and administered it until there was assurance that the voice of the Cuban people would be respected at the polls. It then again withdrew. Such fortitude and resistance to temptation are unusual in history. Neither the European nations nor we ourselves can be counted upon generally to exercise them. If, now, intervention on the part of a single country or of a small group of countries should come at the mandate of all the enlightened Powers, is there not a much. greater likelihood that the temptation to remain will be resisted, and that therefore the national life of the small Powers will in the end be more secure than at present?"

In commenting upon the suggestion, Prof. H. F. Guggenheim of Cambridge said: "No international war is likely to be carried on without either real or imaginary anticipation of some gain. And the backward nation today presents the only possibility for a profitable war." He expressed the view that the sugges

tion "cannot be too seriously considered."

Count Albert Apponyi said of the plan: "It will probably secure peace in most cases because no backward nation would dare resist the joint applications of so many Powers and because the particularly interested ones among the latter would be prevented from quarrelling about their claims, the whole question being lifted up into the higher domain of principle."

The comment of Prince di Cassano of Rome contains the following passage: "What we want is a committee of absolutely free men-free of mind, free of interest - who shall act as ternational jury d'honneur first of all to enlighten public opinion and afterwards to obtain justice and fair treatment."

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Charles Francis Adams' observations on the plan pictured the actual working of it as follows: "The issue presented would, of course, first be formulated by

one or more of the Powers in question. It would then be submitted to a tribunal in the nature of that at The Hague. The backward nation in question would then be invited to appear before this tribunal. The tribunal would in due process make its report; and it would be communicated to all the parties it represented, together with the recommendations of the tribunal as to how its report and recommendations should be made effective. It seems to me the world has now advanced to that point when such a mandate, properly expressed, in a firm but kindly way, would work its own results. Should it fail to do so, the question of its enforcement through the joint action of the Powers from which the complaint had emanated would present itself. It would then become a practical question which would call into operation the diplomatic agencies and the capacity, so to speak, of 'getting there' on the part of the tribunal. On this head no general rules could be laid down;

but the problem must be worked out in an effective manner through the good judgment and the capacity for accomplishing results of those in charge. In this, as in other things, something must be left to time and the process of natural development."

IV

VEERING OF OPINION

All the existing institutions at The Hague are voluntary: that is to say, nations may or may not resort to them, as they see fit. The advocates of the new World Court provided for by The Hague Convention under the name of the Court of Arbitral Justice almost to a man believed that this new institution should likewise be purely voluntary in character. They discouraged the idea of the use of force to hale nations into Court, or to execute the judgment of the Court, as not only unnecessary but harmful. Men pointed to a whole series of arbi

trations through the greater part of a century, none of which had been thrown down by the refusal of one party alone to abide by the award, and asserted that the sense of honourable obligation, backed by the pressure of public opinion, was sufficient not only to insure the acceptance of the awards of international tribunals but to lead the progressive nations habitually to resort to this method of settling disputes in lieu of war. True, in the past few years, several of the backward countries of Latin America had thrown down arbitrations, thus breaking the splendid record of a century. But it was felt that this illustrated less a failure of principle than the actual condition of the peoples in question, peoples who ought never to have been expected to apply successfully such advanced methods.

With the beginning of the present war this reliance on voluntary institutions suffered a fatal shock. It was plain that the efforts of the Entente to