THE PEACE CONFERENCE.
MHE opening of the Peace Conference would have . attracted more notice had it not been made the occasion of so much extravagant speculation. As it is, it comes as something of an anticlimax. The subjects of dis- cussion, when embodied in formal words, seem small by the side of the vast hopes which were built on the original announcement. If it had been given out in the first instance that the Conference was designed simply to provide resort to mediation, and, if possible, to put some small restraint on the indefinite multiplication of armaments, we should prob- ably by this time have begun to speculate on the vast possibilities which lie hid beneath the Czar's proposal. An exaggerated welcome is sometimes as discouraging as no welcome at all.
Yet, if. we put aside the Utopian aspirations of Mr. Stead, and look only at what is going on at the Hague, the Confer- ence will.hardly seem of so little importance as it has lately been the fashion to assume. No doubt it is not destined to usher in universal, or even partial, disarmament. For years to come, even if the Conference is as fruitful as its author can expect, the forces of the Great Powers will not be less than they are now, and in some cases they may even be larger. Nor do we anticipate any material diminution in the horrors which accompany war. Scien- tific invention has added to these in the past, and is likely to add to them in the future. The very cost of modern wars stimulates the desire of those who wage them to make them as conclusive, and therefore as destructive, as possible. It is in a less well-defined and more imaginative region that we must look for the results, if any there be, of the Czar's project. In the first place, there is the fact that a Con- ference of the Powers is actually sitting to consider whether anything can be done to prevent war. It is quite true that all that has happened since the idea was first made public goes to show that the Powers are not at all e- that anything will come of the effort. But this does not alter the fact that they are making it, and that this is in itself a testi- mony to the general sense of the burden that war has become. It is only through the growth of this sense that any improve- ment can be hoped for ; consequently, the first evidence of its existence, in ever so elementary a shape, is not a thing to be passed over as of no importance. There is significance, again, in the quarter from which the proposal comes. It is not put forward by an aged Sovereign as an exhortation which it is his duty to bequeath to a world he is leaving, how- ever slight may be his expectation that he will gain -a hear- ing. On the contrary, it is the work of a young Emperor, not long come to the throne, and having, we may hope, before him a long life of power and influence. A man just over thirty can look forward to many opportunities of giving shape to his ideas, and he may do this with all the more confidence when he is Czar of Russia, since the issues of peace and war are so largely in his own hands. . Considera- .tions such as these are in the highest degree indefinite. They are food for speculation, and for nothing more, put it •it a new thing that speculation should have cause for taking this- direction rather than another,that Europe should belyop–. dering whether war can be avoided, instead :of when and where war is most likely to begin. • • - We are not; however, without some indications of a more immediate and practical kind.- They- arise,•not merely from the circumstance that a Peace Conference is sitting, but frein the nature of one of the suggestions which it is expected to debate. Among the objects which.the Czar is understood. to have in mind is an arrangement by. which the Powers sltould agree to deal with a• difference arising between any two of - them very much on the lines of the preliminaries to a duel. The idea is not that the cause of quarrel should be submitted. to arbitration, but that each of the parties to the•'dispute should invoke the mediation of another Power, and that the two seconds thus nominated should talk the matter -over with the view of discovering some means by which peace may be preserved. There is no questien but that the seconds who meet to make arrangements for, -a duel do sometimes succeed in preventing - its being fought. They see things more calmly than the principals, and they are able to suggest ways of making up the quarrel which the principals would never have discovered for them- selves, or would have been sh of proposing if they had dis- covered them. If two wise friends can sometimes Tender this service to a couple of disputants in private con- troversies, why should not two wise Powers render a similar service in public controversies ? It is not only that third parties see things more' clearly than those whose interests and feelings are immediately concerned. It is that the latter can often accept suggestions from outside which they would have thought it undignified to make in their own persons. Even the delay which such a request for the intervention- of third parties involves must necessarily be an element that makes for peace. It is a natural instinct that tells us that sudden decisions are dangerous things, and that a war whichis held to be inevitable might not have proved so if a week's grace could have been secured. The first thoughts of a Government or a nation are often more war like than the second. A day or two's reflection brings to light other aspects of the controversy, and gives time for weighing the cost and the gain of war against one another.
' If it had no other operation than these two—the reference of the case to unprejudiced observers and the provision of time in which' the Powers concerned may have a chance of being influenced by wiser counsels—there would be a great element of hope in this particular feature of. the Czar's proposals.. But it would have another advantage. It would compel the intending belligerents to state their several cases frankly, and the mere necessity of doing this would sonier times exert a very healing influence on the quarrel. A very famous instance will at once suggest itself, in which a tremendous war would almost certainly have been averted if the good offices of two other Powers could have been invoked. That historic telegram, which Bismarck saw would ensure peace if it was not made more imperious, and which he accordingly did make more imperious by the simple process of making it shorter, would have done no harm if the inter- vention, say, of England and Austria could have' obtained a reconsideration of the whole Hohenzollern controversy. Napoleon III. had no desire to fight. He knew the state in which his army was better than any one, because he knew the ways in which the money supposed to be spent on it had been wasted. The 'King of Prussia did not want to fight,---lit was one of Bismarck's grievances that he wanted it so little. The real cause of the war was Bismarck's conviction that, as he should have to fight France sooner or later, it was best for Germany that the evil day should come as soon as possible. But this was not a conviction that could have been communicated to a third-Power - had there been mediation, Bismarck would have been obliged to 'rest- the case for war on some more presentable ground. He would have found it almost impossible to discover such a ground ; consequently, the result of an appeal to another Power would almost certainly have been the revelation that there was no longer any solid reason of quarrel between France -and Germany. A similar result would possibly have followed if the difference between Spain and the United States could have been handled in the same way. A third Power would have been able to tellSpain Plainly what she must do to sedgy tbe United States; and as plainly to tell the United States that cOntenting to do this Spain had removed the only just cause 0 quarrel. Of course these references might in the end have been Unavailing. Bismarck•might have persuaded his master to dean& War against France, when he had failed to provoke Pince into' declaring war against Prussia. The United St** might, have replied that the proffered concessions had c.pine too late. When a Great Power is determined to fight at all hazards no human agency can prevent it. But whenever War Is the result of genuine misapprehension, or of a secret determination on one or both sides which is not capable of being disclOsedi, the gain of a little time for consideration May easily be inestimable. If such an arrangement Only lessened the number of wars by one-half, it would confer an enormous benefit on the world, and that it might do as much as this we honestly believe. From this point Of view, there- fOre, the Conference may prove to have a surprise in store which will do more to promote peace than many more ambitious projects.
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