ABSTRACT
The machinery of international order can be effective, then, only to the extent that great powers would rather sacrifice their interests than fight about them. The immediate need is for a system which can settle a dispute by exploring the balance of interests and powers, to find a solution which the powerful states are prepared to back. It will not necessarily be a just solution. If one of the great powers has an interest in a state's friendship, that state will fare better than another which is of interest to none of them. Under present conditions, international organization can aim at conciliation; failing that, it can seek to contain a dispute, to prevent it spreading into a major war; it can seek to end minor hostilities once they have begun. But it can hardly aspire to justice, where every member of the jury is an interested party, and does not hestitate to behave like one. There are some tribes where disputes are settled according to the number of kinsmen each of the litigants can muster to testify under oath on his behalf. That system shares with the United Nations Organization the virtue that it gives peacefully the decision for which the stronger party might otherwise be ready to fight. What is important in both cases is not that the system often works unjustly, but that it works at all. For the alternative in each case might be war.
