"Our project is eminently practical; it offers three positive and lasting advantages. The permanent court would have the machinery for settling disputes ready in advance. The second advantage is that the very existence of the court composed of the most eminent jurists of the Anglo-Saxon race and invested with the honor and authority of the two greatest nations of the age must powerfully affect the imagination of the people. Here are two advantages which the negative have not been able to deny. With the permanent court you cannot help getting them; without the court you cannot get them at all.
"Now a third advantage is that a court like this could not fail to have a great and beneficial influence upon international law. Temporary courts are not only by their nature incapable of laying down principles but by varying and uncertain decisions may even multiply causes of dispute, but the permanent court is bound to lay down principles.
"The negative say that we are going too far, that a treaty providing for temporary arbitration as occasion may arise is preferable. We admit the advantages of such a system if you compare it with one present precarious condition, but this debate forces you to compare it with a permanent court.
"There is no well-grounded objection which can be brought against a permanent court which cannot equally be brought against a treaty device. And, more than this, it falls short of the positive advantages which a permanent court must give. It is still a promise against a reality, and so long as it is possible for diplomatists to dodge the meaning of treaties, and so long as they can gain by doing so, such a treaty system must remain obviously inferior to a permanent court. To sum it all up in a word, the way to be sure of a court is to have it, and the only way to have it is to provide it in advance."
A. P. Stokes, the third Yale speaker, said: We would argue as a substitute for their plan the proposition of statesmanship; upon this we rest our hopes of greater peace. We can guarantee absolute impartiality in special cases, while they cannot in a permanent court. Our system is perfectly natural. It has grown up with both nations and has settled all cases which could possibly have been settled by permanent courts. Again, diplomacy is the easiest method of settling dispute. The knowledge of the existence of such a court will take away the sense of responsibility from diplomatists. If the affirmative would vindicate their position they must prove that a court is entirely and absolutely practicable.
The real debate was brought out in rebuttal. Steward made a most forcible and effective outline of the case which had been presented by the affirmative. In marked contrast to Steward's speech was the active rebuttal of Baldwin. Sayre spoke rapidly and with great clearness and earnestness. Clark again pursued his method of answering the affirmative by setting over against each other apparently contrary arguments made by the Harvard speakers. Parker was slow, speaking in rather a hoarse voice, but with force. Stokes lost by a monotonous rising inflection, but had good form, and ended with a strong appeal.
After the debate a banquet was given the speakers at the New Haven House at which Thomas Thatcher, Yale '71, of New York, acted as toastmaster.