two countries in which international controversies might be adjusted by judicial means. The Hague Conferences, however, and the impetus given by them to arbitration, will no doubt recover the lost ground, but vital interests and so-called questions of honor are likely to figure in international agreements for years to come.

Mr. Cremer had had great experience with the workingmen and the public generally, and while able to convince them of the wisdom of arbitration and peaceful settlement of international difficulties he found that the intelligent and enlightened members of parliamentary bodies were difficult to reach and persuade. To settle a difficulty it is necessary to understand it, and a dispute is unlikely to assume serious consequences between people who understand and respect each other's motives. Mr. Cremer therefore felt that good understanding between foreign nations would be best promoted by an interchange of thought and views between various members of the parliamentary bodies, and that agreements reached by them in informal and unofficial reunions would be likely to succeed in the various parliaments if accepted in advance by members pledged to secure their enactment. Therefore, in 1888 Mr. Cremer hit upon the plan of an interparliamentary union, which met for the first time at Paris. in 1888, with thirty-four members in attendance. This was a preliminary meeting. In 1889 the organization was launched and held its first formal meeting at Paris on the anniversary of the French Revolution, whose watchword was the watchword of progress, liberty, equality. fraternity. Ninety-nine French and British members attended, and the distinguished French statesman Jules Simon presided. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the union and its work, for it has brought together the legislators of constitutional countries pledged in advance to cooperate in the cause of peace and progress. It should not be forgotten that at the session of 1894 the Interparliamentary Union proposed a plan for a permanent court of arbitration not unlike that adopted by the First Hague Conference, and that at the session of 1895 M. Descamps, as president of the union, was authorized to issue his famous Mémoir to the powers in favor of international arbitration, which was at once a program and a manifestation; nor should it be overlooked that the Interparliamentary Union drafted the plan of compulsory arbitration which secured the approbation of the overwhelming majority of the countries represented at the recent Hague Conference, and it should be stated that the Second Hague Conference owed its existence to the resolution adopted by the Interparliamentary Union at St. Louis in 1904. From a small group of thirty-four members, representing two

nations, the Interparliamentary Union has grown into a large assembly of well-nigh a thousand, and its annual meetings are international events. Mr. Cremer's services to peace were therefore great, and the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 1903, was a fitting international recognition of his services, as was the knighthood conferred upon him in 1907 by the present enlightened sovereign of Great Britain. Mr. Cremer believed that arbitration, like virtue, was its own reward. It was with him a question of faith. Sprung from the working classes, pinched by poverty, his soul was untouched by ambition or a desire for wealth. He accepted the knighthood upon its second offer because it seemed to him a tribute to labor, just as Lord Macaulay considered the peerage as a homage to literature, and it is characteristic of the man that he touched not a penny of the Nobel Prize, amounting to $40,000, but handed it over as an endowment for the International Arbitration League, which he had organized, whose secretary he had been for many years, and which was the means by which he accomplished much that was noble and worthy for his fellowman. A philanthropist from boyhood, his life was mercifully extended to four score years, so that he might see the fruit of his good works and rejoice at their success.

THE WHEWELL PROFESSORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

Readers of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW will be pleased to learn that Dr. Oppenheim, the author of the very interesting and valuable paper on "The Science of International Law: Its Task and Method," which appeared in the April number of the JOURNAL for the current year, was, on the 31st day of July, elected Whewell professor of international law at the University of Cambridge. The professorship is in itself a great honor. It was founded in the sixties by Dr. William Whewell, master of Trinity College, with the express injunction that the occupant of the chair should, to quote the language of Sir Henry Maine, "make it his aim, in all parts of his treatment of the subject, to lay down such rules and suggest such measures as might tend to diminish the evils of war and finally to extinguish war among nations."

The occupants of the chair have been men eminently worthy of the trust. The first professor, elected in 1869, was the late Sir William Harcourt, known by the admirable letters of Historicus, in the London Times, on some questions of international law arising out of the American civil war; and in the politics of Great Britain known as the faithful and earnest follower of Mr. Gladstone, whether as Solicitor-General,

Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, or leader of the House of Commons. The second incumbent was a man no less distinguished, namely, Sir Henry Maine, whose works on ancient law, early law and custom, and early history of institutions and village communities have given him high rank among the historical school of jurisprudence, and whose lectures on international law, delivered as Whewell professor, caused a profound regret that his life might not have been spared for the science of Grotius. Dr. Oppenheim's immediate predecessor was Prof. John Westlake, a recognized authority on international law, one of the founders of the Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée, a member of the Institute of International Law since its foundation in 1873, and its past president. His recent work on International Law in two small volumes, published by the Cambridge University Press, is the result of a lifetime of study, and will always rank as a thoughtful and valuable contribution to the science.

To say that Dr. Oppenheim is worthy of his predecessors is in itself great praise, but it is the simple fact, recognized by Professor Westlake himself, whose choice Dr. Oppenheim was. Born in Germany in 1858, Dr. Oppenheim is barely fifty years of age, and we may hope that he still has a long and distinguished career before him. For years he was professor of criminal law on the Continent at Freiburg, in Baden, and Basle, in Switzerland. From the year 1885 to 1895 he devoted himself chiefly to jurisprudence as governing criminal law in a series of works published in Germany and highly respected by German scholars. From 1895 to the present day he has devoted himself solely to international law, and for the past few years was lecturer in public international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science of the University of London. His most important publications in the field of international law are the Treatise (Volume I, Peace, 1905; Volume II, War, 1906), published by Longmans Green & Co., and "The Science of International Law: Its Task and Method," which the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW had the honor to publish in its April number. It is not too much to say that Dr. Oppenheim's Treatise is fully abreast of the most exacting scholarship of Germany, that it is profoundly scientific, that it is broad and generous in its conception and execution and wonderfully free from national prejudices, which so often and so curiously mar treatises on international law.

It is not too much to say that the University of Cambridge and Dr. Oppenheim are equally honored and fortunate in the choice of the Whewell professor.

THE BALKAN SITUATION

The proclamation of Bulgarian independence, made October 5, 1908, at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria; the simultaneous annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary; and the raising of the Grecian flag by Crete have made the Balkan Peninsula once again the storm center of Europe. The status established by the Treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, (for which see Supplement) is violated by each of these three events, for by the terms of the treaty Bulgaria is constituted an autonomous and tributary principality under the suzerainty of the Sultan (Article I); the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina are to be occupied and administered by Austria-Hungary (Article XXV) and, although the status of Crete has been modified by subsequent agreement, Article XXIII of the treaty of Berlin recognizes the sovereignty of the Porte over the island. The annexation of Eastern Roumelia by Bulgaria in 1885 was a violation of the treaty, and incorporated as it is with Bulgaria, the recognition of the independence of Bulgaria will carry with it not only its loss but the loss of Eastern Roumelia, which by Article XIII of the treaty was to be and remain "under the direct political and military authority of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, under condition. of administrative autonomy."

It can not be said, however, that the three events were unexpected or that they profoundly changed the actual relations of the various territories of Turkey; for as a matter of fact Bosnia and Herzegovina are occupied and administered by Austria-Hungary, and although Bulgaria is technically dependent upon Turkey, it is recognized and treated as an independent state, and as such took part in the proceedings of the Second Hague Conference. Crete, while acknowledging the suzerainty of Turkey, is autonomous, governed by a governor-general recommended by Greece, and who is, at the present time, a former prime minister of Greece. As a matter of fact the territories in question are independent of Turkey; from the legal standpoint a dependent relation exists. Should Turkey recognize the events which have taken place as faits accomplis the Porte would lose but a theoretical claim of right which it can not hope to make effective. Acquiescence would weaken the prestige of the reform movement; war might abrogate the constitution and postpone indefinitely the blessings of constitutional government.

As the signatory powers to the treaty of Paris declared in 1871 that "it is an essential principle of the law of nations that no power can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipula

tions thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting powers by means of an amicable arrangement," it would seem that the various acts would need confirmation by the signatory powers of the treaty of Berlin in order to have the sanction of law. A conference of the powers would seem to be logical if not inevitable and it is to be hoped that the conference will meet in peace and not at the end of a war.