PEACE (Lat. pax; Fr. paix; Ger. Friede), the contrary of war, conflict or turmoil, and the condition which follows their cessation. Its sense in international law is the condition of not being at war. The word is also used as an abridgment for a treaty of peace, in such cases as the Peace of Utrecht (1713) and the Peace of Amiens (1802).
Introduction.—Peace until quite recently was merely the political condition which prevailed in the intervals between wars. It was a purely negative condition. Even Grotius, who reduced the tendencies existing in his time to a sort of orderly expression, addressed himself to the law of war as the positive part of international jurisprudence and dealt only with peace as its negative alternative. The very name of his historic treatise, De jure belli ac pacis (1625), shows the subordination of peace to the main subject of war. In our own time peace has attained a higher status. It is now customary among writers on international law to give peace at any rate a volume to itself. Peace in fact has become a separate branch of the subject. The rise of arbitration as a method of settling international difficulties has carried it a step further, and now the Hague Peace Conventions have given pacific methods a standing apart from war, and the preservation of peace has become an object of direct political effort. The methods for ensuring such preservation are now almost as precise as the methods of war. However reluctant some states may be to bind themselves to any rules excluding recourse to brute force when diplomatic negotiations have failed, they have nevertheless unanimously at the Hague Conference of 1907 declared their “firm determination to co-operate in the maintenance of general peace” (la ferme volonté de concourir au maintien de la paix générale)[1], and their resolution “to favour with all their efforts the amicable settlement of international conflicts” (preamble to Peace Convention). The offer of mediation by independent powers is provided for (Peace Convention: art. 3), and it is specifically agreed that in matters of a “legal character” such as “questions of interpretation and application” of international conventions, arbitration is the “most efficacious and at the same time most equitable method” of settling differences which have not been solved by diplomacy (Peace Convention: art. 38). In the final act, the conference went farther in agreeing to the “principle of compulsory arbitration,” declaring that “certain disputes, in particular those relating to the interpretation and application of the provisions of international agreements, are suitable (susceptible) to be submitted to compulsory arbitration without any restriction.”
These declarations were obviously a concession to the widespread feeling, among civilized nations, that peace is an object in itself, an international political condition requiring its code of methods and laws just as much as the domestic political conditions of nations require their codes of methods and laws. In other words peace among nations has now become, or is fast becoming, a positive subject of international regulation, while war is coming, among progressive peoples, to be regarded merely as an accidental disturbance of that harmony and concord among mankind which nations require for the fostering of their domestic welfare.
Though the idea of preserving peace by general international regulation has had several exponents in the course of ages, no deliberate plan has ever yet been carried into effect. Indirectly, however, there have been many agencies which have operated towards this end. The earliest, known to history, is the Amphictyonic Council (q.v.) which grew out of the common worship of the Hellenes. It was not so much a political as a religious body. “If it had any claim,” says Freeman,[2] “to the title of a general council of Greece, it was wholly in the sense in which we speak of general councils in modern Europe. The Amphictyonic Council represented Greece as an ecclesiastical synod represented western Christendom. Its primary business was to regulate the concerns of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The Amphictyonic Council which met at Delphi was only the most famous of several bodies of the same kind.” “It is easy, however,” adds Freeman, “to understand how the religious functions of such a body might assume a political character. Thus the old Amphictyonic oath forbade certain extreme measures of hostility against any city sharing in the common Amphictyonic worship, and it was forbidden to raze any Amphictyonic city or to cut off its water. As the only deliberative body in which most Greek communities were represented, its decisions were those of the bulk of the Hellenic people. It sank eventually into a mere political tool in the hands first of Thebes, and then under Philip of Macedonia.”
The so-called pax romana was merely peace within an empire governed from a central authority, the constituent parts of which were held together by a network of centralized authority.
The feudal system again was a system of offence and defence, and its object was efficiency for war, not the organized regulation of peace. Yet it had elements of federation within the bonds of its hierarchy.
The spiritual influence of the Church again was exerted to preserve relative peace among feudal princes. The “Truce of God” was established by the clergy (originally in Guyenne in 1031) to take advantage of holy days and festivals for the purpose of restricting the time available for bloodshed.
The “grand design” of Henry IV. (France), which some historians regard merely as the fantastic idea of a visionary, was probably a scheme of his great minister Sully to avert by a federation the conflict which he probably foresaw would break out sooner or later between Catholic and Protestant Europe, and which, in fact, broke out some fifteen years later in the Thirty Years’ War.
The Holy Roman Empire itself was in some respects an agent for the preservation of peace among its constituent states. In the same way the federation of Swiss cantons, of the states of the North American Union and of the present German Empire have served as means of reducing the number of possible parties to war, and consequently that of its possible occasions.
Not only the number of possible war-making states but also the territorial area over which war can be made has been reduced in recent times by the creation of neutralized states such as Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Norway, and areas such as the Congo basin, the American lakes and the Suez Canal.
The “balance of power,” which has played in the history of modern Europe such an important part, is inherent in the notion of the independence and stability of states. Just as in Italy the common weal of the different republics which were crowded within the limited area of the peninsula required that no one of them should become so powerful as to threaten the independence of the others, so western Europe had a similar danger to counteract. France, Spain and the Empire were competing with each other in power to the detriment of smaller states. Great Britain and the Netherlands, Prussia and Russia, had interests in the preservation of the status quo, and wars were waged and treaties concluded to adjust the strength of states in the common interest of preventing any one of them from obtaining undue predominance. Then came the break up of what remained of feudal Europe and a readjustment under Napoleon, which left the western world with five fairly balanced homogeneous nations. These now took the place of the old heterogeneous areas, governed by their respective sovereigns without reference to any idea of nationality or of national representation. The leading nations assumed the hegemony of the west, and in more recent times this combination has become known as the “concert of Europe.” This concert of the great powers, as its name implies, in contradistinction to the “balance of power,” was essentially a factor for the preservation of peace. For a century back it has played the part of an upper council in the management of Europe. In all matters affecting the Near East, it considers itself supreme. In matters of general interest it has frequently called conferences to which the minor states have been invited, such as the West African Conference in Berlin in 1885, and the Anti-Slavery Conference at Brussels in 1889-1890, and the Conference of Algeciras in 1906. Meanwhile the concert has admitted among its members first in 1856 Turkey, later in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin the United States, and now undoubtedly Japan will expect to be included as a great power in this controlling body. The essential feature of the concert has been recognition of the advantage to all the great powers of common action in reference to territorial changes in the Near East, of meeting together as a council, in preference to unconcerted negotiation by the powers acting severally.
A departure of more recent origin has been the calling together of the smaller powers for the settlement of matters of general administrative interest, conferences such as those which led to the conclusion of the conventions creating the Postal Union, the Copyright and Industrial Property Unions, &c.
These conferences of all the powers serve in practice as a sort of common council in the community of states, just as the concert of the great powers acts as a kind of senate. We have thus the nucleus of that international parliament which idealist peacemakers have dreamt of since the time of Henry IV.’s “grand design.”
This brings us down to the greatest deliberate effort ever made to secure the peace of the world by a general convention. It was due to the initiative of the young tsar Nicolas II., who, in his famous rescript of the 24th of August 1898, stated that he thought that the then moment was “very favourable for seeking, by means of international discussion, the most effectual means of assuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and durable peace.” “In the course of the last twenty years,” added the rescript, “the preservation of peace had become an object of international policy.” Economic crises, due in great part to the existing system of excessive armaments, were transforming armed peace into a crushing burden, which peoples had more and more difficulty in bearing. He therefore proposed that there should be an international conference for the purpose of focusing the efforts of all states which were “sincerely seeking to make the great idea of universal peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord.” The first conference was held in 1899, and another followed it in 1907: at the earlier one twenty-six powers were represented; at that of 1907 there were forty-four, this time practically the whole world. The conventions drawn up at the second conference were a deliberate codification of many branches of international law. By them a written law has been substituted for that unwritten law which nations had been wont to construe with a latitude more or less corresponding to their power. At the conference of 1899, moreover, a court of arbitration was instituted for the purpose of dealing judicially with such matters in dispute as the powers agreed to submit to it.
In the interval between the two Hague Conferences, Great Britain and France concluded the first treaty applicable to future difficulties, as distinguished from the treaties which had preceded it, treaties which related in all cases to difficulties already existing and confined to them. This treaty made arbitration applicable to all matters not affecting “national honour or vital interests.” Since then a network of similar treaties, adopted by different nations with each other and based on the Anglo-French model, has made reference to the Hague Court of Arbitration practically compulsory for all matters which can be settled by an award of damages or do not affect any vital national interest.
The third Hague Conference is timed to be held in 1917. Meanwhile a conference of the maritime powers was held in London in 1908–1909 for the elaboration of a code of international maritime law in time of war, to be applied in the international Court of Prize, which had been proposed in a convention signed ad referendum at the Hague Conference of 1907.
A further development in the common efforts which have been made by different powers to assure the reign of justice and judicial methods among the states of the world was the proposal of Secretary Knox of the United States to insert in the instrument of ratification of the International Prize Court Convention (adopted at the Hague in 1897) a clause stating that the International Prize Court shall be invested with the duties and functions of a court of arbitral justice, such as recommended by the first Voeu of the Final Act of the conference. The object of this proposal was to give effect to the idea that the existing “permanent” court lacked the essential characteristics of national courts of justice in not being ready at all times to hear cases, and in needing to be specially constituted for every case submitted to it. The new court would be permanently in session at the Hague, the full panel of judges to assemble in ordinary or extraordinary session once a year.
Thus, while armaments are increasing, and wars are being fought out in the press and in public discussion, the great powers are steadily working out a system of written law and establishing a judiciary to adjust their differences in accordance with it.[3]
The Current Grouping of Mankind and Nation-making.—In the consolidation of peace one of the most important factors is unquestionably the grouping of mankind in accordance with the final territorial and racial limitations of their apparent destiny. Language has played a vital part in the formation of Germany and Italy. The language question still disturbs the tranquillity of the Near East. The Hungarian government is regarded by the Slav, Ruman and German inhabitants of the monarchy as an oppressor for endeavouring to force everybody within the realm to learn the Magyar language. The “Young Turkish” government has problems to face which will be equally difficult, if it insists on endeavouring to institute centralized government in Turkey on the French model.
Whereas during the 19th century states were being cut out to suit the existing distribution of language, in the 20th the tendency seems to be to avoid further rearrangement of boundaries, and to complete the homogeneity, thus far attained, by the artificial method of forcing reluctant populations to adopt the language of the predominant or governing race. In the United States this artificial method has become a necessity, to prevent the upgrowth of alien communities, which might at some later date cause domestic trouble of a perilous character. For example, when a community of French Canadians, discontented with British rule, many years ago migrated and settled in Massachusetts, they found none of the tolerance they had been enjoying in Canada for their French schools and the French language they wished to preserve. In Alsace-Lorraine German-speaking immigrants are gradually displacing, under government encouragement, the French-speaking population. Poland is another case of the difficulty of managing a population which speaks a language not that of the governing majority, and Russia, in trying to solve one problem by absorbing Finland into the national system, is burdening herself with another which may work out in centuries of unrest, if not in domestic violence. Not very long ago Pan-Germans were paying much attention to the German settlers in the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, where large villages spoke nothing but German, and German, as the only language known on the spot, had become the tongue in which municipal business was transacted. The Brazilian government, in view of the danger to which such a state of things might give rise, followed the example of the United States in dealing with the language question.
Thus while in the one case homogeneity of language within state boundaries seems to be one of the conditions making for peace, the avoidance of interference with a well-marked homogeneous area like Finland would seem to contribute equally to the same end.
Meanwhile the difficulties in the way of contemporary nation-making are fostered by many extraneous influences, as well as by dogged resistance of the races in question. Not the least important of these influences is the sentimental sympathy felt for those who are supposed to be deprived of the use of their mother-tongue, and who are subjected to the hardship of learning an alien one. The hardship inflicted on those who have to learn a second language is very easily exaggerated, though it is to be regretted that in the case of Hungary the second language is not .one more useful for international purposes.
Contemporary Statecraft.—Nation-making has hitherto been more or less unconscious the outcome of necessity, a natural growth due to the play of circumstance and events. But in our own age conscious statecraft is also at work, as in Canada, where the genius of statesmen is gradually endowing that dominion with all the attributes of independence and power. Australia has not learnt the lesson of Canada in vain. Whatever value may attach to the consolidation of the British Empire itself as a factor in spreading the peace which reigns within it, it is also a great contribution to the peace of the world that the British race should have founded practically independent states like the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the South African Union and the Dominion of New Zealand. These self-governing colonies with their spheres of influence, with vast areas still unpeopled, have a future before them which is dissociated from the methods of an over-peopled Europe, and among them the preservation of peace is the direct object and condition of their progressive development. Like the United States, they have or will have their Monroe doctrine. Colonized by the steady industrial peoples of northern Europe, there is no danger of the turbulence of the industrially indolent but more passionate peoples of Central and South America. As in Europe, these northern peoples will hold the power which intelligent democracies are consciously absorbing, and the British faculty for statecraft is gradually welding new nations on the British model, without the obsolete traditions and without that human sediment which too frequently chokes the currents of national vitality in the older communities of Europe.
Militarism.—It is often stated, as if it were incontrovertible, that conscription and large standing armies are a menace to peace, and yet, although throughout the civilized world, except in the British Empire and the United States, conscription is the system employed for the recruiting of the national forces of both defence and offence, few of these countries show any particular disposition to make war. The exceptional position of the United States, with a population about equal to that of the rest of the American continent, and of Great Britain, an island state but little exposed to military invasion, places both beyond absolute need of large standing armies, and renders an enlisting system feasible which would be quite inadequate for the recruitment of armies on the French or German scale. Democratic progress on the Continent has, however, absorbed conscription as a feature in the equalization of the citizen’s rights and liabilities. Just as in Anglo-Saxon lands a national ideal is gradually materializing in the principle of the equalization of chances for all citizens, so in continental Europe, along with this equalization of chances, has still more rapidly developed the ideal of an equalization of obligations, which in turn leads to the claim for an enlargement of political rights co-extensive with the obligations. Thus universal conscription and universal suffrage tend to become in continental political development complementary conditions of the citizen’s political being. In Germany, moreover, the military service is designed not only to make the recruit a good soldier, but also to give him a healthy physical, moral and mental training. German statesmen, under the powerful stimulus of the emperor William II., have, in the eyes of some critics, carried this secondary object of conscript training to such excess as to be detrimental to military efficiency. To put it shortly, the Germans have taught their soldiers to think, and not merely to obey. The French, who naturally looked to German methods for inspiration, have come to apply them more particularly in the development of their cavalry and artillery, especially in that of the former, which has taken in the French army an ever higher place as its observing and thinking organ.
Militarism on the Continent has thus become allied with the very factors which made for the reign of reason. No agitation for the development of national defences, no beating of drums to awaken the military spirit, no anti-foreign clamour or invasion panic, no parading of uniforms and futile clash of arms, are necessary to entice the groundling and the bumpkin into the service. In Germany patriotic waving of the flag, as a political method, is directed more especially to the strengthening of imperial, as distinguished from local, patriotism. Where conscription has existed for any appreciable time it has sunk into the national economy, and men do their military service with as little concern as if it were a civil apprenticeship.
As implied above, military training under conscription does not by any means necessarily tend to the promotion of the military spirit. In France, so far from taking this direction, it has resulted, under democratic government and universal suffrage, in a widespread abhorrence of war, and, in fact, has converted the French people from being the most militant into being the most pacific nation in Europe. The fact that every family throughout the land is a contributory to the military forces of the country has made peace a family, and hence a national, ideal. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the logical conclusion of such comparisons that militarism only exists in countries where there are no citizen armies, and that, where there are citizen armies, they are one of the elements which make for permanent peace.
Normal Nature of Peace. — America has been the pioneer of the view that peace is the normal condition of mankind, and that, when the causes of war are eliminated, war ceases to have a raison d’être. The objects and causes of war are of many kinds. War for fighting’s sake, although in the popular mind there may be, during most wars, only the excitement and the emotion of a great gamble, has no conscious place among the motives of those who determine the destinies of peoples. Apart, however, from self-defence, the main causes of war are four: (1) The desire for territorial expansion, due to the overgrowth of population, and insufficiency of the available food-supply; if the necessary territory cannot be obtained by negotiation, conquest becomes the only alternative to emigration to foreign lands. (2) The prompting of national ambition or a desire to wipe out the record of a humiliating defeat. (3) Ambitious potentates again may seek to deflect popular tendencies into channels more satisfactory for their dynasty. (4) Nations, on the other hand, may grow jealous of each other’s commercial success or material power. In many cases the apparent cause may be of a nobler character, but historians have seldom been content to accept the allegations of those who have claimed to carry on war from disinterested motives.
On the American continent South and Central American states have had many wars, and the disastrous effects of them not only in retarding their own development, but in impairing their national credit, have led to earnest endeavours on the part of their leading statesmen to arrive at such an understanding as will banish from their international polity all excuses for resorting to armed conflicts. In 1881 Mr Blaine, then U.S. secretary of state, addressed an instruction to the ministers of the United States of America accredited to the various Central and South American nations, directing them to invite the governments of these countries to participate in a congress, to be held at Washington in 1882, “for the purpose of considering and discussing the methods of preventing war between the nations of America.” Owing to different circumstances the conference was delayed till the autumn of 1889. At this conference a plan of arbitration was drawn up, under which arbitration was made obligatory in all controversies whatever their origin, with the single exception that it should not apply where, in the judgment of any one of the nations involved in the controversy, its national independence was imperilled, and even in this case arbitration, though optional for the nation so judging, was to be obligatory for the adversary power. At the second International Conference of American States, which sat in the city of Mexico from the 22nd of October 1901 to the 31st of January 1902, the same subject was again discussed, and a scheme was finally adopted as a compromise which conferred authority on the government of Mexico to ascertain the views of the different governments represented in the conference, regarding the most advanced form in which a general arbitration convention could be drawn up that would meet with the approval and secure ratification by all the countries represented, and afterwards to prepare a plan for such a general treaty. The third Pan-American Conference was held in the months of July and August 1906, and was attended by the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Salvador and Uruguay. Only Haiti and Venezuela were absent. The conference, being held only a year before the time fixed for the second Hague Conference, applied itself mainly to the question of the extent to which force might be used for the collection of pecuniary claims against defaulting governments, and the forwarding of the principle of arbitration under the Hague Conventions. The possible causes of war on the American continent had meanwhile been considerably reduced. Different states had adjusted their frontiers, Great Britain in British Guiana had settled an outstanding question with Venezuela, France in French Guiana another with Brazil, Great Britain in Newfoundland had removed time-honoured grievances with France, Great Britain in Canada others with the United States of America, and now the most difficult kind of international questions which can arise, so far as the American continent is concerned, have been removed from among existing dangers to peace. Among the Southern Republics Argentina and Chile concluded in 1902 a treaty of arbitration, for the settlement of all difficulties without distinction, combined with a disarmament agreement of the same date, to which more ample reference will be made hereafter. Thus in America progress is being rapidly made towards the realization of the idea that war can be superannuated by elimination of its causes and the development of positive methods for the preservation of peace (see Pan-American Conferences).
With the American precedent to inspire him, the emperor Nicolas II. of Russia in 1898 issued his invitation to the powers to hold a similar conference of European states, with a more or less similar object. In 1899 twenty-six states met at the Hague and began the work, which was continued at the second conference in 1907, and furthered by the Maritime Conference of London of 1908–1909. The creation of the Hague Court and of a code of law to be applied by it have further eliminated causes of difference.
These efforts in the two hemispheres are based on the idea that international differences can be adjusted without war, where the parties are honestly aggrieved. With this adjustment of existing cases the number of possible pretexts for the employment of force is being rapidly diminished.
Peace Procedure under the Hague Conventions.—The Hague Peace Convention of 1907, which re-enacts the essential parts of the earlier one of 1899, sets out five ways of adjusting international conflicts without recourse to war. Firstly, the signatory powers have undertaken to use their best efforts to ensure the pacific settlement of international difficulties. This is a general declaration of intention to lend themselves to the peaceable adjustment of difficulties and employ their diplomacy to this end. Secondly, in case of serious disagreement, diplomacy having failed, they agree to have recourse, as far as circumstances allow, to the good offices or mediation of one or more friendly powers. Thirdly, the signatory powers agree that it shall not be regarded as an unfriendly act if one or more powers, strangers to the dispute, on their own initiative offer their good offices or mediation to the states in disagreement, or even during hostilities, if war has already broken out. Fourthly, the convention recommends that in disputes of an international nature, involving neither national honour nor vital interests, and arising from a difference of opinion on points of fact, the parties who have not been able to come to an agreement by means of diplomacy should institute an international commission of inquiry to facilitate a solution of these disputes by an investigation of the facts. Lastly, the high contracting parties have agreed that in questions of a legal nature, and especially in interpretation or application of international conventions, arbitration is recognized as the most effective, and at the same time the most equitable, means of settling disputes which diplomacy has failed to adjust.
Down to 1910 no suggestion of mediation had actually been carried out, but a number of cases of arbitration had been tried by the Hague Court, created by the Hague Peace Convention (see Arbitration, International), and one case, viz. that of the Dogger Bank incident, was submitted to a commission of inquiry, which sat in January 1905.[4]
If Secretary Knox’s proposal (see supra) to convert the International Prize Court into a permanently sitting court of arbitration is adopted, a detailed procedure and jurisprudence will no doubt grow out of a continuity which is lacking in the present system, under which the court is recruited from a large panel for each special case. Secretary Knox’s idea, as expressed in the identical circular note addressed by him on the 18th of October 1909 to the powers, was to invest the International Prize Court, proposed to be established by the convention of the 18th of October 1907, with the functions of a “court of arbitral justice.” The court contemplated by the convention was a court of appeal for reviewing prize decisions of national courts both as to facts and as to the law applied, and, in the exercise of its judicial discretion, not only to confirm in whole or in part the national decision or the contrary, but also to certify its judgment to the national court for enforcement thereof. The adoption of this jurisdiction would have involved a revision of the judicial systems of probably every country accepting it. The United States government therefore proposed that the signatories should insert in the act of ratification a reservation to the effect that resort to the International Prize Court, in respect of decisions of their national tribunals, should take the form of a direct claim for compensation. This in any case would remove the United States’ constitutional objection to the establishment of the proposed court. In connexion with this enabling clause Mr Secretary Knox also proposed that a further enabling clause be inserted providing that the International Court of Prize be competent to accept jurisdiction in all matters, arising between signatories, submitted to it, the Court to sit at fixed periods every year and to be composed according to the panel which was drawn up at the Hague. This court, which the American government proposed to call a “Court of Arbitral Justice,” would take the place of that which it was proposed to institute under Vœu No. 1 of the Final Act of the conference of 1907. The intention of the Hague draft annexed to the Vœu was to create a permanent court as distinguished from that established in 1899, which, though called permanent, was not so, having to be put together ad hoc as the occasion arose. The new court, if adopted, would hold regular and continuous sessions, consist of the same judges, and pay due heed to the precedents created by its prior decisions. The two courts would have separate spheres of activity, and litigants would practically have the option of submitting their differences to a judicial court which would regard itself as being bound by the letter of the law and by judicial methods or to a special court created ad hoc with a purely arbitrative character.
The Place of Diplomacy.—The utility of the diplomatic service has been considerably diminished through the increasing efficiency of the public press as a medium of information. It is not too much to say that at the present day an experienced journalist, in a place like Vienna or Berlin, can give more information to an ambassador than the ambassador can give to him. It is even true to say that an ambassador is practically debarred from coming into actual touch with currents of public feeling and the passing influences which, in this age of democracy, determine the course of events in the political life of peoples. The diplomatist has therefore lost one of his chief functions as an informant of the accrediting government. The other chief function of diplomacy is to be the courteous medium of conveying messages from one government to another. Even this function is losing its significance. The ciphered telegram leaves little discretion to the envoy, and written notes are exchanged which are practically a mere transcription of the deciphered telegram or draft prepared at the instructing foreign office. Nevertheless, the personality of an ambassador can play a great part, if he possesses charm, breadth of understanding and interest in the social, intellectual and industrial life of the country to which he is accredited. There are several instances of such men in Europe and America, but they are so rare that some reformers consider them as hardly justifying the large expenditure necessary to maintain the existing system. On the other hand, the utility of the consular service has concurrently increased. Administrative indifference to the eminently useful officials forming the service has led, in many cases, to diminishing instead of increasing their number and their salaries, but it is obvious that the extension of their duties and a corresponding raising of their status would be much more in accordance with the national interest. The French, with that practical sense which distinguishes so much of their recent administrative work, have connected the two services. A consul-general can be promoted to a diplomatic post, and take with him to his higher office the practical experience a consul gains of the material interests of the country to which he belongs.
There is thus still good work for diplomacy to do, and if, in the selection of diplomatic representatives, states followed on the one hand the above-mentioned French example, and on the other hand the American example of selecting for the heads of diplomatic missions men who are not necessarily de la carrière, diplomacy might obtain a new lease of activity, and become once more an extremely useful part of the administrative machinery by which states maintain good business relations as well as friendly political intercourse with one another.
International Regulation by Treaty.—It seems a truism to say that among the agencies which most effectively tend to the preservation of peace are treaties which regulate the relations of states in their intercourse with other states. Such treaties, however, are of quite recent origin. The first of a character was the general act adopted at the South African Conference at Berlin in 1885, which laid down the principle, which has since become of still wider application, that “any Power which henceforth takes possession of a tract of land on the coast of the African continent outside of its present possessions or which, being hitherto without such possessions, shall acquire them . . . shall accompany the act relating to it with a notification thereof, addressed to the other Signatory Powers of the present act, in order to enable them, if need be, to make good any claims of their own,” and, furthermore, that “the Signatory Powers of the present act recognize the obligation to ensure the establishment of authority in the regions occupied by them on the coasts of the African continent sufficient to protect existing rights, and, as the case may be, freedom of trade and transit under the conditions agreed upon.” Under these articles occupation of unoccupied territory to be legal had to be effective. This led to the creation and determination of spheres of influence. By fixing the areas of these spheres of influence rival states in western and central Africa avoided conflicts and preserved their rights until they were able to take a more effective part in their development. The idea of “spheres of influence” has in turn been applied even to more settled and civilized countries, such as China and Persia.
Other cases of regulation by treaty are certain contractual engagements which have been entered into by states for the preservation of the status quo of other states and territories.
The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of the 12th of August 1905 sets out its objects as follows:—
a. “The consolidation and maintenance of the general peace in the regions of Eastern Asia and India;
b. “The preservation of the common interests of the Powers in China, of insuring the independence and the integrity of the Chinese empire, and the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations in China;
c. “The maintenance of the territorial rights of the high contracting parties in the regions of Eastern Asia and of India, and the defence of their special interests in such regions.”
It is a treaty for the maintenance of the status quo in certain parts of Asia in which the parties to it have dominant interests. The same principle underlies different other self-denying arrangements and declarations made by the powers with reference to Chinese integrity.
The Treaty of Algeciras is essentially a generalization of the Franco-German agreement of the 28th of September 1905. By it all the powers represented agree to respect the territorial integrity of Morocco, subject to a possible intervention limited to the purpose of preserving order within it.
Differing from these general acts in not being contractual is the Monroe doctrine, which is a policy of ensuring the maintenance of the territorial status quo as regards non-American powers throughout the American continent. If necessary, the leading republics of South and Central America would no doubt, however, further ensure respect for it by treaty.
With these precedents and current instances of tendency to place the territorial relations of the powers on a permanent footing of respect for the existing status quo, it seems possible to go beyond the mere enunciation of principles, and to take a step towards their practical realization, by agreeing to respect the territorial status quo throughout still larger tracts of the world, neutralize them, and thus place them outside the area of possible wars.
A third contractual method of avoiding conflicts of interest has been the signing of agreements for the maintenance of the “open-door.” The discussion on the question of the “open-door” in connexion with the Morocco difficulty was useful in calling general public attention once more to the undesirability of allowing any single power to exclude other nations from trading on territory over which it may be called to exercise a protectorate, especially if equality of treatment of foreign trade had been practised by the authority ruling over the territory in question before its practical annexation under the name of protectorate. The habitable parts of the world are a limited area, exclusion from any of which is a diminution the available markets of the nations excluded. Every power, is, therefore, rightfully interested in the prevention of such exclusion.
The United States government in 1899 called attention to the subject as regards China, without, however, going into any question of principle. It thought that danger of international irritation might be removed by each power making a declaration respecting the “sphere of interest” in China to which it laid claim. Lord Salisbury informed Mr Choate that H.M. government were prepared to make a declaration in the sense desired. All the powers concerned eventually subscribed to the declaration proposed by the United States government.
The principle of the “open-door” in fact has already been consistently applied in connexion with certain non-European areas. As these areas are practically the only areas which of late years have come within the scope of European regulation, the time seems to be approaching when the principle may be declared to be of general application. From the point of view of diminishing the possible causes of conflict among nations, the adoption of this principle as one of international contractual obligation would be of great utility. While putting an end to the injustice of exclusion, it would obviously reduce the danger of nations seeking colonial aggrandizement with a view to imposing exclusion, and thus one of the chief temptations to colonial adventure would be eliminated.
In the fourth place, there is the self-denying ordinance against employment of arms for the enforcement of contractual obligations adopted at the Hague Conference of 1907. Under it the high contracting powers have agreed not to have recourse to armed force for the recovery of contractual debts claimed from the government of one country by the government of another country as due to its subjects. The only qualification admitted under the new convention is that it shall not apply when the debtor-state refuses or leaves unanswered an offer of arbitration, or in case of acceptance renders the settlement of the terms of arbitration impossible, or, after arbitration, fails to comply with the award. The theory on which this convention is based is known as the Drago theory, having taken a practical form during the administration of Dr L. M. Drago, when he filled the post of Argentine minister of foreign affairs. The doctrine, however, is not new, having already been enunciated a century before by Alexander Hamilton and reiterated since then by several American statesmen, such as Albert Gallatin, William L. Marcy and F. T. Frelinghuysen, as the view prevailing at Washington during their respective periods of office.
Limitations of Disarmament.—Disarmament, or to speak more correctly, the contractual limitation of armaments, has become, of late years, as much an economic as a humanitarian peace-securing object.
“The maintenance of universal peace and a possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations, represent, in the present condition of affairs all over the world, the ideal towards which the efforts of all governments should be directed,” were the opening words of the Note which the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Mouraviev, handed to the diplomatic representatives of the different powers suggesting the first Hague Conference.
“The ever-increasing financial burdens,” the Note went on, “strike at the root of public prosperity. The physical and intellectual forces of the people, labour and capital, are diverted for the greater part from their natural application and wasted unproductively. Hundreds of millions are spent in acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which are regarded to-day as the latest inventions of science, but are destined to-morrow to be rendered obsolete by some new discovery. National culture, economic progress and the production of wealth are either paralysed or developed in a wrong direction. Therefore the more the armaments of each power increase the less they answer to the objects aimed at by the governments. Economic disturbances are caused in great measure by this system of excessive armaments; and the constant danger involved in this accumulation of war material renders the armed peace of to-day a crushing burden more and more difficult for nations to bear. It consequently seems evident that if this situation be prolonged it will inevitably result in the very disaster it is sought to avoid, and the thought of the horrors of which makes every humane mind shudder. It is the supreme duty, therefore, of all states to place some limit on these increasing armaments, and find some means of averting the calamities which threaten the whole world.”
A further Note submitting the programme proposed gave more precision to this item, which thereupon took the following form: “An understanding not to increase for a fixed period the present effectives of the armed military and naval forces, and at the same time not to increase the budgets pertaining thereto; and a preliminary examination of the means by which even a reduction might be effected in future in the forces and budgets above mentioned.”
When the subject came on for discussion at the conference the German military delegate stated his view that the question of effectives could not be discussed by itself, as there were many others to which it was in some measure subordinated, such, for instance, as the length of service, the number of cadres whether existing in peace or made ready for war, the amount of training received by reserves, the situation of the country itself, its railway system, and the number and position of its fortresses. In a modern army all these questions went together, and national defence included them all. In Germany, moreover, the military system “did not provide for fixed numbers annually, but increased the numbers each year.”
After many expressions of regret at finding no method of giving effect to the. proposal, the commission confined itself to recording its opinion that “a further examination of the question by the Powers would prove a great benefit to humanity.”
The Conference, however, were unanimous in the adoption of the following resolution:—
“The Conference is of opinion that the restriction of military budgets, which are at present a heavy burden on the world, is extremely desirable for the increase of the material and moral welfare of mankind;”
and it passed also the following vœu:
“That governments, taking into account the proposals made at the Conference, should examine the possibility of an understanding concerning the limitation of military and naval armaments, and of war budgets.”
The general public, more particularly in Great Britain and France, shows an ever-increasing distrust of the rapid growth of armaments as a possible cause of grave economic troubles. A high state of military preparedness of any one state obliges all the others to endeavour to be prepared on the same level. This process of emulation, very appropriately called by the late Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman “a policy of huge armaments,” unfortunately is a policy from which it is impossible for any country to extricate itself without the co-operation, direct or indirect, of other nations.
The subject was brought forward in view of the second Hague Conference in both the French and Italian parliaments.
The declaration of the French government stated that:—
“France hoped that other nations would grow, as she had done, more and more attached to solutions of international difficulties based upon the respect of justice, and she trusted that the progress of universal opinion in this direction would enable nations to regard the lessening of the present military budgets, declared by the states represented at the Hague to be greatly desirable for the benefit of the material and moral state of humanity, as a practical possibility.” (Chamber of Deputies, June 12, 1906.)
In the Italian Chamber of Deputies, an interpellation was addressed to the minister of foreign affairs about the same time asking “whether the Government had knowledge of the motion approved by the British House of Commons, and of the undertaking of the British government that, in the programme of the coming Hague Conference, the question of the reduction of armaments should be inserted, and in what spirit the Italian government had taken or proposed to take the propositions of the British government, and what instructions it would give to the Italian representatives at the conference.”
The minister of foreign affairs, M Tittoni, in reply expressed the adhesion of the Italian government to the humanitarian ideas which had met with such enthusiasm in the historic House of Parliament at Westminster. “I have always believed,” he said, “that, as far as we are concerned, it would be a national crime to weaken our own armaments while we are surrounded by strongly armed European nations who look upon the improvement of armaments as a guarantee of peace. Nevertheless, I should consider it a crime against humanity not to sincerely co-operate in an initiative having for object a simultaneous reduction of armaments of the great powers. Italian practice has always aimed at the maintenance of peace; therefore, I am happy to be able to say that our delegates at the coming Hague Conference will be instructed to further the English initiative.”
The only existing case of contractual reduction of armaments is that of the Disarmament Agreement of the 28th of May 1902 between the Chilian and Argentine republics, adopted “owing to the initiative and good offices of His Britannic Majesty,” which is as follows:—
Art. I.—In order to remove all cause of fear and distrust between the two countries, the governments of Chile and of the Argentine Republic agree not to take possession of the warships which they are having built, or for the present to make any other acquisitions. The two governments furthermore agree to reduce their respective fleets, according to an arrangement establishing a reasonable proportion between the two fleets. This reduction to be made within one year from the date at which the present agreement shall be ratified.
Art. II.—The two governments respectively promise not to increase their maritime armaments during five years, unless the one who shall wish to increase them shall give the other eighteen months’ notice in advance. This agreement does not include any armaments for the purpose of protecting the shore and ports, and each party will be at liberty to acquire any vessels (maquina flotante) intended for the protection thereof, such as submarines, &c.
Art. III.—The reductions (i.e. ships disposed of) resulting from this agreement will not be parted with to countries having any dispute with either of the two contracting parties.
Art. IV.—In order to facilitate the transfer of the pending orders the two governments agree to increase by two months the time stipulated for the beginning of the construction of the respective ships. They will give instructions accordingly.
An agreement of this kind is obviously more feasible as among states whose navies are small and of comparatively recent origin than among states whose navies are composed of vessels of many and widely different ages. It may be difficult to agree in the latter case on a principle for assessment of the proportionate fighting value of the respective fleets. The break-up or sale of obsolete warships is a diminution of the paper effective of a navy, and their purchase by another state a paper increase of theirs. Even comparatively slight differences in the ages of ships may make great differences in their fighting value. It would be a hard, though probably not insurmountable, task to establish “a reasonable proportion,” such as provided for in Art. II. of the Chile-Argentina Agreement, as between large and old-standing navies like those of Europe.
On the other hand, as regards military power, it seems sometimes forgotten in the discussion of the question of armaments, that the conditions of the present age differ entirely from those of the time of the Napoleonic wars. With conscription a national army corresponds more or less numerically to the proportion of males in the national population. Great Britain, without conscription, has no means of raising troops in any such proportion. Thus, so long as she refrains from adopting conscription, she can only carry on defensive warfare. The object of her navy is therefore necessarily defensive, unless it act in co-operation with a foreign conscript army. As there are practically only three great armies available for the purpose of a war of aggression, the negotiation of contingent arrangements does not seem too remote for achievement by skilful and really well-meaning negotiation. The Hague Conference of 1907, owing to difficulties which occurred in the course of the preliminary negotiations for the conference, did not deal with the subject.
Principle and Capabilities of Neutralization.—Among the different methods which have grown up practically in our own time for the exclusion of war is neutralization. We have been dealing hitherto with the elimination of the causes of war; neutralization is a curtailment of the areas of war and of the factors in warfare, of territory on the one hand and states on the other. The neutralization of territory belonging to states which are not otherwise neutralized includes the neutralization of waterways such as the Suez and Panama canals.
Under the General Act of Berlin of the 26th of February 1885, “in case a power exercising rights of sovereignty or protectorate” in any of the regions forming the basin of the Congo and its affluents, including Lake Tanganyika, and extending away to the Indian Ocean, should be involved in a war, the parties to the General Act bound themselves to lend their good offices in order that the territories belonging to this power be placed during the war “under the rule of neutrality and considered as belonging to a neutral state, the belligerents thenceforth abstaining from extending hostilities to the territories thus neutralized, and from using them as a basis for warlike operations” (art. 2).
Neutralization is not necessarily of general application. Thus two states can agree to neutralize specific territory as between them. For example between Costa Rica and Nicaragua by a treaty of the 15th of April 1858 the parties agreed that “on no account whatever, not even in case of war,” should “any act of hostility be allowed between them in the port of San Juan del Norte nor on the river of that name nor on Lake Nicaragua” (art. 2).[5]
Again, the Straits of Magellan are neutralized as between Argentina and Chile under a treaty of the 23rd of July 1881. Article 5 provides that they are “neutralized for ever and their free navigation is guaranteed to the flags of all nations. To ensure this neutrality and freedom it is agreed that no fortifications or military defences which might interfere therewith shall be erected.”
Luxemburg was declared by the Treaty of London of the 11th of May 1867 (art. 1) to be a perpetually neutral state under the guarantee of Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia. Switzerland, by a declaration confirmed by the Treaty of Vienna, of 1815 (art. 84), likewise enjoys perpetual neutrality. And now Norway has placed herself under a neutral régime of a similar character.
A neutralized state does not mean a state which is forbidden to have fortifications or an army; in this it differs from neutralized territory of a state not otherwise neutralized. Thus Belgium, which is a neutralized state, not only has an army but has fortifications, although by the treaties of 1831 and 1839 she was recognized as a “perpetually neutral state, bound to observe the same neutrality with reference to other states.”
Of waterways, international rivers have been the chief subject of neutralization. It has long been an established principle in the intercourse of nations, that where the navigable parts of a river pass through different countries their navigation is free to all. The rivers Scheldt and Meuse were opened up in this way to riparian states by a decree of the French Convention of the 16th of November 1792. By the treaty of Vienna of the 9th of June 1815, the powers whose territories were separated or traversed by the same navigable river, undertook to regulate by common consent all that regarded its navigation, and for this purpose to name commissioners who should adopt as the bases of their proceedings the principle that the navigation of such rivers along their whole course “from the point where each of them becomes navigable to its mouth, shall be entirely free, and shall not in respect of commerce be prohibited to anyone.” The only case in Europe in which this internationalization of rivers has been maintained is that of the Danube. On the other hand neutralization has made progress in respect of waterways, natural as well as artificial. Thus the Bosporus and Dardanelles under the Treaty of Paris of 1856 and by the Treaty of London 1871 were and remain closed to the passage of foreign armed vessels in time of war, though the Porte may permit their passage in time of peace in certain cases. The Suez and the Panama canals have been permanently neutralized, the former by a convention among the great powers, and the latter by a treaty between Great Britain and the United States.
Alongside this neutralization has grown up a collateral institution, the purpose of which is in some respects similar. We refer to “buffer” zones. “Buffer” zones are of quite recent origin as a political creation,[6] i.e. where their object is to establish upon the territory of two contiguous states a strip or zone on either side of the frontier which the respective states agree to regard as neutral, on which the parties undertake to erect no fortifications, and maintain no armed forces but those necessary to enforce the ordinary respect of government. The word “neutral” does not correctly describe the character of the zone. It is not neutral in the sense of being recognized as such by any third state, and it necessarily ceases to be neutral in case of war between the states concerned. The word “buffer” comes nearest to the object, but even this term implies more than is meant. Between Spain and Morocco a treaty of the 5th of March 1894 established between the Camp of Melilla and Moroccan territory a zone within which no new roads were to be made, no herds to be allowed to graze, no land to be cultivated, no troops of either party, or even private persons carrying arms, to set foot, no inhabitants to dwell, and all habitations to be razed. The zone between Burma and Siam, established by an agreement between Great Britain and France dated the 15th of January 1896, declared “the portion of Siam which is comprised within the drainage basin of the Menam, and of the coast streams of a corresponding longitude,” neutral as between them. Within this area the two powers undertook not to “operate by their military or naval forces, except in so far as they might do so in concert for any purpose requisite for maintaining the independence of Siam.” They also undertook not to acquire within that area any privileges or commercial facilities not extended to both of them.
“Buffer” zones might fulfil a useful purpose even in Europe. They would obviously react against the feeling known as “esprit de frontière,” and diminish the danger of incidents arising out of this feeling, and might attenuate the rivalry of neighbouring counter-armaments.
These considerations no doubt led the Swedish and Norwegian governments, in their settlement of September 1905, to establish a “buffer” zone of 15 kilometres on either side of the frontier between the two states in question. Within these 30 kilometres all existing fortresses are dismantled,[7] no new ones are to be erected, and no armed troops to be maintained; any question between the two states relative to the provisions respecting the “buffer” zone to be decided by arbitration.
A rather special case of neutralization of a territorial area is that of the practical neutralization of the Great Lakes in America. In 1817, at the instance of John Quincy Adams, the United States and Great Britain entered into a compact whereby the Great Lakes, and the waterways from them to the ocean by the St Lawrence river, which divide the United States from the Dominion of Canada, were practically excluded from any possible hostilities. Through a simple agreement, “conditions which make for peace and prosperity, and the absence of those which so often lead to disastrous war, have for nearly a century reigned over these great inland waters, whose commerce, conducted for the benefit of the states and nations of Europe and America, rivals that which passes through the Suez Canal or over the Mediterranean Sea, and with a result foreshadowed in these words of President Monroe in his communication to the Senate commending the proposed agreement: ‘In order to avoid collision and save expense.’ Forts which had been erected at salient points on either side of the lakes and rivers dividing the United States from Canada, which but for this agreement would, in the natural course of events, have been enlarged, increasingly garrisoned, and provided with modern implements of destruction, at large expense, have remained substantially as when the agreement was made, or now constitute but interesting or picturesque ruins; and the great cost of constructing and maintaining, through a long series of years, naval armaments of ever-increasing power has been avoided.”[8]
As we have already said, the Monroe doctrine is a means of excluding European warfare from the American continent and therefore is in the nature of a form of neutralization. A sort of Monroe doctrine is growing into popular favour also throughout the Australian Commonwealth, where it is felt that a continent so far removed from European rivalries ought not to be exposed to complications on account of them.
From time to time questions of adding to existing neutralized areas are raised. When it was announced in 1905 that a British fleet was about to manœuvre in the Baltic Sea, several German newspapers suggested that Germany should combine with other Baltic powers to assure its neutralization.[9] No official observation on the subject, however, was made on the part of any Baltic power. The Baltic is still an open sea for the whole world, without restriction of any kind; and even hostilities between any two non-Baltic powers could be carried on in the Baltic, as elsewhere on the high sea, under the existing practice. When the Dogger Bank incident occurred, the possibility of operations of war being carried on within a few miles of British home ports, and amid the busy traffic of the North Sea, was brought vividly home to British minds.
A movement set on foot at the instance of Edward Atkinson, the well-known Boston economist, and warmly supported by the Massachusetts State Board of Trade, seeks to establish by treaty neutral zones from the ports of North America to the ports of Great Britain and Ireland and the continent of Europe, within which zones steamship and sailing vessels in the conduct of lawful commerce should be free to pass without seizure or interruption in time of war. There is however no precedent of neutralization of any such area of the high sea, and international rivers, ocean canals and neutralized states are obviously no criterion in discussing a proposal to neutralize a strip of the ocean, which may be defined accurately enough on the map and which skilful navigators could approximately determine, but which might be violated without any practical means of detection by a belligerent commander whenever he misread, or it suited him to misread, his bearings.
Connected with the principle of neutralization is that of guaranteeing the integrity of states. Several such guarantees have been given in quite recent times. In November 1907 a treaty was concluded between France, Germany, Great Britain and Russia on the one part and Norway on the other, for the maintenance of the integrity of Norway. This treaty differed from the older one of 1855 in which France and Great Britain guaranteed the integrity of Norway and Sweden, in the fact that whereas the older treaty was for the protection of these two states against Russia, the new treaty is intended, if it is to serve at all as a protection against invasion, to protect Norway against Sweden.
Another such guarantee of a vaguer character is that which the North Sea powers recently entered into for the maintenance of the status quo of their respective North Sea territories; and the similar one entered into by the Mediterranean powers for the same objects in the Mediterranean. Lastly in the same order of ideas Austria-Hungary and Russia are said to have concluded an arrangement between them for the maintenance of the status quo in the Balkans.
The future has no doubt still other extensions of the principle of neutralization in store for us. Not the least interesting of existing possibilities is the limitation of the area of visit and search in time of war itself, as a restriction of belligerent right. It seems contrary to common sense that neutral ships should be exposed to being detained, taken out of their course, and overhauled on mere suspicion of carrying contraband, when they are so far from the seat of war that there can be no presumption as to their destination. Neutrals have a right to carry on their ordinary business unmolested in so far as they do nothing to assist either belligerent. When they are beyond a certain distance from the seat of war it seems reasonable that the presumption that they are merely carrying on their legitimate business should be considered absolute. Such a limitation of the area of hostilities is not only feasible, but it was actually put in practice by the British government during the Boer War.[10]
In the course of the Russo-Japanese War the question came up again, being raised this time by Great Britain. Lord Lansdowne called the attention of the Russian foreign office to the extreme inconvenience to neutral commerce of the Russian search for contraband not only in the proximity of the scene of war, but over all the world, and especially at places at which neutral commerce could be most effectually intercepted. H.M. Government had become aware that a large addition was likely to be made to the number of Russian cruisers employed in this manner, and they had, therefore, to contemplate the possibility that such vessels would shortly be found patrolling the narrow seas which lie on the route from Great Britain to Japan in such a manner as to render it virtually impossible for any neutral vessel to escape their attention. The effect of such interference with neutral trade, he said, would be disastrous to legitimate commerce passing from a British port in the United Kingdom to a British port in the Far East. The British government had no desire to place obstacles in the way of a belligerent desiring to take reasonable precautions in order to prevent the enemy from receiving supplies, but they insisted that the right of taking such precautions did not imply a “consequential right to intercept at any distance from the scene of operations and without proof that the supplies in question were really destined for use of the enemy’s forces, any articles which that belligerent might determine to regard as contraband of war.”
The position thus assumed is not clear. On the one hand the British claim did not, it is seen, go the length of the restriction Great Britain consented to place on her own right of search during the Boer War, seeming to apply only to the case of ships carrying conditional contraband. On the other, the complaint is based on the “interference” with neutral trade, which means the stoppage and search of vessels to ascertain whether they have contraband of any kind on board or not.
It must not be forgotten in this connexion that restriction of the rights of the belligerent necessarily entails extension of the duties of the neutral. The belligerent has an unquestioned right to “interfere” with all neutral vessels navigating in the direction of the seat of war, for the purpose of ascertaining whether they are carrying any kind of contraband or not. Under the Declaration of London of the 26th of February 1909 it is provided under arts. 32 and 35 that a ship’s papers are conclusive proof as to the voyage on which she is engaged unless she is clearly out of the course indicated by her papers and is unable to give adequate reasons to justify her deviation. Thus the interference, if the declaration is ratified, will be confined to an examination of the ship’s papers where the ship is not bound for a belligerent port (cf. art. 30 of the same convention).
Standing Peace Agreements.—Foremost among standing peace agreements are, of course, the International Hague Conventions relating directly to peace, agreements which have not only created a special peace jurisdiction for the settlement of international difficulties by judicial methods but also a written law to apply within the scope of this jurisdiction.
Alongside the Hague Peace Conventions and more or less connected with them are standing treaties of arbitration which have been entered into by different nations for terms of years separately. The first of what may be called a new series was that between Great Britain and France. It has now been followed by over a hundred others forming a network of international relationships which shows that, at any rate, the wish for peace is universal among mankind.[11]
There are, however, a large number of conventions which, although not concluded with the direct object of assuring peace where difficulties have arisen, tend in a very practical manner to contract the area of possible difficulties. These are conventions for the regulation of intercourse between the subjects and citizens of different states. Such conventions obviously remove occasions for friction and are therefore among the most effective agencies contributing to the preservation of peace among civilized peoples. In most cases such conventions have created international unions of states for all matters which lend themselves to international co-operation. The first in order of date was the postal union. The system it inaugurated has now extended its scope to telegraphs, copyright, industrial property, railway traffic, the publication of customs tariffs, metric measures, monetary systems and agriculture. Berne, being the capital of the most central of the neutral European states, is the administrative centre of most of these unions. Customs tariffs and the monetary unions, however, are centralized at Brussels, the weights and measures union in Paris and the agricultural institute at Rome.
The general postal union was created by a convention signed at Berne in 1874. A convention for a similar union for telegraphs was signed in Paris in 1875 (revised at St Petersburg and replaced by another the same year). Both unions issue monthly bulletins and other publications giving useful information about these two services.[12]
The international bureau of weights and measures at Paris was created by a convention signed there in 1875, for the purpose of comparing and verifying weights and measures on the metric system, and preserving their identity for the contracting states.
The double-standard Latin union monetary system was founded by a convention of 1865, between Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland. In 1868 it was joined by Greece. A single standard union exists between Sweden, Norway and Denmark under a convention of 1873.
The copyright union was created by an international convention signed in 1874. The official bureau of the union is at Berne. It issues a periodical publication called Le Droit d’auteur giving information respecting the laws of different states relating to published matter of all kinds.
The term “industrial property” covers patents, trade marks, merchandise marks, trade names, designs and models. The convention dealing with them signed in 1883 created a union with its central office at Berne. It, too, issues a bulletin and other publications which help to prevent misunderstandings.
The railway traffic union was formed by a convention of 1890. The central bureau at Berne issues a monthly bulletin. A subsequent convention was signed at Berne in 1886 relating to matters of technical unification.
Under the convention creating the customs tariffs union, signed in 1890, thirty states, including Great Britain and most British colonies, are associated for the purpose of prompt publication of custom tariffs and their modifications.
The agricultural institute, created by a convention of 1905 with its seat at Rome, as the latest in date is perhaps the most interesting of the series. It shows how deep and widespread the sense of the utility of international state co-operation has become. The convention sets out the scope and objects of the institute, which a recent British official publication states has been joined by 38 states, including Great Britain and all other great powers, as follows:—
Whilst limiting its action to international questions, it shall be the duty of the institute: (a) To collect, elaborate and publish, with as little delay as possible, statistical, technical, or economic information regarding the cultivation of the soil, its productions, whether animal or vegetable, the trade in agricultural products, and the prices obtained on the various markets. (b) To communicate to interested parties, also without delay, full information of the nature above mentioned. (c) To indicate the wages of rural labour. (d) To notify all new diseases of plants which may appear in any part of the world, indicating the districts affected, the spread of the disease, and, if possible, the efficacious means of resistance. (e) To consider questions relating to agricultural co-operation, insurance and credit, in all their forms, collecting and publishing information which may be useful in the various countries for the organization of undertakings relating to agricultural co-operation, insurance and credit. (f) To present, if expedient, to the governments, for their approval, measures for the protection of the common interests of agriculturists and for the improvement of their condition, after having previously taken every means of obtaining the necessary information, e.g. resolutions passed by international congresses or other congresses relating to agriculture or to sciences applied to agriculture, agricultural societies, academies, learned societies, &c.
All questions relating to the economic interests, the legislation and administration of any particular state, must be excluded from the sphere of the institute. (Art. 9).
Lastly, there is a class of difficulties which might arise from preferential treatment of trade from different countries. To obviate them statesmen have been led to adopt the principle of the “most-favoured-nation-clause”—that is to say, a clause providing that if any reductions of tariff or other advantages are granted by either contracting state to any third state, the others shall have the benefit of it. In Europe this clause has been uniformly treated as applying to all reductions of tariff without distinction. The United States interpretation, on the other hand, distinguishes between reductions of a general character and reductions made specifically in return for reductions by some other state. The latter do not come within the operation of the clause, and a co-contracting state is only entitled to obtain extension of them to itself on granting similar concessions. In other words, concessions to any co-contracting state are only allowed gratuitously to a third co-contracting state when nothing has been given for them, the clause not covering advantages granted in return for advantages. It is to be hoped that this special view of the meaning of the clause will be met in the future, as in some recent treaties, by specifically dealing with the exceptions.[13]
The Utility of Popular Effort.—Until quite recently it had been a distinctive mark of practical wisdom to treat private efforts for the improvement of international relations for the preservation of peace, with the patronizing tolerance courteous people of the world extend to half-crazy idealists. Since the opening of the century, an immense change has taken place in the attitude of the leaders of popular opinion towards the advocacy of peace. This new attitude has been contemporary with the greater interest displayed by the mercantile classes of England and the United States in the improvement of their political relations with their neighbours. It may be said to have begun with the visit of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce to Paris in 1900, at a time when France was still smarting from the humiliation of the Fashoda affair, and the Boer War was exciting hostile demonstrations against Great Britain throughout the continent of Europe. That some four hundred British manufacturers and merchants, representing about eighty chambers of commerce of the United Kingdom, should have swept aside all political objections and have boldly trusted to the efficacy of friendly advances as between man and man, appealed to the French people. It seems to have been the first great popular effort ever made deliberately by a representative body of the middle class of a nation for the promotion of international friendship without the aid of diplomacy and without official assistance or even countenance of any kind.
Otherwise, private agencies of a standing character which contribute towards the promotion of peace may be divided into four classes, viz. (1) those which, without having peace for their direct object, promote friendship among men of different races and nationalities; (2) those which directly address themselves to the promoting of friendship and goodwill among peoples; (3) those which regarding peace as the immediate object of their efforts, endeavour to educate democracy in this sense; (4) those which endeavour to remove the causes of international friction by the codification of International law and the promotion of the international regulation of common interests. Lastly, there are two agencies which cannot be classed among the foregoing; one is the International Parliamentary Union and the other the Nobel Prize Committee.
1. Agencies which are indirectly making for peace are of many kinds. Science and medicine now bring men of all nations together in periodical congresses. Technology, electricity, mining, railways, navigation and many other subjects are now dealt with in international congresses. International exhibitions are always used as an occasion for holding many such meetings.
2. One of the most notable efforts directed to the deliberate cementing of friendship has been the interchange of official visits by municipal bodies. In the course of the Anglo-French agitation which culminated in March 1903 with the visit of King Edward to Paris, the French municipal councils passed many resolutions in favour of the entente. After the conclusion of the Anglo-French standing treaty of arbitration (Oct. 14, 1903) and the arrangements for the general settlement of outstanding difficulties with France (April 8, 1904), the municipal bodies in France were prepared to go a step farther, and in 1906 the Municipal Council of Paris was invited by the London County Council to pay an official visit to England. This visit was followed by a return visit to Paris and a similar exchange of visits between the London City Corporation and the Paris Municipal Council, exchange visits of the city corporations of Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh and Lyons, and a visit of the Manchester Corporation to Düsseldorf, Barmen and Cologne. A society, numbering many thousands of working men among its members, which has set itself the more special task of promoting the interchange of visits between working men of different nations, is called the “International Brotherhood Alliance,” or, after the initials of its motto, Fraternitas inter gentes, the F.I.G. Another agency, called the “American Association for International Conciliation,” seeks by the publication of essays on the different aspects of international friendship to promote the same cause.
3. The “peace societies,” which are scattered over the whole world, number several hundreds.[14] Their first International Congress was held in London at the suggestion of Joseph Sturge in 1843. In 1848 a second congress was held at Brussels. The third in 1849 took place in Paris, and was presided over by Victor Hugo. Other congresses were held at Frankfurt, again in London, and in 1853 at Manchester, where Richard Cobden and John Bright took part in the discussions. Then followed an interval of wars during which the Pacifists were unable to raise their voices. At length in 1878 a congress was held at the Paris International Exhibition of that year, but it was not till the next Paris International Exhibition of 1889 that these international peace congresses became periodical. Since then numerous congresses have been held, the seventeenth having sat in London in 1908, and the eighteenth at Stockholm in 1910. These congresses have been supplemented by national congresses in both Great Britain and France. Such congresses are doing admirable work in the popularizing of thought upon the numerous questions which are discussed at the meetings, such as compulsory arbitration, the restriction of armaments, private property at sea in time of war, the position of subject races, airships in war, &c.[15]
4. First among the bodies which try to remove the causes of international friction is the Institute of International Law. This is a body of international lawyers, consisting of sixty members and sixty associates recruited by election the members from those who “have rendered services to international law in the domain of theory or practice,” and associates from those “whose knowledge may be useful to the Institute.” It was formed in 1873, chiefly through the efforts of M. Rolin-Jaequemyns. The official language of the Institute is French, and its annual meetings are held wherever the members at the previous meeting decide to assemble. Its mode of operation is to work out the matters it deals with during the intervals between the sessions, in permanent commissions, among which the whole domain of international law is divided up. The commissions, under the direction of their rapporteurs or conveners, prepare reports and proposals, which are printed and distributed among the members some time before the plenary sittings at which they are to be discussed. If the members are not agreed, the subject is adjourned to another session, and still another, until they do agree. Thus the resolutions of the Institute have the authority attaching to a mature expression of the views of the leading international jurists of Europe. Another body having a more or less similar purpose is the International Law Association, which was founded in 1873 as the “Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations,” with practically the same objects as those which led to the constitution of the Institute of International Law. It also meets in different countries, but it differs from the Institute in the number of its members being unlimited and in all respectable persons being eligible for membership. A report is published after each meeting. There are now numerous volumes of such reports, many of them containing most valuable materials for international jurists. In 1895 the name was changed to International Law Association.
A new society was recently (1906) formed in America called the American Society of International Law, “to foster the study of international law and promote the establishment of international relations on the basis of law and justice.” “Membership in the society is not restricted to lawyers, and any man of good moral character interested in the objects of the society may be admitted to membership.” The publications of this society have already taken an important place among the literature of international law.
Still more recently yet another society came into being in Switzerland with objects which seem to be similar to those of the Institute of International Law.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union, which dates back to 1887, owes its origin to the initiative of the late Sir W. R. Cremer. It is composed of groups of the different parliaments of the world, who meet periodically to “bring about the acceptance in their respective countries, by votes in parliament and by means of arbitration treaties, of the principle that differences between nations should be submitted to arbitration and to consider other questions of international importance.”[16] The sixteenth conference was held at Brussels in August–September, 1910.
The Nobel Committee owes its existence to the will of the late Alfred B. Nobel (1833–1896), the inventor of dynamite, who left a considerable fortune for the encouragement of men who work for the benefit of humanity. The interest of this money was to be divided into five equal parts, to be distributed every year as rewards to the persons who had deserved best of mankind in five departments of human activity. The clauses of the will governing the distribution of these prizes are as follows:—
“The entire sum shall be divided into five equal parts, one to go to the man who shall have made the most important discovery or invention in the domain of physical science; another to the man who shall have made the most important discovery or introduced the greatest improvement in chemistry; the third to the author of the most important discovery in the domain of physiology or medicine; the fourth to the man who shall have produced the most remarkable work of an idealistic nature; and, finally, the fifth to the man who shall have done the most or best work for the fraternity of nations, the suppression or reduction of standing armies, and the formation and propagation of peace congresses. The prizes shall be awarded as follows: For physical science and chemistry, by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; for physiological or medical work, by the Caroline Institution at Stockholm; for literature, by the Stockholm Academy, and for peace work, by a committee of five members elected by the Norwegian Storthing. It is my express desire that, in awarding the prizes, no account shall be taken of nationality, in order that the prize may fall to the lot of the most deserving, whether he be Scandinavian or not.”
Peace v. War.—Peace is the ultimate object of all statecraft—peace in the development of the domestic activities of the nation administered, and peace in the relations of states with one another. For the purpose of ensuring peace an expensive diplomacy is maintained by all states, and to perpetuate it treaties are entered into by states with one another. Even war has no other avowed purpose than that of placing specific international relations on a definite footing. Ultimate peace is uniformly proclaimed by every dictator at home, by every conqueror abroad, as the goal to which he is directing his efforts. And yet dissentient voices are sometimes heard defending war as if it were an end in itself. Without going back to the well-known reply of Count Moltke to Professor Bluntschli respecting the Manual of the Laws of War drawn up by the Institute of International Law in 1880,[17] we need only quote that highly up-to-date philosopher, Nietzsche: “It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment,” he observes, “to expect much (even anything at all) from mankind if it forgets how to make war. As yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervour born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one’s own existence, to that of one’s fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs when it is losing its vitality.”[18]
It is pleasant to contrast this neurotic joy of one onlooker with the matter-of-fact reflexions of another, the late W. E. H. Lecky. “War” he says “is not, and never can be a mere passionless discharge of a painful duty. It is in its essence, and it is a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among great masses of men the destructive and combative passions passions as fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to its death or the tiger springs upon its prey. Destruction is one of its chief ends. Deception is one of its chief means, and one of the great arts of skilful generalship is to deceive in order to destroy. Whatever other elements may mingle with and dignify war, this at least is never absent; and however reluctantly men may enter into war, however conscientiously they may endeavour to avoid it, they must know that when the scene of carnage has once opened, these things must be not only accepted and condoned, but stimulated, encouraged and applauded. It would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals, than that with which the soldiers most animated with the fire and passion that lead to victory rush forward to bayonet the foe. . . . It is allowable to deceive an enemy by fabricated despatches purporting to come from his own side; by tampering with telegraph messages; by spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies and deserters to give him untrue reports of the numbers or movements of the troops; by employing false signals to lure him into an ambuscade. On the use of the flag and uniform of an enemy for purposes of deception there has been some controversy, but it is supported by high military authority. . . . Hardly any one will be so confident of the virtue of his rulers as to believe that every war which his country wages in every part of its dominions with uncivilized as well as civilized populations, is just and necessary, and it is certainly prima facie not in accordance with an ideal morality that men should bind themselves absolutely for life or for a term of years to kill without question, at the command of their superiors, those who have personally done them no wrong.”[19]
Surely with all the existing activity in the removal of causes of war, in the reduction to precise expression of the rules of law governing the relations of states with one another, in the creation of international judicatures for the application of these rules, in the concluding of treaties specifically framed to facilitate the pacific settlement of difficulties diplomacy may have failed to adjust, in the promotion of democratic civilian armies with everything to lose by war, and all the other agencies which have been described above, the hope seems warranted that, in no distant future, life among nations will become still more closely assimilated to life among citizens of the same nation, with legislation, administration, reform all tending to the one great object of law, order and peace among men. (T. Ba.)
- ↑ This has been incorrectly rendered in the English official translation as “the sincere desire to work for the maintenance of general peace.”
- ↑ History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy (2nd ed., London, 1893), p. 97.
- ↑ Schemes of thinkers, like William Penn’s European Parliament (1693); the Abbé St Pierre’s elaboration (c. 1700) of Henry IV.’s “grand design” (see supra); Jeremy Bentham’s International Tribunal (1786–1789); Kant’s Permanent Congress of Nations and Perpetual Peace (1796); John Stuart Mill’s Federal Supreme Court; Seeley’s, Bluntschli’s, David Dudley Field’s, Professor Leone Levi’s, Sir Edmund Hornby’s co-operative schemes for promoting law and order among nations, have all contributed to popularizing in different countries the idea of a federation of mankind for the preservation of peace.
- ↑ The procedure adopted by the commission was afterwards incorporated in the convention of 1907. Under the rules adopted, the examination of witnesses is conducted by the president in accordance with the system prevailing in most continental countries; members of the commission may only put questions to witnesses for the eliciting of further information; and they may not interrupt the witness when he is in course of making his statement, but they may ask the president to put any additional questions. This seems likely to become the procedure also in cases before the Hague Court, where witnesses are examined.
- ↑ Under the treaty of the 29th of March 1864, the courts of Great Britain, France and Russia in their character of guaranteeing powers of Greece declared with the assent of the courts of Austria and Prussia that the islands of Corfu and Paxo as well as their dependencies should, after their union to the Hellenic kingdom, enjoy the advantages of perpetual neutrality, and the king of the Hellenes undertook on his part to maintain such neutrality. (Art. 2).
- ↑ The institution of “buffer” zones in a more strictly correct sense of the term is of very ancient origin. One is mentioned in the annals of China two centuries before our era, between the territories of the Huns in the west and those of the Tunguses in the east—a vast area of some 300 to 400 m., on the opposite margin of which the two peoples kept watch. In Europe, bands of territory from time to time have been made desert to better establish separation. The Romans and Germans protected themselves in this way. In the middle ages the Teutonic Order established a frontier belt on the side of Lithuania. Later, Austria dealt in the same way in her policy in regard to Turkey in the organization of a “military frontier.” See Nys, Droit International (Brussels, 1904), i. 418.
- ↑ It was stipulated that the dismantling should be controlled by a technical commission of three officers of foreign nationality, to be chosen, one by each of the contracting powers and the third by the two officers thus appointed, or, in default of an agreement on their part, by the president of the Swiss Confederation. The dismantling of the forts in question has now been carried out. The Commission was composed on the part of Sweden of an engineer on the staff of the Austrian army, and on the part of Norway of a colonel in the German army, and, by agreement of these, of a colonel in the Dutch army.
- ↑ Memoir of Massachusetts State Board of Trade (Feb. 13, 1905).
- ↑ This was merely reviving an idea which had come and gone many times before. See Barclay, Problems of International Practice and Diplomacy (1907).
- ↑ In January 1900 it was reported that the British government had issued instructions to British naval commanders not to stop or search German merchant vessels at any places not in the vicinity of the seat of war. There is no proper statement of the British position on this subject, the only official information having been given by the German chancellor in a speech to the Reichstag. According to this information, the area was ultimately limited as north of Aden, and afterwards it was agreed that the immunity from search should be extended to all places beyond a distance from the seat of war equal to the distance from it of Aden. This was substantially correct, though the telegrams sent by the Admiralty can hardly be said to have fixed any precise area. As a fact, the commanders-in-chief on the East Indies and Cape of Good Hope stations were instructed that in consequence of the great practical difficulty of proving—at ports so remote from the scene of war operations as Aden and Perim—the real destination of contraband of war carried by vessels visiting those parts, directions were to be given to the officers concerned to cease to search such vessels, and to merely report to the commander-in-chief at the Cape the names of ships suspected of carrying contraband, and the date of clearance.
- ↑
The following list of standing arbitration treaties concluded
after the signing of the Anglo-French treaty of October 14th 1903
is as complete as possible down to June 1910:—
Argentina– Brazil, September 7, 1905. ,, Portugal, August 27, 1909. Austria-Hungary–Switzerland, December 3, 1904. Belgium– Denmark, April 26, 1905. ,, Greece, May 2, 1905. ,, Norway and Sweden, November 30, 1904. ,, Rumania, May 27, 1905. ,, Russia, October 30, 1904. ,, Spain, January 23, 1905. ,, Switzerland, November 15, 1904. Brazil– Portugal, March 25, 1909. ,, Spain, April 8, 1909. ,, Mexico, April 11, 1909. ,, Honduras, April 26, 1909. ,, Venezuela, April 30, 1909. ,, Panama, May 1, 1909. ,, Ecuador, May 13, 1909. ,, Costa Rica, May 18, 1909. ,, Cuba, June 19, 1909. ,, Bolivia, June 25, 1909. ,, Nicaragua, June 28, 1909. ,, Norway, July 13, 1909. ,, China, August 3, 1909. ,, Salvador, September 3, 1909. ,, Peru, December 7, 1909. ,, Sweden, December 14, 1909. Colombia– Peru, September 12, 1905. ,, France, December 16, 1908. Denmark– France, September 15, 1905. ,, Italy, December 16, 1905. ,, Netherlands, February 12, 1904. ,, Russia, March 1, 1905. ,, Spain, December 1, 1905. ,, Norway, October 8, 1908. France– Italy, December 26, 1903. ,, Netherlands, April 6, 1904. ,, Norway and Sweden, July 9, 1904. ,, Spain, February 26, 1904. ,, Sweden and Norway, July 9, 1904. ,, Switzerland, December 14, 1904. ,, Brazil, April 7, 1909. Great Britain– France, October 14, 1903. ,, ,, Germany, July 12, 1904. ,, ,, Italy, February 1, 1907. ,, ,, Austria-Hungary, January 11, 1905. ,, ,, Netherlands, February 15, 1905. ,, ,, Colombia, December 30, 1908. ,, ,, Sweden and Norway, August 11, 1904. ,, ,, Denmark, October 25, 1904. ,, ,, Portugal, November 16, 1904. ,, ,, Spain, February 27, 1904. ,, ,, Switzerland, November 16, 1904. ,, ,, United States, April 4, 1908. ,, ,, Brazil, June 18, 1909. Honduras–Spain, May 13, 1905. Italy– Argentine, September 18, 1907. ,, Mexico, October 1, 1907. ,, Peru, April 18, 1907. ,, Portugal, May 11, 1905. ,, Switzerland, November 23, 1904. ,, Netherlands, November 21, 1909. Netherlands–Portugal, October 26, 1905. Norway–Sweden, October 26, 1905. Norway and Sweden– Russia, December 9, 1904. ,, ,, Spain, January 23, 1905. ,, ,, Switzerland, December 17, 1904. Portugal– Spain, May 31, 1904. ,, Austria-Hungary, February 13, 1906. ,, Denmark, March 20, 1907. ,, France, June 29, 1906. ,, Italy, May 11, 1905. ,, Netherlands, October 1, 1904. ,, Norway and Sweden, May 6, 1905. (Suspended for Norway by a new one dated December 8, 1908.) ,, Spain, May 31, 1904. ,, Switzerland, August 18, 1905. ,, Nicaragua, July 17, 1909. Russia–Norway and Sweden, November 26, 1904. Spain– Greece, December 3–16, 1909. ,, Switzerland, May 14, 1907. United States– Spain, April 20, 1908. ,, Denmark, May 18, 1908. ,, Italy, March 28, 1908. ,, Japan, May 5, 1908. ,, Netherlands, May 2, 1908. ,, Portugal, April 6, 1908. ,, Sweden, May 2, 1908. ,, Switzerland, February 29, 1908. ,, Argentina, December 23, 1908. ,, Peru, December 3, 1908. ,, Salvador, December 21, 1908. ,, Norway, April 4, 1908. ,, Mexico, March 24, 1908. ,, France, February 2, 1908. ,, Ecuador, January 7, 1909. ,, Bolivia, January 7, 1909. ,, Haiti, January 7, 1909. ,, Uruguay, January 9, 1909. ,, Chile, January 13, 1909. ,, Costa Rica, January 13, 1909. ,, Austria-Hungary, January 15, 1909. ,, Brazil, January 23, 1909. ,, Paraguay, March 13, 1909. ,, China, October 8, 1908. - ↑
A subsidiary convention not quite falling within the scope of
the above convention is the submarine telegraphs convention,
which was signed in 1884. It applies outside territorial waters
to all legally established submarine cables landed on the territories,
colonies or possessions of one or more of the high contracting
parties. Under its provisions it is a punishable offence “to break
or injure a submarine cable wilfully or by culpable negligence in
such manner as might interrupt or obstruct telegraphic communication
either wholly or partially, such punishment being without
prejudice to any civil action for damages.” It also provides that:—
“Vessels engaged in laying or repairing submarine cables shall conform to the regulations as to signals which have been, or may be, adopted by mutual agreement among the high contracting parties with the view of preventing collisions at sea. When a ship engaged in repairing a cable exhibits the said signals, other vessels which see them or are able to see them shall withdraw to or keep beyond a distance of one nautical mile at least from the ship in question so as not to interfere with her operations” (art. 5). “Owners of ships or vessels who can prove that they have sacrificed an anchor, a net or other fishing-gear in order to avoid injuring a submarine cable shall receive compensation from the owner of the cable,” and “in order to establish a claim to such compensation a statement supported by the evidence of the crew should whenever possible be drawn up immediately after the occurrence and the master must within twenty-four hours after his return to or next putting into port make a declaration to the proper authorities” (art. 7). “The tribunals competent to take cognizance of infractions of the present convention are those of the country to which the vessel on board of which the offence was committed belongs” (art. 8). By art. 15 it is provided that the stipulations of the convention do not in any way restrict the action of belligerents. It may be remarked that the British representative at the time of signing the convention declared that his government understood that in the time of war a belligerent would be free to act in regard to submarine cables as though the convention did not exist. The act to carry into effect the above convention is the Submarine Telegraph Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 49) which was slightly modified by 50 Vict. c. 3. Section 3 of the earlier act provides that a person who injures the cable either wilfully or by culpable negligence is “guilty of a misdemeanour and on conviction: (a) if he acted wilfully, shall be liable to penal servitude for a term not exceeding five years, or to imprisonment with or without hard labour for a term not exceeding two years, and to a fine either in lieu of or in addition to such penal servitude or imprisonment; and (b) if he acted by culpable negligence shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months without hard labour, and to a fine not exceeding £100 either in lieu of or in addition to such imprisonment.”
See Board of Trade Correspondence on Protection of Submarine Cables, printed on the 24th of July 1882; and Parliamentary Paper C. 5910: 1890.
- ↑ See Barclay, Problems of International Practice and Diplomacy (1907), p. 137 seq.
- ↑ See Annuaire du mouvement pacifiste pour l’année 1910, published by the Bureau International de la Paix, at Bern.
- ↑ At the third congress of the new series, held at Rome in 1891, was created the Bureau International de la Paix. This most useful institution, which has its office at Bern, serves as a means of bringing and keeping together all the known peace societies. Its Correspondance bimensuelle and Annuaire du mouvement pacifiste are well known, and its obliging hon. secretary, Dr A. Gobat, is always ready to supply information from the now considerable archives of the Bureau. In this connexion we may mention that the secretary of the London Peace Society, Dr Evans Darby, has edited an exhaustive collection of materials called International Tribunals. His statements every two years on the progress of arbitration at the International Law Association meetings also form an excellent source of materials for reference.
- ↑ Art. 1 of Statutes revised Sept. 1908.
- ↑ “Perpetual peace,” he said, “is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream. War is an element in the order of the world ordained by God . . . Without war the world would stagnate and lose itself in materialism.”
- ↑ Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, No. 477.
- ↑ The Map of Life, 1902, pp. 92–97.