Page:Future of England - Peel.djvu/169

Rh tion has ceased to be diplomatic in order to become judicial. Thus it is we who have written the name of international arbitration on the roll-call of freedom.

Nor has our energetic advocacy ceased with the century. Mr. Balfour, speaking in 1905, pointed out that England during recent years had "struggled to develop to the utmost the whole principle of arbitration," and had recently brought an increasing number of cases to judgment with success. But it is 1903 that really marks an epoch. For, in that year, following on the Anglo-French Agreement, a new departure was taken. An Anglo-French treaty was negotiated, agreeing to refer to the Permanent Court of Arbitration recently established at the Hague all differences and disputes between the two countries, "not affecting the vital interests, the independence, or the honour, of the two contracting States." M. Renault, who has summarised the proceedings of the second Hague Conference, has estimated that, from 1903 up to the middle of 1908 alone, no less than sixty other treaties have been modelled upon that precedent. It remains for us to widen the scope of this procedure, so that the Anglo-Saxon race may still guide the world in a department of political action so markedly its own.

So far, therefore, it has become apparent that in the future we shall play an increasingly energetic part in Europe, acting in these specific ways. It remains to inquire whether these