world organization itself; then it is folly to insist on the concept of equality as a basic principle of the law of nations.105

If, then, the world is ever to organize itself for the peaceful regulation of international affairs, that organization must provide for the essential inequality of States. If such inequality is not reflected in the pacific machinery, it will make itself felt in war while the machinery will be left to rast unused.106

Whether the opinion that is finding so much popular expression

is to be reflected in the publicists is for the future to

declare.

The event is at present in the hands of those

who make the law of nations rather than of those who interpret it.

VIII

SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVE PRINCIPLES

While the opinion which doubts or denies the principle of equality has gained adherents among the publicists, fow have made any serious effort, either to analyze systematically the inequalities which are characteristic of the society of nations, or to discover another principle upon which the law of nations may be assumed to rest. Two problems are involved. The first has to do with the capacity of international persons in their ordinary legal relations with one another, or, to put the matter in another way, with

105

Brown, International Realities, pp. 15, 68-72. 106 Woolf, International Government, p. 120.

!

their capacity for legal rights. The second is concerned with the capacity of international persons as regards participation in the privileges and responsibilities of supernational institutional development, in other words, with their capacity for political rights. In so far as they have considered these problems at all, writers have generally regarded them as two aspects of the same question.

Systematic attempts to discover an alternative prin

ciple have been made by Lorimer and Pillet.

The former

devotes some attention to the means of ascertaining the relative value of states, and concludes that there are four factors which must be taken into account, viz., the extent or size of the state or the quantity of materials of which it is composed, the content or quality of the state or of its materials, the form of the state or the manner in which its materials are combined, and the government of the state or the manner in which its forces are brought into action.107 Lorimer's study is an effort to get at the facts of international life and to formulate principles in relation to

those facts.

Pillet's study, as he himself admits, is purely theoretical. His theory is founded upon two basic facts: (1) each state is sovereign, and (2) each state lives in intercourse with other states. There are accordingly two groups of

107 Institutes, Vol. I, pp. 182-215.

state rights, those resulting from internal sovereignty, and those resulting from international intercourse. Conflicts between states are always conflicts between sovereignties. Sovereignty is either territorial or personal. Therefore conflicts between states may be divided into three categories: (1) conflicts between two external sovereignties, e.g., on the high seas, in unclaimed territory, or conflicts involving nationals in a third state; (2) conflicts between two internal sovereignties, e.g., in leased, jointly administered, or disputed territory; (3) conflicts between the external sovereignty of one state and the internal sovereignty of another. The controversies of greatest difficulty fall in the third category, which includes most of the really delicate questions of international relations.

For the

settlement of these controversies Pillet evolves what he

calls, for want of a better name, la loi du moindre sacrifice, based upon two propositions: (1) all states are equally

interested in the exercise of the functions of sovereignty;
(2) the different functions of sovereignty may be classified
in an order of importance.

following terms:

His law is formulated in the

States should be guaranteed in the exercise of their
Sovereignty in their mutual relations; and, in case of
conflict, they are rationally bound to give preference
to the public interest which is the more seriously
endangered by the dispute.108

108 "Telle est donc, à nos yeux, la loi qui doit servir de fondement à une doctrine rationnelle du droit des gens. S'il fallait lui donner un nom, nous l'appellerions la loi du moindre sacrifice; nous la forralons ainsi: (Cont. on page 185 .)