There never have been, and never will be, universal rights of men.

Here and there particular relations can be brought under definite international laws, but the bulk of national life is absolutely outside codification.
Even were some such attempt made, even if a comprehensive international code were drawn up, no self-respecting nation would sacrifice its own conception of right to it.

By so doing it would renounce its highest ideals; it would allow its own sense of justice to be violated by an injustice, and thus dishonour itself.
Arbitration treaties must be peculiarly detrimental to an aspiring people, which has not yet reached its political and national zenith, and is bent on expanding its power in order to play its part honourably in the civilized world.

Every Arbitration Court must originate in a certain political status; it must regard this as legally constituted, and must treat any alterations, however necessary, to which the whole of the contracting parties do not agree, as an encroachment.

In this way every progressive change is arrested, and a legal position created which may easily conflict with the actual turn of affairs, and may check the expansion of the young and vigorous State in favour of one which is sinking in the scale of civilization.
These considerations supply the answer to the second decisive question: How can the judgment of the Arbitration Court be enforced if any State refuses to submit to it?
Where does the power reside which insures the execution of this judgment when pronounced?
In America, Elihu Root, formerly Secretary of State, declared in 1908 that the High Court of International Justice established by the second Hague Conference would be able to pronounce definite and binding decisions by virtue of the pressure brought to bear by public opinion.
The present leaders of the American peace movement seem to share this idea.