In addition to these gains may well be mentioned the declarations, expressions of opinion, and utterance of wishes for continued study and persevering effort to make the instrumentalities of war less cruel and destructive.
It has been said not infrequently that the conference missed a great opportunity when it made the resort to arbitration voluntary and not obligatory. Such an objection can come only from those who have never duly considered the problem concerned. Obligatory arbitration between states is indeed possible in various petty matters, but in many great matters absolutely impossible. While a few nations were willing to accept it in regard to these minor matters,—as, for example, postal or monetary difficulties and the like,—not a single power was willing to bind itself by a hard-and-fast rule to submit all questions to it—and least of all the United States.
The reason is very simple: to do so would be to increase the chances of war and to enlarge standing armies throughout the world. Obligatory arbitration on all questions would enable any power, at any moment, to bring before the tribunal any other power against which it has, or thinks it has, a grievance. Greece might thus summon Turkey; France might summon Germany; the Papacy, Italy; England, Russia; China, Japan; Spain, the United States, regarding matters in which the deepest of human feelings—questions of religion, questions of race, questions even of national existence—are concerned. To enforce the decisions of a tribunal in such cases would require armies compared to which those of the present day are a mere bagatelle, and plunge the world into a sea of troubles compared to which those now existing are as nothing. What has been done is to provide a way, always ready and easily accessible, by which nations can settle most of their difficulties with each other. Hitherto, securing a court of arbitration has involved first the education of public opinion in two nations; next, the action of two national legislatures; then the making of a treaty; then the careful selection of judges on both sides; then delays by the jurists thus chosen in disposing of engagements and duties to which they are already pledged—all these matters requiring much labor and long time; and this just when speedy action is most necessary to arrest the development of international anger. Under the system of arbitration now presented, the court can be brought into session at short notice—easily, as regards most nations, within a few weeks, at the farthest. When to these advantages are added the provisions for delaying war and for improving the laws of war, the calm judgment of mankind will, I fully believe, decide that the conference has done a work of value to the world.
There is also another gain—incidental, but of real and permanent value; and this is the inevitable development of the Law of Nations by the decisions of such a court of arbitration composed of the most eminent jurists from all countries. Thus far it has been evolved from the writings of scholars often conflicting, from the decisions of national courts biased by local patriotism, from the practices of various powers, on land and sea, more in obedience to their interests than to their sense of justice; but now we may hope for the growth of a great body of international law under the best conditions possible, and ever more and more in obedience to the great impulse given by Grotius in the direction of right reason and mercy.
CHAPTER L
HINTS FOR REFORMS IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE
In view of a connection with the diplomatic service of the United States begun nearly fifty years ago and resumed at various posts and periods since, I have frequently been asked for my opinion of it, as compared with that of other nations, and also what measures I would suggest for its improvement. Hitherto this question has somewhat embarrassed me: answering it fully might have seemed to involve a plea for my own interests; so that, while I have pointed out, in public lectures and in letters to men of influence, sundry improvements, I have not hitherto thought it best to go fully into the subject.
But what I now say will not see the light until my diplomatic career is finished forever, and I may claim to speak now for what seems to me the good of the service and of the country. I shall make neither personal complaint of the past nor personal plea for the future. As to the past, my experience showed me years ago what I had to expect if I continued in the service—insufficient salary, unfit quarters, inadequate means of discharging my duties, and many other difficulties which ought not to have existed, but which I knew to exist when I took office, and of which I have therefore no right to complain. As to the future, I can speak all the more clearly and earnestly because even my enemies, if I have any, must confess that nothing which is now to be done can inure to my personal benefit.
As to the present condition, then, of our diplomatic service, it seems to me a mixture of good and evil. It is by no means so bad as it once was, and by no means so good as it ought to be and as it could very easily be made. There has been great improvement in it since the days of the Civil War. The diplomatic service of no other country, probably, was so disfigured by eminently unworthy members as was our own during the quarter of a century preceding the inauguration of President Lincoln, and, indeed, during a part of the Lincoln administration itself.
During one presidential term previous to that time our ministers at three of the most important centers of Europe were making unedifying spectacles of themselves, whenever it was possible for them to do so, before the courts to which they were accredited. On one occasion of court festivity, one of them, in a gorgeous uniform such as American ministers formerly wore, ran howling through the mud in the streets of St. Petersburg, the high personages of the empire looking out upon him from the windows of the Winter Palace. Sundry other performances of his, to which I have referred in the account of my Russian mission, were quite as discreditable.