Any change in the relative power of nations, a change which is continually taking place, makes more or less temporary diplomatic settlements, but in no way affects a judicial settlement.
"However, then, international society may be organized for the future and whatever machinery may be set up to minimize the possibilities of war, I believe that the agency which may be counted upon to function with certainty is that which develops and applies legal justice." Every other agency, regardless of its form, will be found, when analyzed, to be diplomatic in character and subject to those impulses and purposes which generally affect diplomatic negotiations.

With a full appreciation of the advantage to be gained for the world at large through the common consideration of a vexatious international question by a body representing all nations, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that such consideration and the action resulting from it are essentially diplomatic in nature.

It is, in brief, the transference of a dispute in a particular case from the capitals of the disputants to the place where the delegates of the nations assemble to deliberate together on matters which affect their common interests.

It does not--and this we should understand--remove the question from the processes of diplomacy or prevent the influences which enter into diplomacy from affecting its consideration.

Nor does it to an appreciable extent change the actual inequality which exists among nations in the matter of power and influence.
"On the other hand, justice applied through the agency of an impartial tribunal clothed with an international jurisdiction eliminates the diplomatic methods of compromise and concession and recognizes that before the law all nations are equal and equally entitled to the exercise of their rights as sovereign and independent states.