and direct assertion of the rights of neutrals which has been formulated

for many years. The State Secretary emphatically refuses to admit the extravagant pretension that Russia, or any other Power, can add fresh articles to the Law of Nations by issuing a proclamation or obtaining a "decision" in one of its own prize courts; he repudiates the extensions which it has been sought to give to the doctrine of conditional contraband, and the claim which Russia has set up to establish a kind of paper blockade of the trade routes of the world. The protest has had its effect. Russia, after some demur, was forced to abandon her extreme claims, and to place the question of conditional contraband on a footing which will at least relieve neutral shipping from a repetition of the series of threatening incidents that occurred during the opening months of the war.

But Mr. Roosevelt does not intend to stop at this point. He aspires to protect trading nations from similar dangers in future. Hence his invitation to the Powers to combine in another Hague Conference. When we consider the traditions of American diplomacy, the standing dislike of the people of the Republic to go out of their way to court foreign complications, and their anxiety to avoid being involved in the mesh of European politics, this bold initiative must be deemed extremely remarkable. It might well be regarded as a new stage in the history of the United States, perhaps even the history of the world; provided, of course, that it is followed up. Some shrewd observers tell us that it was mere playing to the American peace gallery, that it was "good politics" for the President to counter the accusation of being a fire-eater and a militarist by coming forward as the promoter of international concord. One cannot think so. In the first

place, it is not Mr. Roosevelt's way; in the second, it would seem that, having committed himself to this Conference, he would not care to incur the discredit of a fiasco. To the final "Act" of the Hague Convention, various pious opinions were added as a postscript. One of these was that a Conference "in the near future" should consider the rights and duties of neutrals, and another, that it should discuss the inviolability of private property at sea. On this last point, official American opinion may be said to be committed. The President, in his Message to Congress a year ago, registered his adhesion to "this humane and beneficent principle," and he has been supported by Resolutions in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It will not be the fault of the American State Department if the Conference separates without coming to an agreement on such a revision and definition of the rules of International Law as will safe-guard neutral seaborne commerce in time of war.

Whether this result is reached depends, to a large extent, upon the government and people of this coun try. In the last number of this Review, Sir John Macdonell shows that it is high time for us to reconsider our established policy in this respect. The statements of Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Balfour at the close of last Session, and the whole course of our recent diplomacy, demonstrate that tenderness towards belligerents and harshness towards neutrals still determine our attitude. But, as Sir John explains, this sentiment is a little out of date. It takes no account of the changed conditions of the past few years. It assumes, not only that we are the first of Naval Powers, but that our former predominance can be maintained. When we were searching car

1 "The Rights and Duties of Neutrals," in The Living Age for Dec. 3, 1904.

goes in the Baltic in defiance of the Armed Neutrality, or when we seized the whole Danish Fleet and brought it captive into the Channel, we had enemies but no real rival. And from the peace of 1815 until the later seventies there was only one foreign fleet, or at the most two, worth talking about in relation to our own.

on

All this is now changed. There are seven great Naval Powers in Europe, Asia, and America. One of these, the United States, will, in a few years, possess a maritime force not very far behind ours; it has a much larger taxable population, a greater iron and steel production, a longer coast-line on two oceans, more available wealth, and less occasion to expend its resources military establishments. Some of the same considerations apply to Germany; with a great mercantile shipping, a numerous coastal population, a vast metal industry, and unbounded enterprise and ambition, it may provide itself with a navy nearer to ours than any that has been known since Trafalgar. And not far below these will follow France, Japan, Russia, all firstclass Naval Powers; not to mention Italy, and quite possibly, at no very distant date, China. We may, and must, keep the first place. But we shall not sweep the seas as if no other flag existed. And if we endeavored to enforce the system which Lord Stowell crystallized in his prize-courts, and which Russia has been endeavoring to apply, we might find ourselves faced by a much more formidable combination than any we could possibly have encountered a hundred years, or even thirty years, ago. Meanwhile we do the chief carrying trade of the world; and any belligerent, as this Eastern war has shown, who begins to exercise the Right of Search, is likely to harass and injure a dozen British merchants for every one belonging to a foreign nation. In other words, our interests are

now on the side of the neutrals, not against them. Are we to repeat our non possumus of Brussels in 1874 and The Hague of 1899, and declare that we cannot discuss the subject, for fear that the liberty of our captains and admirals might be unduly hampered in war time? Or shall we join with the United States in securing the rights of private traders and putting an end to the oppressive practices that have come down from a period when there was no law of the sea but that of the bigger crew and the heavier gun? If we accept the latter alternative, most of the Continental Powers would probably do the same; it would not greatly matter if they did not. The Anglo-Saxon navies could enforce the law of the sea against all the world, if they chose.

The mere suggestion that the armed force of the two English-speaking nations could be employed for such purposes would be indignantly repelled by many Americans. It is none of our business, they would say, to police the universe or to act as guardians of the rights of humanity. The task may be a noble one, but it is not cast upon us. We prefer to look after our own affairs, and to defend our own interests when they are directly attacked. It remains to be seen whether President Roosevelt will be able, or willing, to convince his countrymen that mere immobility and passivity may sometimes be as bad a defence in peace as in war. A strong initiative is often necessary. Mr. Roosevelt and his Cabinet have themselves taken it very boldly, and perhaps rather unscrupulously, in Panama, energetically enough against Turkey and Morocco, somewhat more cautiously, but with firmness, in regard to Manchuria. So far they have received the undoubted support of their fellow-citizens. The Democrats made nothing out of their impeachment of the President on these

points. A few years ago they would have been more successful. The caution, the provincialism, of the great mass of the sober stay-at-home electors, would have been alarmed at these adventures. The Democratic candidate, on this occasion, preached to deaf ears, when he denounced the abandonment of the non-intervention policy, the dangerous exploring of "untried paths," the following of new ideals, which appealed to ambition and the imagination. "It is essential more than ever to adhere strictly to the traditional policy of the country as formulated by its first President, to invite friendly relations with all nations, while avoiding entangling alliances with any."

Entangling alliances! It is a good phrase, a phrase not unknown to our own political controversy. It has a congenial sound, as 1 have said, to the Anglo-Saxon householder, who does not want to "entangle" himself with any strange persons, if he can help it. But sometimes he cannot help it, unless he is to suffer various inconveniences. Is it a certain consciousness of this truth, which renders Americans much more tolerant of President Roosevelt's spirited foreign policy, and much more impervious to the Democratic invocations of the ancient idols, than they otherwise might be? The feeling, to which Mr. Roosevelt appeals, is a little vague, and not clearly articulate at present; but it is gathering force, as these movements do in America, and it may come to be held, by large numbers of people, with something like the passionate intensity with which the people of New England repudiated the Slave Power. There is a growing conviction that war is simply a survival of obsolete barbarism, a nuisance and a danger to civilization at large, and that it may become part of the "White Man's burden" to sit down on the thing altogether, or at least to see that it is kept within bounds.

As practical men, American statesmen are aware that neither peace conferences nor treaties of arbitration will carry us very far towards the goal. Every law implies what the jurists used to call a sanction-the knowledge that it is laid down by a superior power, which in the last resort is prepared to enforce it. International Law has no sanction; and that is why it is not law at all, but only custom and vaguely established practice, which nations will follow no longer than it suits them to do so. We want not merely a tribunal, but a policeman-a policeman with a big stick. And we should get our international guardian of the peace, if the pacific industrial communities, having first thoroughly armed themselves, were to make it known that any disturbance of the public order, any wanton aggression or violence, would be repressed by the strong hand: that any two peoples who had a quarrel, which could not be settled by mutual agreement, would be required to submit the dispute to the decision, not of force but of a properly constituted court of arbitration.

That is the ideal. It may never be reached; but the only way to approach it is by binding alliances between great Powers, or an efficient majority of them, willing and able to "levy execution," if necessary, upon offenders. The two European alliances, that of the central States on the one hand, and that of France and Russia on the other, have undoubtedly served the purpose of keeping the Continent at peace by rendering war too dangerous. Is it fantastic to hope that the precedent might be applied on a wider stage, and with less doubtful motives? Supposing that Great Britain and the United States entered into an agreement to employ their splendid navies, their immense moral and material force, for certain common beneficial objects? They would not, in the first