The Great Events by Famous Historians

The principle and scope of international arbitration, as exemplified in the treaties recently negotiated by the United States with Great Britain and France, should commend itself to the American people. These treaties go a step beyond any similar instruments which have received the sanction of the United States, or the two foreign Powers specified. They enlarge the field of arbitrable subjects embraced in the treaties ratified by the three governments in 1908. They lift into the realm of discussion and hearing, before some kind of a tribunal, many of the causes of war which have made history such a sickening chronicle of ravage and cruelty, bloodshed and desolation.

After years of patient endeavor by men of various nations, and despite many obstacles and discouragements, there has been established at The Hague a Permanent Court of Arbitration, to which contending governments may submit certain classes 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 feature 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.