The Arbitration Treaty 183 



ally mitigated the evils attendant upon frequent 

 warfare between their city - states. Among the 

 Italian republics of the Middle Ages, disputes 

 were sometimes submitted to the arbitration of 

 learned professors in the universities at Bologna 

 and other towns. But such methods could not 

 prevail over the ruder fashions of Europe north 

 of the Alps. As mediaeval Italy was the industrial 

 and commercial centre of the world, so in our day 

 it is the nations most completely devoted to indus- 

 try and commerce, the English-speaking nations, 

 that are foremost in bringing into practice the 

 methods of arbitration. The settlement of the 

 Alabama Claims is the most brilliant instance 

 on record, and we have already cited examples of 

 the readiness of sundry nations, great and small, 

 to imitate it. Such examples, even when concerned 

 with questions of minor importance, are to some 

 extent an indication of the growing conviction that 

 war, and the unceasing preparations for it, are be- 

 coming insupportable burdens. 



It is the steadily increasing complication of in- 

 dustrial life, and the heightened standard of living 

 that has come therewith, that are making men, year 

 by year, more unwilling to endure the burdens 

 entailed by war. In the Middle Ages, human life 

 was made hideous by famine, pestilence, perennial 



