The next in the order of course we have not yet come to the speech about nothing,-the next is Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, a good friend of many of us and a good friend of the Secretary's and mine for many years back. We have great regret that he is not here. Have you any message from him, Dr. Scott? Dr. JAMES BROWN SCOTT. Mr. Toastmaster, I have a series of letters in his very characteristic vein. After leading us into the belief that he would be with us tonight, and charm us as of yore, and bidding us to invite his friend, the Secretary of Labor, whom we were sure would come if he knew that Mr. Hart was to grace the occasion, he discovered, or his physician discovered, that he had a very sore arm, so that it was thought to be inadvisable for him to come at this time. His heart I understand is good, but his limbs are very weak and feeble. The TOASTMASTER. His heart is all right, his head and his tongue are all right; what difference does the arm make? Then we shall have to excuse our good friend, Mr. Hart, tonight. We are very sorry he is not here-all of us. Now we come to the closing speech. I have heard the Chief Justice speak many times. Yet never at any time that I have heard him speak has he spoken as he indicates that he is going to talk to us tonight-about nothing at all! It will be the first time that I have heard the Chief Justice talk on so quaint a subject, and it is with great interest and much curiosity that I introduce the Chief Justice of the United States, Hon. William Howard Taft. ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Mr. Toastmaster, ladies and gentlemen of the American Society of International Law: I do not know whether I am a member of this Society or not. If I am not, it is an exceptional society. When I had the invitation to come here from Dr. Scott, I wrote to him that I would come if I did not have to make a speech; that it would be in the evening after a conference with my eight brethren of four or five hours, which while a very delightful session, would take all the vitality there is in me out of me. When you lock nine men into one room and have to reach conclusions, the result is just a bit exhausting. Therefore, I thought that Dr. Scott, because he is a kindly looking man, he is a man of kindly manner, would really regard my request; and I hoped that seated next to the presiding officer who then I expected to be Mr. Elihu Root, I thought I could appeal to him as an old friend to let me out. I came here to find instead the head of an institution, a great university, who is in the habit of running things himself, and is not in the habit of excusing a man who is not prepared. This is my apology for coming before you with so little to claim your attention. It has been very pleasant to meet so many distinguished people interested in a subject so vital to the happiness of the world. It has been a great. pleasure for me to hear the Secretary of Labor, who is charged with the responsibility primarily of seeing who shall come into this country, and who shall stay out. I have no doubt that his administration will be a successful one. There is only one danger in that he is a Welshman, and I fear he may think that the rest of the world may have the same capacity for getting on that the Welsh have, and that he may lose a little sense of proportion with reference to the difficulties others labor under who have not that power of making other people do what they wish them to do. We have a Secretary of State who comes from-not immediately, but through an ancestry-from Wales. Then on the other side they do not seem to be able to get on without the Welsh. Now if the Secretary of Labor sets a Welsh standard of the kind of aliens we are to get in, we will keep out most of the world. I felt, however, that I should come in answer to this invitation, because since I have been associated with my friend Scott, I know that he regards the institution of which I have now the honor-undeserved honor-of being the head, as exhibit A in international law. If I may judge of the volumes of our decisions that he has put upon the poor students of international law, I should think that our court would be regarded with a great deal of concern by those who are to study the subject. He draws much from our opinions, as evidence of what can be done in the world, if you will only have a Supreme Court of the world. We do administer international law, and we have every little while an example of the foresight-I hope it may be called-of our ancestors in making provisions for such an international tribunal within the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation first gave us the idea, and it was followed in the Constitution. That story of Connecticut and Pennsylvania fighting out the question of their controverted titles in Wyoming Valley is perhaps the first instance of a real settlement by a court that we have had in this country of international matters. They fought out the question, there were seven judges that heard all the arguments on both sides at Trenton, and then they decided the case for Pennsylvania flat, without a word of reason. They just registered their vote, and Pennsylvania took title. But if you will follow the legislative proceedings thereafter, you will find that within a very few days there was filed in Congress a grant from the State of Connecticut of its possessions clear from Connecticut to the South Sea given it by Charles the Second, a most generous donation of what they did not have, with a reservation which was the negro in the wood pile. It was a reservation of all that part of the territory so generously granted which lay west of the western boundary of Pennsylvania, and ran some hundreds of miles along Lake Erie, about the width of Connecticut. This they retained for themselves, never having had it before. You will observe that in the legislative history delegates from Pennsylvania favored the acceptance of the grant which included in the acceptance the confirmation of the reservation. Which only goes to show that in Connecticut-I now date from Connecticut-we kill cats in other ways than by choking them with butter. Now that was a great judicial and international settlement. And we are having today now in court, which amuses me, another instance of some of that same international aptitude. The State of Massachusetts is suing in our courts to get back some land on the floor of Lake Ontario which it acquired from New York by a treaty of Hartford in 1786. Massachusetts ordinarily does not wait quite so long before getting a dividend, but for some reason or other they have turned up just at a time when Rochester wants this land under the water in Lake Ontario for the purpose of a park. That is a good time to get in, when somebody else wants what originally was not so desirable. A controversy also has arisen between Oklahoma and Texas, and that, seriously, is an instance of the usefulness of such a tribunal. The bed of the Red River up to date has never been full of usefulness; at least one was not able to discover it until oil was found lying under the river bed between Oklahoma and Texas. That made both Oklahomans and Texans feel that the rights of sovereign states should be preserved. And when an Oklahoman and a Texan wish to preserve those rights and they conflict, it is a very useful tribunal that keeps them apart. No one knows what is going to happen after the Great War. It is a little more difficult to prophesy now than it was before the war. I hope we shall have reason to be thankful that out of this dreadful welter of blood, this dreadful destruction, we shall derive some lessons which will drive deep into the hearts of men the necessity of having law between nations that shall be observed. The lessons that are being taught today with reference to the attitude of Russia, which has repudiated all obligations to any other nation, has refused to recognize any obligations, the plight that nation is in, and the lessons that are being taught her and her representatives as to the disadvantages they labor under by reason of having lost the confidence of other nations, are something that I hope will be carried to the hearts of all men, so that the necessity for international law and the recognition of its obligations may be brought more clearly home to all nations than they have ever been before. I am an optimist. I feel that out of all this we are going to get an advance-not a radical advance, because that is not the way that real progress comes. It comes step by step. The progress that is radical usually involves a good deal of retracing. It is discouraging at times to look out upon the world and note how difficult nations broken by war find it to reëstablish peaceful and prosperous conditions, yet as time goes on, while we are discussing what must be done in order to make things better, things are working while we sleep. Men have to live, men have to have communities in which to live, and men have to work in order that they shall live. In doing this they are gradually recovering in the light of the lessons that have been taught by these dreadful disasters which they have endured and which I doubt not will make them cautious hereafter. They will give a sense of value of those things that make for conservatism, for peace, for observation of the obligations that each man owes to every other man, of obligations that all nations owe to one another. In lessons thus taught we shall find the growth and development of international law with more sanction behind it. Now we have a court in the League of Nations. It is a great institution. It is an institution that I doubt not will make much for the benefit of the world. It is an institution in which we have a great and worthy American representative. It is established on broad principles. We should take pride in the fact that its machinery was worked out with the genius and experience of the man than whom no one stands higher in the field of international law, our own Elihu Root. That court is an American invention and it derives its strength from American tradition, and I sincerely hope that we are working towards it. The TOASTMASTER. I have not been disappointed; the Chief Justice has added another to the list of speeches that I have heard from him, all of which have substance and something for thought. The Chief Justice has shown himself, also, to be a man of wit, and we thank him for coming here tonight and for helping us in our deliberations. I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that this closes the meeting of the Society. I suppose that Charles Dickens is not an authority on international law, and my students tell me that he is no longer an authority in literature. But I am going back to quote Charles Dickens in conclusion, by saying simply-"God bless us every one!" We stand adjourned. MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL Thursday, April 27, 1922, 3:15 o'clock p.m. Pursuant to call, the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law met at 2 Jackson Place, Washington, D. C., at 3:15 o'clock p.m. The Chairman, Honorable Oscar S. Straus, presided. Present: Hon. Chandler P. Anderson Hon. Robert Lansing Dr. James Brown Scott Prof. Theo. S. Woolsey Mr. George A. Finch, Assistant Secretary, was also in attendance. The reading of the minutes of April 28 and 30, 1921, was, upon motion, dispensed with, and they were approved as printed in the Proceedings. The following Treasurer's report for the year January 1 to December 31, 1921, was submitted by Mr. Chandler P. Anderson: TREASURER'S REPORT January 1 to December 31, 1921 Jan. 1, 1921. Balance on deposit at Riggs National Bank, carried forward from previous account. 2 Life membership dues. . Balance on deposit December 31, 1921.. INCOME ACCOUNT RECEIPTS Balance on deposit at Union Trust Company, carried forward from previous account. $494.86 200.00 $694.86 $1,833.89 Balance on deposit at Riggs National Bank, carried forward from previous account.. 1,765.38 |