Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
History
Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
Other utterances by public men, such as Mr. Roosevelt and our own Prime
Minister, might be cited in the same sense; but Professor Murray’s has
been chosen because he has the courage to grasp the nettle. In his
words the true position is quite clearly set forth. If Inter-State Law
is to become a reality we must “be sure to go far enough.” There is
no half-way house between Law and no Law, between Government and no
Government, between Responsibility and no Responsibility. If the new
Concert is to be effective it must be able to compel the submission of
all “awkward problems” and causes of quarrel to its permanent Tribunal
at The Hague or elsewhere; and it must be able to enforce the decision
of its tribunal, employing for the purpose, if necessary, the armed
forces of the signatory Powers as an international police. “Outvoted
minorities must accustom themselves to giving way.” It is a bland and
easy phrase; but it involves the whole question of world-government. “Men
must accustom themselves not to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth,” the earliest law-givers might have said, when the State first
intervened between individuals to make itself responsible for public
order. Peace between the Powers, as between individuals, is, no doubt,
a habit to which cantankerous Powers “must accustom themselves.” But
they will be sure to do so if there is a Law, armed with the force to be
their schoolmaster towards peaceable habits. In other words, they will do
so because they have surrendered one of the most vital elements in the
independent life of a State—the right of conducting its own policy—to the
jurisdiction of a higher Power. An Inter-State Concert, with a Judiciary
of its own and an army and navy under its own orders, is, in fact, not
an Inter-State Concert at all; it is a new State: it is, in fact, the
World-State. There is no middle course between Law and no Law: and the
essence of Statehood, as we have seen, is a Common Law....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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