We grieve and blush at the shameful wars of subjugation in
our own time; but these wars were anachronisms, sporadic survivals of
courses common and universally approved three hundred years ago, when
men did not blush for them, but not typical of the tendencies and
civilization of the present age. The true exponent of the world's best
judgment and increasing purpose and policy, as the twentieth century
begins, is not the warring in Luzon and the Transvaal, but the Hague
Tribunal. For a century the states in the United States, because we have
had a Supreme Court, have settled there, and not by combat, their
boundary disputes and other quarrels, graver often than many which have
plunged European nations into war, while most of us have not known even
of the fact of litigation. To-day, because an International Tribunal
exists, the Venezuelan imbroglio is referred to it, which else might
have gone on to the dread arbitrament of arms. Such references will
multiply; the legal way instead of the fighting way will become easy,
will become common, will become instinctive, will become universal; war
will hasten after the duel, to be loathed and to be laughed at, and to
cease to be at all; the cannon will follow the rack to the chamber of
horrors; and nations when they disagree will not go into battle, but
into court.
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