o
determine some method whereby members of the Judicial Arbitration
Court shall be apportioned and selected. If, as has been suggested, it
is decided to use the same scheme of apportionment as that for the
International Court of Prize, the provision that each party to a case
shall have a representative on the bench should be changed so as to
provide that neither party shall have a representative on the bench.
If this court is not to be a misnomer like the Permanent Court of
Arbitration, its rulings must be in accord with the principles of
jurisprudence rather than with the spirit of compromise such a
provision would tend to produce. With this accomplished and the
Judicial Court of Arbitration put in practical working order "of free
and easy access" to the powers, it may be doubted whether anything
further can be done. If the powers can be made to agree to submit to
the court all cases growing out of the disputed interpretation of
treaties, a great advance will have been made, but it is doubtful
whether the present state of public opinion would indorse such a
progressive step. These international legislators can do no more than
provide channels through which the spirit of international peace can
exercise itself as it expands, and the Judicial Court of Arbitration,
at the optional use of the nations, conforms admirably to this
requirement. The delegates should, therefore, avoid the universal
tendency of such bodies to legislate too much. None of these Hague
Conferences can alone accomplish the ultimate purpose of the so-called
dreamers, but each Conference may be a landmark on the upward journey
toward that consummation, anticipated by Utopians from the earliest
times, foretold by prophets from Micah and Isaiah to Robert Burns and
Tennyson, labored for by practical statesmen from Hugo Grotius to
William H. Taft, when each man shall be a native of his state and a
citizen of the world.

AUTHORITIES

For acts and conventions of Hague Conferences:
"Texts of the Peace Conferences" by James Brown Scott.

For data concerning proposed treaty with England:
Text of treaty and majority and minority reports of Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations.

For statistics of arbitration treaties:
"Revised List of Arbitration Treaties," compiled by Denys P.
Myers.

For development of trial by jury:
"Evidence at the Common Law" by Thayer.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prize Oration