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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 162, 14 August 1914, Page 6

Little Denmark may feel intensely indignant over the action of the Germans in laying contact mines* in international waterways, but what redress has she?. International obligations are cast aside when the Hohenzollern finds them at all embarrassing, ,as . Luxemburg and Belgium know to their cost. The German War*' Office threw Army Corps into the duchy without any notification whatever, and, when the violation was made, coolly offered to make reparation later. Belgium's neutrality was similarly violated. The Hague Tribunal has no restraining effect on Germany, when its conditions embarrass her diplomatic enterprises. The tribunal is a body which has no power at all to enforce* peaceful settlement; at present it can only provide the machinery for that purpose. There are no means whatever of persuading belligerent nations to lend their case to arbitration if they are determined to use the sword instead. As a matter of cold fact, The Hague Tribunal- is only an International Arbitration Court in the courtesy sense of the term. As a general rule the only disputatious matters referred to it for its jurisdiction are comparatively unimportant points. Germany, of all nations,- could hot be expected to heed the directions of such a tribunal since she is imbued with that well-known policy 'of Bismarck, that any treaty obligations entered into by any parties may be ignored when the private interests of the signatories "no longer reinforces the text" of the treaties. Austria has been persuaded by her elder brother that while it is a good thing to follow the conventional course of entering into international understandings with one's neighbours, such need be considered binding only so long as they do hot interfere with one's predatory instincts. In these matters the Teuton is a law unto himself—hence the' cool arrogance with which Germany, in the present quarrel, has defied' all international conventions, relying instead* on sheer weight of met::.l and -the number of her sabres.