PROFESSOR FISHER OF YALE SEEKS TO INTEREST ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS IN WORLD COURT PLAN WHICH MANY ALREADY SUPPORT

Calling for the entry of the United States into the World Court, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale, in an article in the Yale News, declares that America must "back up the President," and that college students can be of great aid in furthering this cause.

Professor Fisher, who is one of the leading political economists of the country, has gained fame in recent years as one of the foremost advocates of the League of Nations. In the article below, however, he makes it clear that America's entry into the World Court would not involve this Government with the League.

The Crimson reprints Professor Fisher's article because of its significance at this time, when the intercollegiate movement for American participation is just getting underway.

The political disputes over the World Court and the League of Nations have so confused the issue by discussion of details that the fundamental reasons why America should join have been too often overlooked.

Let us, then, go back to first principles. I believe that anyone who would forget the bitter political discussions and would devote an hour's honest thought to the subject would see that if America is to do anything to co-operate with other nations for world peace the least we can do is to join the Court. There is much more we can do, but we can scarcely do anything less and participate at all in the world-wide effort to prevent war.

Not Impossible to Abolish War

That ancient institution which we call a Court is really the supreme and basic invention of all civilization. It is the only device which has been found to work to prevent war when quarrels became acute. Without it, civilization itself would soon disappear; in fact, it could never have existed. It is the Court which everywhere has kept peace and this has been true in ever-widening circles. Even our humblest Court is that of the "Justice of the Peace".

When people talk loosely, as they so often do, about its being impossible to abolish war, they are flying in the face of history. They overlook the fact that we have already, in spots, abolished war. We have abolished war, in fact, wherever we have applied the proper remedy, that is, wherever we have instituted a strong court. We have abolished war between individuals, families, cities, states, and now are abolishing it between nations.

Before the institution of the Court was devised even individuals settled their disputes as Cain and Abel settled theirs. When a dispute becomes acute and can not be settled diplomatically, there remain just two ways of settling it. One is to fight it out, in which case the stronger man wins irrespective of the justice of his case. The other is to referee it, that is, to put it into the hands of a disinterested third party who is not so excited or prejudiced and who is more likely to make a just decision. That is the fundamental idea of a Court.

This is a very simple invention and a very old one and the fact that it has become so universal demonstrates that at heart man loves peace rather than war, that he prefers to let a judge decide rather than to resort to fighting.

The first Court was the patriarch, who kept the peace within the family. The family was the first "peace group". But to keep peace within the family was not enough. As population grew and families crowded each other it was necessary to keep peace between the families in order that clusters of families might live together in a community or village. The justice of peace, or his equivalent in ancient civilization was the second step in the institution of Courts.

Hour for World Court Arrives

But it was not enough to keep the peace within a village. Inter-village war was still possible, and in primitive regions, such as the Philippines before the United States entered, there was no peaceful method of settling disputes between villages. The next step was to cluster the villages into a state, as Massachusetts grew from its town meetings, and to institute State Courts to keep the peace between communities. The next step was to cluster the States together into a National and to settle the disputes between the States by a Supreme Court. Our Supreme Court has settled eighty-seven such disputes between our States, and without the Supreme Court our States would certainly more than once have been in war. Now the hour has struck for enlarging the peace group one stage further to involve the whole earth by setting up a Court between the nations and clustering the nations into a League.

Court Lacks Only United States

We might almost describe the progress of civilization as consisting in this gradual enlargement of the peace group from the family to the community, to the State, to the Nation, to the World. Only the last step has not yet been fully taken and cannot be, until the United States cooperates. When the step is fully taken, when the whole world is organized for peace, when the World Court is as authoritative as our Supreme Court, we shall have abolished war as an institution wholly and forever. Each previous step of enlarging the peace group has left something outside and, therefore, was incomplete. Occasional war was inevitable. But when the peace group involves the whole earth there is nothing left outside and the only war possible is civil war, which by the nature of the case seldom happens and is outlawed.

Now at last we have a World Court with forty-seven adherents and lacking only the United States to give it full prestige. Let us not talk about creating some substitute Court and let us not pretend that the so-called "Old Hague-Tribunal" is a Court. It is only a list of names on paper! There never was any other World Court than the Court of International Justice at The Hague, and the other nations of the world would never even consider disbanding that Court to please those few United States Senators who talk so absurdly of creating something of their own.

The situation, then, is that a World Court is a fundamental necessity and that there is only one World Court available. Moreover, unless or until America joins the League of Nations, there is no practical way in sight for our joining the World Court except that which was worked out by Secretary Hughes and approved by Presidents Harding and Coolidge as well as supported by the party platforms of both political parties. There is no excuse, therefore, for making a political issue out of the Court, and any man who, like Senator Boran, talks about repudiating the party pledge and

refusing to support President Coolidge is simply an obstructionist and nothing more.

It is utterly impossible for them constructively to give us what we fundamentally need in any other way, but it is possible for Borah and others in the strategic position in the Senate to obstruct and thwart this most fundamental project. There is genuine danger that they will do so unless the practically unanimous approval of the United States becomes sufficiently vocal. I believe the students of our universities, many of whom are already voters and the rest of whom will soon become so, can assert a tremendous influence with the Senate especially by writing personal letters to their own Senators and in other ways bringing to public attention their support of the World Court proposition.

The matter is slated to come before the Senate on December 17, and in order that any individuals influence shall be brought to bear in favor of the Court, it is desirable that the effort should be made in the immediate future