While international law has by agreement laid down certain rules
regarding the conduct of war, it is recognized that there exists no
central authority that is able to enforce compliance with these
arguments. But, as regards the right of a nation to declare war for
any reason, even for openly alleged plunder and conquest, there is no
precept of restraint and no recognized right of interference. Although
the right to invade, subdue and appropriate without provocation cannot
be established as a right to inherit in any sovereign state by any
process of juridical reasoning, nevertheless it is a recognized
prerogative which international law does not, and under existing
conceptions of sovereignty cannot, forbid. One of the greatest
authorities on the subject says: “Theoretically, international law
ought to determine the causes for which war can be justly
undertaken—in other words, it ought to mark out as plainly as
municipal law what constitutes a wrong for which a remedy may be
sought in law. It might also not unreasonably go on to discourage the
commission of wrongs by investigating a state seeking redress with
special rights, and by subjecting a wrong-doer to special
disabilities.” But in fact it does nothing of the kind. International
law accepts war, independently of the justice of its origin, as a
relation which the parties to it may set up if they choose, and which
any nation may, if it chooses, impose upon another against its will.
The law confines itself to nominally regulating the effects of the
relations.—Dr. David Jayne Hill in _Review of Reviews_.
The above declaration from a well known authority upon international law
shows how unsatisfactory is the present status of the recognized law of
nations, and how inadequate, not to say impotent, it is to preserve the
peace among nations. We glean from other authoritative writers on the
subject that the Moral Law which is almost universally held to be
binding upon the individuals of a nation with respect to internal
affairs must, in the case of the nation as a whole, give way to the
necessity of self-preservation, and that under this rule everything
deemed necessary to the preservation of the life of the nation is
justified. Dr. Hill remarks that even the control of international law
upon the conduct of war is wholly illusory, as is evident from the fact
that the so-called laws of war cannot be enforced by a non-belligerent
co-signatory of the convention in which the agreement is made without
the non-belligerent itself going to war to execute such enforcement.
Therefore the nations of the world, regarded as individual entities, are
in precisely the same relation to each other as were the individual
cave-men of the prehistoric era. Each cave-man was a law unto himself
and existed by virtue of his strength and cunning. If one cave-man made
a compact with another to unite for mutual defense there was no outside
power to make either one keep the agreement save by compulsion, or to
respect the life and property of friend or enemy. There was no moral law
among the cave-men, and there is at present no enforceable law among
nations.
The plan of a World Court for Judicial Settlement proposes to introduce
among nations enforceable international laws which would tend to prevent
war altogether by compelling nations to live up to the recognized rules
of international morality. It would do for nations what civilized
institutions have done for the individuals of nations.