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.[1]
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
- ↑ 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.
