war. They are looking expectantly to Congress for leadership in the shape of concrete proposals. They believe that America can lead the world. They recognize the permanent court as a helpful step. On the other hand, these same citizens are putting themselves on record as irreconcilably opposed to war. Unless we are expeditious in discovering, advocating, and putting into effect peace agencies of every sort (obviously they must be international), a vast proportion of our citizenry, in the event of threatened hostilities, are presently going to find themselves in the predicament of being hostile to war as arbiter, but without any provision having been made for an adequate substitute of a peaceful and orderly character.

The public is not ignorant of the limitations of the permanent court. They know that all that it can hope to be is a new agency making for peace and decreasing the likelihood of war, the best practical measure in sight. It is not a perfect or a final instrument. Behind its advocacy is the hope and expectation that it will hasten the day when reason and sentiment, law and order, common sense and a sense of humor will reign in international policy, displacing war by a Supreme Court with final jurisdiction. It is because the permanent court is the next logical step in the direction of the goal that it bulks large in the eyes of a generation which is determined that the children of the nation will never again at our behest go to the temptations and filthiness and barbarities of war-temptations and filthiness and barbarities such as God never willed that our youth should be asked by the nation to enter. The ideal of the court is American, it was presented to us by leaders of vision. But it has ceased to be a project of the few and has become the mandate and the program of the people.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, because of my profound conviction that what I say is true, that I represent the vast multitude of American citizens, I beg of you to do all that in you lies to take this ideal of the nation and weave it into the fabric of its laws.

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

Senator PEPPER. Mr. Wickersham, I think you speak particularly on behalf of the American Bar Association?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. The American Bar Association.

Senator PEPPER. The committee will be glad to hear you now, if agreeable to you.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, at a meeting of the American Bar Association held at Minneapolis last August, unusually largely attended, a resolution was adopted, a copy of which has been transmitted to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate. . . .

That resolution was adopted almost by a unanimous vote, after considerable discussion. It represents the sentiment of a body of lawyers drawn from all over the United States, and I believe is indicative of the sense of the bar in general. The resolution was in the terms of one previously adopted by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, which has been since adopted by the Association of the Bar of the State of New York, and by the associations of the bar of numerous States.

That resolution, in effect, was a recommendation that the United States Senate give its adhesion to the recommendation of President Harding and Secretary Hughes, since renewed by President Coolidge, to accept the Permanent Court of International Justice on the terms recommended by President Harding and Mr. Hughes.

You have before you a definite, concrete proposition. It is not whether, in general, the United States shall indorse the principle of the judicial settlement of international disputes. It is not whether a court of international justice may be erected upon some theoretical principle. It is whether the United States shall give its adherence to a particular existing tribunal, formed and in operation for some two years past, functioning at The Hague under the terms of a statute adopted which was largely framed by a leading American jurist.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the United States was committed at a very early period in its history to the principle of submission to arbitration of international disputes. There are only two ways of settling disputes between nations. One is the arbitrament of force; the other is the arbitrament of law and reason. There are two methods of peaceful determination of disputes between nations. One is submission to arbitration; the other is submission to judicial process of an established court of judicature.

For a long time we proceeded on the principle of arbitration. It had its necessary limitations. It had its obvious shortcomings. We know, as lawyers and business men, what the shortcomings of arbitration are. Men are brought together for a particular purpose. Generally there is a certain number who represent each of the contestants, and they choose a supposedly impartial umpire, and then, after hearing the facts of the dispute, they compromise on a conclusion.

In order to improve that method of judicial arbitration, at the Peace Conference of 1899 there was erected what was known as the Hague Peace Tribunal, misnamed a court, for the purpose of better regulating the process of arbitration. A panel of individuals of distinction in different countries was created by nomination on the part of each power of four members, and a provision was made for drawing from this panel a certain number to act as arbitrators when a given dispute should arise.

When the second Peace Conference was held in 1907 it had become apparent that this was not very much more satisfactory than the old method, and it appeared that during the eight years which had elapsed between the two conferences, only four international disputes had been submitted to arbitration under The Hague protocol; and so unsatisfactory was that process of arbitration that the American Government took the initiative in urging the modification and improvement of The Hague articles into a foundation of a court of international justice.

A moment ago, in the course of his address, Bishop Brent referred, or some one referred, to the arbitration recently had between the United States and Norway. I think it was in a quotation which Bishop Brent read. Nothing could better indicate the unsatisfactory character of the ordinary proceedings of arbitration, even under The Hague rules, than that partic

ular controversy. The United States and Norway had a controversy over the amount to be paid by the United States for certain ships and contracts for the construction of ships which were building for Norway during the war in this country. It was submitted to arbitration under The Hague rules.

The result was so unsatisfactory that the representative of the United States entered a protest when the decision was handed down, and the Secretary of State of the United States, in paying the award, because, he said, the United States was committed to the principle of judicial settlement, or settlement by arbitration, of disputes, nevertheless registered a protest against the award, particularly against the failure of the arbitrators to state satisfactory reasons for the conclusion which they had reached, and while making the payment he protested that that decision should not constitute or be recognized as a precedent for any other cases. . . .

Under The Hague rules each nation selects two, and they two agree upon a fifth, and I suppose I have not followed the details, but I suppose that they followed those rules, and the United States nominated two, Norway two, and then the two nations agreed upon a fifth man. I presume that was it.

Senator SWANSON. When they do not agree under The Hague conference, how is the fifth one appointed? I do not recall.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. The two nations agree, and there are various alternative provisions, so that in some way they must reach an agreement, but which one was resorted to in this instance I am not advised.

That was the situation at the time of the assembling of the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907, and the American Secretary of State instructed the American delegates to that conference to use their best efforts to bring about a development of The Hague Tribunal into a permanent tribunal composed of judges who are judicial officers and nothing else, who are paid adequate salaries, who have no other occupation, and who will devote their entire time to the trial and decision of international cases by judicial methods and under a sense of judicial responsibility. It is well-known history that that effort failed by reason of the difficulty, which was then an impossibility, of hitting upon a method of choosing the judges of the court which should

be satisfactory alike to the great nations and the small ones; but the conference did agree upon a draft convention for the establishment of such a court to be submitted to the nations and to take effect when some method should be reached for the selection of judges which should be satisfactory. It is interesting to take that convention and compare it with the statute establishing the Permanent Court of International Justice, adopted in 1921, and see how closely the two ran, how familiar the framers of the statute of 1921 obviously were with the work which had been done in 1907, done largely by the American delegates to that conference, and how that convention was used as the bones and structure out of which was developed the statute creating the Permanent Court of International Justice.

For example, in The Hague Convention it was provided that "without altering the status of the Permanent Court of Arbitration," any more than the present statute creating the Permanent Court of International Justice affects the existence of The Hague tribunals, which are left as additional bodies for anyone who chooses to resort to them "a judicial arbitration court, of free and easy access, composed of judges representing the various juridical systems of the world, and capable of insuring continuity in arbitral jurisprudence," was erected; that court to be composed of "judges and deputy judges chosen from persons of the highest moral reputation, and all fulfilling conditions qualifying them, in their respective countries, to occupy high legal posts, or be jurists of recognized competence in matters of international law."

So when the framers of the statute of 1921 came to provide for the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice, following very closely upon The Hague Convention, they provided for the establishment of

A permanent court of international justice. in addition to the court of arbitration organized by... The Hague, . . . composed of a body of independent judges, elected regardless of their nationality from amongst persons of high moral character, who possess the qualifications required in their respective countries for appointment to the highest judicial offices, or are jurisconsults of recognized competence in international law.

The electors of the judges who composed this Permanent