It has been my privilege during the past few months to conduct on behalfof the Government of the United States negotiations having for their object the promotion of the great ideal of world peace. Popular and governmental interest in the realization of this ideal has never been greater than at the present time. Ever since the World War, which spelled death to so many millions of men, spread desolation over so much of the Continent of Europe and shocked and imperiled neutral as well as belligerent nations, the minds of statesmen and of their peoples have been more and more concerned with plans for preventing the recurrence of such a calamity.

The United States finds its chief assurance of safety in its own strong arm and in its geographical position; for it has few treaties that offer solid barriers against conflict, and none that bind the other party not to wage war upon it should some conditions arise.

In seeking safeguards against war numerous obstacles have checked our progress. We have not as a people been certain as to what we ought to give up for the sake of peace. We have not been clear as to what should be accepted as feasible and desirable substitutes for war. We have lacked conviction as to the efficacy of some modes of adjustment, and have overlooked the potentialities of others; and we have been reluctant to agree to experiment. We have rigidly declined to agree to make war against a state that becomes a belligerent in violation of its covenant, without considering whether there may not be some other unobjectionable and yet effective means of penalizing such a wrongdoer.

According to the theory accepted by the American and English courts, and by nearly all the American and English writers on international law, war between nations is war between their individual citizens. It makes of the citizens or subjects of one belligerent, enemies of the citizens or subjects of the other. The whole nation is embarked in one common bottom and must be reconciled to submit to one common fate. The government at war is the representative of the will of all the people and acts for the whole society. According to the rival theory, which, though first put forward by Rousseau merely as a philosophical principle, has been accepted by a large number of Continental jurists as a fundamental principle of international law, war is a relation between states in which individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men nor even as citizens, but simply as soldiers. Under the Anglo-American theory, the private property of the nationals of each belligerent, on land or sea, is in principle subject to capture and confiscation by the other belligerent.

The preamble of the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 between Great Britain (on behalf of Canada) and the United States declares its purpose to be:

The decisions of international bodies may be based either on the rigid principle of unanimity or on the more convenient doctrine that the majority shall govern. In a world where national sovereignty is so widely stressed, the former method has a natural appeal. The rule of unanimity has, in fact, been treated by many persons as an inevitable corollary of the theory of sovereignty, which, as it is generally understood, would subject no state to any limitation against its will. Such an idea was very probably in the mind of former Secretary of State Hughes when he stated in the opening address of the Conference on Central American Affairs in December, 1922, “ Unanimity is a part of the consequence of the status of states in international law.” Writers on internationallaw have often so defined sovereignty and independence that the requirement of unanimity for any concerted action of a group of nations would follow.

We are now approaching the end of the first decade following the World War. Perhaps we are sufficiently removed from the heat and passion of that struggle to attempt to gauge the progress which the world has made in the development of international law since it was ended. Ten years is a brief period in any field of history; but before this decade was begun, most of us felt that it was going to see great things accomplished toward broadening and strengthening and extending the law by which the relations of states are governed. The war brought a challenge to our international legal order which could hardly have failed to create for our generation an opportunity to leave an impression on international law, such as has been left by no other generation in the three hundred years since the time of Grotius. As the decade is ending, and as our generation begins to find its energies so absorbed in other tasks, an appraisal of the progress we have achieved may enable us to judge the use we have made of our opportunity and the extent to which it still exists.