280 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS 



conclusion of the peace of Westphalia and including the course of 

 the present war, would seem to show that while it would be well 

 to do everything possible to avoid war by a recourse to international 

 courts in all possible cases, and much can be done to promote that 

 laudable object, still it is well also to remember that the Creator has 

 ordained our world in such a way that force of some kind, sooner or 

 later, is at the hack of all social evolution. You may hold back the 

 laws of nature for a time and even in a way deflect them from their 

 course, but ultimately those laws will prevail and one of those laws 

 of nature is the law of force. And a great and important reason 

 for not forgetting at the present time the realities that the world 

 must face in the effort to do away with war as far as possible, is 

 that just as the Thirty Year's War helped the passing away of 

 feudalism before the incoming new era of nationalism, so it is pos- 

 sible that the Great War will mark a change no less important from 

 nationalism to a new order of things in the world. 



It may be said of the questions of disagreement which arise be- 

 tween the members of the family of nations, that, owing to the 

 realization more and more each year by the peoples of the world of 

 the benefits derived from the interplay of commercial interests be- 

 tween nations, as well as the appreciation that war to-day through 

 its great destruction of wealth and life penalizes victors as well as 

 conquerors, there has grown up an invisible, perhaps one might say 

 an intangible force to induce nations to settle most of their legal 

 differences by an appeal to international tribunals. For when inter- 

 national cases can be settled by an appeal to jural rules upon the 

 basis of justice without hurting or endangering the future power in 

 the world of a nation, the peoples have been contented to see their 

 governments invoke international tribunals to decide between the 

 nations. But as yet there has not developed a sufficient force of any 

 sort to induce or compel nations to submit all their political differ- 

 ences to judicial settlement for solution. And so it leaves us face 

 to face with a momentous problem : How will humanity devise a force 

 sufficiently strong to cause nations to settle all their differences 

 without an appeal to war, or in other words, how will the nations 

 transform the present political cases into legal cases? 



