276 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS 



South African War of 1899-1902, the Russo-Japanese War of 

 1 902-1905, and the present Great War, it would have been useless 

 for any tribunal to have attempted to settle the controversy on the 

 basis of jural rules. The underlying cause of trouble in each of 

 those cases did not involve merely matters which would not affect 

 the future political development and power of the contestants at 

 the council board of the nations of Europe, no matter how the 

 matters in dispute were decided. On the contrary, the cause of 

 strife in each case was because each side wished to possess some- 

 thing which they could not both have, but upon the possession of 

 which, according to the way the question of difference was solved, 

 whether by arms or jural means, the future influence among the 

 members of the .family of nations of the rival contestants would 

 be enhanced or lowered. 



To build up some sort of international organism which will 

 at all times maintain peace between nations will require much time 

 and effort. Yet something already has been done towards the 

 realization of that object. The machinery necessary to permit 

 judicial settlements to replace wars has been developed. Doubtless 

 it can be perfected still further. But that is not, however, the 

 weak point in the eft'ort, now many centuries old, to maintain peace 

 and avoid the curse of war. The real difficulty is how to induce 

 nations to submit all their differences to some sort or other of 

 international tribunals. Consequently, in order to eliminate war 

 between nations as much as possible, one of the important objects 

 to aim at at present is not so much to try to perfect the judicial 

 machinery for deciding disputes between nations, but rather to 

 do away as much as possible with the things that produce war. 

 In other words, to so change the status of certain relations between 

 nations that the desire to resort to war in order to obtain some- 

 thing will be done away with. 



One necessary step to this end of world peace, provided that it 

 is an attainable thing, would be to remove from the world of what 

 may be called some of the hardships that press on certain nations. 

 So far as possible this should be done upon the principle of an 

 equitable quid pro quo. An example of that sort of thing was the 



