Note J — INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE PEACE CONFERENCE. By JAMES HARRIS VICKERY, LL. B.

See Essai sur l’Organisation de l’Arbitrage International, by M. Descamps, p. 24.

K The Transvaal War pertinently illustrates the prevailing want of knowledge regarding the true sphere of arbitration. Ever since the outbreak of war the Continental press and some American papers have been asking why the provisions of the Peace Conference are not put in operation. Much of this is due to anglophobia; much to a genuine ignorance of the matter. The treatment of the subject usually takes the form of an antithesis in which Great Britain as a peace power at the conference is contrasted with Greater Britain making war on a little republic, and this is invariably followed with a statement or inference that the Peace Conference was a huge farce, and the Permanent Court a dire failure. It is now quite plain that the root of the difficulty between England and the Transvaal was not the franchise nor the dynamite monopoly, but English versus Dutch predominancy in the whole of South Africa, and therefore a grave clash of two opposing policies, involving the deepest questions of interest and even self-preservation. Regarding these questions the conference was unanimous in the opinion that they are entirely outside the sphere of arbitrable question.