Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/22

 influence' in Africa was justly considered a great achievement of statesmanship; but there no Power was required to give up anything. It was only a question of mapping out their future gains. Yet it came very near to war. The peaceful clearing up of the outstanding issues between Great Britain and France towards the end of last century needed the wisest and most patient diplomacy, though the points at issue were none of them worth even a day's war. At one time it actually seemed as if war might have ensued because, in a clause of the old Treaty of Utrecht, granting certain fishing rights to the French, no one had thought of deciding whether lobsters were fish. At another time a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana, in which the maps were not in agreement, seemed incapable of settlement except by war between Great Britain and the United States. And such wars would have been madness.

True, these acts of madness were avoided. Throughout the nineteenth century and up to 1914 an ever-increasing number of international difficulties were settled without war. The method was diplomatic conference and, when that failed, arbitration. In 1914 special arbitration treaties already existed between most of the Western nations, except Germany; and not only the treaties, but the spirit of fair dealing and 'cordial understanding' which had grown up between Great Britain and most of the other Powers, made the final cessation of war between civilized