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Show -121- A suit before the United States Supreme Court, whether between State and States or State and Nation is but a substitute for war and should only be permitted where the emergency is great or where the complaining parties have exhausted all reasonable efforts to adjust their differences by diplomatic methods,, As we have already observed, the States possess all the powers of independent sovereignties not surrendered to the United States by the Constitution, The sovereignty of the United States begins only where the sovereignty of the States end. On matters of dispute, where the diploma- tic method of adjustment is sought^ the high contracting parties proceed upon the basis of their respective sovereignties, each exercising inde- pendent and separate powers and each exclusive within its sphere. If the United States may sue a State or States before the United States Supreme Court the same parties litigant may compromise their difference by com- pact o The independent sovereignties of the parties litigan'b is the funda- mental basis of the right to sue. As said by Mr. Justice Harlan in the United States vs« Texas: "The submission to judicial solution of controversies arising between these two governments, 'each covereign with respect to the o"biects committed to it, and neither sovereign with respect to the GbjOjCvifcSj committed to the other,r McCulloch vs. State of Maryland, k Wheat, 316, 1^00, I4IO, but both subject to the supreme law of the lar>o.% does no violence to the inherent nature of sovereignty." ( U. S. 621, 61+6.) The foregoing controversy grew out of an early dispute over the boundary between the Indian Territory and the State of Texas (lately final- ly settled in Oklahoma vs, Texas-1921). This controversy furnishes a valuable precedent respecting the right of the two independent sovereign- ties--State and Nation-to formulate compacts respecting matters of dis- pute. Prior to the series of suits instituted before the Supreme Court respecting this boundary, first by the United States and subseqbently by the State of Oklahoma, adjustment had been sought through two "joint commissions", duly constituted by the United States and the State of Texas, prior to the admission of the State of Oklahoma. Neither of these commis- sions could agree upon the boundary and finally, after exhausting the peaceable method of settlement, the United States filed original suit be- fore the Supreme Court for the purpose of obtaining a judicial deteniiina- tion of the true boundary. In that suit the position of Texas is thus stated by Justice Harlan: "Texas insists that no such jurisdiction has been conferred upon this court, and the only mode in which the present dispute c«n be peaceably settled is by agreement, in some form, between the United States and that State. Of course, if no such agreement can be re&ched- and it seems that one is not probable-and if neither party will sur- render its claim of authority and jurisdiction over the disputed -ter- ritory, the result, according to the defendant's theory of the Consti- tution, must be that the Unites States, in order to effect a settlement of this vexed question of boundary, must bring its suit in one of the |