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 THE GREEN BAG

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION THE PRODUCT OF THE MODERN INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM Bv HON. HANNIS TAYLOR, IN the presence of a death-grapple between two nations, involving a reckless sacri fice of human lives almost unparalleled, statesmen and philanthropists are struggling to force the realization of a dream which has been haunting the world for centuries. That dream foreshadows no less than a perma nent international tribunal armed with the power to take jurisdiction over every ques tion, or nearly every question, that may disturb the peace of the family of nations, and to enforce its decrees under the author ity of treaties conceding the right of com pulsory arbitration. Since the founding of the existing international system a series of efforts have been made in that direction with results always discouraging until the growing sense of humanity developed in our time prompted movements which have resulted in actual and practical advances. It does seem as if the time is at hand when the family of nations, armed with an inter national organization more complete than ever before, is to become strong enough and resolute enough to preserve, through moral means, its own peace and order.

LL. D. (Edin. and Dub.) was absolutely universal. The chiefs of that comprehensive society were the Roman Emperor and the Roman pontiff — the one standing at its head in its temporal charac ter as an empire, the other standing at its head in its spiritual character as a church. Finally after the Pope established his ju dicial supremacy over the Emperor, the theory was that all Christian princes stood to the Roman pontiff as great vassals to a supreme lord of suzerain; and as such suzerain the pope claimed the right to act as supreme judge in all grave affairs of his vassals, whether national or international. Thus, for centuries, the medieval empire stood forth as the one bond of cohesion, holding Europe together under the spell of a theory that assumed to provide a com plete system of international justice, and a supreme tribunal adequate for the settle ment of all controversies that could pos sibly arise between Christian nations. No matter whether the medieval empire was a theory or an institution the fact remains that until the splendid conception of a united Christendom it embodied was wrecked in the storm of the Reformation, it did THE MEDIEVAL EMPIRE AS AN INTER what it could to secure to the world the NATIONAL POWER. conditions for which the most advanced Before the existing state system of Europe advocates of international arbitration are was born, the separate nationalities com now striving. posing it, which arose out of the wreck of the empire of Charles the Great, had passed CREATION OF THE MODERN INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM. through a long childhood under the protect ing wings of an institution that illustrated The great earthquake that began in Ger for centuries the enduring power of a poli many struck at the root of the theory by tical theory. That institution was known which the medieval empire had been created as the Holy Roman or Medieval Empire, and upheld — the theory that all Christen which rested upon the magnificent notion dom consisted of a single body of the faithful of a vast Christian monarchy whose sway held together under the dominion of the