WORLD COURT OF JUSTICE.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17706, 7 March 1923, Page 9

WORLD COURT OF JUSTICE.

♦ | PRESIDENT HARDING'S ADVOCACY. APPEAL TO AMERICANS. (bt cable—press association—COPVSlOHT.) (AUSTRALIAN- AND X.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) WASHINGTON, March 5. President Harding, in a letter to the Lkut.-<Jovernor of Oni o responding to the resolution of the Ohio Assembly commending the President's world court proposal, indicates that he will attempt to swing American public opinion in favour of joining the Court. President Harding says.—''lt is inconeei\able to me that the American people, who have so long been devoted to this ideal, should refuse their adher- , ence now to such a programme as is represented by this tribunal. I feel the adhesion of our country to the Per- j manent Court of International Justice j would represent a lons important step towards the assumption of those proper and entirely safe relationships to international affairs which should be borne by such a country as our own." The President says his request to the Senate was not made without the most thorough and mature deliberation. He declares that those "who are at this time invested with the direction of the international relations of our country are firmly convinced that this move would not only represent the wise policy of our own people, but would also be an emphatic testimony of our purpose to encourage every feasible project for establishing the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of power in the world." The President gives his assurances that there is no idea of the American Government surrendering in any way its control over its own fundamental rights and destinies. "We may be sure" he says, "that differences will always arise among States and peoples, precisely as they have always arisen 'between individuals, and just as courts of justice and equity have been, set up to determine issues between individuals, so it is proper and logical that provision should be made for like adjudication on those differences between nations and peoples, which may properly be committed to such determination. I look upon the establishment of the Court of International Justice, with the jurisdiction that has been given to it, as one of the greatest advances which world society has made toward- a condition in whicli,- at last the rule of law may -be substituted for the rule of force."

Referring to the Court the President says "it looks to the settlement of issues before they become dangerously acute. It contemplates the elimination of the causes of conflict and war. Feeling thus, I cannot but believe our own country should be amon£ the most devoted adherents to such a programme."