“On the other hand, justice applied through the agency of an impartial tribunal clothed with an international jurisdiction eliminates the diplomatic methods of compromise and concession and recognizes that before the law all nations are equal and equally entitled to the exercise of their rights as sovereign and independent states.  In a word, international democracy exists in the sphere of legal justice and, up to the present time, in no other relation between nations.

“Let us, then, with as little delay as possible establish an international tribunal or tribunals of justice with The Hague Court as a foundation; let us provide an easier, a cheaper, and better procedure than now exists; and let us draft a simple and concise body of legal principles to be applied to the questions to be adjudicated.  When that has been accomplished—­and it ought not to be a difficult task if the delegates of the Governments charged with it are chosen for their experience and learning in the field of jurisprudence—­we shall, in my judgment, have done more to prevent international wars through removing their causes than can be done by any other means that has been devised or suggested.”

The views, which I thus publicly expressed at Boston in September, 1919, while the President was upon his tour of the country in favor of the Covenant of the League of Nations, were the same as those that I held at Paris in December, 1918, before I had seen the President’s first draft of a Covenant, as the following will indicate.

On December 17, 1918, three days after arriving in Paris, I had, as has been stated, a long conference with Colonel House on the Peace Conference and the subjects to come before it.  I urged him in the course of our conversation “to persuade the President to make the nucleus of his proposed League of Nations an international court pointing out that it was the simplest and best way of organizing the world for peace, and that, if in addition the general principles of international law were codified and the right of inquiry confided to the court, everything practical would have been done to prevent wars in the future” (quoted from a memorandum of the conversation made at the time).  I also urged upon the Colonel that The Hague Tribunal be made the basis of the judicial organization, but that it be expanded and improved to meet the new conditions.  I shall have something further to say on this subject.

Reverting now to the draft of articles which I had in form on January 5, 1919, it must be borne in mind that I then had no reason to think that the President would omit from his plan an independent judicial agency for the administration of legal justice, although I did realize that he gave first place to the mutual guaranty and intended to build a League on that as a nucleus.  It did not seem probable that an American, a student of the political institutions of the United States and familiar with their operation, would fail