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 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.

organ.

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 PANAMERICAN 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, | Secretary Knox also proposed that a further enabling clause be where the parties are honestly aggrieved. With this adjust-inserted providing that the International Court of Prize be ment of existing cases the number of possible pretexts for the competent to accept jurisdiction in all matters, arising between employment of force is being rapidly diminished. 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 Vau No. 1 of the Final Act of the conference of 1907. The intention of the Hague draft annexed to the Vau 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.

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

66

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

1 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.

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 Such treaties, of states in their intercourse with other states. however, are of quite recent origin. The first of a comprehensive

any

Every power,

character was the general act adopted at the South African | the available markets of the nations excluded. Conference at Berlin in 1885, which laid down the principle, is, therefore, rightfully interested in the prevention of such which has since become of still wider application, that exclusion. 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.

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.

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:

α.

"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.

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 andy. Frelinghuysen, as the view prevailing at Washington durrgeir 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.

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" strike at the root of public prosperity. The physical and

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 " opendoor" 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 of

"The ever-increasing financial burdens," the Note went on,

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

time for the exclusion of war is neutralization. We have been | natural as well as artificial. Thus the Bosporus and Dardanelles dealing hitherto with the elimination of the causes of war; under the Treaty of Paris of 1856 and by the Treaty of London neutralization is a curtailment of the areas of war and of the 1871 were and remain closed to the passage of foreign armed factors in warfare, of territory on the one hand and states on the vessels in time of war, though the Porte may permit their passage other. The neutralization of territory belonging to states in time of peace in certain cases. The Suez and the Panama which are not otherwise neutralized includes the neutralization canals have been permanently neutralized,' the former by a of waterways such as the Suez and Panama canals. convention among the great powers, and the latter by a treaty between Great Britain and the United States.