POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY TH HOLLAND'S INTERNATIONAL POLICY1 HE diplomatic history of Holland since her resurrection in 1813, though following one consistent and clearly discernible line, may be divided into three distinct periods. If a league of nations is formed with the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a member, a fourth period in that history will open. I The one outstanding characteristic of Dutch foreign policy during the past hundred years will probably not seem unfamiliar to Americans. This is the extreme disinclination on the part of both the statesmen and the people of the Netherlands to meddle with the numerous and monotonous European intrigues about power, change of power, combination of power, balance of power. This is not to say that Holland has held aloof from international affairs if some higher international interest needed her support. After the United States, in 1803 and 1815, had successfully scourged the Algerian pirates, Holland, in conjunction with Great Britain, took an honorable part in a new repression of this piracy in 1816. In 1863, Holland cooperated with England, France and the United States against a hostile daimio in Japan,-a country which was first introduced to western civilization by the Dutch. 'The writer of this article is a professor of law at the University of Leyden and was lately attached to the Legation of the Netherlands in Washington. * The name "Holland", by which the Kingdom of the Netherlands is popularly known, is here used interchangeably with the latter. In the same way "Dutch " and "Netherlands'' are used interchangeably. In 1900, Holland willingly joined in the action by eleven powers against China to maintain international law against the Boxer uprising; and in the same year the Netherlands government offered a man-of-war to President Kruger of the South African Republic, in order to transport that old and honored statesman, then at war with the superior force of Great Britain, from South Africa to Europe. But apart from such international cooperation or action, and apart from her cordial participation in many European congresses on international and colonial problems, Holland has pursued a policy of detachment from foreign entanglements. The atmosphere of jealousies, of rivalries, of disputes respecting power, which has so generally pervaded Europe, was not congenial to her; and although she never had a Washington to warn her against "entangling alliances," against a policy that seeks favorites and creates adversaries among foreign nations, the counsel of the Farewell Address was clearly written on the Dutch national mind. When the Netherlands government in April, 1908, signed the North Sea agreement with five other European powers, it took care to state expressly that this understanding involved no alliance; and when a few years afterwards rumors arose of a similar Pacific Ocean entente with Holland as a member, there was some fear in Dutch parliamentary circles lest the old and tried policy might be forgotten. This Dutch policy of aloofness has not, of course, earned the praise of France, Great Britain or Germany. In order to be praised by them, it would have been necessary for Holland to fall in with the aims of their diplomacy. By maintaining her detachment, inspired by her peaceful inclinations and her distrust of policies of power, she has failed to gain partisans; and the honest dullness of her course, which even the civil war of 1830-1831 with the seceding Belgians, ending in the peace of 1839, hardly interrupted, has been criticised for its negative quality. The misunderstanding, misrepresentation and silence, which this foreign policy has often brought upon the country, could not be obviated even by the fact that Holland had organized and developed in the East Indies a splendid empire of fifty millions of inhabitants; that her engineers had con structed harbors in Chile; that her contractors had improved the rivers of China and the Suez Canal; and that, in view of her small population, her scientific men had won an unusually large number of Nobel prizes. II In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, after the close of the Franco-German War, the scene began to change. A new trend developed in European policy. This was the tendency to substitute an international for a merely foreign policy, the tendency to promote common interests, to recognize and uphold the interdependence of nations. Such things move very slowly; but it is indispensable that some one should make a start and lead the way. There is one great name in the recent history of Holland, bound up indissolubly with her joyful entrance into this disinterested new international policy of Europe-the name of Mr. Tobias M. C. Asser, lawyer, professor, privy councilor, delegate to both peace conferences at The Hague and to many other diplomatic congresses, member of The Hague Arbitration Court and arbitrator in several international disputes. He died in 1913. Holland's international, as distinguished from her national, resurrection is almost entirely attributable to him. The Franco-German War ended in 1871. Almost immediately, in 1873, the Netherlands government tried to bring about an international conference on an important and difficult, but politically innocent, subject, which is represented in the United States by renowned authors of able works, the conflict of laws. This attempt failed. In 1884, Italy, guided by Mr. Asser's friend Mancini, made a similar effort, but in vain. In 1891, Holland tried again. This time Mr. Asser succeeded, and his success resulted in a series of Hague conferences on private international law. The effects were lasting and increasing, and in 1910 and 1912, when bills of exchange formed the subject of the conferences, the United States sent delegates. In 1911, the attitude and activities of the Dutch government were gracefully recognized by the United States, when it proposed to make The Hague the seat of a new series of international conferences for the restriction of the use of opium. Is not such work conducive to the benefit of the nations of the world and to better international relations? Undoubtedly it is. Does it stir the hearts and the minds of the mass of the population? Undoubtedly not. It creates an atmosphere of disinterestedness and of mutual understanding; it develops what President Butler of Columbia University has happily styled " the international mind"; but it directly appeals only to a small and limited, though important, circle of men of influence and high. standing. It is the same with Holland's comprehensive arbitration treaties—the most advanced examples of the kind-with Denmark (1904), Italy (1909) and China (1915). Nor is the fact to be overlooked that Holland, in December, 1913, was the first European country to conclude (through the influence of her foreign minister, Jonkheer Loudon) a "Bryan treaty" for the advancement of peace. All of these treaties showed the progressive spirit of the Netherlands in international affairs, a spirit that was further manifested in Holland's adhesion, in 1912, to the international copyright convention of Berne. When the honorary doctor's degree was bestowed by the University of Leyden, on the eve of the opening of the Peace Palace (1913), upon four prominent promoters of international goodwill-Mr. Elihu Root being among them-the act met with general interest and general approval in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, events had occurred bringing international problems to the very masses of the population and affecting the international policy not merely of governments but of nations. They came unexpectedly and for Holland had a twofold interest. In the first place there was the meeting of the peace conference at The Hague in May, 1899, a time of bright spring, of the peaceful mingling of the flags of many nations, of reviving hope and awakening idealism. The result was the establishment of the Arbitration Court at The Hague. But the sunshine of the picture soon faded away. The autumn of the same year, 1899, witnessed the outbreak of the Boer War, fought by Great Britain against two free, harmless, democratic nations of |