International Government

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATION must be regarded as the most precious flower and fruit, the essential mark and prerogative of the independent, sovereign State. It is, then, not wonderful that those who regard such a State as an isolated entity, a water-tight compartment of "national interests," should postulate the absolute independence of its administration as a condition of its existence as a State. This is well understood in those subterranean regions where the evil spirits guide diplomatists toward inevitable war. They know that, whatever the real causes which would induce civilized men to massacre one another by the hundred thousand, the men themselves must believe that a demand had been- made by one independent sovereign State to interfere in the administration of another independent sovereign State before the process could begin. Nothing could make a war between Austrians and Serbians so inevitable as a demand on the part of "Austria" to interfere in the administration of "Serbia." That Austria's demand was unjustifiable cannot alter the fact that this conception of the State and of administration is false, for it does not mirror the realities of life and the world as they exist to-day. History is continually getting ahead of the conceptions and beliefs of human beings, including diplomatists and international lawyers; and the catastrophes and miseries of humanity are often caused by the attempt to apply these obsolete conceptions and beliefs to a world which they no longer fit. Such is the present catastrophe, and it shows that either our conceptions must go forward and conform with an advanced world, or the world will be dragged back into line with our primitive beliefs. Administration, as...