Page:The binding force of international law; inaugural lecture in international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Session 1910-11 (IA bindingforceofin00higgrich).pdf/57

 "We cannot recognise the right of any Power or State to alter an international treaty without the consent of the other parties to it. We cannot ourselves recognise the result of any such actions till the other Powers have been consulted, including especially in this case Turkey, who is one of the other Powers most closely concerned, because if it is to become the practice in foreign polities that any single Power or State can at will make abrupt violations of international treaties you will undermine public confi- dence with all of us."

With this may be compared the language used by Lord Granville, in 1870: "It has always been held that the right [of releasing a party to a treaty] belongs only to the governments who have been parties to the original instru- ment....... Yet it is quite evident that the effect of such a doctrine [as that advanced by the Russian Government] and of any proceeding which, with or without avowal, is founded upon it, is to bring the entire authority and efficacy of treaties under the discretionary control of each of the powers who may have signed them; the result of which would be the entire destruction of treaties in their essence." (Quoted by W. E. Hall, op. cit. p. 356.)

(6) A translation of Professor Bluntschli's letter to Count von Moltke from which these quotations are taken is given in Professor Holland's Letters on War and Neutrality, p. 27.

(7) J. Lorimer, Institutes of the Law of Nations, Vol. II. p. 184. The whole of Book V on "The ultimate problem of international jurisprudence" is worthy of study though the conclusions of the learned writer will probably be rejected by many readers.