Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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What aspect, think you, would the geographical map of the United States present were it not for this means of dis- pensing justice? We may with impunity declare that it would not be what it is today. Innumerable controversies would have arisen between the different States and, if these had been settled by war, some states would have annexed others, and from this, it is even within the realm of reason to contend that our government today would be divided. However, our Supreme Court, that exalted and upright tribunal, which has stood the test of years, settles these questions to the best of its discerning justice. THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS WHAT PREVENTS CIVIL WAR IN A NATION, AND THIS SAME MODE OF PROCEDURE SHOULD PRE- VENT IT AMONG NATIONS. Our next step brings us to the most serious and dangerous phase of the question, one which we should dread and avoid as we would any impending personal calamity, that is : In- ternational Disputes. The method in vogue at present of settling these questions, has a certain element of the barbaric. The contending parties argue the matter among themselves, and if neither is honest enough to admit the rights of the other, the argument is decided in the din and blood of battle. This style when used between individuals, is held up to ridicule, deemed foolhardy and unjust, and then punished by the very law which the nations refuse to regard as affecting themselves. If this is unreasonable for the individual, when one person is wronged, how much more unreasonable is it to subject a whole nation to the uncertainty and consequent danger of settlement by armed encounter. I need not ask you to think, ladies and gentlemen, of the awful hardships to be undergone, of the starvation and agony of the wounded soldiers, of the thousands of brave and valua- ble citizens who are lost, to think of the burdens to be carried by the wives and children of the soldiers, their anguish of mind lest their loved ones be suffering, their physical discomfort and want of the bare necessities of life, to picture wom.en and children rendered widowed and fatherless and destitute of their means of support, or, to consider the more sordid side, the enormous expense and the reduction of business and com- merce, to realize that the question after all is decided by might.

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unreasonable and foolhardy method of the aborigines to re- cover his property or honor. The modern man refers the con- troversy to a neutral third party who has delegated authority to act as judge; the arbitrator weighs the arguments of the two men and gives his decision in favor of the one whose rea- sons are the weightier. In this way (except in rare cases), the contending parties receive the respective treatment they de- serve. In other words justice has been meted out, and it was dispensed, not by chance or by the demonstration of power, but by due consideration of the merits of the case. This mode of settlement is worthy of rational creatures. And, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot insist too strongly upon this: We are rational creatures. When beasts, irrational animals, have grievances against one another they resort to bloody conflict. This is the means used by the lowest grade of the animal king- dom. It gives birth to all the vile and degenerate passions of their nature, those of the instinctive murder, hatred and re- venge. AND ARE WE TO MAKE USE OF SUCH MEANS AS THESE, TO SETTLE OUR GRIEVANCES? ARE WE, WHO ARE RATIONAL BEINGS, THE CHOSEN AND HONORED OF THE CREATOR, MADE TO HIS IMAGE AND LIKENESS, SELECTED FROM ALL HIS CREA- TURES, AND ALL WHOM HE COULD IN POTENCY CREATE, TO RECEIVE THIS MARK OF DISTINC- TION— RATIONALITY— WHICH PLACES US IN AN EXALTED POSITION IN HIS CREATION OF THE WORLD,— SHALL WE REJECT THIS WONDERFUL GIFT, THROWING IT BACK AS IT WERE IN THE FACE OF OUR MAKER, CRYING, WE WILL HAVE NONE OF IT? WISDOM ANSWERS NO. A just feeling of pride takes possession of us; for we realize that we are the chosen of God’s creatures. And we can give no better or nobler outward expression of our appreciation of this sublime gift than by employing it in the adjustment of international problems. Proceeding to a wider and more serious plane, namely: In- terstate Controversies, we find that the same process of settling disputes prevails. The contending parties again refer their differences to a third party and are almost invariably satis- fied with the decision.

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not right, — I say I need not dwell on these things, for they all have been ably pictured to you many times within these very walls. A fallacy extant at present, is that there is one moral law for men and another for nations. It does seem absurd on the very face of it. But, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot afford to laugh at it, for this is the principle upon which many of the rulers of nations are acting, in these days of boasted civili- zation. They force the nation to do things which they in their personal lives would discountenance ; they forget that the nation’s responsibility of making and keeping peace in its re- lation to other nations is the same as that of the individual to other men. The principles which govern the life and conduct of one are equally obligatory in the case of the other ; the moral law is as unbending, the conscience as imperative, when a man voluntarily compounds his deeds with those of other men, as when he acts alone. Whatever in principle is a crime for a man, a fortiori, would seem a crime for a nation; and we all know that battle and war, except in the case of un- just aggression, are wrong for the individual. The doctrine of the founder of Christianity, was one of eternal peace— the absolute antithesis of war. Hence what greater proof do we need to show the error of the accepted attitude of civilized nations with regard to war as a fitting weapon to settle disputes. Unless Christianity has altogether ceased to mean conformity to the principles of Christ, how can that attitude be called Christian? When we reflect on the life and teachings of Christ, the full violence of the contradiction between what He said and did, and what Christian nations say and do, strikes the hardest. FOR HERE OUR CRASS INDIFFERENCE IS NOT IN RESPECT TO CEREMONY, OR SYMBOLIC RIGHT, OR IN REGARD TO SOME TABLE OF MOSAIC REGULATIONS; OUR DERELICTION IS NOT EVEN ONLY FROM THE LIV- ING LAW DIVINELY TRACED ON THE TABLETS OF THE HUMAN HEART, BUT FROM THAT SOVEREIGN AND ETERNAL WORD WHICH ONCE AT LEAST HAD BREATH IN THE LOVELINESS OF THE LAW- GIVER’S OWN LIFE. But, ladies and gentlemen, let me treat this question from (20)