The Maccabaean

THERE is one aspect of the question of a Jewish State which I have not seen remarked anywhere. It is, namely, the part a Jewish State could play in the promotion of international justice and in the prevention of war. We have indeed heard ad anuseam of the “mission” of the Jews, which, we are told, is this very thing, to bring about justice and peace. But the keenest of our “missionaries” seem to be precisely those Jews who hate like sin the very idea of a Jewish State. Yet, as we shall try to show, it is only through the instrumentality of a State that the Jewish people can contribute definitely and directly to that great movement towards international peace and justice whidh happily characterizes the present era. We are bound, moreover, to’ observe that there are many Zionists, too, in the same boat with their opponents insofar as they all, on both sides, while crying lustily for justice among the nations, have only the vaguest, the most rhetorical notions, of what that is, and how it may actually be brought about.

Now, by international justice we mean here, not a fume and fancy, but a definite reality. We mean, in fact, the reign of law in the relations between sovereign states law as definite and imperative as the municipal law which governs your relations and mine in our common state: law enforced, as the municipal law is enforced, by courts, and sanctioned, as the municipal law is sanctioned, by pains and penalties. However much more than that justice may be, it can surely be no less than that. We are living in a period when international law, the articulation of much of our modern humanitarian feeling, is having a tremendous development, both in scope and in authority. Since 1898 and

this fact is as remarkable as it is true— more international law has been created than in the 250 years preceding, from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) up to 1898. The extraordinary significance of this fact is realized only when one stops to think— what, unfortunately, many peace enthusiasts never stop to do—that war can never in the world be abolished until all international disputes that may arise, of whatsoever nature, whether involving a matter of mere money or a matter of the most sacred, national honor, are made to come under the principles of International Law, as interpreted and applied by permanent international courts.

That is the only way. There are, to be sure, two other methods by which international difficulties have been, and may be, to an extent, pacifically settled,—diplomacy and arbitration. But only to an extent. Diplomacy is, of course, futile beyond an early stage. And arbitration, though it has proved tremendously useful in the settlement of many international disputes, has, on the other hand, conspicuously failed to settle many other. The more important, international disputes. Indeed, the inherent inadequacy of arbitration is latterly becoming more and more apparent. Its technical difficulties need not be spelt out here. Let it suffice to recall that arbitrators, whether in a private dispute between John Doe and Richard Roe, or in a dispute between capital and labor, or finally in a dispute between nations, endeavor at settlement more on the basis of expediency than on the basis of principles. Unlike judges, arbitrators are not always bound to render reason for their decisions. In a matter between two equally matched parties—as in the recent fisheries arbitration between the United States and Great Britain—neither party being in a