THE DOGGER BANK AFFAIR

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 44, 3 November 1904, Page 17

THE DOGGER BANK AFFAIR

§j* HE universal sense of satisfaction and relief at II the prospect of the qtestions involved in the f Dlogger Bank . outrage being settled by arbinT tration will be tempered by a subdued but Jk unmistakable ieehng that England has been Sk rather out-manoeuvred in the interchange of T diplomacy on the matter. The claim of the » Kussian press that their Government has beaten Britain in the negotiations is undoubtedly well founded. Russia has ' saved her face,' gained time, averted a conflict, and secured a good prospect of getting very much belter terms than England at first demanded. It is the la.shion to aespise and ridicule Muscovite methods but the fact remains that the British representatives aie not now, and never have been able to oope with the Kussians in the matter of diplomacy. The British representatives bark very loudly but they do not bite. In their dealings with Kuasia they seem to be perpetually in the position of those who are ' willing to wounil but yet afraid to strike.' We do not mean, of course, that the nation is afraid in any military or naval sense —the British navy would make very short work of the Baltic fleet if it was only allowed to get to work— but the British representatives, after writing stathing despatches about Kussian cruelty or perfidy and making the most, violent paper protests, almost invariably hesitate, palter, daily with the question, and finally decide that the point of difference is not serious enough to be worth lighting tor, and Russia inevitably gets her way i n the end m spue of British tall talk at the commencement of negotiations It is so in the present case. It was ceitainly the wisest course to submit the dispute to arbitration but undoubtedly England stands to lose most by the transaction.

The turn which events have taken in connection with this dispute furnishes a striking illustration of the value, both actual and potential, of the International Court of Arbitration established by the Hague Conference of 1899. That Conference, as we have explained elsewhere,, was called at the direct instance of the Czar in the interests of universal peace. To his bitter disappointment it failed utterly in its more immediate purpose — \u, , the gradual disarmament of the Great Powers— but the tribunal of arbitration which it succeeded in setting up is a standing evidence that the Conference was not called in vain. The Court was fully organised and duly constituted on April 14, 1901. Five months later it was called upon to hear its first dispute — a case of compensation for the destruction of Church property m Mexico —and the dispute was fully and finally settled in 28 days. Shortly afterwards the Boer delegates sought its intervention for the purpose of adjusting terms of peace between the Boers and England, but the Advisory Council decided that unless both parties were willing to submit the case to the Court no action could be taken. The action of England and Russia in the present case is not only significant in itself but is particularly valuable as a precedent. If ever there was a case that seemed little likely to lend itself to arbitration the Dogger Bank afrair was one. There was apparently no two