One of the best achievements of The Hague Conference of 1907 was the scheme for an International Court of Appeal in Prize Cases. The world was not ready for it, and the differences of view between the greater and the lesser Powers have not unnaturally prevented its ratification. But is it not, under present circumstances, possible that a shorter step in the same direction might and could be taken by some of those Powers who are most concerned in the proper disposition of prize court proceedings?

Madame de Staël declared that mankind was always advancing, but always in a spiral course. In 1915 the world, while it moved far during the preceding century or two in the direction of human brotherhood, seems to have come to a pause very close, so far as commercial intercourse between nations is concerned, to the point reached at the time of the French Revolution.