quite circumscribed in his travels, because he is the Keeper of the Great Seal, an instrument which he must neither quit without special authority nor carry out of the realm, and the audiences before which he may appear are necessarily limited to that extent. His must be more than a personal purpose, therefore, which would induce him to seek and obtain the permission of his sovereign to cross the seas in order to make an address at Montreal; and if the departure of the Lord Chancellor required the approval of the sovereign, it is not at all unlikely that what the Lord Chancellor was to say upon his arrival at his destination received also the approval of the sovereign, and perhaps of his ministers as well. Indeed, in the course of his remarks the Lord Chancellor delivered a personal message of esteem and good will from the King of Great Britain to the people of the United States and of Canada, and he expressly stated that the King's message formed the text for what he had to say.

Following the example of another distinguished Englishman, Lord Russell of Killowen, Chief Justice of England, who, in 1896, addressed the same association at Saratoga, New York, on the subject of international law and arbitration, the Lord Chancellor chose as his subject a question of international interest, namely, a suggestion of a sanction for international obligations which he thought had not previously attracted attention in connection with international law.

To develop his idea, the speaker began by recurring to the system of rules by which the daily conduct of the citizens of a state is regulated. "Of this system," he said, "the law forms only a small part," for "law, properly so called, whether civil or criminal, means essentially those rules of conduct which are expressly and publicly laid down by the sovereign will of the state, and are enforced by the sanction of compulsion." Besides the rules and sanctions of law, there were also, he said, the rules of morality. "But the tribunal of conscience is a private one, and its jurisdiction is limited to the individual whose conscience it is. The moral rules enjoined by the private conscience may be the very highest of all. But they are enforced only by an inward and private tribunal. Their sanction is subjective and not binding in the same way on all men."

"The field of daily conduct," he continued, "is covered, in the case of the citizen, only to a small extent by law and legality on the one hand, and by the dictates of the individual conscience on the other. There is a more extensive system of guidance which regulates conduct and

which differs from both in its character and sanction. It applies, like law, to all the members of a society alike, without distinction of persons. It resembles the morality of conscience in that it is enforced by no legal compulsion. In the English language we have no name for it. * German writers have, however, marked out the system to which I refer and have given it the name of 'Sittlichkeit.' * * 'Sittlichkeit' is the system of habitual or customary conduct, ethical rather than legal, which embraces all those obligations of the citizen which it is 'bad form' or 'not the thing' to disregard. Indeed regard for these obligations is frequently enjoined merely by the social penalty of being 'cut' or looked on askance. And yet the system is so generally accepted and is held in so high regard, that no one can venture to disregard it without in some way suffering at the hands of his neighbors for so doing. If a man maltreats his wife and children, or habitually jostles his fellowcitizens in the street, or does things flagrantly selfish or in bad taste, he is pretty sure to find himself in a minority and the worse off in the end. But not only does it not pay to do these things, but the decent man does not wish to do them. A feeling analogous to what arises from the dictates of his more private and individual conscience restrains him. He finds himself so restrained in the ordinary affairs of daily life. But he is guided in his conduct by no mere inward feeling, as in the case of conscience. Conscience, and for that matter, law overlap parts of the sphere of social obligation about which I am speaking. A rule of conduct may, indeed, appear in more than one sphere, and may consequently have a twofold sanction. But the guide to which the citizen mostly looks is just the standard recognized by the community, a community made up mainly of those fellow-citizens whose good opinion he respects and desires to have. He has everywhere round him an objectlesson in the conduct of decent people towards each other and towards the community to which they belong. Without such conduct and the restraints which it imposes there could be no tolerable social life, and real freedom from interference would not be enjoyed. It is the instinctive sense of what to do and what not to do in daily life and behaviour that is the source of liberty and ease. And it is this instinctive sense of obligation that is the chief foundation of society. Its reality takes objective shape and displays itself in family life and in our other civic and social institutions. It is not limited to any one form, and it is capable of manifesting itself in new forms and of developing and changing old forms. Indeed, the civic community is more than a political

fabric. It includes all the social institutions in and by which the individual life is influenced-such as are the family, the school, the church, the legislature, and the executive. None of these can subsist in isolation from the rest; together they and other institutions of the kind form a single organic whole, the whole which is known as the Nation. The spirit and habit of life which this organic entirety inspires and compels are what, for my present purpose, I mean by 'Sittlichkeit.' 'Sitte' is the German for custom, and 'Sittlichkeit' implies custom and a habit of mind and action. It also implies a little more. Fichte defines it in words which are worth quoting, and which I will put into English: 'What, to begin with,' he says, 'does Sitte signify, and in what sense do we use the word? It means for us, and means in every accurate reference we make to it, those principles of conduct which regulate people in their relations to each other, and which have become matter of habit and second nature at the stage of culture reached, and of which, therefore, we are not explicitly conscious. Principles, we call them, because we do not refer to the sort of conduct that is casual or is determined on casual grounds, but to the hidden and uniform ground of action which we assume to be present in the man whose action is not deflected and from which we can pretty certainly predict what he will do. Principles, we say, which have become a second nature and of which we are not explicitly conscious. We thus exclude all impulses and motives based on free individual choice, the inward aspect of Sittlichkeit, that is to say morality, and also the outward side, or law, alike. For what a man has first to reflect over and then freely to resolve is not for him a habit in conduct; and in so far as habit in conduct is associated with a particular age, it is regarded as the unconscious instrument of the Time Spirit.'

"The system of ethical habit in a community is of a dominating character, for the decision and influence of the whole community is embodied in that social habit. Because such conduct is systematic and covers the whole of the field of society, the individual will is closely related by it to the will and spirit of the community. And out of this relation arises the power of adequately controlling the conduct of the individual. If this power fails or becomes weak the community degenerates and may fall to pieces. Different nations excel in their 'Sittlichkeit' in different fashions. The spirit of the community and its ideals may vary greatly. There may be a low level of 'Sittlichkeit'; and we have the spectacle of 1 Grundzüge des Gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, Werke, Band vii., p. 214.

nations which have even degenerated in this respect. It may possibly conflict with law and morality, as in the case of the duel. But when its level is high in a nation we admire the system, for we see it not only guiding a people and binding them together for national effort, but affording the greatest freedom of thought and action for those who in daily life habitually act in harmony with the General Will."

After citing several examples to illustrate his meaning and to distinguish what he called the General Will from a collection of individual wills, he said, "Thus we find within the single state the evidence of a sanction which is less than legal but more than merely moral, and which is sufficient, in the vast majority of the events of daily life, to secure observance of general standards of conduct without any question of resort to force." He then asked: "If this is so within a nation, can it be so as between nations? * * * Can nations form a group or community among themselves within which a habit of looking to common ideals may grow up sufficiently strong to develop a General Will, and to make the binding power of these ideals a reliable sanction for their obligations to each other?"

"There is," he said, "nothing in the real nature of nationality that precludes such a possibility;" but, referring to the prayer of Grotius in concluding his work on War and Peace that God may "write these lessons on the hearts of all those who have the affairs of Christendom in their hands," and give to them "a mind fitted to understand and to respect rights, human and divine, and lead them to recollect always that the ministration committed to them is no less than this, that they are the Governors of Man, a creature most dear to God," the Lord Chancellor concludes:

"The prayer of Grotius has not yet been fulfilled, nor do recent events point to the fulfilment being near. The world is probably a long way off from the abolition of armaments and the peril of war. For habits of mind which can be sufficiently strong with a single people can hardly be as strong between nations. There does not exist the same extent of common interest, of common purpose, and of common tradition. And yet the tendency, even as between nations that stand in no special relation to each other, to develop such a habit of mind is in our time becoming recognisable. There are signs that the best people in the best nations are ceasing to wish to live in a world of mere claims, and to proclaim on every occasion, 'Our country, right or wrong.' There is growing up a disposition to believe that it is good, not only for all men

but for all nations, to consider their neighbours' point of view as well as their own. There is apparent at least a tendency to seek for a higher standard of ideals in international relations. The barbarism which once looked to conquest and the waging of successful war as the main object of statesmanship, seems as though it were passing away. There have been established rules of International Law which already govern the conduct of war itself, and are generally observed as binding by all civilized people, with the result that the cruelties of war have been lessened. If practice falls short of theory, at least there is to-day little effective challenge of the broad principle that a nation has as regards its neighbours' duties as well as rights. It is this spirit that may develop as time goes on into a full international 'Sittlichkeit.'"

FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES

The society with the expressive but unpronounceable name, as Mr. Choate facetiously calls it, held its fourth annual meeting under his presidency at Washington, December 4-6, 1913. It was well-attended, the papers at the different sessions were of unusual excellence, and the addresses at the formal dinner, which closed the meeting, were so apt and instructive that they will be preserved and printed in the volume of Proceedings which the Society issues after each annual meeting.

The aim of the Society is stated in the name, which is in itself a manifesto and a program. It seeks to advance the cause of judicial settlement without questioning the right of nations to submit their disputes to arbitration, if they wish to do so. But the members of the Society advocate in season and out of season the creation of a permanent international court of justice, composed of professional judges who will, to use an expression of Mr. Root's, act under a sense of judicial responsibility, and to which court the nations may submit their disputes of a legal nature for judicial decision by the passionless and impartial application of principles of justice. Arbitration is the modern shibboleth: every dispute, no matter how great or how little, whether it be political or legal, must be referred to the single remedy of arbitration, and a belief in arbitration as a catch-all and a cure-all is popularly made the test of the man of peace as distinguished from the man of war. The Society takes no attitude on arbitration: many of its members doubtless believe in the efficacy of arbitral procedure, certainly none are op