TOPICS OF THE DAY
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THE WORK OF THE HAGUE CONFERENCE.
WHEN the present Hague Conference began its sittings we were sceptical about any effect it might have on the reduction of armaments, or any other matters of national policy ; but we sincerely hoped that it would do something to clarify, codify, and give sanction to the rules of international law. We must confess ourselves disappointed. There has been a bewildering number of Committees and Sub-Committees, and a lavish expression of pious opinions. But in all practical questions it has done very little, and that little is not all good. The present Conference is no worse than its predecessor, and its failure does not so much reflect upon the goodwill of the delegates as show the almost impossible difficulties under which any International Congress must labour. The ordinary Confer- ence does not aim at an immediate practical result. Its object is discussion,—the formation of policy rather than the enforcement of precepts. If such a gathering as the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart had attempted, let us say, to bind the working men of Europe as to the methods to be used in strikes, we can imagine how little unanimity there would have been in the voting. Each delegate would have remembered the thousands whom it would be his task to persuade, and would have been very chary of binding himself down to anything but platitudes. The task is harder when behind the delegates are Governments and nations. At the same time, the difficulty does not quite excuse the failure of the Conference. There were many questions of international law, such as contraband, which on any broad-minded view were not controversial. There were also certain questions, such as floating mines at sea, to which on any humane principle there could be only one answer. But the Conference did not display much broad-mindedness or humanity except in its show speeches. An un- prejudiced observer, reading some of these speeches, would think that the Golden Age was about to dawn ; but if he turned to the discussions he would soon con- vince himself that the reign of narrow self-interest was not over. We have not the slightest objection to self- interest unless it is carried too far, but we confess that some of the debates showed a very petty and extravagant kind of penny-wisdom and pound-foolishness. The Con- ference, instead of trying to find the most reasonable and workable code of international practice, constituted itself a kind of handicapping authority in order to level up the chances at sea of the smaller Powers. Britain as the greatest sea-Power was suspect, and therefore British pro- posals must be rejected. It is odd that a Conference which purported to be concerned with peace should have gone out of its way to increase the risks of war by trying to give the weaker Powers the chance of fighting on a better footing. It is as if a body of Quaker gentlemen were to try to suppress bullying at a school by surreptitiously arming the smaller boys with revolvers and encouraging the use of them.
A very bad instance was the treatment of the British proposals as to submarine mines. The mischief of these weapons of warfare is that their effects are felt not only during a war but long after. It is not too much to say that till time has rendered them innocuous the seas in which the mines have been placed are almost shut to the world's commerce. The Russo-Japanese War showed this, and yet that war was only fought in a small corner of a remote sea. What would happen in the case of a, great European or American war if, for example, the Baltic or the Mediterranean or the New England coasts were encum- bered with these terrible hazards ? We proposed to put restrictions on the use of floating mines, to try to reduce their dangers to the period and place of actual war. We were obviously the right Power to make the proposal, for our shipping interests are the greatest in the world, and we can most fully understand the havoc that might be wrought by these engines of destruction. But the other delegates, led by Germany, would have none of our moderate proposals. So we modified them still further, till they were the bare minimum which could be of any practical value. The Third Committee reported on these modifications last week, and all our proposals were either rejected or reduced to some ludicrous provisions which mean nothing. None of the results are worth mentioning, though even to these pale shadows of resolutions Germany thought fit to enter her protest. Mines are prohibited if laid with the sole object of intercepting commercial navigation. We do not know where the Admiral is to be found who would be so incompetent as not to invent some better object for his mines than this. There is also an obligation to intimate to commercial interests the localities where the mines are not under control—which involves no real safe- guard—and a still vaguer promise to try as far as possible to render mines innocuous within a limited interval of time. International rules to have any binding force must be framed as categorically as the rules of the Geneva Convention. We cannot imagine any refractory nation paying much attention to the vaguely worded suggestions of the Hague Conference.
It is difficult to see, in the face of all the humanitarian protestations of the delegates, that the reason of this policy is anything but a dislike of Britain's maritime supremacy, and a desire to leave intact in the hands of other navies a cheap and deadly, if ignoble, weapon of offence. That being so, we are in entire agreement with the protest of the Times of Monday against the other achievement of the Conference,—the International Prize Court. The peculiarity of this body is that it will both make and administer the law. In the absence of a Convention between the nation of the captor and that of the captured, the Court is empowered to decide according to recognised rules of international law, and, failing them, according to the " general principles of justice and equity." It lies with the Court to say what is generally recognised in international law, and what is just and equitable. We presume that it would decide what is cantraband of war, what is an effective blockade, and all the other matters which are still open because the Powers are unable to agree upon a definition. Frankly, after the recent performance at the Hague, we should be very loth to put our Navy at the mercy of any such tribunal. As the Times puts it, " the constitution of the panel is such that the nominees of Powers who have always repudiated English doctrines of maritime law, together with the nominees of States notoriously upon a low plane of civilisation, will form a permanent majority of the full Court." We would welcome an International Prize Court to administer law, provided that law is agreed upon. Let some future Hague Conference define contraband and other terms once for all, and we shall gladly submit to the enforcement of these definitions by such a Court. But unless we are to have a direct share in making, or, if necessary, rejecting, laws which touch our most vital national interests, we cannot accept any such jurisdiction. The British Government are bound to reject the Convention on the subject in its present form.
The Conference, we believe, is conscious of its limita- tions, and its proposal that two years before the date of the next meeting the various Governments should appoint special Committees to draw up practicable proposals which might be submitted to national criticism shows a recog- nition of one of the chief causes of its failure,—the timidity which all the delegates share in voting for some- thing novel on which they have not fully ascertained the feeling of their countries. But the real difficulty, as we pointed out last week, is that every Power, from France and Britain to the most inconsiderable Balkan State or South American Republic, has an equal voting-power. If, as seems certain, national considerations sway the delegates rather than international, it will be a sheer impossibility to get any unanimous resolution. We agree, however, with Sir Edward Fry that unanimity is not an absolute essential for progress at the Conference, and we do not see why the Powers that agree on any particular subject should not give effect to their views in a special Conven- tion. Twenty-four States accepted the British view of contraband, and there is no reason why they should not embody their agreement in some formal document. After all, international law is still largely a matter of moral sanctions, and the best security for a rule is that it appeals to the good sense of a large number of people. Moreover, there is such a thing as the persuasive force of a good example.
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