Imperial apologies were offered. 2 He seems to have
exposed himself unnecessarily, and Sir C. Macdonald felt
no serious apprehensions for the safety of his companion
missionaries. Three of the guilty parties were promptly
captured. The proceedings of the malcontents never-
theless were rapidly extended from the persecution of
native converts to an open attack on foreigners. 3 The
principal Ministers then demanded specifically the sup-
pression of the objectionable societies. Naturally, this
was a request going considerably beyond their rights,
and one which a very slight acquaintance with China will
show to be one which it was impossible effectively to
comply with. The subsequent events, including the
attack on the Taku forts, the siege of the Pekin Legations,
and the despatch of an allied force to their relief, do
not concern us. The European powers had, rightly or
wrongly, made government by the constituted authorities
of China impossible, and they alone were responsible for
the result.
Not content with the devastation (which we charitably
assume to have been unavoidable) wrought by the allied
expedition, nor with its triumphal entry into Pekin, the
German Government insisted upon individuals being
1 83 S.P. 468. 2 94 S.P. 1053. 3 lb. 1061, 1 120.
chap, v] HONDURAS 237
delivered up for vengeance. The United States, Japan
and Russia preferred that the Chinese authorities should
proceed against them in a legal way. Russia also ex-
pressed a preference for the penalty of exile rather than
of loss of life, for political offences of the kind in question.
The other powers just named came to accept the view
that insistence on the capital penalty was inopportune,
and France eventually agreed with them. 1
One Pears was shot by a sentry who had challenged
him at San Pedro, Honduras, when the place was just
released from a state of siege in 1899. 2 This was merely
part of the fortune of war ; but Mr. Hay managed to get
$10,000 for Pears' relations. He argued that the sentry
had shot without observing the formalities required by
Honduras law. Honduras admitted that he might not
have acted with the utmost circumspection, but abso-
lutely refused to penalize him after his exculpation by
the military court. She paid the indemnity, however,
under protest. This is believed to be almost the only case
in which responsibility has been urged for the merely
negligent acts of an official ; indeed, for the wilful acts of
a private soldier, his government is not generally liable. 3
In 1901 Italians were still the subject of outrages in the
States. Indemnities were paid as of grace. Mr. Carig-
nani protested against the supineness of the authorities,
as a denial of justice, a violation of contractual engage-
ments, and a grave offence to every humane and civil
sentiment. 4 The demands of the United States on
Honduras are, in this connection, inexplicable.
A French company had constructed wharves and
reclaimed land from the sea, at Constantinople. In
1899 D the Turkish Government formed the desire of re-
purchasing the premises. Although confiscation without
1 95 S.P. 1308. 2 For. Rd. U.S. (1900), 674.
3 Cf. pp. 151, 177, supra.
4 lb. (1901), 297, Carignani to Hay, 14 Nov. 1901.
6 Archives Diplomatiques (1901-2), 74.
238 ILLUSTRATION [chap, v
compensation was not threatened, Mr. Delcasse insisted l
that ' pour le prestige francais . . . du moins l'ad-
ministration et l'exploitation des quais devenus ottomans
devraient etre confiees a une societe fran9aise." That,
he said, was a minimum from which he could not recede,
and perhaps it might scarcely be sufficient for the safe-
guarding of French " moral interests." A further
difficulty arose through the failure of the Porte to pay
damages to French subjects which had been awarded
by the Ottoman courts. 2 On 9 July 1901, Mr. Constans
peremptorily demanded that the French company should
be reinstated in the full ownership of the wharves,
and the idea of expropriation abandoned. Promises of
accommodation were not fulfilled, 3 and the Ambassador
left Constantinople. Delcasse then seized Mitylene. 4
Both in the nature of the demand and in the manner
of its enforcement, these proceedings were in a high
degree improper. The question of the wharves was
practically settled, 5 and the sole reason for which France
violently invaded Turkish territory was the non-pay-
ment of a trivial private debt. Various demands of a
religious character were thrown in as a make-weight.
A remarkable decree of Hayti in 1903 closed the
country to " Syrians," whose immigration was said to
amount to nothing short of an invasion by a horde of
strangers who would not mix with the population of the
country.
The United States protested (as in the case of their
Jewish citizens who were expelled from Russia), 7 par-
ticularly when Syrians were refused the right of retail
trade. Rightly, however, they did not press the matter,
1 Archives Diplomatiqucs (1901-2), 76, Delcasse to Constans,
17 July 1900.
- lb. 7cS, but see pp. 99, 103, which show that this statement
requires qualification. :1 //;. 84-98.
4 J h. 108. See infra, p. 251.
lb. 110, 1)( h ;asse's Note of 30 Oct. 1901.
8 96 S.P. 50O. » p Wt ReL U>St ( igo5 ), 547.
chap, v] VENEZUELA 239
as it seems to be one for internal regulation. When, as
in Colombia in I903, 1 there were riots in which their
Syrian subjects suffered loss and injury, no claim for
compensation was made. 2
Various grievances of a more or less trivial nature
against the Venezuelans are detailed in the British State
Papers, vol. 95, p. 1064, as occurring in 1901. (1) Some
British subjects en route to Port of Spain in boats were,
for unknown reasons, summoned, with Venezuelans, on
board a Venezuelan armed ship, whilst those who refused
were left marooned. (2) A Trinidad fisherman landed at
Pat os (an island between Trinidad and Venezuela), and
was, with his crew, attacked and fired at, his boat being
seized. (3) A Venezuelan ship, owned by British sub-
jects, had her crew removed and was set on lire and
scuttled, on a charge of assisting revolutionaries. There
was evidence in support of the charge, and Great Britain
forbore to press the claim which she considered arose.
(4) A Venezuelan coastguard boat seized a British
smuggler at Patos. (5) On an accusation of smuggling,
the British sloop Indiana was seized in the River Barima,
as Great Britain considered, without evidence of the
corpus delicti. (6) A British vessel, the In Time, was sunk
in Venezuelan waters during operations of war. (7) The
Queen was seized on the high seas twenty miles off Cam-
pano, on a voyage from Grenada to Trinidad. (8) A
British subject, Gransaul, had been seven months in jail
on a political charge.
Of these complaints, 1, 2 and 4 arose simply out of
the fact of the dispute as to the ownership of Patos. It
was faintly alleged that the acts complained of would
have been unlawful if done in Venezuela, but there seems
to have been no discrimination against foreigners in them,
1 For. Rel. U. S. (1903), 129.
2 See, on the general question of Syrian immigrants, ib. (1903),
598. They are stated by Commissioner Powell to have erowded
out the native merchants. ,
24O ILLUSTRATION [chap, v
and no wanton cruelty. Charges 3 and 5 concerned acts
done with, at any rate, colour of right. Charge 6 was
apparently an exercise of droit d 'angaria, parallel to the
sinking of British ships in the Seine by the Germans.
Charge 7 appears to have been the only serious one ;
and it is certainly grave.
The real complaint against Venezuela was the fact
that " British " railway companies in that country con-
sidered they had claims for damages on account of the
depreciation of government bonds and the acts of govern-
ment forces. Clearly, foreigners in a foreign country
must take the risks, along with natives, of military pro-
ceedings. It is no doubt usual to compensate private
persons injured by warlike operations. But it is an act
of grace. It is difficult not to feel that the complaints
about Patos and the Queen were the legal husk of a
moral complaint. Afterwards, a more serious event
took place ; a British subject (Jones) was (according to
his account) deliberately set on, in consequence of a
previous quarrel, by the local police. Another (Sampty)
was impressed, but promptly released. The Racer sloop
went ashore on the Venezuelan coast, and was pillaged.
Germany was making contemporaneous complaints,
based frankly on the consequences of the civil war of
1898-1900. Joint war was in the result waged by
Britain and Germany. That war existed is undeniable.
Mr. Balfour asserted it in his place in Parliament, and the
Venezuelan Government declared its intention of meeting
its legitimate obligations " as soon as peace is declared." '
By what is really, if not in name, the Treaty of Peace,
Venezuela agreed to satisfy the minor claims by the
payment of a comparatively small sum, and to refer the
war-claims to a mixed commission in the ordinary fashion.
And it was agreed that the Treaty of Commerce of 1834
should be confirmed, " as it may be contended that the
1 95 S.P. 1 1 17, Haggard to Lansdowne, 14 Dec. 1902. Cf. 116
Hansard \th Ser. 1245, etc.
chap, v] VENEZUELA 24I
establishment of a blockade . . . has ipso facto created
a state of war." In fact, Lord Lansdowne stated
that it did. 1 It was held by various arbitrators that
Venezuela was not liable for damage, done by insurgents,
which she could not control. 2
A British sealer was seized in 1904 by Uruguay, 3 and
the master and mates were charged with smuggling. The
case remained undecided from n Nov. 1904 to Aug. 1905.
This was attributed to the action of defendants' counsel.
Eventually a sentence of ten months (from date of
arrest) was passed.
In 1904 there was a disposition on the part of European
governments to occupy Dominican territory as a security
for debt. 4 This would have been a highly blamable
measure. It was frustrated by the negotiations for
the administration of the revenues by the U.S.A., on the
pattern of the joint control of those of Greece. The
Dominican diplomacy was exceedingly skilful. By
the very fact of the negotiations European powers were
put in a state of uncertainty. But Dominica was not
committed to the U.S. proposals.
Seamen of a U.S. warship drowned a Chinese at
Canton in 1904, and the United States paid £300,
though not admitting the facts. 5
U.S. citizens whose land was trespassed upon by the
Guatemalan local authorities in 1905, were accorded
small indemnities. It would appear that the Guatemalan
Government put pressure on its officer to make satis-
1 95 S.P. 481, Lansdowne to Herbert, 13 Jan. 1903. "The
establishment of a blockade created ipso facto a state of war
between Great Britain and Venezuela, involving, it might possibly
be contended, the abrogation of any Treaty existing between the
two countries."
2 Moore, Digest, § 1045.
3 For. Rel. U.S. (1905), 916.
4 Ib. 304. Probably Italy was the active party. For a history
of Dominica (nineteenth century), see ib. 382.
6 Ib. (1905), 112.
16
242 ILLUSTRATION [chap, v
faction personally. 1 When in Smyrna a policeman
assaulted a U.S. citizen, an apology was given. 2
A recent case to be compared with the Peruvian and
Singapore shipping cases already mentioned is that of the
Olof Wyk. This Swedish steamer arrived in Antwerp,
15 Feb. 1907, with the bodies of four deceased
persons on board. One, Tcherniak, was a Russian
revolutionist. 3 The Swedish Consul at Antwerp was
permitted to take the whole cognizance of the affair, and
was assisted by the Belgian courts.
In March 1909 the High Court at Viborg increased
a sentence passed on the captain of a British trawler
for fishing in prohibited waters off Iceland to eighteen
months' penal servitude and a fine of 3,200 kroner.
The captain was further charged with upsetting a boat
through carelessness, whereby three Icelanders were
drowned. The steersman and cook were also sentenced
to terms of imprisonment.
The arrangements arrived at by the various powers
for taking over the administration of the Morocco coast
towns do not appear to be working well, and have already
brought diplomacy within an ace of a European war.
The right to acquire land has been conceded to foreigners
by Morocco, but acute conflicts might at any moment
arise as to the terms on which it is to be held, and its
alienation and descent regulated. As to the multiple
control established over Moroccan finance, it can only
be said that its fruits are not yet apparent.
1 lb. 529. 2 lb. (1903), 733-
3 Rev. de D.I. (1907), 316.
CHAPTER VI
TERRITORIALISM
When the principles of Authority and Individuality
were brought into collision at the time of the Reforma-
tion, and the old foundations of society were broken up,
the world cast about for a common element on which to
re-unite, and found it in the essentials of material comfort.
Society was re-organized on a cash basis, and the era
of industrialism was ushered in, which has now worked
itself out to its logical development of complete in-
dividual isolation. People found that they could live
in exile, and even live pleasurably in exile. Emigration,
as distinct from migration, dates from the Reformation
time. Formerly one was hopelessly out of one's element
abroad. One could only breathe freely among one's
neighbours. But, when one's neighbours took to pillag-
ing and burning one, it was easier to dare the unknown.
And Saxon fled to Poland, and Bohemian to Prussia,
whilst French Protestants came in troops to English
towns. In their new homes there was no established
niche of ancient custom for them : they came simply
with what they could offer of aptitude for craftsmanship
and labour. The territorial states which from 1648 to
1848 stood in absolute independence as the rigid frame-
work of the European system, preluded that period by
an attempt to live by militant Catholicism or Protestant-
ism as the case might be. But the world would accept
neither ideal, nor would it accept eternal religious war.
The only escape lay in the recognition of absolute
243
244 TERRITORIALISM [chap, vi
territorial sovereignty. This meant that Catholic and
Protestant divided Europe between them. Theoretically
claiming propaganda as a right and a duty, they yielded
to the logic of facts, and renounced the pretension of
saving their neighbours from hell at the sword's point.
It is as though the English, weary of the educational
struggle, were to acknowledge that there was no possible
method of accommodating the conflict by compromise ;
and were to cut the knot by declaring that teaching in
half the counties of England should be High Anglican,
and in the rest Undenominational, with a secular London
corresponding to Mohammedan Turkey. Thenceforward,
territorial absolutism was the postulate of the states-
man.
The Renaissance, filtering down to the quiet popu-
lations, had made it impossible that the old bonds of
cohesion should continue. It had broken up the com-
munity of ideas that had kept them strong, for it had
introduced indefinite avenues of variation. The free
Greek daimon of self-culture had been released from its
iron casings sealed with the Hebrew seal of Solomon,
and had risen from the Eastern sea, dim but powerful.
It worked like a ferment in monastery and village, as
well as in palace and camp. The Reformation was at
once the symptom of the decay of the old order and
the precipitation of its ruin.
The old order had reached from heaven to earth :
the new was frankly limited to a single point. The
Prince was supreme ; that, for Luther as for Austria,
was all-sufficient. Five hundred years before — one hun-
dred years — Europe had looked from the serf to the
freeman, from the freeman to the lord, from lord to
count, from count to duke, from duke to king. Beyond
the throne stood the moral force of all Christendom con-
centrated in the more than half-sacred majesty of the
Emperor ; who, little as he might wield of physical force,
represented a Unity of Law and a Supremacy of Right.
chap, vi] NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 245
And above and beyond the Emperor's orbed sceptre,
towering into the very azure, as the serf sank almost
into animated dust, was the wholly sacred and divine
power of the Patriarch of Rome, the visible Vicar of
Heaven.
The absolute modern king, on the contrary, acknow-
ledged no legal duties towards superiors or inferiors.
The spiritual empire of Rome and the temporal empire
of Frankfort had abandoned their seats, and that intel-
lectual power alone continued which was fabled, the
third in that trinity, to reign at Paris, and reigns there
unacknowledged to this day through its legates the
editors and professors of the two worlds, but with a
coercive power which is only just beginning to be under-
stood and bridled. There needed some mediator between
the absolute Princes of the new age. They could not
live in anarchy. " How can anything be done anywhere
without some law ? " asks Carlyle. A lawgiver was
necessary. And the world found it in the interpreter of
Right Reason — Hugo Grotius. As the plenipotentiaries
of the power of instructed common sense, he and his
followers filled the gap, and gave a Law to the absolute
masters of Europe.
The basis of that law is Territorial Independence.
And until we have something better to put in its place,
we shall do well to avoid tampering with that funda-
mental hypothesis of all modern politics. The absolute
sacredness of a nation's land is the vital nerve of our
present system. Other institutes of the Law of Nations
may be roughly hacked and hewed about. It can survive
the disappearance of many salient features. But let
that vital element be touched with a needle's point,
and the whole fabric shudders with a terror of disso-
lution.
There is no saying how far you may go, if you are
once admitted to infringe the territory of your neighbour.
Putting aside the half-right of stepping within his bounds
246 TERRITORIALISM [chap: vi
to avert a great injury which there is no time to get
him to avert for you — (as in the case of the Caroline) —
offering him all possible explanations and apologies,
the inviolability of his dominions can only be infringed
in process of lawful war. No more dangerous doctrine
was ever broached than that by which modern authors
justify the exercise of forcible acts by one state within
the bounds of another without the excuse of war. The
result of admitting it would plainly be that states would
constantly carry out their own will in their neighbours'
territories on the chance that the latter would not dare
to resent them. We should then have an anarchic
world in which states were liable to repeated casual
incursions by others who traded on their weakness.
The homely observation of Mr. Wemmick is not to be
forgotten — " Castles mustn't be broke open, 'cept in
war-time."
The stock argument which is used is not even specious.
If the horrors of war are justifiable, it is said, a fortiori
so is any lesser violence. This is the same as to say that,
because you may kill an enemy in fair fight, you may
violently maim an unarmed wayfarer. The cases are
not in pari materia. A nation which goes to war incurs
a crowd of responsibilities, an indefinite number of
risks. It incurs an assurance of neutral disfavour.
It incurs a certainty of general odium as a disturber of
the public peace. It is clearly no argument to say
that because, subject to all these disadvantages, it may
inflict the evils of war, it may therefore inflict lesser
evils — (by how much lesser, one ventures to inquire ?) —
without incurring any such checks. War is certain to
involve it in some damage : if its net material result is
to the credit side of the balance, it is impossible to weigh
and measure lives and suffering. War is likely to involve
it in foreign complications : its enemies may find allies
— its friends may plead altered circumstances as an
excuse for desertion. War will shut it out like a leper
chap, vi] CONDITIONAL WAR 247
from neutral ports, and its troops from the use of neutral
passage.
If it chooses to pay that entrance-fee, it may cross
its neighbour's frontier and enter the Jezreel vineyard.
But it cannot face both ways, and say that in time of
peace it is rightfully disporting itself there. Its presence
there is only justifiable by the existence of war. If it
estops itself from saying that there is war between itself
and the invaded power, it puts itself hopelessly in the
wrong. If there is no war, it is a simple burglar. The
self-contradictory theory is advanced by some, that the
invading state is doing no wrong, but that the invaded
state may rightly resent its action by war. But where
there is no injury, there can be no cause of war. Again,
sometimes it is held that pacific violence of this kind is
an extraordinary hybrid of war and peace, depending
for its character on whether the invaded state chooses
to consider it as war, or not. Needless to say, there
can be no such onus thrown on the assaulted party to
make it quite clear to the world that he considers
himself assaulted. He may turn the other cheek to
the smiter and expressly ratify and assent to his
violence. But common sense tells us that an attitude of
such remarkable humility is not to be inferred from
mere inaction in the face of the invader's proceedings.
The truth is that when one nation l sets out to
work its will by violence in the territory of another, it
goes to war with it, and no amount of protestation
1 The word " nation " is used throughout as a name for an
organized community, in consonance with usage, universal up
to a recent date. The etymological pedantry which would
restrict the term to denote a race, deprives the language of a
word which has no precise equivalent, for the word " state "
connotes the idea of government rather than that of country.
"Nation" means the country in its organized aspect, and has
little but an historical connection with the notion of community
of racial origin. Etymology, as Moulton, L.J., has shown us, is
a good servant but a bad master.
248 TERRITORIALISM [chap, vi
that it does not mean to do so will make the fact
any different.
The absurdity of the novel contention will be plainly
seen when it is reflected that a powerful state might
in this way permanently occupy, with a profusion of
peaceable phrases, a whole province belonging to another,
and have every facility put at her disposal in neutral
harbours and employ the aid of neutral troops : whereas
she could not so much as keep a ship for a week in a
neutral harbour and take in a ton of gunpowder, if she
were attempting to exact a paltry indemnity by means
of declared war.
Perhaps the conjecture may be hazarded that the
idea which leads to such absurd results has arisen from
the fact that very inconvenient practical consequences
follow from the admission that two states have been
at war. Their treaties are all broken and invalid — their
subjects' mutual partnerships have all been dissolved —
reciprocal trade has been illegal — naturalizations have
been void — innocent assistance to the enemy has been
treason, and so forth. It is simpler, when one state has
been passive, and matters are eventually accommodated,
to say there has been no war. The next step will be,
to say that there has been no war, when its forces have
not been passive, but no formal intimation that it con-
siders itself at war has been made. War will then
disappear, and " mutual violence ' will succeed it ;
which naturally will be regulated by no principles until
it is recognized as simply war under a new name. Mean-
while, the confusion will be appalling. For as we know
from Chinese experience, war which is not styled " war ,:
and is not governed by its rules, is simply embittered
savagery.
Mr. Dooley's Chinaman at a mythical Hague Conference
takes this view, on hearing that the Pekin Expedition is
regarded as ' an expedition to fulfil the high moral
duties of Christian civilization " — " ' Thin, I'm for war,'
chap, vi] INVASION IS WAR 249
he says, ' it ain't so rough,' he says, an' he wint home. "
Parenthetically, it may be noted that the over-elaboration
of rules of war is enough to tempt any nation to absolve
itself from their observance by proclaiming as emphati-
cally and as often as it can, the pacific nature of its
military operations.
It is of course easy to say that if war is so much pre-
ferable to peaceful violence, the invaded state can always