GIBBONS WARNS AGAINST PRECIPITATION IN JOINING INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE

The article of warning printed below, regarding the entrance of the United States into the World Court, was written by Herbert Adams Gibbons, former war correspondent in Europe for the New York Herald and Harper's Magazine, Professor of History and Political Economy, and author of several books on world politics.

The article published by courtesy of the Yale News follows:

Those who are opposed to the proposal that the United States participate immediately and without conditions in the work of the World Court, thus becoming a member state, are accused of being isolationists, of working against world peace, and of being unwilling to substitute law for war. Nothing could be more unfounded and foolish than this accusation. It betrays a tragic lack of objectivity on the part of most of the propagandists for the World Court. They are under the spell of a great idea; to them the World Court issue has become the symbol and test of America's willingness to cooperate with other nations in the effort to diminish the chances of war. Being in this subjective frame of mind they are impatient with those who insist upon examining the World Court proposal without parti pris.

Herein lies the danger. Instead of educating public opinion the World Court propagandists are endeavoring to stampede it. From senate chamber to college mass meeting the World Court issue is being presented as the great choice between following the path toward peace or the path toward war. In the Senate and in public mass meetings, if the World Court is a political issue, as it seems to be, that is all right. In the colleges it is all wrong. College students should be kept free of mass meetings and propaganda on this question. It should remain an academic question--mark the word!

The entry of the United States into the World Court may be a wise thing and it may help the cause of world peace. But only if the American people have first--not afterwards, but first--made definite stipulations governing their participation in the tribunal and have had these stipulations understood and accepted by the other states.

Must be Free from League

We want to be sure that the World Court, although it may have been created as a result of an article in the League Covenant, is not an organ of or dependent in any way upon the League of Nations. We want to be sure that our entry into the World Court will not commit us, even indirectly, to the endorsement of or guaranteeing League policies. This is far more important than it seems on the surface. The European Powers which control the Council of the League of Nations submit to the World Court only questions which they cannot settle themselves or for which they want a wide international "moral underwriting" of the decision. We should be the only Great Power on the bench of the Court which is not a member of the League Council. When our representative is simply a judge helping to render the verdict in accordance with the evidence, or the technicalities of the law, is it not possible to suppose, unless the contrary is clearly understood before we enter the Court, that his vote may be taken to imply the approval or disapproval of the United States in some question that it is to our interest to avoid getting mixed up with?

We want to be sure that membership in the Court cannot be used either (a) to bring this country before the bar of the World Court in the settlement of a question that we do not care to submit to it, or (b) to marshal world-wide public opinion against us in case we have refused to submit a moot question to the Court.

In short, in connection with the World Court as with the League, God give us the wisdom to act in such a manner that the famous question of Moliere need never be asked of the United States: "Pourquoi est-il alle dans cette galere?"