National Security and International Arbitration

Extract

The most significant feature of the development of international arbitration during the past generation has been the gradual widening of the field of controversies to which the obligation to arbitrate should apply. The plan of a comprehensive agreement to arbitrate all disputes without restriction seemed at the time of the First Hague Conference the ideal of a fardistant millennium, and to many, indeed, not even an ideal, but an unwarranted restraint upon national progress. At the moment of present writing (September 17) the plan seems to have come within the range of practical possibilities and the Assembly of the League of Nations is discussing ways and means of giving it definite actuality.