James Lorimer (1818–1890)

This is a translation from French into English of the following article: Higgins, Alexander Pearce. La contribution de quatre grands juristes britanniques au droit international (Lorimer, Westlake, Hall et Holland) — I: James Lorimer (1818–1890). Recueil des cours | Academie de Droit International, n. 40, p. 5–22, Avril 1932.

It is an acknowledged fact that jurists cannot make international law, but it is also acknowledged that they have played and continue to play an important role in helping to develop its rules. It is possible that the position of the “international jurist” holds more weight in the countries of continental Europe than it does in Great Britain; however, the writings of British publicists have had a considerable influence in the past, shaping national thought during times of international crisis and assisting in the scientific development of the rules of the law of nations. As an example of the former role, one can cite the famous series of letters written to the newspaper The Times by Sir William Harcourt during the Civil War, 1861–1865, which were published under the title “The Letters of Historicus”. The writings of the four jurists I am concerned with in these lectures bear witness to the significance of the contributions they have made to the scientific progress of international law.

The 19th century marked a great revival in the study of international law, and there is practically no country in Europe where one could not find the name of two or more jurists of world renown. In the United States as well, there have been several jurists of great international value.

When, in 1899, M. Charles Dupuis published his work on The Law of Maritime Warfare According to Contemporary English Doctrines, he took as his guides the most recent English writers as representative of contemporary doctrine. Their prominent position in the world of letters in Great Britain and their experience gave their writings undeniable value, both as a scientific exposition of the law and as an illustration of British practice. Among those whose works are cited by M. Dupuis are Westlake, Hall and Holland, three of the jurists I am concerned with. By contrast, the name of James Lorimer does not appear, whose contributions are of a different character than those of the other three authors. Lorimer, in fact, cannot be taken as the type of a British international jurist; his training and his horizons were different from those of the other authors cited; however, his contributions to the science of international law deserve our consideration, because, from certain important points of view, the opinions he upheld and taught are of greater importance in our time than they were during his lifetime.

Lorimer was a Scotsman and a professor at Edinburgh; he was trained in the philosophical atmosphere of that great University. He found himself under the influence of Sir William Hamilton, a highly distinguished professor of philosophy, and he continued his studies in Geneva, Berlin and Bonn. At Bonn, he drew abundantly from the source of German philosophy, and was particularly influenced by Dahlmann. Of this master, Lorimer said: “After Sir William Hamilton, I believe I owe more to Dahlmann, intellectually speaking, than to any other man. These two men and Aristotle stand out as the sources of my philosophical and political inspiration.”

It was as a philosopher-jurist that Lorimer took an important position in the world of international jurists.

Before examining his works, it may be useful to give a brief sketch of his life. James Lorimer was born on the 4th of November, 1818, at Aberdalgie, in the county of Perth, Scotland. After attending Perth Grammar School, he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained his degrees in the “Arts” category. He then attended several universities on the continent; he studied zoology in Geneva and chemistry in Berlin, where he also attended Puchta’s lectures on Roman law and Trendelenburg’s lectures on philosophy of law. But it was in Bonn, as I have already said, that he received from Dahlmann’s lectures his most vivid impressions. Lorimer then returned to Edinburgh, attended law courses and was admitted to the bar in 1845. He did not succeed in practice, and he began a literary career, writing articles on educational reforms and on the principles of political science. In 1862, at the age of 44, he was appointed Professor of Public Law and Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh, and he held this chair until his death on the 13th of February, 1890.

Lorimer was one of the founders of the Institute of International Law; he was present at its first meeting in Ghent in 1873; he dedicated his work on international law to the Institute; he made frequent contributions to the Annuaire and also to the Revue de Droit international, the Institute’s organ, in the form of studies of political or scientific problems.

Lorimer’s main works concerning international law and the science of law are: The Institutes of Law, published in two volumes in 1872, abridged and translated into French under the title Principles of Natural Law by Professor Ernest Nys of Brussels, in 1890; The Institutes of the Law of Nations, the first volume of which appeared in 1883 and the second volume in 1884: this work was also abridged and translated into French under the title Principles of International Law by E. Nys, in 1885; the French abridgment was translated into Spanish by Don Lopez y Lopey Cotenha in 1887; Studies National and International: these are separate lectures given at the University of Edinburgh from 1864 to 1889; these lectures were published in 1890 with biographical notices by Professor R. Flint and by M. G. Rolin-Jacquemyns; the volume also contains a complete bibliography of Lorimer’s works.

Before dealing with Lorimer’s contribution to international law, it is necessary to note that his two major works, The Institutes of Law and The Institutes of International Law, should not be separated from each other; the second is the complement of the first, and the author’s principles are only intelligible on the condition of being considered in this way. We shall limit ourselves to discussing the first sufficiently to show its influence on the second.

Taking as his theme Burke’s statement that all human laws are properly speaking only declaratory, and believing that the origin and history of social and political institutions only shed light on the results that follow from the nature of man, he examines the principles on which the rules of man’s conduct in society rest, and he draws these principles from natural law. He does the same when he deals with the relations of states with each other, grounding the rules of their mutual relations not on custom or convention but on natural law. Lorimer’s system is based on what he calls the “de facto” principle; it is a protest against the point of view of the utilitarian school of Bentham and Austin and the positivist school of international jurists; he attaches only modest importance to the historical method, of which, in England, Sir Henry Sumner Maine’s writings are such brilliant examples.

The essence of Lorimer’s system is religious. As a starting point, he admits the creation of the world by God, infinite in power and wisdom. This is the postulate of all law and all science: “Any point of view on society, politics or history that does not agree with the belief in the existence of God, in His omnipotence over human affairs and in His goodness, is necessarily erroneous.” He was a Protestant, but his religious point of view was broad. He emphasizes humanity’s great debt to the Stoics in their interpretation of the moral teaching of the Socratic school and in their enunciation of practical rules of life for the individual, the state and the community of states; he gives ample justice to the great Spanish jurists of the 16th and 17th centuries: Vitoria, Soto and Suarez.

From the existence of God, he moves to the existence of man. He declares in fact: “I am, therefore I have the right to exist.” From this “de facto” principle, he deduces other rights, such as those of freedom in the exercise of subjective faculties. Reason tells us that our right, with regard to others, must necessarily be relative and limited, since it requires cooperation and resolves itself into a reciprocity of dependence of rights and duties and, thus, into a mutually ordered liberty. Justice and charity are identical, their separate realization is impossible. Against the point of view sometimes put forward that liberty implies an absolute equality of all men, Lorimer raises a vigorous protest. Men are not equal by nature; the facts of everyday life show that they are unequal in the different qualities that contribute to making a man; it follows that they cannot be equal in law, even though they are all equal before the law. Individuals are different in influence, capacity, moral and physical form, and these are facts that cannot be ignored.

How is one to extract the laws of nature that will govern men? Reason is the main source, and that means reason ordered under divine guidance. One can question the value of this doctrine as a starting point, especially given that Lorimer admits that the results of individual reason must necessarily differ considerably, depending on time, place, race, education and formative circumstances. He also admits that one cannot build a principle applicable to all times and to all countries. But on the basis of the adage “ubi societas ibi jus”, he takes the expression “positive law” as meaning natural law realized in a given time and place. The terminology is sometimes marked by some confusion, because “positive law” is generally taken as meaning “the law as it is”; for this latter notion, Lorimer proposes the term “enacted law”; and positive law, or enacted law, is the law enforced by a recognized authority, whether in conformity or in opposition to natural law. These laws should be assessed according to their degree of proximity to justice, and the legislator should base his laws, the diplomat should establish his treaties, on an accurate analysis of the facts and in conformity with the divine order of nature, peace, good will and security. All abnormal or inharmonious acts should be recognized and regulated so that ultimately one can arrive at their extinction.

With regard to all positive law, Lorimer admits that public opinion, although it may at certain moments be irresistible, is nonetheless not infallible. However, in his thought, casting his gaze over a considerable period of time, he sees the force of justice and truth growing gradually. Natural law has asserted itself in the abolition of slavery, in the improvement of the treatment of foreigners and enemies and in the development of religious tolerance. There is no principle, in the history of humanity, that has played a more important role than that of natural law, in its ancient meaning. It is in its name that almost all the old abuses have been denounced, attacked and often destroyed.

We are mainly concerned with Lorimer’s contribution to international law, and we do not have the time to make a more complete examination and to engage in a critique of his general philosophy of law; however, his mind worked in a logical fashion, and his principles are applied to the relations of states with each other in his two volumes of The Institutes of International Law. Those who would not be able to study all of Lorimer’s works, but who wish to obtain a first-hand knowledge of his doctrine, could refer for this to his lecture entitled “Prolegomena to a Rational System of International Law”, given to his students in November 1878.

International law is considered a branch of positive natural law, and as the object of natural law is the realization of the liberty of individuals in accordance with their respective powers and capacities, the basis of international law is the recognition of the fact of the individual, subject of law. Applying this proposition to states, Lorimer defines international law as follows: “International law is the realization of the liberty of isolated nations, by the reciprocal affirmation and recognition of their true faculties.”

Here, as in his general plan, he starts from the fact of existence and he affirms that rights exist because they derive from the right to exist, itself given by the fact of existence. But rights are not rights until their coincidence with the fact is established; until this coincidence is achieved, they are only opinions: This explains, says Lorimer, why so often we see systems that have begun by declaring the rights of all men end up by denying the rights of each man. The state exists and from its de facto existence follows the doctrine of de jure recognition, which Lorimer makes the fundamental doctrine of international law. In the absence of a central authority, each state must decide for itself the right to determine the existence or non-existence of the right of a state claiming recognition. But such a decision should not be arbitrary; it must depend on both the will and the possibility of using reciprocity in the recognition that it demands. There are examples of states that have intolerant religious or secular beliefs which exclude the presumption of the possession of the necessary will of reciprocity, by which a state shows that it is both capable of and disposed to fulfill the duties inherent in its international existence.

Lorimer then deals with the external liberty or independence of states, and he shows that no community is absolutely independent: interdependence is the rule of human life, whether for the individual or for the state. Rights and duties are correlative; states cannot live in isolation; and the doctrine of absolute non-intervention must not be accepted, even though interference in the internal government of one state by another state is interference with self-expression; thus, recognition of a state must imply the absence of any propaganda in other states. Rights cannot be taken beyond the facts that constitute their origin. International law cannot create a state, but if a state exists, international law takes it as it is and recognizes the fact, whether it be small or large. This recognition may, according to Lorimer, be complete or partial, absolute or relative, and he declares that inequalities in fact imply inequalities in law, a doctrine that requires careful limitation, because it can give rise to misunderstandings. All states do not have equal rights in law, but all states are entitled to be protected by law, and Lorimer’s protest is against the common confusion of legal equality with equality before the law. His thought on the doctrine of equality is found in the following statements: “If all that is meant by equality was that all states have an equal right to assert the rights they have and thus had an equal interest in this vindication of law, then the affirmation would be true for states as for individuals.” The doctrine of the equality of states was introduced into the theory of international law by the “state of nature” of the School of Natural Law Writers; it is not found in Grotius, and the facts of state life agree with this statement by Lorimer that all states do not have the right to be recognized as equal states, simply because they are not equal. Recognition should only be given to states, and not to races or nationalities; only the state can be considered a moral person. This point of view corresponds to the facts of inter-state life; however, in discussing the subject, Lorimer does not give sufficient attention to the development of the doctrine of nationality and its effect on international law; one might have expected him to deal more at length with this movement as illustrating the growth of the liberty of development of human combinations.

The rights and duties of states are divided into two parts: normal relations and abnormal relations. This raises the question of what place should be assigned to war in the philosophy of law. War, says Lorimer, must be recognized as a fact, but it is not simply a pendant of the law of peace. War gives rise to certain rights and obligations, both between belligerent states and between neutral states. But war is a state of affairs that is abnormal and a violation and contradiction of the realization of the liberty of the state; for, in war, each belligerent state seeks to impose its will on the other. International law must tend towards the abolition of war, and, in the meantime, its rules must be conceived in a way that limits the extent and duration of war.

Having thus outlined his subject, Lorimer continues by considering the normal relations of states; he distinguishes two main categories: negative relations and positive relations. The negative aspect leads to the doctrine of non-intervention, which is based on the principle of mutual recognition; while the positive side teaches the principle of mutual cooperation due to the facts of interdependence. “To affirm or develop its freedom of action is the right and duty of each separate community, and the relation that gives the most complete scope for the exercise of this right is the perfect relation between separate communities.” It is the right and duty of all communities to recognize this affirmation and to help in its development. States “are bonamen to each other that all may be free”, and, paradoxical as it may seem, liberty is thus a relationship of mutual dependence. This does not mean a sacrifice of the liberty of separate states, but the vindication of their liberty until the point where liberty comes to commit suicide.

In examining the means by which these ends can be achieved, Lorimer conducts his reasoning by the method of analogy: this analogy is drawn from the internal laws of civilized states, the province of the science of law in which positive law has long been a reality. While admitting that the analogy is imperfect and that it is necessary to use it with caution, he declares that all reasoning from experience is reasoning from imperfect analogies between the circumstances of the past and those of the present. He shows the exaggerations that the first writers of international law committed in applying the maxims and subtleties of Roman law, to the point of often making international law absurd (hidebound). But given that these writers were concerned with human rights and duties, he concludes that they were justified in using this method, because the definitions and conclusions they had obtained in one category of relationships were likely to shed light on those of the other category. In his application of the principle, Lorimer does not always free himself from the errors into which the old authors fell. This is notable in his theory of treaties; he considers that the rules of negotiation do not differ from those applicable to the establishment of valid contracts in any other part of the science of law. The differences between contracts in private law and treaties between states are marked both in terms of the contracting parties and the objects on which the agreement bears; the analogy is here more superficial than real.

Let us now move to the way in which Lorimer treats war and neutrality, that is to say, the abnormal relations of states. He admits that these abnormal relations still contain legal relationships. Lorimer’s position is as follows: the science of law is a therapeutics. The phenomena of disease are studied by it with the aim of removing them; if one considers the science of law as an art, the object of this science is always to restore the abnormal to the normal, the irrational to the rational. Positive law repudiates any anomaly that is not inevitable. It is only the minimum of an abnormal relationship that is legal; it remains legal only as long as it is inevitable; the only object that is proposed is to annihilate it. There are cases in which war can be justified, and Lorimer, as do the old authors, examines what these cases might be. However, it is necessary to note first that he has laid down as a principle that aggression or expansion is a natural right, whose extent is measured by the faculties that God has given to the aggressor or has allowed him to develop. Within this limit, the right of individual, social, political and ethnic conquest is included in the idea of liberty, and is thus included in the object of the science of law. The end that is just justifies the use of the means necessary to achieve it, as a consequence of the application of force; and this calls for the right of war insofar as force is necessary to obtain this end. Liberty has often been asserted in a necessary way by war when peoples have sought to become separate political communities and have wished to throw off the foreign yoke, as in the case of the revolts of the Dutch provinces against Spain and the Swiss cantons against Austria. But if states were rational beings living under a system of rational laws, the natural expansion of states would be foreseen, regulated and established legally as in the case of the acquisition of territories. In the meantime, international law must recognize the facts, and Lorimer then proceeds to deal with some of the practices of belligerents that he criticizes from the point of view of his philosophical system. These chapters are not the best in his work, and his discussion shows that he does not sufficiently master the principles of war. Thus, he sees no difference between the principles of war on land and war at sea, even though the fact of the adjudication of prizes taken at sea by a Prize Court is in marked opposition to the indiscriminate levying of contributions and requisitions in war on land. But in his developments on this part of his subject, he follows Grotius in the way he advocates “temperamenta belli”.

As for the problem of neutrality, he examines it from a point of view that was not common at the time he was writing. Having admitted that a state can fight in order to affirm or defend its liberty, he asks whether other states should take part in the war, and he proposes the theory that if a state can defend its own liberty, it can also help another state to do the same. The duty of non-intervention, which exists during a period of normal relations, ceases when hostilities break out and when abnormal relations are established; consequently, the right of a state to remain neutral arises only when states are not able to form definite opinions as to the merits of the dispute. Doubts and divided opinions cannot justify neutral states in taking part in a war: the way they best fulfill their duties and take account of their interests will be to follow a policy of absolute impartiality. There is also another reason that justifies a state in remaining neutral: its physical inability to participate in the war.

Lorimer admits that his views run counter to the generally received doctrine, according to which the neutrality of states helps to maintain peace by limiting war to the belligerent states alone. To this, Lorimer replies that law is a branch of morality, that it tends towards the moral health of the community and that its rules apply not only to individuals but also to states. For individuals, the duty is clear. If a man witnesses a fight and thinks he can separate the combatants and put an end to unjust aggression, he has a duty to intervene and not remain an indifferent spectator. Similarly, states should be guided by the same principle. Lorimer is not alone in this attitude towards neutrality. M. Gustave Rolin-Jacquemyns says that conscience revolts against a theory that makes the indifference of all towards each and of each towards all the last word of international law and politics.

Westlake, also considering from a moral point of view the subject of the general right of any member of society to promote justice within that society and peace on the basis exclusively of justice, concludes that neutrality is not morally justifiable, unless intervention in the war is not likely to advance justice or can only do so at a ruinous price for the intervening state. Baron Albéric Rolin declares: “One must ask oneself whether it is in accordance with morality and the universal international interest that a powerful state has the right to always remain neutral, however flagrant, however evident the injustice committed before its eyes.”

Admitting that neutrality is in accordance with law in certain circumstances, Lorimer then examines the rights and duties of neutral states, and his views do not always agree with the accepted practice of states. Neutral states have a duty to observe absolute impartiality and not to give assistance to one or other of the belligerents, which is not the case, moreover, with the citizens of the neutral state. They can take part in commercial transactions with the belligerent and can even enlist in neutral territory. Modern laws and declarations on enlistment or neutrality, as well as decisions such as those of the arbitrators in the famous Alabama case, and the rules of the Treaty of Washington of 1871, all provide for a more rigorous application of the principles of impartiality than does Lorimer, whose doctrines seem to contradict these rules. Furthermore, we might have expected Lorimer to condemn as contrary to his doctrines of justice and humanity the fact that neutral nationals help to prolong the war by taking advantage of it for their pecuniary profit.

We now arrive at the part of Lorimer’s work that forms its conclusion, in which he discusses the ultimate problem of international jurisprudence. We have already seen that war horrified him, although he accepted it as a fact. But he asks whether it is inevitable, in international politics, that, at the moment when a change of relations manifests itself in fact — for example, a progressive state takes over a stationary or retrograde state — any principle of human conduct, up to and including the most elementary rules of morality and material well-being, should be thrown to the winds, and whether the hideous spectacle should be given to us of soldiers and diplomats unrestrainedly performing a dance of death on millions of downtrodden individuals, in honor of a phantom theory of the balance of power, or of the absolute independence and equality of states. Is it that motives of exclusive and selfish interest, jealousy, envy, suspicion and fear, which we hold to be the most base when it comes to individuals, can become springs of generous and praiseworthy action when transported to a larger stage? To these questions, history does not give the negative answer that men would give if these questions were put to them frankly. But given that Lorimer believed that there were permanent fundamental laws to govern the relations of states, which could lead to a peaceful solution of the questions likely to produce war, he devoted his energy to the preparation of a plan that was first published in the Revue de droit international in 1877 and which now forms the fifth book of his Institutes of International Law (pp. 181–299). The object of the plan is to provide for an international organization for the states of the world, a plan that would give them institutions of an international character, corresponding to the factors that, in the internal science of law, are the legislative, jurisdictional and executive factors. Without a more complete international organization, international law cannot function effectively. Before setting out his own plan, Lorimer gives an interesting account of the various plans tending towards the direct solution of the problem of international organization that have been elaborated since that attributed by Sully to the King of France Henry IV.

Without going into the details of Lorimer’s project, we can note its general lines. He proposed a treaty for the establishment of an International Government, in which all recognized states would be invited to participate. This treaty would be composed of two parts: the first would constitute an attempt by the participants to simultaneously and proportionally reduce their national forces to the limit that they would reciprocally recognize as necessary for their internal purposes, but in a way that would conserve without change the relative power of the various states. The second part of this treaty was an attempt to establish a government aimed exclusively at international goals, consisting of legislative, judicial, executive and financial organizations. As for the venue of meetings, Lorimer would have preferred Constantinople, but, failing that, he favored Geneva; however, preliminary meetings could be held in Holland or Belgium. The time of the meeting would be autumn. The judicial department would consist of fourteen judges and a president, of whom six would be chosen by the six Great Powers, one per Power; their jurisdiction would be both civil and criminal. As for the executive department, each state would have to supply a contingent of men, or the equivalent in money, to implement the decisions of the international legislative assembly and international courts. There would be a small standing force to maintain order and to deal with emergencies. The expenses of the International Government would be covered by an international tax levied by each state on its nationals.

The maintenance of peace, according to Lorimer, depends on the creation of an international organization and, in his opinion, questions of international disarmament and international organization act and react on each other from all sides. He understands that security and disarmament are inextricably intertwined and that it is only when a project for international organization has been put in place, in order to provide each state with a trustworthy guarantee, that the honorable objectives for which standing armies are maintained beyond what is necessary for internal purposes would be likely to be achieved without these standing armies; it is only at this time that one could expect states of good faith to contemplate their reduction.

Here, it would be useful to enumerate what these honorable goals are, considered by Lorimer, for which standing armies are maintained beyond the limit necessary for internal purposes. They can be reduced, he says, to three: 1) national security; 2) the civilization of barbarian races under the guardianship of advanced nations; 3) the recognition by other nations of national progress already made, even if this recognition implies a change in the relations between the most progressive nation and other nations, and a modification in what is called the balance of power. Through proportional disarmament, Lorimer claims that: 1) national security will be guaranteed if this proportional disarmament is undertaken in conjunction with a plan for international organization; 2) the conservation of a force by a Power such as Great Britain, necessary for the maintenance of law and order in barbarian or semi-barbarian communities, would not arouse any jealousy on the part of other states, provided that the certainty were obtained that this state has not developed an army of aggression under false pretenses; but 3) international recognition of national development is considered by him to involve more difficulty than the other two points. Here, too, he considered that an International Government could provide a peaceful solution in such a way that a de facto principle could find its expression without requiring the action of national forces.

This project shows that Lorimer was a man of broad vision; the plan established by him is not the work of a simple dreamer; it proceeded from his desire to give his ideas concrete form. He was right, as M. Rivier said, on “the need to give ideas a body, to translate them into concrete and tangible things”. The establishment of the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice provides a striking answer to those who represented the author of this plan as a credulous visionary who, in a new form, had once again dreamt of the perpetual peace of the old philanthropists. The words found in the Preamble of the Covenant of the League of Nations, that the states participating in it do so in order to “promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security”, echo the very thoughts and almost the very words of Lorimer’s teachings. The world has traveled a long road in the direction indicated by Lorimer, but it is still lacking some of the institutions he declared necessary for a complete system of international organization.

Lorimer separated the idea of perpetual peace from the objectives of positive international law, but that did not prevent him from rejecting the idea of the perpetuity of war as being incompatible with the goodness of God. He started from the point of view that neither international morality nor international common sense can rise higher than national morality and common sense, and he recognized the unfortunate consequences in both spheres of envy, hatred, greed and jealousy. Lorimer was an optimist, but, possessing the characteristics known of his race, he was a man of caution. “When we speak of man as a rational being, we use an expression that we know to be only partially accurate. But man is not completely irrational or deprived of the reason he possesses as a citizen, when he deals with interests that go beyond the limits of the existence of the state; and consequently, I see no reason to doubt that what his partial and intermittent reason has accomplished in the field of domestic law can be gradually accomplished in the field of international law.”

Whatever one may think of the fundamental bases of Lorimer’s contribution to the literature of international law, they are worthy of consideration; his exposition of his principles is always suggestive, and often it is done with eloquence. Lorimer’s doctrine has evident weaknesses, and his Institutes of International Law cannot be recommended to the jurist who would like to know the current rules of international law. Although grounding his work on the de facto principle, there is no doubt that he indulges in excessive idealism; this can be explained by his violent antipathy for the empirical doctrine of the positivist school of international law and the philosophical school of negative skepticism that has challenged the foundation of all moral certainty. Nowadays, the doctrine of sovereignty is no longer placed at the basis of international relations; the independence of states is recognized as being only an acceptable principle when it is joined to that of their mutual interdependence, a doctrine on which Lorimer constantly insisted. The reaction in favor of a natural law foundation for the rules governing inter-state relations has become more marked in recent years, and it is good that the present generation of students has focused its attention on the work of a man who set out his principles and their application to international relations, and whose conception of the world was, to quote the words of M. G. Rolin-Jacquemyns, “that of a Christian, a philosopher and a jurist”. Our final word finds a particular place at a time when the great point is that of a more complete development of means to provide for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. “Let us strive to abolish war through the development of an effective system of international law; but let us not waste our time and our energy in futile efforts to directly abolish war before we have succeeded in filling its place and establishing peaceful means for the justification of the natural right of aggression.”