Italy and Yugo-Slavia. Such negotiations were frequently attempted during the course of the Conference but failed invariably owing to the fact that the Italians relied for their support upon the Treaty of London, and the Yugo-Slavs looked for assistance to the principles of President Wilson. The results of the Conference of London have merely tended to emphasise these two divergent aspects. On the other hand both sides are anxious, and indeed determined, to secure some sort of peace within their own countries. Moreover, Signor Nitti may succeed in delivering a surprise attack upon the Yugo-Slavs by reopening the whole question of the Hungarian frontiers. The next few weeks will show whether these direct negotiations are pregnant with some fruitful solution or whether they are to be regarded as merely one of those long pauses which have hitherto followed upon the periodic tempests to which the Prime Ministers of the Great Powers have exposed themselves in their conduct of the Adriatic negotiations.

16th March 1920.

THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

I. The League of Nations. By Dr. OPPENHEIM. Longmans, Green.

1919.

2. The Society of Nations. By Dr. LAWRENCE. New York: Oxford University Press. 1919.

THE

HE founders of the League of Nations have declared that the peace of the future must rest upon the firm establish'ment of the understandings of International Law as the 'actual rule of conduct among Governments,' and the community of nations is now being organised to this end. Although the United States is hesitating between a new foreign policy and the old policy of American isolation, and although the diplomacy of some European capitals is out of harmony with the spirit of the Covenant, the League has been formally launched with the support of a considerable body of opinion in all countries, and a war-weary world supplies a promising field for its early activities. The times invite the study of International Law and prompt reflections upon its future. But by singular mischance two of its most eminent spokesmen in England, Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Oppenheim, Whewell Professor in the University of Cambridge, have died within a few months of one another. The need for such men and their writings, as, for instance, Lawrence's 'Society of Nations' or Oppenheim's last published work, 'The League of Nations,' to give direction and guidance is greater than ever before. For it would indeed be dangerous to presume too much upon the war-weariness of to-day, or to construe as a permanent change of outlook what may prove to be only a reaction of feeling.

After the great upheaval of Europe during the Napoleonic wars a similar reaction towards law and peace took place. A manifesto proclaimed to the world that the sovereigns of the five great States in their union at the Conference of Aix-laChapelle had no other object than the maintenance of peace on the basis of existing treaties. They had formed no new political combinations; their rule was the observance of international

law; their object the prosperity and moral welfare of their subjects. Yet within a year or two political reaction had reached its full tide in Europe.* In the twentieth century the danger does not appear to lie in the direction of absolutism, and it may be that the instability of some newly formed democratic States. may provoke more crises during this generation than the greed or repression of arbitrary monarchs. But whatever the provocation, the causes which underlie the renewal of a spirit of war in the world are fundamentally the same. With the passage of years war seems to lose its naked horror. History is flushed with the glow of achievement, and its tints become the soft tints of a time long ago. Men no longer come home from the trenches with their sobering tale. Old warriors romance or forget. The instinct of youth and the aspirations of the nation dispute the wisdom of those who teach lessons of peace. These lessons are written with pathetic insistence in many a preamble to a treaty of peace-written and forgotten.

The factors which govern the making of history are beyond the reach of the characteristic movements of one century or another; they ignore Europe's changing phases of vigour or fatigue. Some such thought as this is stirred by Oppenheim's study of the League of Nations idea in its beginning, and of its age-long struggle with the spirit that breeds strife: The con'ception of a League of Nations is very old, is indeed as old as 'modern International Law.' Pierre Dubois, Antoine Marini, Sully, Emeric Crucé-their dreams should bring disillusionment to some who during the past five years have claimed originality for present schemes. Oppenheim has something to say too on the function of war in history, not less valuable because the words were written before hostilities ended: 'All States were originally 'founded on force . . . Most of the States in Europe are the 'product of the activity of strong dynasties . . . through war 'and conquest and through marriage and purchase.' Religious, dynastic, and colonial wars, wars for the attainment of national unity-how little their makers were disturbed in victory or defeat by the dreamers of leagues of peace. But some men in all ages have seen such visions, and Lawrence and Oppenheim were among them; now their spirit has caught

* Fyffe, Modern Europe.' 1892. Vol. ii. 134, 163.

the popular fancy, and some of their desires are to be put to proof.

Instant and complete success cannot be expected. Neither the subtlety of men of affairs, nor their enthusiasm, nor the goodwill of the peoples behind them can solve outright the problems which spring from the depths of human nature, and from the contradictions of love and hate in the relations of man to man. The League of Nations is a first experiment, and already heavy burdens have been cast upon it. For fifteen years it is responsible for the government of the Saar Basin. At the end of that time, when Germany may well be recovering from her present economic ruin, and many years of peace may perhaps have intervened to make the lessons of the recent war forgotten, the League is charged with the task of allocating this prized area between the two rival claimants. The city of Danzig, a German city forming Poland's natural outlet to the sea, is placed under the protection of the League, though its foreign relations and the interests of its subjects abroad are in the hands of Poland. Provisions for safeguarding the rights of minorities in Austria, Roumania, and other States of Central Europe and the Balkans, the protection of Jews in Poland and of Mussalmans in the Serb-Croat-Slovene State are placed under the guarantee of the League, and differences are to be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice.

These and many other responsibilities, fraught with dangers of which history is eloquent, are laid upon the League by the Treaties of Peace, in addition to its principal task of promoting the peace and security of nations. It is no wonder that writers of distinction, here and in the United States, have urged the separation of the Covenant from the Treaties. But the Treaties themselves, not it would seem without deliberate purpose, have effectually provided against such a ruthless endeavour. Every part, every section is interwoven with the League. 'These com'promises, which have been the subject of so much criticism,' a writer in the Times New Year Supplement truly remarked with reference to the frontiers of France and the territory of Poland, 'have this in common, that their success depends entirely on the 'establishment and efficiency of the League of Nations.' Any attempt to excise the League must involve the existing Treaties in disaster.

But the League may fail in one or many of these arduous duties. Doubtless, the proper moral of any such failure would be that the system was on its first trial, and that the measure of success already achieved should encourage further effort. But there is much danger that disappointment might turn the nations against the instrument which they have created, visiting upon it the penalty more justly due to their own defects of temper. During the progress of the recent war, an error of this sort was made in some neutral countries, where speakers and writers were apt to lay the blame for the conflict, not upon the guilty spirit of aggression in the diplomacy of the Central Powers, but upon the system of the Balance of Power. This tendency must have been in part responsible for the general discredit into which that doctrine, which had guided European diplomacy since the Treaty of Westphalia, has now fallen in all countries alike. Yet the principle of the Balance of Power was recognised by the Peace of Utrecht as one without which the law of nations could not exist, and it has since won approval in many international agreements. It was applied at the Congress of Vienna, and in the various resettlements of the nineteenth century, when attempts were made to distribute political power evenly among States, so that they should be deterred from disturbing the peace by fear of one another. These arrangements may well have contributed materially to the peace of Europe; but they failed in 1914, and in that terrible failure forfeited the good opinion of the world.

The settlement of 1919, in so far as it has risen above the imperious demands of compromise, rests upon three principles, two wholly new, and one of comparatively modern origin. These are respect for nationalities, the establishment of a League of Nations, and reliance upon the United States as a disinterested party to hold the balance between rival European Powers. The last principle, whether or not any success attends the present attempt to secure its application, is in conflict with the American tradition of foreign policy; it is based neither upon the lessons of history nor upon the general characteristics of human nature, and is unlikely to outlive the men who have devised it. But the principle of the League is rooted in the past, and reason lends it support. It holds more promise for the future, and is the main foundation of the new order.

The new structure is generally thought to differ essentially