A court is created for the purpose of administering justice, under law.
“This then is the general significance of law, a rule of action dictated
by some superior being.” And then the great teacher of the English
Common law lays down the principles of the moral law “that we should
live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his
due”; and of the law of nature “that man should pursue his own true and
substantial happiness,” adding, “that this is the foundation of what we
call ethics, or natural law; for the several articles into which it is
branched in our systems amount to no more than demonstrating that this
or that action tends to man’s real happiness, and therefore very justly
concluding that the performance of it is a part of the law of nature
or, on the other hand, that this or that action is destructive of man’s
happiness, and therefore that the law of nature forbids it.”
From these two prior laws he derives the “third kind of law to regulate
this mutual intercourse, called the ‘law of nations,’ which, cannot be
dictated by any, but depends entirely upon the rules of natural law, or
upon mutual compacts, treaties, leagues, and agreements between these
several communities: in the construction also of which compacts we have
no other rules to resort to, but the law of nature: being the only one to
which all the communities are equally subject.”
The “natural law” is no longer the controlling “law.”
That which most promptly suggests itself to the mind of the ordinary
man, when law is talked of, is not the moral law or the natural law, but
municipal law, “a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power
in a state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong.”
The tendency towards the enactment of man made statutes has magnified the
“municipal Law,” until it is in the way of becoming the only law, and
as it overshadows, then the principles of the moral law and the law of
nature gradually are dwarfed, and become atrophied. The law of commerce
is the “municipal law”; and as the commercial instinct becomes greater,
the municipal law becomes the prevailing law. Statutory law takes the
place of “common law.” Ethics are replaced by written inhibitions. The
moral law becomes evanescent; men consult the revised codes to find the
boundaries of that search for happiness, instead of consulting their
inner consciousness.
It follows that there is left no such law as “international law,” for
there are no statutes to bind nations and no supreme power to enforce
a rule of conduct, and the ethics of natural law are not a world
restraining force.
The evil of statutory law—necessary as it is—lies in the fact that man
becomes prone to look to the numerous volumes to find a guidance of
conduct. Nations are formed of members of society. If the units of the
nations have become trained to look to the statutes for the control of
actions, and feel at liberty to do those things which are not forbidden
therein, they, as part of the nation, will refuse to be guided in their
relationship with other nations by anything except their personal
inclinations; moral ethics as a rule of conduct having disappeared.
Instead of the restraint of respect and love a new controlling sense is
established, that of fear.
A court is created as a means by which to administer justice. Without the
power to compel the observance of its decrees a court is but a comedy.
If there be no supreme power, there can be no supreme court. For without
a supreme power there can be no way of establishing a responsible force
having vested in it the duty of compelling the observance of the decrees
of a supreme tribunal.
If a Supreme Court of International Justice be established and there be
created an international force to enforce the decrees thereof, the units
of that force will be responsible to the nations from whom they are
taken, and not to the Supreme Court, unless that Supreme Court become
more than a judicial body; it must become also a supreme administrative
body of the United States of the World. Enforcement of a decree is
impossible unless there is unity of force back of it. If a majority
be relied upon, then the majority may be found to change. Government
can only prevail when the opinion of the majority becomes the accepted
doctrine of the whole. Otherwise revolution.
The Supreme Court of International Justice, to be of practical use, must
pass from its position of Supreme Court to Supreme Controlling body. An
utopian dream, which may in the generations to come be a reality. But not
for generations.
Without a supreme controlling body there must be something to substitute
in moral effect. There has existed a something which has been one
influence to prevent nations from being always at war, when their
individual advancement was opposed.
Dread; a greater controlling power than fear.
Dread of devastation; dread of wanton destruction; dread of extermination.
War is undertaken by a weaker power only when the alternative is dread of
something even greater than devastation or wanton destruction—dread of
extermination.
But the dread of war has ceased to prevent war; because the horrors of
war had lost their vividness.
That universal peace will some day reign supreme must be accepted by all
who believe in a progressive civilization. This includes all the thinking
world. If there is to be universal peace, and if it is not to come
through a consolidation of all nations, which is extremely improbable,
then it must come from some controlling feeling, which will in itself
create the administrative branch of the Supreme Court of International
Justice.
The police force to compel observance with the decrees of this Supreme
Court will be incorporeal: It will be Dread.
There never will be established an international corporeal force capable
of enforcing the obedience to the decrees of this Court. That means
the establishment of a war force to prevent war; it is foolish in its
conception. The power against which a decree is to be enforced will
withdraw its representatives from the international force, and by the
establishment of alliances, just as at present, meet with arms the force
of arms.
If it be a weak nation; it will do, as it does now—obey the mandate
through fear, unless the mandate means extermination, when it will fight.
National extermination, while fighting, is better than extermination
without resistance.
The first power for enforcement will be “Dread.” A greater dread than
exists to-day, because of a greater object lesson of horror than has
existed heretofore.
All things, that are, have a reason for their existence. The present
conflagration must have its raison d’être. In orderly evolution it is not
to be presumed that the reason is for the world control by any one power.
That suggestion might meet the conceit of a nation, but would not meet
the approbation of the world.
Nations having deviated from the moral law, the individuals thereof
having gradually become accustomed to written rules of regulation, it
has been necessary to substitute something for the moral code, for the
present, until the moral code can once more take its rightful place.
Dread will be enthroned as the enforcer of agreements. Dread of war will
prevent war.
That this may come about, it is necessary that there shall be a concrete
example of the horrors of war in all its awful intensity. As nations have
increased and as armaments have been multiplied, it is necessary that the
lesson of “dread” must be planted firmly.
The times were ripe for the lesson. The wonders of art can bring before
an audience a scene of horror as it was enacted thousands of miles away.
Hence the horrors of the present war. It must not be thought for a moment
that they have reached their climax. They will be permitted to continue
until they have increased to such intensity that men will mention war
with bated breath, and nations that pretend to civilization will arm only
to protect themselves from uncivilized countries; until the uncivilized
become civilized and armaments cease.
But the first great preventive of war will be “Dread,” succeeded in the
ultimate by the acceptance of the rule of ethics.
Man may create a Court of International Justice. God alone can create the
force back of it for the enforcement of its decrees.
Out of that which appears evil, good does come. The sufferings of the
battlefield will be sanctified by the generations of warless existence.
There were the burnt offerings and sacrifices of the Old Testament. They
were symbolical.
The battlefields of Europe are the burnt offerings for perpetual peace.
The power of enforcement will first be practical, “Dread,” but as this
is a base reason, it will gradually be changed by the light of a better
understanding into the rule of ethics.