to describe the atrocities which I have seen, or to quote the overwhelming reports of the international commissions, sent to the spot; nobody would listen to me. No, it was the Turks, always the Turks, against whom they persisted in raising the hue and cry; and they accepted as gospel the periodical petty dispatches about Ferdinand the paladin, with their constant repetition of the refrain: "The Turks are massacring, the Turks are still murdering and committing the most shocking crimes, etc., etc.'

For various reasons I say nothing of the performances of some of those who were the Christian allies of our good Bulgarians at that time. As for the Armenians, on whose account I have also been no little abused, they have fully justified one of the accusations which I made against them: At Baku, on September 14, several thousands of them, whom the English had fitted out so that they could help them to defend the city against the common enemy, fell back at the first attack; when they were forced to go back and fight, they fled a second time, in wild disorder, at the crisis of the battle. An old Turkish proverb says that Allah created the hare and the Armenian of the same substance.'

But my aim to-day is simply to state once more this truth, which is well known to all those among us who have taken the trouble to study the evidence: namely, that the Turks have never been our enemies. The enemies of the Russians, oh! that they unquestionably are; and how could it be otherwise in view of the continual and implacable threat of Russia, who did not even take the trouble to hide her obstinate purpose to destroy them? It was not on us that they declared war, but on Russia, and who would not have done the same thing in their place? Later, history will tell us how

this war was begun by some German barbarians, aboard small vessels flying the Sultan's flag, who, in order to make the thing irrevocable, did not hesitate to fire on the Russian coast towns, even before Enver, who was perhaps still hesitating, had been notified. And moreover what did the Turks owe to us? Since the Crimean expedition, we have not ceased to make common cause with their enemies, and lately, during the Balkan War, doubtless to show our gratitude for the generous hospitality they at all times extended to us in their country, we poured out on them an endless stream of insults, in almost all our newspapers which I know was to them the greatest and most painful surprise. Despairing of their cause, and to avoid being crushed by Russia, they threw themselves into the arms of hated Germany. I say hated, for, with the exception of a very small minority, they do abominate her. Why, then, harbor an implacable illwill against them because of a fatal error, which has so many extenuating circumstances, and for which they are ready to make amends?

Oh! what an injury it would have been to France if it had been necessary to give to Russia, Constantinople, which was at heart a so thoroughly French city, a city where we were, so to speak, at home, and from which we should gradually have been driven out by the Russians, on their arrival, as undesirable intruders! And what an assault on this principle of nationalities which is being invoked at the present time by all the nations if it had been necessary to carry out a certain agreement signed in secrecy, which, besides Stamboul, would wrest from the Turkish fatherland the very cradle of its birth all these Asiatic cities, Trebizond, Kharput, and the rest, which are essentially centres of pure Turkey.

I said that they were not our enemies, these Turks, who have been so slandered, and that they made war on us only reluctantly. I said, besides,said, besides, and I have said it all my life,- that they constituted the soundest, the most honest element of the whole Orient and also the most tolerant, much more so than the orthodox element, though this last assertion will startle those who know nothing about it. Now, on these two points, behold suddenly, since the war began, a thousand proofs have come to light, which confirm what I say, even to the satisfaction of the most wrong-headed. Generals, officers of all ranks, private soldiers, who had left France full of prejudice against my poor friends yonder, and who considered me a dangerous dreamer, have written spontaneously to me, purely for conscience' sake, to say to me with one voice, 'Oh! how well you know them, these chivalrous people, who are so kind to the prisoners, to the wounded, and treat them like brothers! Depend upon us when we return, to add our united testimony to yours!' I should like to publish all those numerous letters signed letters, mind you!- they are so touching, so sincere; but they would make a big volume!

Le Figaro

In closing, I quote an anecdote which I have chosen among a thousand, because it is typical. In 1916 a French hydroplane fell disabled to the ground, in Palestine, near a Turkish military post; the officers in command after courteously making our aviators prisoners, telegraphed to the pasha who was governor of Jerusalem to ask for orders; and this is the reply they received, word for word: "Treat them as your dearest kinsmen or friends.' This injunction had been anticipated; for they had received these comrades fallen from the sky like brothers. And when, a few days later, they received orders to send them to Jerusalem, knowing that they were short of money, they clubbed together to lend them what was necessary to make the journey comfortably.

And finally, with no fear of being repudiated by our fighting men in those regions, I venture to maintain, that the greater part of our beloved soldiers, returning from their mad escapade to the Dardanelles, would have been cut down on the seashore had not the Turks shown great goodwill in allowing them to reëmbark: as a rule, they stopped firing on the French boats, whenever there was not a German brute behind them to urge them on.

SOVEREIGNTY and independence are terms in constant use among publicists. Unfortunately there is no general agreement as to the definition of them, or of the corresponding adjectives, and therefore no certainty in their usage beyond the simplest cases. We are not now concerned with the application of 'sovereign' and 'sovereignty' as opposed to the condition of subordinate authorities, or to power which is not legal but merely political, within a given commonwealth, but only with their significance in external relations.

When the governing body of a State, however constituted, is not itself subject to any recognized external control, that State is said to be sovereign and independent. So far there is no dispute but very little farther. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that a State may bind itself in some things by convention, as a man may bind himself by contract, and not thereby cease to be sovereign or independent any more than a contracting party ceases to be a free man. Otherwise no civilized State could be fully sovereign, which would be absurd: for there is certainly none which does not profess to be bound by treaties of various kinds with various other States.

But among citizens, though a man is, generally speaking, bound by his contract (subject to the general requirements of law for making promises binding, whatever they be in the jurisdiction concerned), yet there are some kinds of agreement which are deemed

in all or most systems of law to make excessive inroads on the promisor's freedom to exercise his faculties, and therefore, even if men cannot be prevented from making and performing such promises, the law so far discourages them that the courts will not enforce them. An agreement to become another man's servant (in the ordinary sense) for life is an extreme instance; the classes of agreements said to be 'against public policy' in English law, notably contracts in restraint of trade,' offer more practical illustrations. Yet there are contracts, or voluntary relations founded on contracts, whereby a man's freedom is very seriously limited, and notwithstanding this they are not only tolerated but actively encouraged. Such is the case with marriage. The assumption that all selfimposed renunciation of right or discretion is presumably bad, either as inconsistent with the dignity of a free agent, or as harmful on assumed general grounds of utility, belongs to an obsolete way of thinking.

In like manner a sovereign State may enter into obligations to another State or States which so far hamper its freedom of action that it cannot be called independent without doing violence to common sense. On the other hand, SO long as a State retains the usual attributes of supreme power within its own territory, and continues to exercise that power in its own government and affairs, there is no obvious necessity for denying it the name of sovereign. The

question is how far a State may limit its own freedom of action without prejudice to its independence or sovereignty. It would seem, if we attend to the convenience of language and the common understanding of mankind, that a State may very well be sovereign and not independent; but we shall find no settled rule to guide us. It is a pretty general opinion that when a State renounces the power of conducting its own foreign affairs, and especially the right to make war and peace at its uncontrolled discretion, it thereby ceases to be independent, and accordingly States which have bound themselves to that extent are often called semi-sovereign. But many writers of good repute hold that sovereignty is not so indivisible but that a State may give up some part of its sovereign powers, or even cease to be recognizable for the purposes of international law, and remain sovereign in those departments of government where it acknowledges no superior. This is the case of States bound by a federal compact which commits foreign and interState relations to the common federal authority while domestic matters of administration are left to the local government. It is current American usage to call the individual States of the Union sovereign, notwithstanding that they are subject, in the last resort, to whatever new authority may yet be conferred on the President or on Congress, or whatever new laws of general application may be enacted, by amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The lesser German kingdoms have in substance less power, in some respects, than American States; uniformity of law, for example, has been carried much farther; but their nominal sovereignty has been saved by allowing them a shadow of diplomatic representation, and could hardly be disputed without offense; a Prussian would cer

tainly be ill advised to do so in Munich or Dresden. No one, however, would think of calling Bavaria, Saxony, or Baden, any more than Massachusetts, independent. I speak (it may be prudent to add at this time) of the German Empire as constituted before the

war.

But in 1893 our Colonial Office certified to the High Court that the Sultan of Johore, one of the 'Federated States' in the Malay Peninsula, was the ruler of an independent State and territory,' and also mentioned that, by a treaty made with Queen Victoria, he had 'bound himself not to negotiate treaties or to enter into any engagement with any foreign State.' Accordingly it was decided that he could not be sued in a court of justice here; and what was more, the judges adopted the language of the Colonial Office.* It seems not to have occurred to any of them that 'sovereign' need not be synonymous with 'independent.' In earlier cases on the immunity of reigning sovcreign princes or their property from legal process the word 'independent' is hardly ever used, even where it would be fully justified; and the true legal view seems to be that the immunity in question is conferred by official recognition of the party as a reigning prince, i.e., as a ruler exercising the usual attributes of government within his own territory (as was stated in detail in the Sultan of Johore's case), and has no necessary connection with independence in the sense of international law. There can be no doubt that the Sultan of Johore, since the treaty made in 1885, is for the purposes of international diplomacy as non-existent as the State of New York, or Scotland

or,

for that matter, England, though the majority of Englishmen have probably never thought of it. There is also no

* Mighell v. Sultan of Johore 1894], 1 Q.B. 149, C.A.

doubt that his position in a general way resembles that of native ruling chiefs in India, the lesser rather than the greater ones. Neither the Colonial Office nor the Court of Appeal has authority over the English language, and not even the concurrence of departmental and judicial utterances will suffice to justify, much less compel, the use of words in a non-natural and inconvenient sense. An inquiry directed to the India Office whether the native princes of India were independent would surely have had a different answer. In that department it would be held erroneous to ascribe independence to the Nizam of Hyderabad, and no less erroneous to deny him the attribute of sovereignty; and that, I conceive, is the good English of the matter. It seems, therefore, that when we are discussing the derogation from the rights of an independent State which must or may be incident to joining a League of Nations, it will be better to avoid sovereignty as an ambiguous and disputed term, and speak only of independence; better still if we can bear in mind that the question is not of words, but to what extent the parties to a League of Nations must undertake to fetter their discretion in exercising the rights allowed to independent States by accepted usage, and whether in these necessary restraints there is anything unreasonable or excessive, having regard to the importance of the end to be attained.

The most essential point in any possible League of Nations is an undertaking to refer disputes beyond the ordinary resources of diplomacy for peaceable settlement, judicial or by way of mediation according to the nature of the case, by some method which the league has provided or approved for that purpose. Now most European nations, even Germany, have of late years become parties to arbitra

tion treaties; Great Britain had entered into about a dozen before the war. So had the United States. The earlier type of such treaties is subject to a reservation of questions touching honor, independence, or vital interests, but the latest is not. If these and other Great Powers have thereby ceased to be independent it would seem that independence is a kind of legal fiction hardly worth preserving, like the absolute and indivisible sovereignty of certain publicists, which, unfortunately for their doctrine, it is impossible to find in the Government of the United States, or in any federal constitution.

If Great Powers may without undue derogation enter into covenants one with another to refer their disputes to arbitration or the award of a court, why is it a derogation to enter into one comprehensive agreement to the same effect, guaranteed by the joint strength of them all? As for the submission being compulsory, the compulsion, so far as it lies in covenant, is of no other kind than the binding force of a treaty made singly between any two Powers. Indeed, it may well be considered that in a common undertaking between many Powers, of whom no one can be supposed to hold a controlling position, there is less danger of prejudice to equal rights than in a particular agreement between two or three.

There is ample precedent for such undertakings in defined spheres of international affairs and traffic, the Postal Union, for example. Every member of that Union has renounced its power, as regards all other members, of fixing rates of foreign postage at its own will and pleasure.

But it is said that the parties to a League of Nations must renounce their absolute discretion to make war and peace; that the league must, sooner or later, involve a general convention for the limitation of armaments; and that