manners and his habit of walking arm-in-arm with his wife-laboured single-mindedly for what he considered to be the interest of Europe, namely, a lasting peace based on a 'just equilibrium,' and so did much to establish that new and higher tradition which, on the whole, determined the moral standpoint of 19th-century diplomacy. But in this 'European' attitude he was practically isolated, in spite of the lofty pretensions of the Emperor Alexander, who became a byword even in Vienna for falseness and immorality. It has needed more than twenty years,' wrote the Marquis de Bonnay, 'to open the eyes of the sovereigns with regard to revolutionary France. How many years will be needed to make them realise the folly and the curse of their rival ambitions?' t

'I have watched every day,' Castlereagh wrote home, 'the astonishing tenacity with which all the Powers cling to the smallest point of separate interest.' This tenacity was apparent from the first, and these reports are full of expressions of fear that the Congress would break up even before it had properly assembled. 'God grant,' wrote the Swedish envoy Loewenhjelm to his brother, that the members of the Congress won't act like the Fathers of the Council of Nicæa, who decided the question of the Trinity with their fists.' Of such invocations of Providence there are not many in these reports; but one other may be cited as summing up the whole spirit of the Congress. It was when the return of Napoleon from Elba once more threatened everything with ruin that the diplomatist Treitlingen, in a letter to the Princess of Turn and Taxis, expressed the pious hope that Providence might still bless the more important efforts of the Congress. God grant,' he said, 'that just indemnities will be assigned to the House of Your Most Serene Highness.' §

It is not germane to our purpose to criticise the settlement of Vienna. Opinion at the Congress itself expected at one time no more than another Peace of Amiens, a mere interlude in the 'bellum omnium contra

* See Professor C. K. Webster's admirable study on England and the Polish-Saxon Question at the Congress of Vienna.' (Spottiswoode, 1913.) † Weil, 'Les Dessous,' i, p. 538, No. 783.

Ibid. i, p. 336, No. 453.

§ Ibid. ii, p. 397, No. 2049.

omnes.' Out of the labyrinthine intrigues of the Congress there was in fact, however, evolved a system which did ensure an unprecedented period of peace. But it was none the less true that this system contained all the germs of future war; and to the reasons for this not all at the time were blind. In concluding this all too short account of these interesting volumes we may quote in this connexion an appreciation of the work of the Congress given by the Hanoverian diplomatist von Reden in conversation with the Papal nuncio:

'To judge by the partitions sanctioned among the Powers, without any regard to the geographical position of the countries, to the moral and other idiosyncracies of the nations, or to the imprescriptible rights of the peoples, it appears that the sovereigns have merely done a deal (marchandé), and thus by a purely arbitrary process assigned to their Empires the territories which happened to suit them.''

This is the one piece of evidence in all these reports that there was anywhere any realisation of the fact that the weakness of the work of the Congress of Vienna lay in the survival of the old partitional spirit' and in the total neglect of the new forces which were to determine the history of the 19th century.

However short-sighted and unjust the treaties of Vienna may have been, they did at least provide Europe with an authoritative code of International Law; and, however narrow and reactionary the Alliance which sponsored them, this at least tended to encourage a new sense of the community of interests between the members of the European body politic. During the 19th century a new standard of political ethics as between State and State was gradually established. To exaggerate the change would be absurd in view of the events of recent years; but that change there has been is proved by the all but universal reprobation evoked by the PrussoGerman methods in diplomacy and war, methods which in the 17th and 18th centuries would have surprised nobody and shocked very few. The change is in the fundamental conception of the relations between States.

* Weil, 'Les Dessous,' ii, p. 569, No. 2405.

The inventors of the old systems, as Mr Denys P. Myers puts it, 'operated on a theory of innate enmities, which is now obsolete by intervening disproof.' Diplomacy was considered only as part of the mechanism of war, whereas before the outbreak of the present war its main concern had come to be with the mechanism of peace. The object of foreign policy, indeed, remained and remains, not abstract justice, but the advantage of the State; but it has become increasingly evident that the permanent advantage of one State cannot be based upon injustice to another. It is only within the last fifty years, says Mr Myers, that there has been any general conception of a policy of fairness as something inuring to the good of the State in the long run; and the diplomatist is still essentially an advocate whose duty is to make the weaker case seem the stronger. But in general we have advanced greatly from the time when a Gabriel Naudé could define the duties of an ambassador as 'to spy out the actions of foreign princes, and to dissemble, cover and disguise those of his own master.' When, in the middle of the last century, the Comte de Garden defined diplomacy as, inter alia, 'the art of reconciling the interests of peoples one with another' he was not so much proclaiming an ideal as announcing a change.

The 'to be or not to be' of this new ideal of international relations is the fundamental issue of the present war. When we speak of Prussian militarism, we do not mean the Prussian military power, but the whole spirit of Prussian policy, which has remained unaffected by the new ideas, stereotyped in the traditions of the 18th century, and firmly grounded in the principle of Frederick the Great that 'Distrust is the mother of security.' For Prussia-Germany, as is now only too clear, diplomacy has remained only a part of the mechanism of war, which is for her the father of all things.' Her diplomacy during the years of peace was, as we now realise, but a preparation for the day of war; she spread the network of her secret agents over every country in the globe, with an efficiency which the chiefs of the Secret du Roi

See his Notes on the Control of Foreign Relations,' in the 'Recueil de Rapports,' issued by the 'Organisation Centrale pour une Paix durable,' Part III (The Hague, 1917). This is a brilliant criticism of the suggested 'democratic control' of foreign policy.

would have envied; in her dealings with foreign Powers she took for her maxim Frederick's Let us lull them to sleep'--and she succeeded. In carrying on the war itself, too, she is true to the Frederician tradition in the cunning combination of diplomacy with military operations. At Brest-Litovsk the Bolshevik negotiators, blinded by fanatical devotion to a crude political and economic creed, fell into a trap similar to that prepared for the Austrians at Klein Schnellendorf, and with far more disastrous results. The repeated peace manœuvres, nicely timed to suit the exigencies of the military situation, differ in form only from the similar manoeuvres of Frederick. He addressed himself to monarchs and their ministers, in letters admirably calculated to disarm suspicion; the German Chancellor, as the times require, addresses himself to the peoples, in speeches of which the apparent candour and moderation are calculated to hide from the simple and ignorant the fact that they commit him to nothing. Their object is the same-to sow doubt and distrust in the ranks of their opponents, and so to weaken their power of military resistance.

It is to the credit of the democracies in arms that this false coin has gained so small a currency among them. Let them look to it that they persevere until the cry for peace from the enemy rings true, which it will never do until he realises that his great adventure has failed. For the free peoples are engaged in a life-anddeath struggle with principalities and powers, and the rulers of darkness in high places'; and upon their steadfastness the future of the world's order depends.

WALTER ALISON PHILLIPS.

Art. 3.-THE GOVERNMENT OF NATIVE RACES.

MANY and diverse are the problems which present themselves to a political officer in the course of his work among the natives of Africa. The greatest of these, although it is sometimes relegated to the background as not calling insistently for immediate solution, is the question as to what is the final goal to the attainment of which all the energy which he sees exerted in the interests of the natives is directed. Is it our object so to establish the conditions now existing that they shall last for ever? Or, if not, what conditions are we trying to establish?

Races have been conquering each other since the dawn of history; and the practical results, in course of time, have been that the conquered race either fused with the conquerors, or was exterminated, or at length recovered its liberty. During the more recent past, the civilised nations of Western and Central Europe have conquered—or, it would be more accurate to say, gained dominion over-the coloured races of the world on a scale which has no parallel in history, so that full independence is to-day enjoyed by but few of those groups of human beings to whom we apply in common parlance the term 'native.' Not only have the groups 'dominating' and dominated' become far larger, but there is a greater divergence between their mental and physical characteristics than was to be found in earlier historical times. These differences have been accentuated by the appearance from time to time in history of great leaders of thought, and of the founders of religion. The lines of cleavage have thus become so pronounced that the fusion of European with native races has now become impossible without causing racial deterioration.

In the past, when the principle of væ victis was accepted, the conqueror might destroy, enslave or export the conquered to his own advantage. Such a principle is not tolerated to-day; it is not only opposed to our moral ideals, but it is obviously impracticable, owing to the vast populations involved; moreover it is generally recognised as economically unsound. If we cannot fuse with or exterminate the dominated races, what then is