[Footnote 8: See Fried, "Das internationale Leben der Gegenwart" (1908), where the innumerable interests are grouped and discussed which knit the civilised world together.]
The manifold interests which knit all the civilised States together and create a constant intercourse between one another, have long since brought about the necessity that these States should have one or more official representatives living abroad. Thus we find everywhere foreign envoys and consuls. They are the agents who make possible the current stream of transactions between the Governments of the different States. A number of International Offices, International Bureaux, International Commissions have been permanently appointed for the administration of international business, a permanent Court of Arbitration has been, and an International Prize Court will soon be, established at the Hague. And from time to time special international conferences and congresses of delegates of the different States are convoked for discussing and settling matters international. Though the individual States are sovereign and independent of each other, though there is no international Government above the national ones, though there is no central political authority to which the different States are subjected, yet there is something mightier than all the powerful separating factors: namely, the common interests. And these common interests and the necessary intercourse which serves these interests, unite the separate States into an indivisible community. For many hundreds of years this community has been called "Family of Nations" or "Society of Nations."
[Sidenote: The "Family of Nations" a Community with Rules of Conduct.]
§ 8. Thus the first essential condition for the existence of law is a reality. The single States make altogether a body of States, a community of individual States. But the second condition cannot be denied either. For hundreds of years more and more rules have grown up for the conduct of the States between each other. These rules are to a great extent customary rules. But side by side with these customary and unwritten rules more and more written rules are daily created by international agreements, such as the Declaration of Paris of 1856, the Hague Rules concerning land warfare of 1899 and 1907, and the like. The so-called Law of Nations is nothing else than a body of customary and conventional rules regulating the conduct of the individual States with each other. Just as out of tribal communities which were in no way connected with each other arose the State, so the Family of Nations arose out of the different States which were in no way connected with each other. But whereas the State is a settled institution, firmly established and completely organised, the Family of Nations is still in the beginning of its development. A settled institution and firmly established it certainly is, but it entirely lacks at present any organisation whatever. Such an organisation is, however, gradually growing into existence before our eyes. The permanent Court of Arbitration created by the First Hague Peace Conference, and the International Prize Court proposed by the Second Hague Peace Conference, are the first small traces of a future organisation. The next step forward will be that the Hague Peace Conferences will meet automatically within certain periods of time, without being summoned by one of the Powers. A second step forward will be the agreement on the part of the Powers upon fixed rules of procedure for the future Hague Peace Conferences. As soon as these two steps forward are really made, the nucleus of an organisation of the Family of Nations will be in existence, and out of this nucleus will grow in time a more powerful organisation, the ultimate characteristic features of which cannot at present be foreseen.[9]