a conference to take up this whole matter and draft an international treaty dealing with the constitution of arbitral tribunals and radically revising the procedure.

“On account of the difficulties of the subject, which do not appear on the surface, but which experience has shown to be very real, I feel that it would be impracticable to provide in the Peace Treaty too definitely the method of constituting arbitral tribunals.  It will require considerable thought and discussion to make arbitration available to the poor as well as the rich, to make an award a judicial settlement rather than a diplomatic compromise, and to supersede the cumbersome and prolonged procedure with its duplication of documents and maps by a simple method which will settle the issues and materially shorten the proceedings which now unavoidably drag along for months, if not for years.

   “Faithfully yours

   “ROBERT LANSING

   “THE PRESIDENT

   “28 Rue de Monceau”

At the time that I sent this letter to Mr. Wilson I had not seen the revised draft of the Covenant which he laid before the Commission on the League of Nations.  The probability is that, if I had seen it, the letter would not have been written, for in the revision of the original draft the objectionable Article V, relating to arbitration and appeals from arbitral awards, was omitted.  In place of it there were substituted two articles, 11 and 12, the first being an agreement to arbitrate under certain conditions and the other providing that “the Executive Council will formulate plans for the establishment of a Permanent Court of International Justice, and this Court will be competent to hear and determine any matter which the parties recognize as suitable for submission to it for arbitration.”

Unadvised as to this change, which promised a careful consideration of the method of applying legal principles of justice to international disputes, I did not feel that I could let pass without challenge the unsatisfactory provisions of the President’s original draft.  Knowing the contempt which Mr. Wilson felt for The Hague Tribunal and his general suspicion of the justice of decisions which it might render, it seemed to me inexpedient to suggest that it should form the basis of a newly constituted judiciary, a suggestion which I should have made had I been dealing with any one other than President Wilson.  In view of the intensity of the President’s prejudices and of the uselessness of attempting to remove them, my letter was intended to induce him to postpone a determination of the subject until the problems which it presented could be thoroughly studied and a judicial system developed by an international body of representatives more expert in juridical matters than the Commission on the League of Nations, the American members of which were incompetent by training, knowledge, and practical experience to consider the subject.