Art. X. THE HAGUE CONFERENCE.

1. Courrier de la Conférence de la Paix. Rédigé par William T. Stead, nos 1-109. The Hague: June-October, 1907. 2. Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée. 2me série, tome 9, no. 6 (1er fascicule), 1907. (This contains the complete Final Act of the Second Peace Conference.)

3. The Arbiter in Council. London: Macmillan, 1906. 4. Problems of International Practice and Diplomacy, with special reference to the Hague Conferences and Conventions and other general International agreements. By Sir Thomas Barclay. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1907.

5. International Law. By L. Oppenheim. Vol. I: Peace, 1905; Vol. II: War and Neutrality, 1906. London: Longmans.

6. International Law. By J. Westlake, LL.D. Part I: Peace, 1904; Part II: War, 1907. Cambridge: University Press.

7. Traité de Droit Public International. 1re partie: Les Prolégomènes et les Théories Générales. Par A. Mérignhac. Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1905.

8. Commerce in War. By L. A. Atherley-Jones, K.C., M.P., assisted by Hugh H. L. Bellot. London: Methuen, 1907.

9. International Law as interpreted during the RussoJapanese War. By F. E. Smith and N. W. Sibley. London: Fisher Unwin, and Clowes, 1905.

10. Neutral Duties in a Maritime War, as illustrated by recent events. By T. E. Holland, K.C., D.C.L. From the Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. II. Oxford University Press, 1905.

11. War and Neutrality in the Far East. By the Rev. T. J. Lawrence, LL.D. Second edition, enlarged. London: Macmillan, 1904.

12. The Law of Private Property in War, with a chapter on Conquest, being the Yorke Prize Essay for 1906. By Norman Bentwich. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1907.

13. A Digest of International Law, as embodied in [official documents, especially of the United States], and the writings of jurists. By John Bassett Moore, LL.D. Eight vols. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906.

THE changes in men's point of view towards the problems of their nature and destiny, which have powerfully moulded their social and political relations to one another, so far as those relations have been confined within the city or the State, seem to have done nothing for the improvement of their international relations. It may be that those mental changes have exhausted, in the nearer and more necessary fields, the moving force which they were capable of exercising; or it may be that the help of the sword, in conquering and defending the new mental positions, has had to be paid for. Certainly the troubled times of the Renaissance and the Reformation had for one of their net results to exalt the irresponsibility of international action. To bring that action under some responsibility is the object of a great cry which goes up from modern Europe, a cry based on no new spiritual vision, but wrung from suffering and fear. During more than a generation no two Christian European States have been at war with one another; but the spectre of war has become more terrible. The burden of taxation caused by vast armaments and the cost of keeping them abreast of invention; the fear of the still greater losses which would attend even a short war; armies increasing automatically by the general liability of increasing populations to military service; the dread of bloody battles and devastating invasion on a scale increasing with the increase of armies-all this has been more acutely felt as manners have become milder and life easier, and therefore more valued. To the rational objections against all that tends to war there has been added a nervous tension. All history has known the electric tension of a mistaken patriotism, uniting for war a country divided yesterday within itself. We have now learnt the passionate tension which unites people in different countries in a cry for peace, while as yet few have considered whether they are prepared to renounce for themselves the desires which make for war.

The Peace Conference of 1899, which represented the first attempt of official agencies to lead the popular cry, was essentially a diplomatic one. It did not pretend to be a legislature, nor did it ape the ways of one, or aim at any results which it was plainly impossible to reach by agreement. Even 'putting an end to the progressive increase of armaments by sea and land,' which figured in the Tsar's invitation to it, could not, when first broached, be considered as entirely impracticable, although the Powers, when met together, found it to be such, at least for the time. Pursuing the diplomatic path of agreement, the Conference arrived at a codification of the laws of land war, for which the way had been prepared by official discussion at Brussels in 1874. Pursuing the same path, but venturing beyond the limits of previous official discussion, it made an important first step in facilitating the practice of international arbitration by establishing, with the name of a court, a list of judges to choose from, and some broad outlines of procedure.

The Peace Conference of 1907, proposed by President Roosevelt, but convoked by the Queen of the Netherlands on the invitation of the Emperor Nicholas, in whose favour the President gracefully retired, spread its sails more widely to the popular gale. It launched into a great variety of topics, almost wholly unprepared by official discussion, and of which some, as the British proposal for the abolition of contraband of war, had not been mooted even in scientific assemblages, though not quite unknown to scientific literature. And, most of all, it marked its popular affinity, if not its popular origin, by adopting the forms of a legislature, indeed of a democratic legislature, short only of the point at which those forms usually bear the fruit for the sake of which they have been devised. Speeches and votes gave a parliamentary air, not only to committees, sub-committees, and drafting committees, but even to full sittings. For the purpose of announcing the result of a division the votes of all States were treated as equal. For the purpose of carrying any matter a stage further they were treated as unequal. Sometimes a resolution approving the proposal of one delegation did not prevent an inconsistent approval being given to the proposal of another delegation, and the two resolutions would then go together to

a drafting committee, there to be voted on again. Sometimes a majority was so frightened by its victory over an important minority that any further proceeding on the matter in question was dropped. If a real similarity can be traced between the Conference and a legislature, the comparison, for all the proceedings below the full sittings, must be made with the old Hungarian diet, in which the Palatine, represented at the Conference by the common-sense of the body, quashed a resolution which he disliked with the formula suffragia non numeranda sed ponderanda. For the full sittings the comparison may be made with the Polish diet, in which each individual enjoyed a liberum veto, since even the final vote did not bind any State without its own consent.

The most curious thing about this parody of a parliament is that, to some extent, it would seem to have imposed on those concerned in it. When the proceedings on the British proposal for the abolition of contraband of war had been dropped because France, Germany, Russia, and the United States opposed it, while twenty-six States voted for it, Sir Edward Fry attempted to unite the twenty-six in a treaty to that effect, which, of course, would have been outside the Conference. All but Haiti refused. The phantom of a legislature, powerless to enable the majority to carry their resolution as one of the Conference, revived with sufficient strength to prevent their carrying it into effect among themselves by a diplomatic step at the time and place of the Conference. M. Mérey de Kapos-Mére for Austria and Count Tornielli for Italy took the lead in saying that their votes in favour of the British proposal had been given as a part of the proceedings of the Conference, of which the principle was that unanimity, or an approach to it, was necessary for a result (qu'on ne saurait agir qu'à l'unanimité ou à la presqu'unanimité). To sign at it a convention outside it would damage the Conference, and might prevent the Powers from agreeing to hold another.* Perhaps we may say that, in the general opinion of the Powers, the Conference combined diplomacy with an appeal to public opinion, which was encouraged to form itself by debate, and to some extent to triumph over

* Courrier de la Conférence,' No. 89, September 26.

opposition. 'Let me be permitted,' said M. Renault, as reporter on the scheme for an International Prize Court, 'to draw attention to the beneficent influence of the atmosphere (milieu). How many years of diplomatic negotiations would it have needed to bring about an agreement on so difficult a subject, starting as we did from such opposite points! The Conference has changed years into weeks, thanks to the approximation between men and ideas which it causes, and to the sentiment of justice to which it tends to give the victory over particular interests.'* It will be well for Great Britain and the other Powers to bear this in mind, and on future occasions to guard against the possible surprises of an 'atmosphere' by carefully preparing the ground through diplomatic conversations of the ordinary kind.

In any case it appears to us that in future all voting had better be avoided. No doubt, if agreement was not to be made a rigid condition, voting seemed inevitable to all who were unable to think except in the forms of democratic government, but with it, on the same democratic principles, there was bound to come the equality of votes for the purpose of display, and with that again, as we have seen, the worthlessness of votes for any purpose but that of display. The equality may have given a temporary satisfaction to the political feelings of many who joined in the cry of distress for which they hoped the Conference would find a remedy, but the worthlessness must have taught them that votes were not helping them in the noble effort to bring international action under responsibility. The equality of votes flattered the small States, of which, not to mention that strength must always tell, the opinion on international doctrines is diminished in value by their inexperience of the situations to which they have to be applied. But that pleasure must have vanished when they found that the delegations of the larger States were prevented by the force of things from admitting them to a real equality. The last speech of the most industrious and eloquent first Brazilian delegate, M. Ruy de Barbosa, was described by one of the leading continental members of the Conference as a fierce (farouche) exposition of the extreme conception of

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* Courrier de la Conférence,' No. 75, September 10,