Arbitration, International, the settlement of a dispute between nations by an impartial court. The rapid substitution of this rational process in the place of war is perhaps the greatest step in advance that marks the close of the nineteenth century. To Americans it is of peculiar interest. To submit the conflicting claims of nations (as of individuals) not to brute force, but to rational adjudication, is not more than Christian; it is not more than common sense; but, besides being in a measure both Christian and sensible, it is in its origin distinctly American,--as this article will show. Old-World philosophers had taught for centuries that war was not only inevitable, but also beneficent and right. Thus Dante, the mightiest intellect of the Middle Ages, wrote in defense even of the absurd folly of private war, or "trial by combat,"--when God was always solemnly invoked to "show the right": Whatever is acquired by single combat, is acquired with Right. For when human judgment fails, either because it is wrapped in darkness or because it has not the aid of a judge, then ... recourse must be had to Him who so loved Justice that, by the shedding of His own blood, He met her full demands. . . .This end is accomplished when, with the free consent of the participants, . . . the judgment of God is sought through a trial of bodily and spiritual strength. In spite of such attempts to bolster up that judicial duel by pious phrases about the "judgment of God," the custom disappeared soon after Dante's day, in the light of advancing knowledge and with the establishment of a more efficient system of courts in European countries. But for quarrels between nations the same language continued. Thus Lord Bacon wrote (seventeenth century): Wars are no massacres and confusions, but the highest trial of right, when princes and states which acknowledge no superior on earth, put themselves on the judgment of God for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it may please Him to give to either side. Bacon's day no longer used this silly defense for small fights, between Smith and Jones, but it still thought such impious defense good for big fights, between France and England. In our day it grows more and more impossible, by such language, to excuse ourselves, and to throw our own responsibility upon God; but the old excuse has been cast into vaguer form,--as by the English statesman, Sir Charles Dilke, who blandly assures us, in his recent book upon Problems of National Defense, that war is inevitable because it is "analogous to litigation in private life." War analagous to litigation! Of course war is analogous not to modern, peaceful litigation,--an attempt to find the right by rational, careful investigation,--but, at best, to the barbarous and outgrown "trial by battle." And, just as for individuals, in the upward progress of humanity, the feud and the duel have given way to peaceful litigation, so, for nations, war is now giving way to arbitration. That is the only analogy the case admits. Not that anyone thinks we can always avoid war yet. We can not always avoid private fights. It is still necessary now and then for the gentleman to defend himself or another from the thug. If it were not for the policeman and the law-court around the corner, this sort of thing would be necessary oftener, and pretty good men would sometimes find fists or knives the only arguments to settle their disputes. Pretty good nations in the past have had no other way, because for them there have been no peaceful agencies at hand. Statesmen are now busied in supplying something of the kind,--not expecting absolutely to abolish war, but hoping confidently to make it less excusable, and so less frequent. In the earlier development of this sensible process, the United States holds a proud place. America stands for Peace. This emphasis upon peace is one of her chief contributions to the world. So marked was the American opposition to a war policy, even in the infancy of our nation, that Thomas Jefferson, despairing of peace for the warring Europe of his day, wished us to cut ourselves off from the Old World that we might the better dedicate this New World to peace. "When we are strong enough to give the law for the continent," he wrote, "we may formally demand a median of partition through the ocean, on the hither side of which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on the other,--while, during the rage of eternal war in Europe, within our regions the lion and the lamb shall lie down in peace." This favorite thought of Jefferson's was soon to find recognition, in part at least, in our national policy; for it is this which makes the idealistic element in our Monroe Doctrine (see article). Even before that doctrine was proclaimed, our country, with England, and at our suggestion, gave to the world the first great illustration of practical disarmament,--in the "Convention of 1817," just after the War of 1812. In this memorable compact the two countries agreed that neither would maintain war-vessels on the Great Lakes. The agreement has been kept, spite of intrigues in Congress year after year by greedy shipbuilders and jingo politicians; and, as a result, for the century since, across those northern waters which unite the two lands, the opposite shores have smiled in constant friendliness,--when, under Old-World conditions, there must have frowned scores of grim fortresses thronged with hostile soldiery eager to pot one another. Indeed the whole history of American diplomacy has been one consistent effort to lessen the waste of war to non-combatants, and to lessen the likelihood of war itself, and to extend (sometimes to invent) the more beneficent principles of international law. Even our wanton aggression in our one unjust war was partially redeemed by a solemn pledge in the treaty of peace with Mexico (1848), that in future we would settle differences with our weaker neighbor by arbitration. That device, of international arbitration, was then some half a century old, and it was practically an American invention,--the noblest product of the heart and brain of an inventive people. A score of years before the words just quoted from Jefferson were written, Benjamin Franklin said: We make great improvements daily in natural philosophy. There is one improvement I wish in moral philosophy,--namely, the discovery [invention] of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another's throats.... When will human intelligence be sufficiently improved to see the advantage of this? . . . When shall we grow wise enough to substitute arbitration for war? This is the first expression of the kind from a practical statesman. Franklin did not think it needful to take high moral ground: it was a matter of common sense. To the shrewd and kindly author of the maxims of "Poor Richard," to the scientist who had snatched from the storm-cloud the secret of the lightning, to the practiced diplomat trained in all the wiles of European courts, war was "folly,"--not Bacon's or Dante's pious appeal to the judgment of God; not Dilke's approved and necessary form of "litigation"; but mere folly, and inevitable only so long as human intelligence remained too unimproved "to see the advantage" of arbitration. Franklin wrote these wise words as our War for Independence was drawing to a close (1780). Ten years after it closed President Washington and John Jay warded off another war with England by negotiating the Jay Treaty of 1793-1794 (see article), one clause of which contained in working form that invention in moral philosophy for which Franklin had hoped. Several matters were in dispute,--among others, the boundary between Maine and the British Possessions. At the treaty of peace (1783), the line had been fixed rather carelessly, and even the map upon which it had been roughly indicated had been lost. All geographical terms used in the treaty regarding it (belonging as they did to an unexplored wilderness), were meaningless or ambiguous; and now there was an honest difference of opinion about the ownership of some eight thousand square miles of territory. The fifth section of the Jay Treaty provided that this boundary should be fixed anew, in accordance with the original intention so far as discoverable, by a "mixed commission" of experts, who should be sworn to do justice after careful examination of evidence,--both countries pledging themselves to accept the award as final. This same provision called forth violent outcry. In England the ministry were vehemently assailed for so shamefully "compromising British honor." In America there went up a like howl from the offended jingoes. Those were the days when mobs, ten-thousand strong, gathered day after day in the streets of Philadelphia, as John Adams assures us, threatening to drag George Washington from his house. "What!" shrieked the frenzied opponents of the administration; "arbitrate the ownership of our soil! surrender a foot of American territory without first fighting to the last drop of our blood!" This silly, question-begging bombast was fitly answered by Alexander Hamilton in his famous defense of the Treaty: It would be a horrid and destructive principle,--that nations could not terminate a dispute about a parcel of territory by peaceful arbitration, but only by violence. The Jay Treaty arbitration was distinctly a new thing. At all times, to be sure, nations have now and then avoided war by inviting the mediation of a powerful neighbor or by diplomatic negotiation between themselves. And either of these things is usually better than war, but neither of them is arbitration. Arbitration means neither diplomacy,--a war of wits,--nor mediation,--the decision of an arbitrary umpire, based partly on guesswork, partly on expediency, and partly on compromise; arbitration means not these, but painstaking adjudication by a sort of international court, composed as impartially as possible, with definite forms of procedure approximating to those of a law-court, hearing evidence and argument in public, and basing the decision solely on the merits of the case. The nearest approach to this in earlier history (except perhaps for some sporadic experiments among Greek cities), was the occasional mediation of the great Catholic church in the Middle Ages. But as that period of history drew to a close the pope fell under the political control of the rising despotisms of France (see article on AVIGNON) and Spain. Then the Reformation split Christendom into opposing camps, so that the beneficent mediative power of the popes practically disappeared. Here and there an isolated philosopher urged the creation of an international tribunal for peaceful settlement of disputes, but such suggestions never arrested the attention of any practical statesmen. The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, with their incessant and almost universal warfare, knew no such recourse; and, for the modern world, international arbitration reappeared, in a far higher form than ever before, with the Northeast Boundary Commission of 1796 established by the Jay Treaty. The year after that treaty, the Pinckney Treaty with Spain arranged another minor arbitration; but, on the whole, the two English-speaking peoples who first used the device in this modern form continued to be its chief users for nearly a century. Speaking in the rough, the hundred years between the Jay Treaty and the Hague Tribunal saw one hundred and fifty cases of true arbitration. Of these, England, with her complex foreign relations, was a party to seventy; the United States, even with her policy of keeping free from all foreign entanglements in that period, to sixty; France to twenty; no other country to more than ten. Forty of our cases were with England. That is England had thirty cases, and we twenty, with other countries. England and America, severally or together, were parties to ninety cases, leaving only sixty for all other countries in matters to which one of these two was not a party; and these sixty came in the main, in the latter part of the century, when this Anglo-Saxon device had begun to spread rapidly to other lands,--as jury trial and representative government had done a hundred years before. The one hundred and fifty cases dealt with all sorts of questions. Nine-tenths of them, perhaps, concerned little questions which would never have led to war anyway,--though in the absence of arbitration, even these would have led to grave injustice and would have intensified international hatreds. The remaining fifteen or twenty cases dealt with big questions which might easily have led to war. Thus our forty cases with England included such tremendous matters as the Bering Sea Fisheries, the Alabama Claims, the Venezuela Question, the Alaska Boundary, and several less important, but still highly significant, territorial disputes regarding our northern frontier. This record of nineteenth century arbitration is a glorious history; but the closing months of that century and the opening years of the twentieth have seen something better. These nineteenth century arbitrations were all arranged by individual treaties, after the disputes arose. Now comes the day of permanent tribunals and general treaties. It is one thing for two nations on the brink of war, passions inflamed and enmities augmented, sometimes to save themselves by agreeing at the last moment upon a mode of arbitration. It is a nobler as well as a safer thing to agree in advance, by a general arbitration treaty, upon the composition of a standing international court, to which disputes are referred as they arise, without causing even talk of war. To this stage nearly all civilized states have now come. Such "general treaty" with a permanent tribunal was first suggested by a French thinker about 1570; but the first acts of any political government in favor of such a suggestion were the resolutions adopted with practical unanimity by the legislature of Massachusetts in 1833 and 1835, and by that state and Maine in 1850 and 1851. In 1851 and 1853 the Committee on Foreign Affairs in our national Senate reported similar resolutions. Our Civil War interrupted this great Peace movement; but in 1872 that same Senate Committee adopted the following memorable resolutions drawn by its chairman, Charles Sumner: WHEREAS, by international law and existing custom, war is recognized as a form of trial for the determination of differences between nations; and WHEREAS, for generations good men have protested against the irrational character of this arbitrament, where force instead of justice prevails, and have anxiously sought a substitute in the nature of a judicial tribunal; and WHEREAS, war once prevailed in the determination of differences between individuals . . . being recognized as the arbiter of justice, but at last yielded to a judicial tribunal, and now, in the progress of civilization, the time has come for the extension of this humane principle to nations; . . . and WHEREAS, it becomes important to consider and settle the character of this beneficent tribunal . . . so that its authority as a substitute for war may be . . . strengthened and upheld, to the end that civilization may be advanced; . . . therefore, 1. Resolved, That in the determination of international differences, arbitration should become a substitute for war in reality as in name, . . . so that any question or grievance which might be the occasion of war or of misunderstanding between nations should be considered by this tribunal. 2. . . . 3. Resolved, That the United States, having at heart the cause of peace everywhere, and hoping to help its permanent establishment between nations, hereby recommend the adoption of arbitration as a just and practical method for the determination of international differences to be maintained sincerely and in good faith, so that war may cease to be regarded as a proper form of trial. In 1874 the House of Representatives adopted resolutions of this nature. In 1883 a "general treaty" was proposed to us by the Swiss government; but, as a treaty between America and Switzerland could have had only sentimental, not practical, interest, the matter was allowed to drop. In 1889-1890, the Pan-American Congress at Washington (representatives present from all the independent countries of North and South America), presided over by James G. Blaine, drew up a general arbitration treaty in much detail (covering several pages of fine print), recommending it to the several American governments. This, however, led to no actual ratification. But in 1888 and 1890 Congress again passed resolutions favoring the creation of a standing international tribunal to arbitrate differences between nations. These resolutions called forth warm approval in the British parliament; and, in consequence, in 1893, negotiations opened between England and America for a general treaty. Three years of painstaking consideration followed, and in 1896 President Cleveland transmitted to our Senate the first general arbitration treaty of practical significance ever carried to so complete a stage. It would have been fit, indeed, that the English-speaking peoples, who a century before had arranged the first case of individual arbitration, should also now have led the world to this higher plane of a standing arbitration court. But it was not to be. Here the United States lost its honorable leadership in the great movement. The treaty was absolutely unobjectionable. It was cautious, even to timidity. President Cleveland, who in his famous Venezuela message had recently trodden with perhaps unnecessary vehemence on the British lion's tail, recommended ratification in a powerful and unanswerable message. A few months later, President McKinley, coming into office, did the like. But the Senate, after long, factious, jingo discussions, failed to ratify. Ten years later (1907) that same body, in its period of degeneracy, slaughtered frivolously a bunch of ten such treaties negotiated with the leading nations of the earth by our Secretary of State, John Hay, and strenuously recommended by President Roosevelt. But though America for a time had fallen away from the movement, progress did not cease. August 24, 1898, by order of the Tsar, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs handed to the representatives of the different nations at St. Petersburg a circular letter suggesting a World-Conference to consider some means of arresting the danger of war and for lessening the hardly less serious menace of the armed peace in Europe, with its crushing weight of standing armies. Thus originated the famous Hague Conference of 1899. In this gathering, at the birthplace of international law, appeared commissioners, one to seven in number, from twenty-six nations, including Persia, Japan, Siam, and Mexico,--practically all the independent states of the world except the South American republics,--comprising in all over four hundred millions of people. This conference of itself put the Peace movement in a new light. Through the nineteenth century, so-called "Peace Congresses" met from time to time at Brussels or Geneva, made up of representatives of peace societies; but these meetings of "harmless cranks" were either ignored contemptuously by the press or were regarded as fit food for the funny column. The Hague Congress, however, was as spectacular as war itself; it could not be ignored. And it was made up of practical statesmen, official representatives of the great governments of the world; it could not be joked away. It was, of course, not a government,--only a meeting of diplomats whose recommendations had no effect until ratified by their respective countries. Most of the recommendations adopted there have been ratified, however, by nearly all governments. One result in particular the First Hague Congress left behind it. It provided for the creation of a permanent international court, of the highest character, to which all differences between nations may be referred. No nation is compelled, as yet, to submit its quarrels to this World Supreme Court; but it is of mighty import that there now exists, ready for use at any moment, this noble judicial machinery, so that nations may escape war without loss of dignity if they really so desire. No doubt the battle flags will continue from time to time to be unfurled; but the Hague Conference, with its successors of like name, is a mighty step toward the poet's dream of the "federation of the world." Then the movement for arbitration quickened. The first great step came in South America, which had no part at the Hague. While that Conference was in session, Chile and Argentina were on the brink of war over a boundary dispute in the Andes region. Both countries were straining every nerve to augment armies and navies. Taxes were piling up. Hatreds were fanned to white heat. But in 1901, when war seemed a matter only of days or hours, two good Catholic bishops, one in each country, appealed eloquently to their peoples in the name of Christ to stay the approaching bloodshed. Their devoted efforts won. The two governments agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration; and, in 1903, the boundary was satisfactorily adjusted, not by hostile armies, but by a commission of geographical experts appointed by Edward of England. A year later (1904) the two countries joined in erecting upon that boundary line, on the crest of the mountains, a famous statue, "The Christ of the Andes,"--cast from metal which just before had formed hostile cannon, and bearing on the base this inscription, "Sooner shall these mountains crumble into dust than Argentines and Chileans break the peace which they have pledged at the feet of Christ." Meanwhile, delighted with this particular arbitration, the two countries advanced still further,--and in June, 1903, they signed a "general arbitration treaty," providing that for the space of five years all disputes which might arise should be arbitrated by a stated tribunal. This was the first "general arbitration treaty" ever ratified, but similar agreements were already under way in Europe; and four months later (October, 1903), one was concluded between France and Great Britain providing for settlement of future disputes (with some reservations) by the Hague Tribunal. The next eighteen months saw twelve more such treaties in rapid succession,--Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Denmark, Holland, and Switzerland, in various combinations, being the contracting parties, and Great Britain joining in five of the twelve. From that time the movement has been assured, and to the present writing (August, 1909) has met with no backset. For long, owing to the obstruction of part of the Senate, the name of our own country was missing from the roll call of the nations, but in the spring of 1909 several treaties of this character were concluded between the United States and other countries, and America has returned to her rightful place as a leader in this righteous movement for peace on earth.--WILLIS MASON WEST, University of Minnesota.