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The Control of Foreign Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Denys P. Myers
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Extract

There is criticism of the conduct of foreign policy and the methods of diplomacy. Some of it is definite, some nebulous. It is either in very general terms, or else directed at isolated and specific diplomatic decisions. The feeling of dissatisfaction is widespread, and it is apparently safe to conclude that where there is a great deal of smoke there must be some fire. A people, like a physician's patient, may be certain there is something wrong without knowing what or where it is; or they may be misinformed, or badly informed.

It has been very popular in some quarters to make the diplomat the scapegoat of the European war, to characterize him simply as an intriguer pulling wires neither wisely nor too well. Especially is it urged that the diplomat as a trustee of the people's welfare has been recreant to his trust, and that things can be righted by the simple process of having legislative bodies take diplomatic decisions. The suggested remedy is apparently attractive to parliamentarians, some sociologists and those living in states where parliamentary action on treaties is required.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 1917 , pp. 24 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1917

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References

1 Garden, , Histoire Générale des Traités de Paix, 1, lxxxii–iii.Google Scholar The same text appears in his Traité de diplomatie.

2 Escott, , History of British Diplomacy, p. 1. London, Unwin, 1908.Google Scholar

3 Garden, op. cit., 1, xci–xcii.

4 Deputy Vollmar in the German Reichstag, Berichte des Reichstags, March 13, 1897, p. 5170C.Google Scholar

5 Cited in note 2 to Letter C, Unpublished Correspondence of Prince^Talleyrand and Louis XVIII.

6 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, Life of Lord Granville, I, 49.Google Scholar

7 See Snow, Alpheus H., The Law of Nations, 6 American Journal of International Law, 890.Google Scholar

8 Easily nine-tenths of all treaties are of non-political character. Computations from the published treaty volumes of all countries and of all times lead me to conclude that some 25,000 treaties are in existence, of which about two-fifths are in force. The last century has produced more treaties than all the past, if an actual examination without actual count can be trusted. But if 10,000 treaties are now currently in force, not 500 of them are political. The rest—the great majority—are administrative or regulatory. To some extent many of these directly or implicitly have a political bearing, but inclusion of all such would not more than double the number of political treaties, those involving policy.

In a certain aspect, however, all treaties involve policy, because they do not constitute international law, which in conventional provisions is to be found only in a comparatively few declarative documents multinationally negotiated and generally signed and ratified. Every bipartite treaty records that two states have agreed on a rule between them. The tendency is for treaty provisions found satisfactory to be employed frequently and in the course of time to take on a similarity very close to identity. Extradition treaties illustrate the process, such conventions now practically conforming to one model; codification into an international convention being the next logical step, thus adding a chapter to positive international law.

9 The United States with thirty States, and Argentina, Brazil and Chile among themselves, have by treaty agreed not to declare war before legal inquiries and reports have been made. It is greatly to be hoped that the example will be generally followed, but these treaties do not now constitute international law, but only an international precedent. They, of course, bind the contractants where they are completed. The treaties in question, however, are not phrased so broadly as to include nonjusticiable and determined acts involving life or wilful and continuing acts, in which latter cases wilful acts offer no basis for investigation and continuing acts operate to free the aggrieved party from the treaty engagement after the first instance.

10 On this whole question see Bernard, Mountague, Systems of Policy, pp. 60–109Google Scholar, in Four Lectures on Subjects Connected with Diplomacy, London, Macmillan and Company, 1868.

11 Porras, Belisario, delegate of Panama to Second Peace Conference, 2 Deux. Conf., 336.Google Scholar

12 Minietère des affaires étrangères. Documents diplomatiques, 1912. Affairée du Maroc, vi, 1910–1912, pp. 421, 433, 441, 477.

13 Parliamentary Debates, Fifth series, vol. xxiv, 540–641.

14 Instructions to delegates to Second Hague Conference, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1907, 1135.Google Scholar

15 The first instance of debating a treaty in open session was apparently that of the Bayard-Chamberlain fisheries treaty of February 15, 1888. That treaty practically ended the century-old North Atlantic fisheries controversy between Great Britain and the United States. Its discussion in open session of the senate had unfortunate results. It was made an issue in the presidential campaign of that year and failed of ratification. That it did not deserve to be killed by publicity, or killed at all, can be seen from the fact that some of its most important provisions were embodied twenty-two years later in the award of the Permanent Court of The Hague in the North Atlantic fisheries arbitration.

Executive sessions of the senate are not reported stenographically. A summary journal is kept and this is published in a small edition several years after the period with which its text deals. It usually shows amendments to treaties offered, votes thereon and the votes consenting to ratification in the customary “yea-and-nay” form.

16 In Brazil they are called Relatorios.

17 Diplomatic History of the Panama Canal, Sen. Doc. No. 474, 63rd Congress, 2nd session, 21, 22, 36, 37, 51, 53.

18 SirAdair, Robert, Mission to the Court of Vienna, 10, note.Google Scholar

19 The Paget Papers …. edited by SirPaget, Augustus B., vol. ii, 224–225.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., vol. ii, 272.

21 Four Lectures on Subjects Connected with Diplomacy, 160–161. Bernard, who was one of the British negotiators of the famous treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871, for settlement of the Alabama claims, was of course not contemplating such a frenzy of conducting negotiations in the newspapers as has characterized the diplomacy of the European war. It may be doubted whether the practice in the presence of belligerency will set a precedent, for it is inspired by a spirit of propaganda which can not be considered a normal characteristic of negotiation.

22 Four Lectures on Subjects Connected with Diplomacy, 126–127.

23 In 1913 Albin, Pierre, in La Paix armée,—l'Allemagne et la France en Europe (1885–1894)Google Scholar, brought together the evidence. See that work, pages 315–377, for a detailed account of such evidence as is here cited.

24 See particularly a dispatch to the London Times of December 9, 1912, and E. J. Dillon, From the Triple to the Quadruple Alliance.

25 Really nothing needed to be added to the statements made to German diplomats since March 27, 1904. See Documents diplomatiques. Affaires du Maroc, No. I, 1901–1904, pp. 122 and 166.

26 Such was the famous arbitral declaration inserted in the twenty-third protocol of the Congress of Paris of 1856.

27 I omit from consideration the actual acquiring of texts by means of espionage, a practice more normal in novels than in foreign offices.

28 Manuel de droit international public, par. 831.

29 An illustration of the operation of this psychology is to be found in the negotiations of Austria-Hungary and Italy concerning the Triple Alliance. These brought out the text of Articles 1, 111, IV and VII of the treaty in negotiations apparently without moral foundations, but in which each side sedulously sought to appear right.

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