THE OPINION OF THE WORLD
[Address before the American Bar Association, in Continental Hall,
October 20, 1914.]
MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION:
I am very deeply gratified by the greeting that your president has given
me and by your response to it. My only strength lies in your confidence.
We stand now in a peculiar case. Our first thought, I suppose, as
lawyers, is of international law, of those bonds of right and principle
which draw the nations together and hold the community of the world to
some standards of action. We know that we see in international law, as
it were, the moral processes by which law itself came into existence. I
know that as a lawyer I have myself at times felt that there was no real
comparison between the law of a nation and the law of nations, because
the latter lacked the sanction that gave the former strength and
validity. And yet, if you look into the matter more closely, you will
find that the two have the same foundations, and that those foundations
are more evident and conspicuous in our day than they have ever been
before.
The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world; and the processes
of international law are the slow processes by which opinion works its
will.
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