employed by means of war--the very thing which is to be avoided.

We can imagine a Court of Arbitration intervening in the quarrels of the
separate tributary countries when an empire like the Roman Empire
existed. Such an empire never can or will arise again. Even if it did,
it would assuredly, like a universal peace league, be disastrous to all
human progress, which is dependent on the clashing interests and the
unchecked rivalry of different groups.

So long as we live under such a State system as at present, the German
Imperial Chancellor certainly hit the nail on the head when he declared,
in his speech in the Reichstag on March 30, 1911, that treaties for
arbitration between nations must be limited to clearly ascertainable
legal issues, and that a general arbitration treaty between two
countries afforded no guarantee of permanent peace. Such a treaty merely
proved that between the two contracting States no serious inducement to
break the peace could be imagined. It therefore only confirmed the
relations already existing. "If these relations change, if differences
develop between the two nations which affect their national existence,
which, to use a homely phrase, cut them to the quick, then every
arbitration treaty will burn like tinder and end in smoke."

It must be borne in mind that a peaceful decision by an Arbitration
Court can never replace in its effects and consequences a warlike
decision, even as regards the State in whose favour it is pronounced. If
we imagine, for example, that Silesia had fallen to Frederick the Great
by the finding of a Court of Arbitration, and not by a war of
unparalleled heroism, would the winning of this province have been
equally important for Prussia and for Germany? No one will maintain this.