AGREEING TO DIFFER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1940, Page 10

AGREEING TO DIFFER

International disputation is sometimes carried on with unnecessary heat. Where a dispute is not vital to national existence or to national honour, there is no need to stage it provocatively, unless one or both of the two Governments has a provocative intention. Assuming no provocative intention and no limelight designs, both Governments should approach a new dispute with a minimum of heat, knowing that few international problems are so serious as to make it impossible for the Governments concerned to agree, or agree to differ. But the possibilities of agreement, or of agreement to differ, are sometimes not increased by exchange of Notes. If two Foreign Ministers meet like two pistol duellists, one of whom fires the first bullet (his Note of protest) to which the other replies with the second bullet (his counter-Note), the foundation is laid for an exchange of shots in which' each Minister endeavours to slay the other in a war of words. That method is prejudicial to either amicable differing or to agreement; and though diplomacy provides numerous instances in which the existing diplomatic machinery has been operated on much better methods and with harmonious results, nevertheless there is much to be said for the Anglo-American innovation mentioned by Rugby— the thrashing out of questions "almost entirely through personal diplomatic conferences and as far as possible without resort to sharp Notes."

If sharp Notes and counter-Notes are published from day to day, the Ministers become protagonists; so also do their Governments and their peoples; and the path of agreement, and the equally important path of toleration of differences of opinion, tend to become blocked by prejudice and passion. That this path did not become blocked in the case of Britain and Japan—disputing the right of belligerent Britain to remove belligerent Germany's subjects, liable to German war service, from the Asama Maru, a Japanese neutral merchant ship—is due to mutual forbearance. Publication of the British and Japanese Notes and correspondence has been timed with a view to pacification ; and the same motive has clearly actuated the authors of the published matter. Lord Halifax's regret at the Japanese interpretation of the s seizure of the Germans as an unfriendly act, and his disclaimer of any intention of Britain to infringe Japan's national honour, concerning which the Japanese have a particular conception of their own* class his correspondence at once as that of a pacifier who refuses to be argued out of his case, but who can tolerate the same refusal— however weakly supported in law and in logic—in the representative of Japan. There is no such thing as an international Parliament; and international law as derived from tradition or from international adjudications is so undefined that honest interpreters thereof may often find reason to differ tolerantly—which, in the "Daily Telegraph's" view, is what Britain and Japan have done. They have made a failure-to-agree as harmless as possible, while disclosing it in Notes. Under the AngloAmerican innovation referred to above, the failure-to-agree might be reached without Notes, and might require no parading whatever. A striking fact emerging from the Anglo-Japanese correspondence is that Germany has herself acted (by removal of people at sea) against the Japanese interpretation; so Germany herself could not make the claim on behalf of her Germans that Japan makes as a neutral. If Japanese shipping companies refuse to ship belligerent countries' subjects capable of war service, it now seems that further exploration of the difference in interpretation of international law that has arisen between

Britain and Japan may become unnecessary. In some future war a Japanese Government may find itself compelled, as a naval Power, to adopt the British case, and will therefore not be sorry if Lord Halifax and Mr. Arita left the Asama Maru incident in equipoise.