of controversies for adjudication. This
court has already justified its creation and existence by the
settlement of contentions which in other days led to disastrous wars,
and even in this enlightened age might have precipitated serious
ruptures. The United States Government, as represented by the National
Administration, is ready to utilize this method of settling
international disputes to a greater extent than ever before. That is,
we are willing to refer to this tribunal, or a similar one, questions
which heretofore have been left entirely to diplomatic negotiation.

The treaties go further by providing for the creation of a Joint High
Commission, to which shall be referred, for impartial and conscientious
investigation, any controversy between this Government, on one hand,
and Great Britain or France, on the other hand, before such a
controversy has been submitted to an arbitral body from which there is
no appeal.

And, assuming that governments, like individuals, do not always
display, while a dispute is in progress, that calmness of judgment and
equipoise which are so consistent with righteous deportment, provision
is made for the passion to subside and the blood to cool, by deferring
the reference of such controversy to the Joint High Commission for one
year. This affords an opportunity for diplomatic adjustment without an
appeal to the commission.

The plan of submission to a joint high commission, composed of three
citizens or subjects of one party and the same number of another, is a
concession to the fear of being too tightly bound to an adverse
decision made manifest in the objections of the Senate committee,
because it may well be supposed that two out of three citizens or
subjects of one party would not decide that an issue was arbitrable
under the treaty against the contention of their own country unless it
were reasonably clear that the issue was justiciable under the first
clause of the treaty.

Ultimately, I hope, we shall come to submit our quarrels to an
international arbitral court that will have power finally to decide
upon the limits of its own jurisdiction, and in which the form of
procedure by the complaining country shall be fixed, and the
obligations of the country complained of, to answer in a form
prescribed, shall be recognized and definite, and the judgment shall be
either acquiesced in, or enforced. These treaties are a substantial
step, but a step only, in that direction, and the f