rty which desired that arbitration should be
made obligatory for a number of differences, and she will, I am sure,
renew her efforts at the approaching Third Peace Conference. Should she
refuse to go to arbitration in her present dispute with Great Britain,
the whole movement for arbitration would, for a generation at least, be
discredited and come to a standstill. For if the leader of the movement
is false to all his declarations and aspirations in the past, the
movement itself must be damaged and its opponents must be victorious.
Prominent Americans are alive to this indubitable fact, and it would
seem to be appropriate to conclude this study with the text of the
letter of Mr Thomas Willing Balch of Philadelphia--the worthy son of
his father who was the first to demand the settlement of the Alabama
dispute by arbitration--which the _New York Sun_, an influential
American paper, published on September 4, 1912, on its editorial page.

"To the Editor of the _Sun_. Sir:--

A half century ago, Americans believed firmly that we had a good
cause of grievance against Great Britain for having allowed, during
our great Civil War, the use of her ports for the fitting out of a
fleet of Confederate cruisers, which caused our maritime flag to
disappear almost entirely from the high seas. We pressed Great
Britain long and persistently to agree that our claims, known under
the generic name of the Alabama claims, should be submitted for
settlement to an impartial arbitration. Finally, with reluctance,
Great Britain acceded to our demands. And as a result the two
Nations appeared as litigants before the Bar of the International
Court of Justice, popularly known as the Geneva Tribunal. The
result was a triumph for the United States, but also it was a
greater triumph for the cause of civilization.

To-day our Government and that of Great Britain have once more come
to an _impasse_, this time over the interpretation of the
Hay-Pauncefote Panama Treaty. Our Government has definitely granted
free passage through the Panama Canal to our vessels engaged in the
coastwise trade. And as a consequence Great Britain has entered a
protest and given notice that she will request that the
Hay-Pauncefote International contract shall be submitted for
interpretation to a judicial decision by The Hague Tribunal. Though
so short a time has elapsed since the Panama