The Insufficiency of Arbitration divorced from an adequate legislative corrective can meet the situation. A legal system must change to meet chang ing conditions and it is impossible for judges, with all their large law-making functions, to make international law which shall meet the need of legislation as to international policies. Professor Reinsch says in his address on "The Codification of International Law":.— Principles must be taken out of politics to be made law. Any policy which still proves to be of vital importance in that great struggle for independence, authority and influence, which we call politics, cannot truly be a part of inter national law. This is an extreme statement, but there is enough truth in it to justify the position that a few judges sitting at The Hague will not be able to control the current of world politics. That mere rules admit of little room for change is illustrated by a statement made by President Butler in his recent address at the Lake Mohonk conference: — It is as inconsistent with the international mind to attempt to steal some other nation's territory as it would be inconsistent with the principles of ordinary morality to attempt to steal some other individual's purse. That no such concept is practically operative is shown in the seizure by great powers of territory in South Africa, the Chinese ports, the Philippines, Panama, Korea, Morocco, Bosnia, Per sia and Tripoli. The large fact is that above all nations is humanity; all of the inhabitants of the earth are equally entitled to all of its territory, and national title is not absolute but is based on might or social advantage. Great Britain became the great coloniz ing power of the world because she deserved to be. If, now, the German nation steps into her place as the greatest and most efficient world-power, no pre emption of the surface of the globe can
307
permanently deny such people the right either to trade or colonize, any more than the descendants of favored cour tiers can permanently retain immense ducal estates to the detriment of others. Within the nation real democracy will work out the problem of social justice. So there must be an adequate organ to prevent international stagnation. Any scheme proposed to preclude the internal development of a country, as the recent suggestion that to safeguard the inter ests of American investment the United States must intervene in Mexico to pre vent the adoption of Socialism, must follow the fate of the Holy Alliance which similarly attempted in behalf of despotism to dam back the tide of democracy. The deadening power of a military league cannot keep the Euro pean races in the possession of chosen portions of the earth either because of internal dissension in such a league, or because of the growing power of these not within the league. Selfishness has been more offensive in international action than in any other human relation. The difficulties of the backward nations are largely due to the rapacity of the enlightened. China has reason to fear the disinterested benevolence of the European powers. The spirit of the Holy Alliance still stalks in the chan cellories of Europe. When the powers of Europe lay down the principle that they shall determine where political equality shall exist for European and Asiatic peoples, the principle is operative only so long as the white race has big enough guns to coerce the black and yellow races of the world. As in national life governing oli garchies have exploited the governed classes, so an international oligarchy does not promise to be the ultimate organ of international justice. Perhaps any international harmony is a distinct
