ABSTRACT
In the history of the theory of international law the concept of the state as sovereign has, inevitably, a central place. Since the state is a sovereign organization, it can be bound by no will save its own; and the problem of making rules for an international community the members of which can be bound only as they agree to be bound is a grave one. It is clear that a state which lived in this atmosphere was bound, in the logic of the system, to regard war as the supreme expression of its sovereign power. For the problems of an international system require the subjection of the discretion of each individual state to the common good. That subjection cannot be realized so long as discretion expresses a policy designed to preserve, and even to extend, the claims of vested interests.
