ESSAY XVI

WAR AND INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.

To the thoughtful student of modern questions there is no phenomenon so disheartening as the settled conviction which seems to prevail that war is an unavoidable evil. The nations that rank first in the march of progress employ a goodly portion of the highest talent at their disposal, make enormous drains upon their material resources, and in most cases remove the male population from industry for several years to give them a special training-and all this in preparation for mutual destruction. Each fresh device in the mechanism of slaughter remains but a short time in the hands of the nation that buys it of the discoverer, and no great Power dare face the risk of allowing its armaments to become obsolete. If Messrs. Yarrow build for the Russian Government a torpedo-catcher (the Sokol) with a speed of thirty-four miles an hour, then forty miles becomes the aim of the British Admiralty. At each alarm of war some Government, thinking its security menaced, enlarges its expenditure, and its rivals must follow its example. The race between France and Germany to outnumber each other's armies will at once occur to the reader, and a most striking instance was recently presented in the British naval budget of 1896, following on the war scare of the preceding winter, and the instant resolution of the United States to increase the number of their war-ships. The state of things which the armed peace of the last twenty-five years has brought about will be painfully evident from the tables appended to this work, which show amongst other data the military and naval preparedness for war of the leading nations of the world.*

The war contagion spreads, unfortunately, to the smallest, poorest, and most inoffensive nations. In 1895 the Tyneside shipbuilders were gladdened with orders from Chili and San Domingo, while Switzerland and Belgium must arm for fear their territories should be made a cock-pit for unscrupulous

Appendix No. III.

combatants. The placid millions of the East, as we have been wont to regard them, show signs of a fatal activity, and within no long space Japan must rank among the chief war Powers of the world.

The mere existence of these complicated and expensive armaments is a source of danger. The temptation is very great to make use of some new discovery to win a war before other nations get hold of it. Again, the pursuit of war tends to become attractive, apart from the ends to which it is directed, as soon as it rises to the rank of a profession. Ambitious officers in India and Russian Asia have been responsible, it must be feared, for more than a few aggressive border wars, and the highest honours are still conferred upon warriors.

To the moralist, it must be admitted, the aspect of war is uniformly repellent; but philosophers, especially those whose creed it is that all is for the best in this our excellent world, have thought to find in it redeeming features. Thus, Hegel was of opinion that "war is not an absolute evil, and that perpetual peace would be a state of moral stagnation for the nations." Herbert Spencer is more reserved. In his letter to the arbitration meeting at St. James's Hall, London, on March 3, 1896, he says:—

"Savage as have been the passions commonly causing war, and great as have been its horrors, it has throughout the past achieved certain immense benefits. From it has resulted the predominance and spread of the most powerful races. . . . At the same time, military discipline has habituated wild men to the bearing of restraints, and has initiated that system of graduated subordination under which all social life is carried on. But though, along with detestation of the cruelties and bloodshed and brutalisation accompanying war, we must recognise these great incidental benefits bequeathed by it heretofore, we are shown that henceforth there can arise no such good to be set against its enormous evils. Powerful types of men now possess the world; great aggregates of them have been consolidated; societies have been organised; and throughout the future the conflicts of nations, entailing on larger scales than ever before death, devastation, and misery, can yield to posterity no compensating advantages. Henceforth social progress is to be achieved, not by systems of education, not by the preaching of this and that religion, not by insistence on a humane Creed daily repeated and daily disregarded, but only by cessation from those antagonisms which keep alive the brutal elements of human nature, and by persistence in a peaceful life, which gives full play to the sympathies. In sundry places and in sundry ways I have sought to show that advance to the higher forms of man and society essentially depends on the decline of militarism and the growth of industrialism.'

To criticise the views of the greatest of living philosophers

may seem presumptuous, yet one cannot help asking whether the "powerful types of men" have yet settled among themselves the proprietorship of the head-waters of the Nile, for instance, and whether in this direction there may not be room for the action of war.

It would be rash to prophesy that no case could ever occur again as that of the French Revolution, whose propaganda were established by force all over Europe, and with results generally acknowledged to have been beneficial.*

And yet, whatever be the answer to this and similar questions, no individual can or dare arrogate to himself the right of applying so fierce a cautery to the ills society is heir to. As Hegel has said, it is incumbent on seekers after progress to strive for peace in any case.

The miseries attendant on an appeal to arms between civilised communities have from the earliest times suggested the remedy of arbitration. Thus in ancient Greece the Amphictyonic Council judged between the component States of Hellas; in the Middle Ages the spiritual arm of the Roman Church often interposed to secure the peace of Europe; in modern history an almost continuous chain of arbitrations might be cited. In the present century peace was preserved in Europe, with slight infractions, from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 till the revolutions of 1848, by a council of the signatories of the Treaty of Vienna, who not only managed to avoid hostilities within their own circle, but to check outbreaks on the part of the smaller Powers. Thus, for instance, Turkey was forced to keep hands off Greece by the single engagement of Navarino.

Again, in 1836 England pronounced on the disputes between France and the United States arising out of the interpretation of the Treaty of Paris of 1830; in 1847 France, Austria, and Prussia interposed to settle the quarrels between the Catholic cantons of Switzerland and the Federal Government. The most important date, however, in the history of international arbitration in this century is 1872, when decisions were given on two disputes between this country and the United States, in both cases in favour of the latter: the San-Juan boundary question and the Alabama case.

* Without at all differing from the writer of this essay concerning the evils and criminality of war, it would be worse than indiscreet not to remember the great interests which to-day, in this country, need protection from unscrupulous and ambitious rulers. From the Appendix already referred to it will be seen that the total sea-borne commerce of the United Kingdom (that is to say, the imports and exports, without estimating the value of shipping or the Colonial trade) during the year 1895 amounted to more than 682 millions sterling, and to ensure the safety of this vast property from plunder we expended on the maintenance of our navy a little over 17 millions, or less than 2 per cent. of the value.-ED.

The first depended on the interpretation to be put on the Treaty of Washington in 1846, the first clause of which marked out the boundary between the north-west territory of the States and that of British Columbia. The three arbitrators named by the Emperor of Germany-namely, Kiepert, a geographer; Goldschmidt, a jurist; and Grimm, a diplomat-gave their decision on October 21, 1872. This check to Great Britain at Berlin followed hard upon another at Geneva, where compensation to the extent of fifteen and a half million dollars was awarded to the United States for damage inflicted on the commerce of the North by the Southern cruiser Alabama, which had been fitted out in England. The litigant parties had previously entered into an agreement (the Washington Convention, May 8, 1871), in which it was laid down that it was the duty of a neutral State

(1.) To use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping within its jurisdiction of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war against a Power with which it is at peace; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike use.

(2.) Not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.

(3.) To exercise diligence in its own ports and waters, and, as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties.

With these rules before it, the tribunal was directed to determine, as to each vessel, "whether Great Britain has, by any act or omission, failed to fulfil any of the duties set forth in such rules, or recognised by the principles of international law not inconsistent with such rules.'

The arbitrators were-Sir Alexander Cockburn, Lord ChiefJustice of England, nominated by the Queen; Charles Francis Adams, nominated by the United States; Count F. Sclopis, nominated by the King of Italy; M. Jacques Staempfli, nominated by the Swiss President; M. A. d'Aurojo, Viscount d'Itajubá, Brazilian Envoy to France, nominated by the Emperor of Brazil; and the following was their award :—

"Whereas, with respect to the vessel called the Alabama, it clearly results from all the facts relative to the construction of the ship, at first designated the Number 290 in the port of Liverpool, and its equipment and armament in the vicinity of Terceira through the agency of the vessels

called the Agrippina and the Bahama, despatched from Great Britain to that end; that the British Government failed to use due diligence in the performance of its neutral obligations; and especially that it omitted, notwithstanding the warnings and official representations made by the diplomatic agents of the United States during the construction of the said Number 290, to take in due time any effective measures of prevention, and that those orders which it did give at last for the detention of the vessel were issued so late that their execution was not practicable;

"And whereas, after the escape of that vessel, the measures taken for its pursuit and arrest were so imperfect as to lead to no result, and therefore cannot be considered sufficient to release Great Britain from the responsibility already incurred;

"And whereas, in despite of the violations of the neutrality of Great Britain committed by the '290,' this same vessel, later known as the Confederate cruiser Alabama, was on several occasions freely admitted into the ports of colonies of Great Britain;

"And whereas, the Government of her Britannic Majesty cannot justify itself for a failure in due diligence on the plea of the insufficiency of the legal means of action which it possessed:

"Four of the arbitrators for the reasons above assigned, and the fifth for reasons separately assigned by him, are of opinion

"That Great Britain has in this case failed by omission to fulfil the duties prescribed in the first and the third of the rules established by the 6th article of the Treaty of Washington.'

This decision derives its great importance, first from the extent and weight of the interests at stake between two such powerful countries, and from the positions laid down as to the duties of neutrals. It further established the principle that claims for indirect losses were inadmissible before a tribunal of arbitration, in rejecting the American claim for losses sustained by them owing to the exploits of the Alabama having prolonged a costly war.

On September 25, 1872, the President of the French Republic (M. Thiers) was called in to arbitrate on the respective claims of England and Portugal to Delagoa Bay and the adjacent territories. On July 24, 1875, his successor (Marshal MacMahon) adjudged the disputed territory to Portugal.

In 1873 the American and Italian representatives in Brazil decided on the claims for damages put forward by the British Government on behalf of Lord Dundonald, and awarded £38,675.

In May of the same year the Czar of Russia pronounced on a dispute between Japan and Peru arising out of a shipload of coolies landed at Kanagawa, and decided in favour of Japan.

In 1874 the United States and Mexico submitted certain claims made by the former against the latter to the arbitration of Sir E. Thornton, who upheld the claims. In this case the

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