able to fulfil its duties, let it lay claim to exercise the corresponding attributes of independence, and let the trustee state, supported by the public opinion of the other states, and if need be by their intervention, hasten to help and not to retard this progress toward full independence and sovereign statehood. When a state ignores its obligations, be it in even an isolated instance, it is liable to encounter the interposition of the state it has wronged, or the intervention of other states who perceive that such conduct constitutes an assault upon the principles sacred to them all, and necessary to the preservation of international society. So regarded, all justifiable intervention is a case of supervision instituted for the governance of a particular matter. In the succeeding sections, we shall examine the occasions in which such intervention is justifiable.

CHAPTER III

NON-INTERFERENCE

§ 11. INTERFERENCE

We have seen that there are certain cases when a state is warranted in using force, either to secure redress for an injury, or to protect international society by enforcing respect for law and by preventing the abuse of a right. Such instances of intervention are of frequent occurrence, but we have still to examine certain other instances before we shall be in a position to decide whether the grounds upon which recourse to force is defended are to be condemned as unjustifiable interference. Interference as between states may be defined as the unwarranted reliance upon force to constrain an independent state to adopt or to refrain from a particular course of action.

Since interference may result from menace as well as from the employment of actual force, it is important to distinguish between counsel offered in a friendly spirit, and similar "advice" which carries with it a threat of execution by force." This distinction gives us no difficulty. It is only necessary to bear in mind that whether

47 The same distinction based upon the absence of constraint hold as regards intercession, good offices, and mediation, the consideration of which must be reserved for a later volume on the procedure for the settlement of international controversies.

66

Westlake remarks: ...the tender of advice to a foreign government, even about the internal affairs of its state, is not

force is actually used or not, there is interference whenever an independent state is in fact restrained from the free exercise of its sovereign rights under international law by an intimation, however covert, of an intention to employ force to influence its action.48

intervention and violates no right, though it is generally injudicious. Statesmen must remember that though governments and states are different, and it is to states that the rights given by international law belong, yet it is governments that they have to live with and whose susceptibilities they will therefore find it needful to consult." (Westlake: International Law, Vol. I, p. 320-321.)

48 Usually the intimation is not given in so crude a form as to amount to a threat of force. A word to wise governments is sufficient, and from even the slightest hint, a small state understands what its greater neighbor wishes. A refusal to acquiesce will bring into play against it the wide reaching influence of the great state, and unless the smaller state can counter by some retaliatory action sufficiently important to act as a deterrent, it must expect to feel the full weight of the great state's hostility exercised in a peaceful but unfriendly manner. The consequences may be very disastrous to the small state. The smaller state usually yields perforce to the dictation of the greater, and avoids the disagreeable consequences which would result from an insistence upon its rights. We have then a veritable instance of interference, but it is one which neither of the states concerned cares to proclaim as such.

The essential object of investigation in any instance ought to be to discover whether an undue influence has been exerted upon the government to induce it to adopt a desired course in such a manner as really to affect its freedom of action.

The mere fact that a particular course is adopted by a small state from fear that otherwise the great neighbor will make it suffer does not constitute an act of interference unless the great state has given an intimation or warning which thereby attaches to the act a greater certainty of a disagreeable consequence.

The anticipation that the greater state may use force is the ordinary condition of interstate life, but an intimation to the effect that force will be used is an attempt to control the weaker state by duress. Should an intimation be disregarded

In discussing interference, the writers generally confine themselves to internal affairs, but there would seem

under such circumstances, it is almost certain that the interfering state will make an especial effort to let the other state pay the penalty of its temerity.

Halleck perceives that a menace of force may constitute an interference. He says: "Armed intervention, [i. e., forcible interference] on the contrary, consists in threatened or actual force, employed, or to be employed, by one state in regulating or determining the conduct or affairs of another." (Halleck: International Law, ch XIV, § 12, p. 335.)

But so keen an observer as Stapleton would make the actual employment of force the criterion of interference. This is to confuse the means with the purpose, as so frequently occurs. He says:

"Of all the principles in the code of international law, the most important-the one on which the independent existence of all weaker states must depend-is this: No state has a right FORCIBLY to interfere in the internal concerns of another state, unless there exists a casus belli against it. For, if every powerful state has a right at its pleasure forcibly to interfere with the affairs of its weaker neighbors, it is obvious no weak state can be really independent. The constant and general violation of this law would be, in fact, to establish the law of the strongest.

"This principle as here laid down is the true principle of 'non-intervention' [non-interference]. But by leaving out the word forcible, and by then applying it, without limitation or explanation, much confusion respecting it has arisen.

"It is essential, therefore, that it should be correctly defined; for, taking it in the broad sense in which it is sometimes taken, as forbidding all kinds of intervention [interference] in the internal affairs of neighboring states, it is neither defensible in theory nor harmless in practice." (A. G. Stapleton: Intervention and Non-intervention, London, 1866, p. 6.)

Professor Kébedgy (Intervention, p. 9) with a similar opinion, quotes Kant's Essay on Perpetual Peace to the effect that: "No state should forcibly mix in the constitution and government of another state.

As regards the statement that the actual use of force is not an essental idea of interference, we cannot do better than quote Sir Robert Morier's answer to the Duke of Cambridge,

to be no sufficient reason for insisting upon this limitation.49 No doubt interference in international affairs is generally a more serious offense, and will be found

who did not see how Great Britain could intervene to stop the Franco-German war without an army: "I ventured to observe that there were certain moves on the political chessboard which necessarily led to checkmate, and that good players did not go on playing after these were executed." (Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier, II, 153.)

Russia interfered at Olmütz (1850) just as surely as if force had been employed. France, Germany and Russia interfered between Japan and China in 1896, just as surely as if the ships of war assembled in Chinese waters had belched forth their fire.

Pellegrino Rossi states this principle clearly, although his definition of interference is restricted to internal affairs, and does not include intermeddling in foreign relations. He says, "There is said to be intervention [interference] when a state mixes in the internal affairs of another state for the purpose of modifying its political system. That the intervening [interfering] state acts through menace, through invasion, or through any other means of constraint, and whether upon its own initiative, or upon the request of one of the parties that divide the state where the intervention [interference] takes place, is of slight importance." (Translated from Rossi's article on Intervention in Archives de droit et de législation, Vol. I, (1837), p. 357.)

Frederick de Martens says: "Intervention [interference] takes place by means of diplomatic notes or by force of arms' (Bergbohm's German Edition, Vol. I, p. 299).

De Floeckher writes: "Intervention [interference] exists from the moment that notice of the demand is given to the state upon which it is made, and it is not necessary that it be enforced for the state often yields to the pressure brought to bear upon it." (de Floeckher: Intervention, p. 4, cf. also Geffcken in Holtzendorff's Handbuch, Vol. IV, p. 131-2.)

Professor Berner also perceives that the actual use of force is not essential to constitute intervention. (Berner article on Intervention in the Deutsches Staats-Wörterbuch (1861), Vol. V, p. 341.)

49 Some of those who limit intervention to internal affairs are Rossi: Intervention, Archives de droit, (1837), p. 357; H. von Rotteck: Recht der Einmischung, 1845, p. 17; Bernard: Intervention, 1860, p. 1; Carnazza Amari; Non-intervention,