The Allies are, however, beginning to see that many of their demands are futile, and that the Covenant, providing only for a coalition for domination, is unworkable; while public opinion in America, if correctly expressed in the platform of the Republican Party, the utterances of the President-elect and the overwhelming vote, is crystallizing exactly along the lines of this Plan, which is based upon arbitral procedure aiming to secure the greatest possible impartiality and justice.

The foundation for international relationship is definitely laid in the most solemn manner, by the offer and acceptance of the "WILSON POINTS” while both belligerents were under arms and free to contract. To force the substitution of the coalition Covenant for them, is to deprive America of all benefits from the war. To readjust the present differences in the society of nations, requires only the insistence by America of a return to that foundation and the addition of the superstructure which was developed along with the principles of those Points, in this Plan.

Not only should America do this for her own advantage, but to fulfill an obligation which she seems to have overlooked. It was the promise of the benefits to be gained under those Points that caused the people of the Central Powers to turn from their militarist leaders and put their trust in America and the Allies; and when they and the compensation clause were embodied in the offer for the ending of the war and that offer accepted, an agreement arose. America did not simply subscribe to a voeu, a desire, or simply to a convention, general neglect of which by the parties would relieve any particular one from performance, but entered into a two-sided contract under which

she became obligated in solido to see that the other side obtained its rights under the agreement. It is, therefore, America's duty to participate actively in the discharge of those obligations.

JUSTICE-NOT PREFERMENTS

PREFACE

To preconceive situations between nations that would arise, should given changes be introduced in their relationship, and then, to devise or apply rules, derived as much as possible from experience, that would be effective in controlling them, is a very strenuous mental task, when it is considered that, to be of value, all must conform to natural laws and to the motives of those concerned.

This plan represents an almost continuous study, by the writer, of the problems of international arbitration in the above manner, extending well over a period of thirty years, and marked, already in 1887, by an essay in competition for the Charles Sumner Prize at Harvard. Only by keeping tenaciously at the subject and being satisfied with an occasional inch of progress, has this argument reached its present proportions.

It has, too, necessarily been an almost solitary undertaking; for, during the early part of that period, while a number of persons talked and preached on the abolition of war, no one advanced anything like a comprehensive plan to accomplish that result; later, when the first Hague Conference was convoked, the subjects for consideration were restricted by the invitation; at the second Conference, there was no attempt made to go beyond certain limits, namely, a court of voluntary resort, with no plan for enforcing its decrees, and most of the attention continued to be given to the rules of war; and today, those who discuss it are found to be partisans of certain phases such as Conciliation, a Judicial Court, an International

Army, etc., at which points they stop; so that there are still very few who care to discuss the subject of a universal system in all of its aspects.

In the absence of the stimulus and aid of such discussions and the speedy elucidations that would often have followed, the writer has been obliged to depend chiefly upon an acquaintance with the various systems of municipal law and the precedents of international law, tested constantly by application to the events that have arisen in that period, for the foundations on which to base the features that have been adopted. The habits of a Wall Street lawyer in devising plans and drafting instruments with endless variations and constant relations with foreigners have, however, facilitated this work.

As these ideas have been developed and accumulated they have been set forth in pamphlets and addressed to persons who have expressed interest in the cause, but the time is now approaching when the subject will be of absorbing interest, and an arrangement of them in a more concise form is here undertaken.

The mainspring for so comprehensive a mechanism, the instrument for coercing nations, was developed from an inspiration had while listening to a lecture on the Continental Blocus, at a European University. Then followed the development of the other chief features of the plan: namely, compulsory arbitration; general disarmament; the recognition of the power of a few of the large nations to compel all others to enter the arrangement; a mode of convoking automatically executive bodies termed “extraordinary commissions;" the securing of impartial members for it; and the limiting of the powers of the latter.