Those establishing it had grown to realize that it was in danger of becoming a mere paper court, so that it would never really come into being at all.
M.d'Estournelles de Constant had been especially alive to this danger.
By correspondence and in personal interviews he impressed upon me the need not only of making advances by actually applying arbitration--not merely promising by treaty to apply it--to questions that were up for settlement, but of using the Hague tribunal for this purpose.

I cordially sympathized with these views.

On the recommendation of John Hay, I succeeded in getting an agreement with Mexico to lay a matter in dispute between the two republics before the Hague Court.

This was the first case ever brought before the Hague Court.

It was followed by numerous others; and it definitely established that court as the great international peace tribunal.