60. This last objection has already been dealt with above (paragraph 55), where it is shown that a judicial award as an authoritative declaration of the legitimate character of an act or claim has, in and for itself, nothing to do with the governmental execution of the award. But as to the fear that the erection of an international court might endanger the peaceable settlement of disputes and the development of international arbitration, that is certainly groundless. The contrary is the case, as is shown by the fact that the happy movement towards the erection of an international court was initiated by the United States of North America. This country, which since its entry into the international community of states has more than any other championed the idea of the arbitral adjustment of disputes, and has in practice put it to good use, is well aware of the value of arbitration, but, on the other hand, it knows also how to prize the purely legal decision of legal questions. It has actually happened that a state has not ventured to submit a certain dispute to arbitration because it feared that its claim would not receive jural treatment in this way. It is just because the existence of an international court would promote the non-warlike settlement of international claims that its erection has been put forward. The reason is that even with the most careful selection of arbiters, one is never certain beforehand as to the quarter whence they will derive their ideas of the _aequum et bonum_, whilst with a jural settlement of claims the decision rests on the sure basis of law. Further, the erection of an international court is not intended to cause the suppression of the so-called Permanent Court of Arbitration; on the contrary, the machinery of this latter is to be retained in full existence, so that the parties may in every case be able to choose between the Court of Arbitration and a real court. The future will show that both can render good service side by side. [Sidenote: Composition of an international court.]