The Arbitration Treaty 173 



with reasonable promptness, under the provisions 

 of this new Arbitration Treaty. One chief desid- 

 eratum in any such instrument is to secure impar- 

 tiality in the arbitrating tribunals, and here the 

 arrangements made in our treaty will doubtless 

 yield as good results as can ever be achieved 

 through mere arrangements. In such matters, the 

 best of machinery is of less consequence than the 

 human nature by which the machinery is to be 

 worked. Impartiality, not only real, but conspicu- 

 ous and unmistakable, is the prime requisite in a 

 court of arbitration. Its life and health can be 

 sustained only in an atmosphere of untainted and un- 

 suspected integrity. But in an age which does not 

 yet fully comprehend the damnable villainy of such 

 maxims as " Our country, right or wrong," gross 

 partisanship is not easy to eliminate from human 

 nature. Even austere judges, taken from a Su- 

 preme Court, have sometimes shown themselves to 

 be men of like passions with ourselves. It would 

 need but few awards made on the " eight to seven " 

 principle, as in the Electoral Commission of 1877, 

 to make our arbitrating tribunal the laughing-stock 

 of the world, and to set back for a generation or 

 two the hand upon the timepiece of civilization. 



A general experience, however, justifies us in 

 hoping much better things from the group of in- 



