When the War Is Ended by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 20, 1916

When the War Is Ended

By Editor

THERE is only one hope for world peace, in the opinion of Elihu Root, former Secretary of State, and Senator from New York, and that is in the real restraint of nations by powerful international tribunals operating under a definite code of laws. Speaking before a joint session of a subsection of international law from the Pan-American Scientific Congress and the American Society of International Law, of which he is president, he said:—

When this war is ended, the civilized world will have to determine whether what we call international law is to be continued as a mere code of etiquette, or whether it is to be a real body of laws imposing obligations much more definite and inevitable than they have been heretofore. It must be one thing or the other.

Vague and uncertain as the future must be, there is some reason to think that after the terrible experience through which civilization is passing there will be a tendency to strengthen rather than abandon the law of nations. Whatever the result may be, the world will have received a dreadful lesson of the evils of war. The sacrifice of millions of lives, millions homeless and in poverty, industry and commerce destroyed, overwhelming national debts,—all will naturally produce a strong desire to do something that will prevent the same thing from happening again.

While the war has exhibited the inadequacy of international law so far as it has yet developed, to curb those governmental policies which aim to extend power at all costs, it has shown even more clearly that little reliance can be placed upon unrestrained human nature, subject to specific temptations to commit forcible aggression in the pursuit of power and wealth.

How can the restraints of law be made more effective upon nations? It is not difficult to suggest some things which will tend in that direction. Laws to be obeyed must have sanctions behind them; that is to say, violations of them must be followed by punishment. That punishment must be caused by powers superior to the lawbreakers.

Many states have grown so great that there is no power capable of imposing punishment upon them except the power of collective civilization outside of the offending state. Any exercise of that power must be based upon public opinion. Without such an opinion behind it, no punishment of any kind can be imposed for the violation of international law.

The world condition is well expressed by Elihu Root; but we think that his one hope for world peace, resting as it does in restraint of nations by international tribunals, is certain to be disappointed. The concern shown by prominent men when “looking after those things which are coming on the earth,” is another sign that Christ’s coming is near.