Alternative dispute resolution

“ When they can be selected from among those living on the border, speaking each other's language and having some acquaintance with each other's customs, a great advantage is gained.
Neither government should be regarded as intending wrong, violating the laws of nations or treaties, until the case be too plain for dispute. When either republic violates the rights of citizens of the other, let peaceful arbitration heal the breach. ”

“ That, in the judgment of this Congress, an appeal to arms for the purpose of deciding disputes among nations is a custom condemned alike by religion, reason, justice, humanity, and the best interests of the people,—and that, therefore, it considers it to be the duty of the civilized world to adopt measures calculated to effect its entire abolition. ”

“ If no decision can be reached, the accused is acquitted for the time, or, in a civil dispute, a compromise is imposed. The rulers cannot, without incurring such general anger as would be fatal to their power, disregard our fundamental laws. ”

“ Whether the States will resort to the harsh means of war, and rush into the discords of social evils sure to follow in the footsteps of such a war, or whether recognizing some justice in their grievances, peaceful means to mitigate by treaties the evils of disunion, or else by timely additional guarantees in the Constitution, to give full assurance of the equality and protection demanded in the Union, are questions of future policy for discussion in each State. ”

“ Whenever an international dispute arises, no matter what party is in power, demand at once that your government offer to refer it to arbitration, and if necessary break with your party. Peace is above party. Should the adversary have forestalled your government in offering arbitration, which for the sake of our race I trust will never occur, then insist upon its acceptance and listen to nothing until it is accepted. Drop all other public questions, concentrate your efforts upon the one question which carries in its bosom the issue of peace or of war. ”

“ Comparatively easy as it is to settle a dispute on questions of territory by arbitration or to work out schemes for compromise in regard to such, so difficult or almost impossible it would be to arbitrate on a question of actual supremacy or to settle it by compromise. ”

“ Wherever they meet, whether in a conflict between different nations or different parts of the same nation, one or the other must peaceably yield, or the strife must be settled in blood or, what is still worse, a disgraceful compromise. The last has been the mode in our own country until this glorious day. The various forms of contention, from the petty lawsuit up to the shock of armies, are only so many struggles for existence and influence between great and opposing principles—only parts of that sublime battle between right and wrong. ”

“ When strikers are shot down, the State is taking the side of the rich. When opinions adverse to the existing State are punished, the81 State is obviously one of the parties to the dispute. And from the suppression of individual opinion up to civil war all gradations are possible. But broadly speaking, force employed according to laws previously laid down by the community as a whole may be distinguished from force employed by one community against another on occasions of which the one community is the sole judge. ”

“ An intervention, for instance, takes place when, although two States in conflict have made up their minds to fight it out in war, a third State dictatorially requests them to settle their dispute through arbitration.
[54] See above, vol. I. §§ 134-138. [Pg 55]
Intervention, in the form of dictatorial interference, must, further, be distinguished from such efforts of a State as are directed to induce the States in conflict to settle their difference amicably by proffering its good offices or mediation, or by giving friendly advice. ”

“ Why should the Government endeavour to keep us in subjection to unjust laws by the power of the sword instead of making themselves live in the heart of the people by a broad policy of justice? What can be said of a policy which deliberately divides the two great sections of the people from each other, instead of uniting them under equal laws, or the policy which keeps us in eternal turmoil with the neighbouring States? ”

“ The solution must be, “We do not say where the right lies in the pending conflicts; we only desire that a system of law and a tribunal should be created in which those who are competent and in authority (as we are not) should settle the conflicts without violence.” ”

“ So long as no council of the powers exists, there is no neutral authority to order resistance, and we have to consider the justification of repelling an attack when the nation attacked is the judge in its own cause. ”

“ That simple and beautiful thing, minding our own affairs and leaving our neighbours to mind theirs, is unhappily not possible for allies. Neither is a keen and common desire for peace a sufficient basis for agreement. Peace must have terms, and terms require a basis of their own—justice, reason, and the limited gains which are based on mutual concessions. ”

“ I am unwilling to dismiss this subject without assuring you of my support of any measures the wisdom of Congress may devise for the promotion of peace on this continent and throughout the world, and I trust that the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized peoples, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of arbitration. ”

“ While discussion and dispute are taking place, we will simply pass the measures we desire and present them to the public as an accomplished fact. Nobody will dare to demand the rejection of measures thus passed, and the more so as they will be interpreted as an improvement. ”

“ To consider, to deliberate, to debate—what? What course of action shall, by mutual agreement, be taken by the States whom this convention will represent, what manner of resistance, what mode of redress? Now, sir, in all matters of this kind, in all revolutions, in all dissolutions of the ties which bind us together, the first step is the great difficulty. It is so even in social and private life; it is so in the married state. The first wanton and public outrage on the part of one towards the other of the parties is easily followed by such steps as end in total and thorough estrangement. ”

“ And if so it be that the constitution makes no provision one way or another, any dispute that may occur must be settled by amicable arrangement among the parties concerned: if they cannot amicably agree, they must fight. To save this last eventuality, it were well that any claim which the people in any country may have to remove princes and statesmen from office, to alter the polity, or to divide the empire, should be made matter of the clearest understanding and most express and unambiguous stipulation. ”

“ Nations may enter into a solemn undertaking to refer all differences or disputes that may arise to arbitration or to other peaceful settlement. If they can be got to adhere to such a general agreement, international law and public right will take the place of private force, and wars of aggression and defense will no longer happen. But what will ensure the fulfilment of their undertaking by all the signatory Powers? Public opinion and a common sense of justice are found inadequate safeguards. ”

“ There ought to be tribunals to appease the differences of peoples as well as those of individuals; every nation ought to be associated with every other nation to assure the progress of the entire world. ”

“ I use the words ‘right of intervention.’ But there are considerations of policy and humanity which have, on various occasions, led to representations, more or less formal, which are in the nature of interference with private affairs, but which are grounded on a sincere and dispassionate anxiety, in the first place, for the general principles of humanity and justice, and, in the second place, for the interests of the great Power in whose counsels you appear to intervene. ”

“ Everything must be done to prevent the great issues which divide men's minds from taking the form of brute struggles of greed or pride between armed nations. Let us hope that the disputes which come before the Council of Conciliation will not. even at the worst, be merely tugs-of-war between nations, with no principle involved but competing desires. ”

“ Behind the law stands the State, armed with power, which it employs, and rightly so, not merely to protect, but actively to promote, the moral and spiritual interests of society. But there is no impartial power that stands above the rivalry of States to restrain injustice, and to use that rivalry with conscious purpose to promote the highest ends of mankind. ”

“ This Congress, believing that the intervention, by threatened or actual violence, of one country in the international politics of another, is a frequent cause of bitter and desolating wars, maintains that the right of every State to regulate its own affairs should be held absolute and inviolate. ”

“ But in as much as both parties, in point of right and law, are in so far equal, that they refuse to recognize in common any higher judge, an absolute state of violence necessarily ensues, a struggle of power follows, until at last, in the change of circumstances, the relations of justice are restored by mutual consent. The party that first proclaims war becomes, in this process of trial by battle, the judge of its own cause. ”

“ It is, we are told, the miserable mania for litigation, the pure love of wrangling, the irresistible desire to inflict pain on one’s opponent, even when it is certain that one will have to pay for it more heavily than one’s opponent.
Let us drop the consideration of the controversy between two private persons, and in their place put two nations. The one nation, let us suppose, has, contrary to law, taken from the other a square mile of barren, worthless land. ”

“ When there is a society there must needs be a compulsory power to order and regulate the movements of its members; without this power thus applied the community of interests and all reciprocal compacts can have no stability; and we are thrust back on a state of contradictions, uncertainties, insecurity, unlaw, and war. ”

“ This is why peace between nations cannot be attained by reasonable means, by conventions, arbitration, and so forth, as long as the subordination of the people to the Goverment continues, a condition always unreasonable and always pernicious. ”

“ We have no disposition and we disclaim all right to meddle in disputes, whether internal or foreign, that may molest other countries, regarding them in their actual state as social communities, and preserving a strict neutrality in all their controversies. ”

“ There may be clear ground for saying, in regard to any conflict, that one side rather than the other ought to have been taken, not because those on one side were, those on the other were not, entitled to say that they had a right to act as they did, but because the common good of a nation or mankind was clearly promoted by one line of action, not by the other. ”

“ To suggest to governments that they should not use violence, but should solve their disagreements in accordance with fairness, is inviting them to abolish themselves as government, and no government can ever consent to do that. ”

“ It is only by such an organism, that the assent of each can be made necessary to put the government in motion; or the power made effectual to arrest its action, when put in motion — and it is only by the one or the other that the different interests, orders, classes, or portions, into which the community may be divided, can be protected, and all conflict and struggle between them prevented — by rendering it impossible to put or to keep it in action, without the concurrent consent of all. ”

“ OUR SOLE AGENCY OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE, AND INTERNATIONAL CONCORD
The consensus of intelligent thought throughout the world is to the effect that just as we have established an orderly method for the settlement of disputes between individuals or groups of individuals in any particular nation, we must now move forward and establish such methods for the settlement of disputes among nations. There is no civilised country in the world that any longer permits the individual to take the law into his own hands. ”

“ It is in itself a good thing to accustom nations to discuss their difficulties face to face in a public assembly where reasons have to be sought and given for their attitude which will persuade and satisfy neutral minds of its justice and fairness. It is a practice to be cultivated. It is the practice that ended in eliminating the arbitrament of the sword in the internal affairs of nations. It is only thus [Pg 80] that international disputes will gradually drift into the debating chamber instead of on to the battlefield for settlement. ”

“ To maintain justice as between individual men the power of the State is invoked, and we now recognise, after the failure of international law to avert the Great War, that there must be some power or, as the lawyers say, some sanction for the maintenance of justice as between nation and nation. ”

“ Force instead of right, privilege instead of equality, expediency instead of principle, being once the leading motives of your policy, you will have no power to stem the current. There will be new abuses to be corrected, new inconveniences to be remedied, new supposed dangers to be obviated, new equally exacting ends to be subserved, and your encroachments upon the natural rights of your opponents now, will be used as welcome precedents for the mutual oppression of parties then. ”

“ We want the subjects of other nations to see aland filled with citizens—not subjects; aland in which the pew is above the pulpit; where the people are superior to the state; where legislators are representatives and where authority means simply the duty to enforce the people's will.
Let us hope above all things that this Fair will bind the nations together closer and stronger; and let us hope that this will result in the settlement of all national difficulties by arbitration instead of war. In a savage state, individuals settle their own difficulties by an appeal to force. ”