Wilson, Mr. Hughes and Mr. Lodge uphold it. These
personal expressions do not bind the Nations; but they
show that the general plan is feasible and supplies a want
which the world feels.

The platform only lays down broad lines. Its machinery
must be worked out in International Conference. Its feasi-
bility is not successfully attacked by exceptional hypotheses
under which it would fail of its purpose. The most practical
plan of government may thus be shown to be futile. If the
platform will work in most cases, the value of the result
justifies its adoption.

Are the four planks considered in detail feasible?

1. A Court to administer international justice is not new.
Our own Supreme Court is one. Questions arise between
States not settled by the Federal Constitution or Federal
statutes. In the Kansas-Colorado case, Congress had no
power to control Colorado. International Law alone fixed
the rights between the States; and the Supreme Court en-
forced these rights.

Our relations with Canada are such that we settle all
questions by negotiation or arbitration. We have now two
permanent Tribunals to decide controversies between us --
one to adjudge questions of boundary waters like that be-
tween Kansas and Colorado, and the other to pass upon
claims of the citizens of one country against the other. We
have thus contracted the habit of arbitration; and, when
negotiation fails, no one expects anything else. In our
League, the quarrelling nations, moved by their obligation,
sanctioned by the threat of compulsion by their associates,
will contract the same habit.

2. There may be, however, political or other irritating
and threatening issues between nations which cannot be

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