heir experience and learning in the field of jurisprudence--we
shall, in my judgment, have done more to prevent international wars
through removing their causes than can be done by any other means
that has been devised or suggested."

The views, which I thus publicly expressed at Boston in September, 1919,
while the President was upon his tour of the country in favor of the
Covenant of the League of Nations, were the same as those that I held at
Paris in December, 1918, before I had seen the President's first draft
of a Covenant, as the following will indicate.

On December 17, 1918, three days after arriving in Paris, I had, as has
been stated, a long conference with Colonel House on the Peace
Conference and the subjects to come before it. I urged him in the course
of our conversation "to persuade the President to make the nucleus of
his proposed League of Nations an international court pointing out that
it was the simplest and best way of organizing the world for peace, and
that, if in addition the general principles of international law were
codified and the right of inquiry confided to the court, everything
practical would have been done to prevent wars in the future" (quoted
from a memorandum of the conversation made at the time). I also urged
upon the Colonel that The Hague Tribunal be made the basis of the
judicial organization, but that it be expanded and improved to meet the
new conditions. I shall have something further to say on this subject.

Reverting now to the draft of articles which I had in form on January 5,
1919, it must be borne in mind that I then had no reason to think that
the President would omit from his plan an independent judicial agency
for the administration of legal justice, although I did realize that he
gave first place to the mutual guaranty and intended to build a League
on that as a nucleus. It did not seem probable that an American, a
student of the political institutions of the United States and familiar
with their operation, would fail to incorporate in any scheme for world
organization a judicial system which would be free from the control and
even from the influence of the political and diplomatic branch of the
organization. The benefit, if not the necessity, of such a division of
authority seemed so patent that the omission of a provision to that
effect in the original draft of the Covenant condemned it to one who
believed in the principles of government which found exp