eature of the
binding character of the decision of the Joint High Commission as to
the arbitral character of the question is the most distinctive advance
in the right direction. Do not let us give up this feature without
using every legitimate effort to retain it.

An understanding of the term _justiciable_ may be essential to a full
comprehension of the significance and scope of these treaties.
Questions involving boundary lines, the rights of fishermen in waters
bordering upon countries with contiguous territory, the use of
water-power, the erection of structures on frontiers, outrages upon
aliens, are examples of justiciable subjects, and these are made
susceptible of adjudication and decision under these treaties. It is
now proposed to establish a permanent method of disposing of such
questions without preliminary quarrels and menaces whose result may
never be foreseen.

Certain questions of governmental or traditional policy are by their
very nature excluded from the consideration of the Joint High
Commission, or even the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
Such specific exemptions it is not necessary to set forth in the
treaties. Objection has been made that under the first section of the
pending pacts it might be claimed that we would be called upon to
submit to arbitration of the Monroe Doctrine, or our right to exclude
foreign peoples from our shores, or the question of the validity of
southern bonds issued in reconstruction days.

The Monroe Doctrine is not a justiciable question, but one of purely
governmental policy which we have followed for nearly a century, and in
which the countries of Europe have generally acquiesced. With respect
to the exclusion of immigrants, it is a principle of international law
that every country may admit only those whom it chooses. This is a
subject of domestic policy in which no foreign country can interfere
unless it is covered by a treaty, and then it may become properly a
matter of treaty construction.

With reference to the right to involve the United States in a
controversy over the obligation of certain Southern States to pay bonds
issued during reconstruction, which have been repudiated, it is
sufficient to say that the pending treaties affect only cases hereafter
arising, and the cases of the Southern bonds all arose years ago.

After a time, if our treaties stand the test of experience and prove
useful, it is probable that all the greatest Powers on eart