to be given. The recent Behring Sea trouble produced much less war talk than former bickerings between the United States and England, and its peaceful solution was a matter of general con- gratulation even among the newspapers, the first organs to start a war scare, and the last to abandon it. The development of public opinion which arbitration has produced should warn its friends not to rest content with any such half-way measure. Arbitration has proved an imperfect substitute for war; but it does not follow from that that arbitration has accomplished its mission in simply providing a peaceful means of healing a few IS