TREATIES OF PEACE.•
A CYNIC, after reading Sir Walter Phillimore's invaluable little book, might vary the old Latin tag and say of many sets of bygone diplomatists : "They made a treaty, and called it peace." For the - author's analysis and criticism of the principal treaties from the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 to the Peace of Bucharest of 1913 bring Out very clearly the many errors and failings of those settlements, which contained the seeds of future troubles. The Peace of West- phalia, for ekample, closed the Schelde, ruining the trade of Antwerp in the interests of the rival Dutch ports, and thus creating a real grievance which led to endless complications, and the arbitrary removal of which by the French Republic caused Pitt to declare war in 1793. The Treaty of Utrecht gave the French the right to fish in certain Newfoundland waters, and thus started a con- troversy that has ended only in recent years. The Treaty of Aix- la-Chapelle of 1748, a "peace without victory," solemnly guaran- teed the Pragmatic Sanction—the document ensuring Maria Theresa's succession to the Austrian possessions, which had been accepted by all the European Powers while the Emperor Charles lived, but was promptly repudiated by Frederick of Prussia at the Emperor's death, and then by other States. The signatories of the treaty repeated a guarantee which some of them had previously given and then openly violated. The "peace without victory " lasted but eight years, as might have been expected. The Treaty of Vienna, closing the Napoleonic Wars, left a fatal inheritance to Europe. It destroyed the newly established unity of Italy, restored the princelings and the Papal States, and left the Austrians in Milan and Venice. It united Norway against her will to Sweden, and yoked the Belgians with the Dutch in an unpopular union. It con- firmed the partitions of Poland, but made the Poles an illusory promise of such representation and national status as the three ruling Powers should think fit to grant them—just such a promise as Count Czemin made at Brest-Litovsk the other day regarding the Southern Slays, Poles, and Czechs in reply to the Russian Anar- chist demand for the " self-determination " of peoples. The Treaty of Paris of 1856 is notorious for the guarantee of the Six Powers in common to respect the integrity of Turkey—a guarantee which, as the author observes, was not individual but collective, and did not afford any security against action by one of the guarantors, for no other State was likely to threaten the Turks. The clauses neutralizing the Black Sea and forbidding Russia or Turkey to have fleets or arsenals were obviously absurd, since they could not be enforced except by a European war. The Treaty of Frankfort, which tore Alsace-Lorraine from France, left an open wound which is still unhealed. The " haff-measures " of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, as we all know, caused infinite mischief in the Balkans and in Asiatic Turkey, and had much to do with the outbreak of the present war. Sir Walter Phillimore's book yields an abundance of other blunders, small and great, which treaty-makers have com- mitted, mainly becauae they were unable or unwilling to face the facts in a broad and statesmanlike spirit, and would not consider the future.
However, the nations must try again when this war cornea to an end. The chief value of Sir Walter Phillimore's book lies not so much in his excellent historical survey as in his dispassionate sum- mary of the principles of a just and lasting peace, and in his cautious attempt to outline the terms. Retribution on the authors of the war there must be, but he lays stress on the need for distributive justice, "justice to nations, peoples, and races ; that is, the due provision for the independence and safety of every State, small or large, the grouping of peoples according to their national desires, and the freedom of oppressed races." The Peace should be final • Three Centuriet of Treatise of Peace and their Teaching. By Biz Walter G.1. Phillimore London: .TOhn Murray. 17e. 6d. net.]
end defiaite, The device of neutralization has failed to protract Belgitun, and is not worth trying again. Buffer-States are illusions. There should be- no imperfect sovereignties, protectorates, or susser- *intim end stipulations that one State should d.eat with a section of its subjects as other States think it ought to do should be avoided. History shows in the cases of the Dissidents in Poland and the Christians in Turkey, and in other instances, that the protection offered by foreign States in this way is bad both for the State and for the people whose rights it is desired to safeguard. The author would leave each State free to guide its own destinies, when once the Peace had been made. He departs from his own rule in the sugges- tion that if Germany were allowed to regain some of her colonies, "special provisions of a temporary character must be taken to protect the natives " ; but it is clear that the wretched natives, in such an unlikely event, would have no protection whatever
The author warns us not to expect too. much from any Treaty of Peace. But he would, nevertheless, take rare to insert a restate-
ment of the laws of war, "an application of old-established prin- ciples in the form of new laws to check new developments of in- humanity, just as some Articles in, the Creed were framed to meet new heresies." In regard to blockade, he is strongly in favour of the old British rule under which a belligerent ship or cargo was cap- tured, but a neutral ship or cargo went free, and he argues, as we think most convincingly, against any attempt to abolish capture of private property at sea. The new heresies against, which he 'fiould make special provision are the enemy's " frightfulness " towards non-combatants on land, and the sinking of merchant- men which have not been warned and do not resist. He would have it enacted by treaty that no soldier or sailor is bound to obey orders to commit crimes against the Conventions of Geneva, Petrograd, and the Hague ; that is, he would put the murderers of Dinant and Louvain or the 'U '-boat captains and crews on the same level as spies or truce-breakers, who cannot plead their orders in extenuation of their misdeeds.
Sir Walter Phillimore has, of course, sought to find a new sanction for the international laws that must be made afresh. He is inclined to hope more from the maintenance of a Balance of Power than from the formation of a League of Peace, but he goes some distance with the advocates of such a League :—
"The proposals are as follows :—The form of the treaty should be such that each State, party to it, contracts with each and every other State which is a party, that in the event of war between it and any other State, parties to the treaty, it will observe towards the State with which it is at war, all the agreed rules of the laws of war ; and that any other State, party to the treaty, may deem it an offence against itself that the contracting State has violated the laws of war, each such violation, though not a direct injury to the neutral State, being considered nevertheless as an mdirect injury, by reason of the lowering of the standard of conduct. It would be further provided that the neutral State should have a locus etandi to remonstrate, and if its remonstrance were unheeded, to proceed to acts of retortion, voice de fait, such as an embargo on the persona, ships, and property of subjects of the treaty-breaking nation, and in the extreme case, war. In this way it would be made clear that any breach by a belligerent is not merely a breach of contract with the other belligerent or belligerents, but is a breach of contract with every State, neutral as well as belligerent, which is a party to the International Convention."
The merits of this plan lie in the fact that it would give each signatory to the Peace Treaty or Convention a direct right to remonstrate if any signatory broke the rules. Any State could intervene at once
without having to fear the reproach that it was interfering with matters in which it was not concerned. The Monroe Doctrine affords a parallel, for America claimed by that Doctrine to treat an injury to any American State as an injury to herself. Sir
Walter Phi/limore has no faith in proposals for limitation of arma- ments, but he sees hope in the extension of arbitration, provided that a preliminary mediation can somehow be made compulsory.
He adduces the example of the French juge di pair, who is called in to give disputants his view of their case before they go to law.
If a dispute between States could be prevented from developing into war until the rivals and their neighbours had had time to consider the matter and find a way out, the road to arbitratiOn would be smoothed. But this plan, as we know, would not have prevented the present war, because it. was deliberately provoked by Germany, who refused both mediation and arbitration in the case of Serbia. So long as there is one powerful State animated by such evil passions as Germany's, there is really no chance for peace on any terms or under any system.
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