All agree that the
instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to
which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this
treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific
mode of settlement. Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn
between justiciable issues, relating to the application or
interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of
legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or
arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement,
are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.

But the proposals differ widely, both as regards the scope they assign
to the work of preventing war, and as regards the measures they advocate
for securing the fulfilment of international agreement. They may be
grouped, I think, in three classes on an ascending scale of rigour. The
first class envisages a general treaty, by which the signatory states
shall undertake to submit all differences between them to processes of
arbitration or conciliation conducted by impartial courts or
commissions, and to abstain from all acts of hostility during the
progress of such investigation. This principle has recently found an
important expression in the treaties signed last year by the United
States with Great Britain and France, and other nations. The first
article of these treaties reads as follows: 'The High Contracting
Parties agree that all disputes between them, of every nature
whatsoever, other than disputes the settlement of which is provided for,
and in fact achieved, under existing agreements between the High
Contracting Parties, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have
failed, be referred for investigation and report to a Permanent
International Commission to be constituted in the manner prescribed in
the next succeeding article; and they agree not to declare war or begin
hostilities during such investigation and before the report is
submitted.' The objects of this method of pacific settlement are three:
first, to provide impartial and responsible bodies for a reasonable
inquiry into all disputes; secondly, to secure a 'cooling off' time for
the heated feelings of the contestants; thirdly, to inform the public
opinion of the world and to make effective its moral pressure for a
sound pacific settlement.

The efficacy of any such arrangement evidently depends upon two
conditions, first,