Through the Hague convention of 1899, for the first time by a general treaty, nations in effect agreed that under certain circumstances, at least, they were morally bound, as were ordinary corporations or mere private individuals, to submit the merits of their disputes to impartial examination. The old doctrine that the king, as the representative of Deity, could do no wrong and the newer fiction that national governments were sovereign—beyond the ordinary gauges of right and wrong—and were their own courts of last resort upon the rightfulness of their actions toward other governments, subject only to the arbitrament of war, were measurably impaired, the signatory nations admitting fallibility and agreeing that, composed as they were of an aggregate of individuals, like their component parts they might err, and that the question as to whether they had erred or not could fairly be determined by other human beings, perhaps no wiser, but certainly more impartial than themselves.