character was the general act adopted at the South African Conference at Berlin in 1885, which laid down the principle, which has since become of still wider application, that “any Power which henceforth takes possession of a tract of land on the coast of the African continent outside of its present possessions or which, being hitherto without such possessions, shall acquire them . . . shall accompany the act relating to it with a notification thereof, addressed to the other Signatory Powers of the present act, in order to enable them, if need be, to make good any claims of their own,” and, furthermore, that “the Signatory Powers of the present act recognize the obligation to ensure the establishment of authority in the regions occupied by them on the coasts of the African continent sufficient to protect existing rights, and, as the case may be, freedom of trade and transit under the conditions agreed upon.” Under these articles occupation of unoccupied territory to be legal had to be effective. This led to the creation and determination of spheres of influence. By fixing the areas of these spheres of influence rival states in western and central Africa avoided conflicts and preserved their rights until they were able to take a more effective part in their development. The idea of “spheres of influence” has in turn been applied even to more settled and civilized countries, such as China and Persia.
Other cases of regulation by treaty are certain contractual engagements which have been entered into by states for the preservation of the status quo of other states and territories.
The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of the 12th of August 1905 sets out its objects as follows: —
a. “The consolidation and maintenance of the general peace in the regions of Eastern Asia and India;
b. “The preservation of the common interests of the Powers in China, of insuring the independence and the integrity of the Chinese empire, and the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations in China;
c. “The maintenance of the territorial rights of the high contracting parties in the regions of Eastern Asia and of India, and the defence of their special interests in such regions.”
It is a treaty for the maintenance of the status quo in certain parts of Asia in which the parties to it have dominant interests. The same principle underlies different other self-denying arrangements and declarations made by the powers with reference to Chinese integrity.
The Treaty of Algeciras is essentially a generalization of the Franco-German agreement of the 28th of September 1905. By it all the powers represented agree to respect the territorial integrity of Morocco, subject to a possible intervention limited to the purpose of preserving order within it.
Differing from these general acts in not being contractual is the Monroe doctrine, which is a policy of ensuring the maintenance of the territorial status quo as regards non-American powers throughout the American continent. If necessary, the leading republics of South and Central America would no doubt, however, further ensure respect for it by treaty.
With these precedents and current instances of tendency to place the territorial relations of the powers on a permanent footing of respect for the existing status quo, it seems possible to go beyond the mere enunciation of principles, and to take a step towards their practical realization, by agreeing to respect the territorial status quo throughout still larger tracts of the world, neutralize them, and thus place them outside the area of possible wars.
A third contractual method of avoiding conflicts of interest has been the signing of agreements for the maintenance of the “open-door.” The discussion on the question of the “open-door” in connexion with the Morocco difficulty was useful in calling general public attention once more to the undesirability of allowing any single power to exclude other nations from trading on territory over which it may be called to exercise a protectorate, especially if equality of treatment of foreign trade had been practised by the authority ruling over the territory in question before its practical annexation under the name of protectorate. The habitable parts of the world are a limited area, exclusion from any of which is a diminution the available markets of the nations excluded. Every power, is, therefore, rightfully interested in the prevention of such exclusion.
The United States government in 1899 called attention to the subject as regards China, without, however, going into any question of principle. It thought that danger of international irritation might be removed by each power making a declaration respecting the “sphere of interest” in China to which it laid claim. Lord Salisbury informed Mr Choate that H.M. government were prepared to make a declaration in the sense desired. All the powers concerned eventually subscribed to the declaration proposed by the United States government.
The principle of the “open-door” in fact has already been consistently applied in connexion with certain non-European areas. As these areas are practically the only areas which of late years have come within the scope of European regulation, the time seems to be approaching when the principle may be declared to be of general application. From the point of view of diminishing the possible causes of conflict among nations, the adoption of this principle as one of international contractual obligation would be of great utility. While putting an end to the injustice of exclusion, it would obviously reduce the danger of nations seeking colonial aggrandizement with a view to imposing exclusion, and thus one of the chief temptations to colonial adventure would be eliminated.
In the fourth place, there is the self-denying ordinance against employment of arms for the enforcement of contractual obligations adopted at the Hague Conference of 1907. Under it the high contracting powers have agreed not to have recourse to armed force for the recovery of contractual debts claimed from the government of one country by the government of another country as due to its subjects. The only qualification admitted under the new convention is that it shall not apply when the debtor-state refuses or leaves unanswered an offer of arbitration, or in case of acceptance renders the settlement of the terms of arbitration impossible, or, after arbitration, fails to comply with the award. The theory on which this convention is based is known as the Drago theory, having taken a practical form during the administration of Dr L. M. Drago, when he filled the post of Argentine minister of foreign affairs. The doctrine, however, is not new, having already been enunciated a century before by Alexander Hamilton and reiterated since then by several American statesmen, such as Albert Gallatin, William L. Marcy and F. T. Frelinghuysen, as the view prevailing at Washington during their respective periods of office.
Limitations of Disarmament. — Disarmament, or to speak more correctly, the contractual limitation of armaments, has become, of late years, as much an economic as a humanitarian peace-securing object.
“The maintenance of universal peace and a possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations, represent, in the present condition of affairs all over the world, the ideal towards which the efforts of all governments should be directed,” were the opening words of the Note which the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Mouraviev, handed to the diplomatic representatives of the different powers suggesting the first Hague Conference.
“The ever-increasing financial burdens,” the Note went on, “strike at the root of public prosperity. The physical and intellectual forces of the people, labour and capital, are diverted for the greater part from their natural application and wasted unproductively. Hundreds of millions are spent in acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which are regarded to-day as the latest inventions of science, but are destined to-morrow to be rendered obsolete by some new discovery. National culture, economic progress and the production of wealth are either paralysed or developed in a wrong direction. Therefore the more the armaments of each power increase the less they answer to the objects aimed at by the governments. Economic disturbances are caused in great measure by this system of excessive armaments; and the constant danger involved in this accumulation of war material renders the armed peace of to-day a crushing
