The eleventh Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Peace is sitting at Vienna,
and is attended by more than five hundred eminent persons, including several diplomatists of mark. Their object is to support the practice of appealing to arbi- tration through the Court set up at the Hague. That is well, doubtless, but we wish the speakers would not be quite so smooth-spoken. Dr. Korber, for instance, the Premier of Cisleithan Austria, said on Monday that wars now sprang only from " honour " and "want," that the little States of
Europe were never so secure, and that all Sovereigns now wished peace. Acquisition by conquest had been abandoned. That is very nice, but is it true ? Without prejudice to the American case, it can hardly be said that the war with Spain was begun either because honour had been insulted or because any- body was starving; and the great civil wars of our time have been due to racial differences or differences of civilisation. The smaller States, even in Western Europe, are very insecure, wit- ness Holland and Norway; while in the Balkans they may count their chances of existence by months. And though Austria may plead that she wants to seize nothing, she did seize Bosnia—to the great advantage of Bosnia—and will, if she can, seize a good deal more of the Western half of the Balkan Peninsula ; while Russia is seizing something every year. The seizures may be beneficial or inevitable, but there is nothing gained by blinding ourselves to facts with a veil of sentiment. The Kings are ambitious, the stronger you are the safer you are, and the main use of an Arbitration Court is to settle inter- national matters of account. That is a most useful function, but it will not prevent Bulgaria from fighting Turkey, or Russia from getting Constantinople if she can.
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