CHAPTER III.

SOVEREIGNTY
AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION

"The world is a comedy jor the man who thinks, a

tragedy for the man who feels." Ou) SPANISH PROVERB.

Section I
Sovereignty in the External Order

I T IS generally recognized today that the successive legal concep­

tions of sovereignty are reflections of historical changes in
political power both in its internal organization and in its external
relations. What doctrine is still unwilling to admit is the persistence
in the reality of international life of a conception of sovereignty
which in some respects contradicts the doctrinal conception. Doubt­
less the contrasts have been exaggerated. The politician does not
usually mistake the limits imposed on State action by the existence
of other States. In the ordinary course of things he accepts the
duties and burdens which these limits imply. But the fact remains
that over against the law the State holds in reserve the plea of
sovereignty. A unit of power, it balks at being a mere subject of
law. It proposes not only to define for itself those of its interests
that it holds vital but also to defend them with all the means at its
disposal, including that of armed force, the use of which in the
external order is the negation of the common law of coexistence.
In this political perspective, sovereignty shares the concrete and
eminently contingent character of all political conceptions. In fact
there is often little relation between the measures that it dictates
to Powers of the first magnitude, animated by vast ambitions, and
the attitude that small States take in wholly similar circumstances.
Of course, considerations of prudence, the desire for an economic
superiority that finds in a peaceful climate its best chance of de­
velopment, or the wish not to interrupt a sequence of political
events that is proceeding to their advantage, may moderate the
claims of the great. When moderate in substance, these claims
readily take legal form. But adjustments of this sort, counselled by
convenience, do not alter the political character of sovereignty. At