All which, as the action of your committee, is respectfully submitted to the Association for confirmation, and the committee adjourned until to-morrow evening at 7 o'clock, when other applications can be heard and acted upon. August 20, 1903. E. E. STICKLEY, Chairman. To the Virginia State Bar Association: Your Committee on Admissions have the honor to report further: That, at the first adjourned meeting held this evening, at the Homestead, a quorum being present, the following gentlemen upon applications properly authenticated, were unanimously elected, in addition to the number already reported, members of this Association, viz.: To the Virginia State Bar Association: Your Committeee on Admissions have the honor to report further: That, at the second adjourned meeting, held this evening, at 7 o'clock, at this place, a quorum was found present, upon the call of the roll, and upon their applications duly presented and properly avouched, the following gentlemen were unanimously elected to membership in this Association: 51. Robert B. Tunstall. 52. B. H. Sewell 53. Mayo Cabell 54. E. H. McClintic.. 55. D. Harmon, Jr.. Norfolk Jonesville Big Stone Gap Monterey Charlottesville George W. Peery, member of committee for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, being absent, J. F. Bullitt, Jr., was appointed to act in his place for said circuit. The attention of the Association is called to the fact that the Admissions Committee for the next year, to take effect February 1, 1904, must be appointed so as to conform to the new circuits (24 in number), under the new Constitution. Adjourned till Monday morning for final meeting of this committee, whose powers expire with Monday session. August 22, 1903. E. E. STICKLEY, Chairman. To the Virginia State Bar Association: Your committee met this morning pursuant to adjournment, with quorum present, and there being no further applications for membership, and no other business, they bring their work to an end in stating the sum of the new members to be fifty-five (55) in number, including those elected in vacation. In closing now its several reports for the year just ending, your committee desires to tender its congratulations to the retiring President, our active, energetic and wide-awake Secretary and Treasurer as well, the other officers of the Association, and (in the main) the Association itself, for the able management in the conduct of its affairs and the deep and abiding interest entertained and manifested, the able and useful papers presented in the program, and the excellent work so willingly and cheerfully done during the year that closes with this meeting, showing the largest increase of membership we have had to the knowledge of your committee. In conclusion, your committee congratulates these young men, as well as the elder gentlemen, who have just come in and taken their stand in the ranks of this honored Association, and in giving them a sincere welcome, we bid them aid the Association to increase its usefulness and earnestly to enter into the good work of this great body of Virginia lawyers, to elevate the Bar of the State, uphold the honor of our profession, and help to continually uplift and advance the Association in its noble and honorable career. Committee adjourned sine die. E. E. STICKLEY, August 24, 1903, 10 o'clock A. M. Chairman. The new Committee on Admissions met to-day, with quorum present and organized by the election of E. E. Stickley, of Woodstock, Va., as chairman, and George A. Frick, of Norfolk. Va., as secretary, for the current year. E. E. STICKLEY, August 24, 1903. Chairman. Report of Committee on International Arbitration To the Virginia State Bar Association: The establishment of the Court for the settlement of international disputes, at the Hague, July 29th, 1899, while accepted by many as a move in the right direction, was regarded by others as chimerical, impracticable and as tending to the abandonment of national honor in the interest of servile peace. The appeal to national prowess has not been fruitless at home and abroad in stimulating a false sentiment towards the principle of arbitration and in moulding public opinion to the belief that the martial spirit of a people, essential to their continued freedom, would be sacrificed in its adoption to a maudling sentimentality. Nor have the opponents of this principle maintained, without success in some quarters, that national honor can rest for its safety on no other foundation than that of its own sovereign authority. That the surrender of it to the determination of any other power, however respectable and imposing, is an abandonment of the primal principle upon which the State rests and is sanctioned by no historical precedent in the history of nations. National honor and independence is no less sacred, we maintain, than personal honor; indeed, national honor is but the sum of that of the individuals composing the nation, and, if the individual may safely entrust to another all that is most sacred to him in life, may not the nation itself, composed of individuals, safely follow the same methods. In the consideration of the present development of international arbitration among nations, however, this question is not a practical one. What the future may bring forth in its further development, must be the subject of mere speculation. For up to this time, all questions involving national honor or national self defence, are recognized exceptions to the principle of international arbitration in its present state of development. The struggle for the adoption of peaceful remedies for the solution REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 65 of international disputes on the American continent, has been hopeful though slow, and like those sustaining forces in mechanics, which constantly acquire and never lose what they once gain, is constantly advancing and will never retrograde. Its peaceful legions, composed of representatives of every American country, carrying aloft the banner of peace, march with certain tread to ultimate and complete victory. The history of this struggle has been admirably portrayed by the Honorable John Bassett Moore, in an article in the annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for the month of July, 1903. The past year has witnessed the recognition of the principle of international arbitration, as adopted at the Hague Convention, in two notable cases, which alone are sufficient to refer to as steps in the progress of the principle. The dispute between Venezuela and the continental powers, arising chiefly out of demands of European countries and individuals representing those countries against Venezuela, which were sought to be enforced by the presence of warships in Venezuelan waters, and actual hostilities in some cases, have been, by mutual consent, referred, not to the strength of the war vessels of the contending nations, nor to the force of their balls and shells, but to the impartial judgment of representatives of the nations of the world, accepted and agreed to by the contending powers, as better fitted for determining such controversies. Many questions of international interest are involved in the Venezuela disputes, but it is sufficient for our purpose to call attention merely to the fact that peaceful means, rather than brute force, are recognized as the accepted means of their solution. It is also interesting to note and gratifying to us as Americans, who are entitled to so large a share of praise for the establishment of the Hague Court, that the first international dispute referred to that court, was one in which the United States was a party and its valued neighbor Mexico the other. The controversy between the United States and Mexico, arising out of "the pious fund of the Californias," after the acquisition of California by the United States, has been a source of prolific |