The so-called General Arbitration Treaties negotiated by Secretary Knox with France and England used the word “justiciable” to describe the kind of questions which the parties bound themselves to submit to arbitration. They defined this to include all issues that could be decided on principles of law or equity. The issue whether a question arising was justiciable and arbitrable was to be left to the decision of a preliminary investigating commission. The term justiciable and indeed the whole scheme of these treaties were suggested by the provision for settling controversies between States in the Federal Constitution and the construction of it by the Supreme Court. The controversies between States, decision of which was not determined by rules furnished by the Constitution or by Congressional regulation, were strictly analogous to questions arising between independent nations, and were to be divided into justiciable and non-justiciable questions by the same line of distinction. The treaties were not ratified by the United States Senate, but their approval by England and France and by the Executive of this country constitutes a valuable and suggestive precedent for the framing of the Constitution and jurisdiction of an arbitral court to be one of the main features of a league of peace between the great nations of the world. Now, is it idle to treat such a league as possible? Well, let us take England and Canada. For a hundred years we have been at peace. For that century we have had a frontier between us and Canada four thousand miles long which is entirely undefended by forts or navies. We have had issue after issue between the two peoples that because of their nature might have led to war. But we have settled them by negotiation, or, when that has failed, by arbitration, until now it is not too much to say that the “habit” of arbitration between us is so fixed that a treaty to secure such a settlement in future issues would not make it more certain than it is. I concede that conditions have been favorable for the creating of such a customary practice. The two peoples have the same language and literature, the same law and civil liberty and the same origin and history. Each had a wide domain, in the settlement and development of which their energies and ambitions have been absorbed. The jealousies and encroachments of neighbors in the thickly populated regions of Europe have not been present to stir up strife. And yet we ought not to minimize the beneficent significance of this century of peace by ignoring the fact that many of the issues which we have settled peaceably seemed at the time to be difficult of settlement and likely to lead to war. The Alabama Claims issue and the Oregon Boundary dispute were two of this kind.