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It is understood, then, that the members of the Society are invited to join any one of the subcommittees that interests them and take part in the discussion. Subcommittee No. 1 on "Visit, Search and Capture" I will assign to this corner of the room here (indicating); Subcommittee No. 2 on the "Status of Government Vessels," I will assign to this corner here (indicating), and if they do not behave, they will be subject to visit, search and capture by Subcommittee No. 1. Subcommittee No. 3 on "Problems of Maritime Warfare" will be put down in the corner on the left (indicating); Subcommittee No. 4 on "Offenses which could be characterized as International Crimes and Procedure" may have their meeting place in the remaining corner of the room.

Upon the adjournment of the subcommittees this morning they will adjourn to meet at half-past two this afternoon in their appropriate corners, and at half-past eight this evening Baron Korff will oblige us by a paper or an address upon "The Equality of States."

Is there any further business to be brought before the general committee? If not, the committee will separate and resolve itself into its constituent elements, meeting in their respective corners.

A.M.

Whereupon, the meeting of the committee adjourned at 10.50 o'clock

THIRD SESSION

Friday, April 28, 1922, at 8.30 o'clock p.m.

The Society was called to order at 8.30 o'clock P.M., with Honorable Oscar S. Straus, a Vice-President and Chairman of the Executive Council, in the chair.

The CHAIRMAN. There is some little business to be transacted before the session begins. It is customary to appoint a nominating committee. Under the amendment to the constitution which will come up and doubtless will be adopted tomorrow, it is provided that an interval of at least one year shall elapse between terms of service on the Executive Council. The Council is composed of three classes, each of eight members, whose terms expire in successive years. The class that goes out this year will be those that are designated to serve until 1922, and new nominations for the class of 1925 will be made. We are not a closed corporation, but we are growing older. We are sixteen years old now. Many of us who started sixteen years ago are not quite as young as we were then, and we want this Society always to have the push and energy to go forward and meet the great problems of the reconstruction of the world on a basis of law. Therefore by this renovation we are not going to die by old age. It is my duty to appoint a nominating committee to present the nominations at the business meeting, which is held tomorrow morning at ten o'clock.

I appoint to such nominating committee Hon. Frank C. Partridge, Prof. Charles Cheney Hyde, Hon. Lester H. Woolsey, Prof. Phillip Marshall Brown and Prof. Francis W. Aymar. I would suggest that that committee meet this evening after the session is closed so that they can confer and make arrangements for a further meeting as they decide. This committee is to present nominations, as I have stated, for the eight members of the council of the class of 1925; they are to present nominations for honorary president; they are to present nominations for president, and they are to present nominations for eighteen vice-presidents. There are three new vice-presidents who must be nominated to fill the vacancies caused by death of three of the present vice-presidents, and those three, I am sorry to say, are Hon. Philander C. Knox, Hon. Horace Porter, and Chief Justice White.

I am requested to state that the members should secure tickets for the banquet at latest tomorrow morning from Mr. Finch, who has charge of the banquet. I trust that will not be neglected because certain arrangements have to be made and they cannot be made later, and therefore the reservations should be made not later than tomorrow morning.

The session this evening will be constituted by an address on "The Equality of States," by Baron Korff, after which the four important com

mittees who have charge of the four subjects designated upon the program will make their reports. I will have something to say about that before calling upon them to make their reports.

I now have the pleasure of calling upon Baron Korff, Professor of Political Science in the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.

THE EQUALITY OF STATES

ADDRESS BY BARON S. A. KORFF

Professor of Political Science in the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: It was with a feeling of distinct hesitation that I decided to tackle the question on the program this evening, and for several reasons, not only because I knew that I would be faced by an eminent audience, having in its midst some of the foremost specialists in the United States, and that I had to deal with the most intricate questions of international politics, but because I realized that in a way I would have against me the policies of certain great Powers, and finally because the main principle is still controversial. Yet I gathered up my courage because I considered that now is the time more than ever to discuss this principle. International law, after the great war, is very slowly but gradually picking up and being reconstructed, and it is time to consider the main and basic principles.

In this respect two questions stand out preeminently in my mind. First of all, Is any legal order, such as we would like international law to stand for, possible without the principle of equality? It is no mere coincidence that in this respect our thoughts go back to the eighteenth century, and we think of the father of the theories of personal freedom, Samuel Pufendorf, and that these questions of personal freedom are very closely connected with the important principle of the equality of states.

The second question that comes to my mind is of a political nature, Is the conception of inequality harmless? And I answer it also in the negative. I think that it bears some very great dangers for the ideas of international law. Not so long ago there was made a valiant attempt to analyze and study this domain. A book was written that I read with the greatest pleasure,1-constructive, stimulating, interesting; every page I found enthralling; and yet when I had read it through and put it down, I put it down with a certain feeling of dissatisfaction. It ought to have a second volume with more definite conclusions.

The source of trouble in this question is the growth of the so-called great Powers. There formed gradually in the nineteenth century a small group of nations that were imposing their will and policies on the rest of the world, like a sort of self-appointed executive committee; that policy was constantly

1E. D. Dickinson, The Equality of States in International Law.

threatening the rights of small nations, and depriving them of sufficient safeguards for their existence. If you take the history of the nineteenth century you will see that the legal principle was more or less admitted everywhere, that equality as such ought to exist among the states, but no special definition of it is given. Unfortunately, the political principle of dominance was constantly and strongly overshadowing it and thwarting it. After 1900 that system gradually crystallized in a definite group, which for the first time felt itself as such in 1907, at the second Hague Conference. At the first Hague Conference the elements of the system were perhaps already in existence, but they were not so evident then, because at that first Conference great Powers alone were participating almost exclusively. At the second Conference there were thirty-odd small ones around them. Thus the glaring contradiction between the great and the small became evident to the outside world. There were eight of the great Powers at that time, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Russia.

That system was from the point of view of international law best described by a Russian, Professor Hrabar of Dorpat. Unfortunately, his work has never been translated. His idea was that the comity of nations cannot be constructed on the monarchical principle; that it ought never to be constructed on the democratic principle, and that aristocracy, in consequence, was the only right principle for any international organization; in other words, the latter ought to be governed by a small group of nations. According to the old principle, when large dogs fight the small ones keep at a respectful distance. Unfortunately, once in a while there is an angry snap at them and they always get the worst of it. Most people now realize that the second Hague Conference failed. It failed for two reasons: first of all, because Germany rebelled at the idea that a powerful nation should willingly renounce for the general good part of its freedom of action. On the other hand, the second reason was eloquently put forward by the Brazilian, Barbosa; it was the small nations fear of the great ones. The small ones protested right along and protested to such a degree that it amounted to declining to participate in such a combination.

And that brings us into the very heart of the question. On the one side you have the great Powers claiming freedom of action. On the other side you have the small ones afraid of the larger ones and asking for justice and equality.

It is a great problem that confronts us. In very many questions of modern law you have the same problem exactly; for instance, in constitutional law, what shall we do with the idea of sovereignty? Many thoughtful scientists have it weighing heavily on their minds, how to adapt our new ideas to the old conceptions of unlimited power of the state. It is most vital to bring in limitations that we all feel are so necessary, but so few have yet found the right method to do it.

Two facts will strike us at once as outstanding in their significance in this respect. I mentioned the eight great Powers that were leading the world in 1907. Where are they now? How many of them are left? Three of them have disappeared as great Powers, possibly forever,-Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary. There remain five. Out of the five, two are distinctly lagging behind, so much so that many persons question the fact of their belonging any more to the group of great Powers. There remain thus three, and even among the survivors one has to deal at present with most serious problems of disintegration. We distinctly see that in the British Empire the centrifugal forces dominate. We see that Egypt is lost. We see that India is seething with discontent. And the other day I heard somebody say that even Ireland had its troubles! What do these processes mean? They mean that only three great Powers are left. Can they lead the world? Can one construct a system of international law on the basis of two or three great Powers leading the rest?

On the other hand, we find the second undeniable fact: the great war has brought about the destruction of four empires-three of them belonging to the former great Powers, plus Turkey. The destruction was so effective that it created dozens of new states, all of them small ones; and every one of these small nations in its process of self-determination (whatever that. means) is clamoring for equality, for independence, for legal guaranties, that the remaining big ones should not attack them or curtail their rights. Much of the trouble of the present day depends upon that readjustment of the different nations which have not yet found their equilibrium. For instance, here alone lies the cause of the failure of the League of Nations. First, the great Powers are fearing to lose their dominance. Secondly, they are fearing the restriction of their freedom of action. And thirdly, and mostly, they are fearful that the small states in the international organization of the League of Nations should, by mere majority, enforce their will and curtail the liberty and freedom of the great Powers. On the other hand, the small ones feel that they do not yet find the protection of their rights and of their equality.

If we analyze the objects of the science of international law, I think we might say that it consists not only, as some assert, of the interpretation of the existing legal order; science not only interprets, but has also to formulate and crystallize principles and ideals. Science in that meaning has to lead. I am not much impressed by the argument that equality is a fiction, and at that never very consistently observed. So are the Ten Commandments, which are not very consistently observed either.

I think that the great war confirmed more than anything else the very important truth that social processes and the development of humanity are going along the lines of general evolution, and that these forces are not blind ones, that they are not uncontrollable, as thunder-storms or tornadoes, that the human intellect can rationalize them; and if man can rationalize these forces, it means that we can influence them, that in understanding them, we

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