ARBITRATION IN THE GREEK WORLD. 291 



My hope was to bring before you part of the life and thought of 

 the Greeks — I fear I have only presented you with a skeleton of 

 dead, dry facts. For history, to be appreciated aright, demands 

 an effort not only of the intellect, but also of the imagination : 

 those whose lives and actions we study were not automata, but 

 living men and women with hopes and fears, passions and 

 aspirations like our own, and it is possible to possess a full and 

 accurate knowledge of the ascertained facts about them and yet 

 fail to come into contact with that living, pulsating humanity 

 which made them what they were. This effort of sympathetic 

 imagination T ask from you to endow with life the facts I have 

 set before you. I can only ask one question in conclusion, and 

 indicate rather than formulate the answer I would give. Was 

 arbitration amongst the Greek states a success ? Berard, in 

 his treatise on this subject, replies with an emphatic negative, 

 basing his verdict upon the continued existence, for centuries, 

 of disputes which were repeatedly made the subjects of arbitral 

 awards, such as those between Samos and Priene, or Sparta and 

 Messene. Yet these form a very small proportion indeed of the 

 cases known to us, and must be treated not as normal, but as 

 exceptional, and even they will, I think, if carefully examined, 

 lead us to a different conclusion. We shall admit that it was 

 " unsportsmanlike " of the worsted city to refuse to accept its 

 defeat as final, and to reopen the question again and again, but 

 we shall also insist upon two facts, that the renewed appeal was 

 always to a fresh arbitration, never to war, and that for a time, at 

 least, often for half a century or even more, the award is accepted 

 and acted upon. For, in spite of the oft-repeated yet one-sided 

 truth, that an arbitral sentence cannot be enforced, that there 

 is no international police to compel acquiescence, one lesson 

 clearly taught by the experience both of ancient and of modern 

 times is this, that it is only in very rare cases that the 

 arbitrator's award is repudiated by either of the parties 

 concerned. And thus, although remembering the existence of 

 those age-long disputes, those chronic maladies of the Greek 

 body politic, and of those other cases in which arbitral settle- 

 ment was refused even by those who had bound themselves by 

 solemn compact to employ it, I would emphatically record my 

 own conviction that among the Greeks arbitration proved 

 a striking success in averting war, in bringing national 

 quarrels and misunderstandings to an equitable conclusion, 

 and in promoting friendship and goodwill between state and 

 state. 



u 2 



