people, are to be imposed?

If this is the intention then there will be one kind of independence for a great nation and an inferior kind of independence for a small nation. We must know what is meant for equality of right among nations, small as well as great, is one of the fundamental issues this country and her Allies are fighting to establish in this war. 69

VIII

SUMMARY

There is little that need be said, by way of summary, of the formal statements of equality that appear in the documentary literature of the past century. In general, they simply echo the familiar statements of the text-books and the treatises. The language of Sir William Scott and Chief Justice Marshall was the language of Burlamaqui, Vattel, and their contemporaries, nor did those distinguished judges add anything to a conception which had already reached a mature development in the writings of the classical publicists. The same conception comes circuitously from the publicists in the American Institute's Declaration of the Rights of Nations. The naturalist idea, indeed the very words in which it was expounded, reappear in the protests of smaller nations, before international tribunals, in diplomatic papers, and in the Peace Conferences at The Hague. The application of the principle gives rise to new problems at The Hague, but the principle itself remains unchanged. So in the diplomatic

69

Authorized version as published by the British Government (New York, George H. Doran Company, 1918), p. 5.

utterances provoked by the present war, the equality of nations is asserted with an understanding and in language, if one be permitted to interpolate the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," that would have been understood as readily among statesmen and publicists of the eighteenth century.

Those who affirm as well as those who deny the principle of equality agree that the practice of nations tends to impose limitations upon it. These limitations, their nature, and significance constitute the subject-matter of succeeding

chapters.