Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/468

 EditoríalDepa rtmeut. difficulties or foreign wars. 5th. This guarantee is both a benefit and a burden to each of the contracting parties and may therefore be enforced on the ini tiative of either. 6th. Although the United States may en force this guarantee, unasked, they must do so subject to the paramount rights of sov ereignty and self-defence which are reserved to the local sovereign since nowhere ex pressly granted away. /th. The ordinary rights of every nation to safeguard its interests and to seek redress for the violation of treaty rights are limited by the provision that neither party shall re sort to self-help on account of any supposed violation of the above treaty rights until a statement of damages and a claim for re dress has been made to the opposite party without obtaining satisfaction. Applying these conclusions of law to the well-known facts of the revolution in Pana ma, we see that the United States were not bound to put down that revolution at the re quest of Colombia; that the United States were acting within their treaty rights in land ing men to preserve the freedom of transit whenever it seemed necessary, with or with out the permission of Colombia, but that the treaty does not give the right to the United States to exclude the forces of their ally and co-guarantor from her own territory because the presence of these forces is likely to ren der the task of the United States more diffi cult; and that the United States were there fore technically not justified by any or all the provisions of the treaty in preventing the Colombian soldiers at Colon from proceed ing to Panama on the morning after the rev olution. This was an act of political inter vention; its justification must be found in considerations of ethics and expediency. It cannot be found in law. 'Тик Latest Decision at The Hague" is commented upon by Edwin Maxey, Profes sor of International Law at the University of West Virginia, in the Yale Law Journal for May. Professor Maxey says:

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The issue in the case before the Court was clearly this: Is a resort to force such a meri torious thing that it gives to the nation or nations resorting to it early a preferred standing in a Court created for the purpose of maintaining international peace and jus tice? The Allied Powers maintained the af firmative and the others, to wit: Holland, Belgium, Norway and Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, France, and the LTnited States maintained the negative of this issue. Never before has a lawsuit in cluded so many important nations as parties litigant. It is difficult to see how a court established for the purpose of furthering the peace of the world could decide this issue in the af firmative and thus put a premium upon vio lence. But such was the decision of the court. A glance at the make-up of the com mittee of judges will help us somewhat in understanding the decision handed down by them. . . . Tt is natural that both the Rus sians and the Austrian should bring to the bench full-grown convictions as to the effi cacy of force as a factor in the government of mankind and not equally enlarged con ceptions as to the rights of weaker nations. . Apologists for the decision attempt to jus tify it upon the ground of an analogy be tween the preferences given in courts^of law to judgment creditors over ordinary credi tors and1 the preference given in this case to the Allied Powers over the Peace Powers. At first blush this analog}' seems sound. But let us examine it a little more closely. Whatever preference a judgment creditor has over his fellow-creditors he has secured not by forcibly seizing his debtor by the throat or by seizing or destroying or threat ening to seize or destroy his property and thus compelling him to sign an agreement under duress, but rather by virtue of the fact that he has submitted his claim for judicial adjudication and has in advance of his fel low-creditors established the fact that he has a valid claim. Had the Allied Powers se cured an award from an arbitration tribunal, while the other creditor nations were doing