cially elected on the question, voted unanimously for union, and the desire was solemnly granted in another treaty between the same Powers on November 14, and in a treaty with Greece as cosignatory on March 29, 1864. In all these treaties the vote of the islands is stated as the primary condition of the abrogation of the Vienna arrangement and the union with Greece. However greatly the desire to balance the growing Slav strength to the north, or to reward the Greeks for their recent choice of a sovereign may have contributed to this act, until then unparalleled in history, the choice of method is undoubtedly due to the perception of its value by the British Cabinet, and especially by Lord John Russell.

The most interesting international discussion of the method of the plebiscite, and the one most significant to-day, is that by the eight Powers gathered in the Conference of London which met in the spring of 1864 with the object of converting the temporary cessation of hostilities between Denmark and the Germanic Powers into a permanent peace. The point at issue was again the disposition of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, a matter which had supposedly been settled, after 1848, by various treaties regarding the succession in the duchies. Denmark and the neutrals desired that these provisions be restored. Prussia, the Confederation and Austria were determined against it. Perceiving after a lengthy and futile discussion that restoration of the treaty provisions was hopeless, Earl Russell, as spokesman for the neutral powers, proposed that recognition be made of the national aspirations of the two races in Schleswig by a division of the duchy along a frontier which he indicated, no further disposition of the southern part or of Holstein to be made without the consent of the inhabitants "duly consulted." To such a division Denmark and the Germanic Powers agreed in principle, but could reach no agreement on the line of demarcation, each proposing a line which would include many of the alien race, the German delegates claiming the whole of the mixed district and the Danish delegates claiming that and even

more.

The Germanic delegates, however, insisted on an unexpected development of the original proposal. It had been the British proposition that the vote should be taken only in those districts to be separated from the Danish crown, namely, in Holstein and the southern districts of Schleswig, in order to ascertain their wish as to their future ruler. Bismarck now resorted to a plan originally proposed to him by Napoleon 1 and instructed the Prussian plenipotentiary to insist that the vote be taken also in the part of Schleswig to be separated from the rest of the duchies. "Guided by the conviction that

1

1 Heinrich von Sybel, The Founding of the German Empire by William I, vol. 3, pp. 318 and 341-351, gives extracts from the correspondence between Bismarck and Drouyn de Lhuys, the French Foreign Minister, on this subject.

the Conference should be aware of the wish of the people whose future they were deliberating," Count von Bernstorff, at the order of his government, asked "that the inhabitants of Schleswig should be consulted on the subject of the disposition to be adopted in their regard, and that the fate of these populations should not be decided without their wishes having been previously consulted." 1 This plan of a vote in Northern Schleswig was not pleasing to Denmark as it offered an opportunity to the people to vote against their own ruler, nor was it pleasing to the neutral Powers to whom the preservation of the Danish monarchy was an essential to the Balance of Power. The Germanic delegates being insistent, however, the French plenipotentiary, de la Tour d'Auvergne, then suggested a compromise. His plan was to limit the vote to the district bounded on the north by the line proposed by Prussia and on the south by the line insisted on by Denmark, the vote to be taken by communes under the eyes of delegates of the eight Powers, all military forces having been withdrawn. This, he said, presented a method which would allow, in the definitive drawing of the frontier line, the giving of the most exact consideration possible to each nationality." This solution at once gained the support of the delegates of the Germanic Confederation and Prussia, as well as those of all the other Powers excepting Russia and Austria who were still true to the principle of legitimacy of the Vienna Congress. The Russian representative, Brunnow, protested eloquently against the indignity of leaving to a vote of peasants a question which the diplomatists of Europe had been summoned to London to settle and said that he should be forsaking the principles which served to regulate the policy of the Emperor were he to admit the appeal which the plenipotentiaries of Prussia proposed to make to the population of Schleswig. On the utter refusal of Denmark to consider any other frontier than the one originally proposed by Russell the conference was forced to abandon the solution and, the period of the armistice having expired, the conference adjourned and the war went on to its conclusion so disastrous for Denmark.

46

The statement is sometimes made that the Conference of London repudiated the method of the plebiscite. Such a conclusion might well be drawn from the adroit summing up of the discussion by the Russian plenipotentiary. Examination of the text of the protocols shows, however, that although Russia definitely repudiated any appeal to a vote, and Austria refused absolutely to support any vote except of the Estates, the plenipotentiaries of Denmark, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Prussia and the Germanic Confederation all accepted the general principle of a plebiscite, and that, although there was definite objection by Denmark and the neutrals to the Prussian proposal of

1 Conference of London, Protocol No. 10, Documents, post, p. 913.

2 Protocol No. 11, Documents, post, p. 928.

taking a vote in the whole of Northern Schleswig, the French solution of taking a vote in the disputed district and drawing a frontier line in accordance with it met with the unqualified approval of the representatives of all of the Powers except Denmark, Russia and Austria.

In 1866 the Powers were once more met at Paris to discuss the question of the Danubian Principalities. Prince Couza, whose election in 1857 had secured the union of Moldavia and Wallachia, had been deposed by his own subjects. The vacancy in the office of Hospodar once more raised the question of union. Turkey and Austria were still opposed to it and Russia now shared their attitude. The Austrian and Russian plenipotentiaries, however, were both careful to base their arguments on the supposed desire of the Moldavians for separation. Both Brunnow for Russia and Metternich for Austria insisted that the people of Moldavia should be able to state their wishes under sure guarantees of liberty and independence.1 Cowley, the British representative, said that his government had no preconceived opinion either for or against union, had no intention of imposing on the population an arrangement repugnant to them and left it to the wish of the populations. If the people, legally consulted, pronounced for the maintenance of union, the British government would not oppose it and would, in fact, support it with the Porte. In this Prussia agreed. France insisted that beyond question the people of the Principalities were still in favor of union; if further information was desired the joint assembly at Bucharest could be interrogated. This did not please either the Austrian or Russian delegates, who advocated a vote by separate assemblies in each Principality in order to obviate the danger of pressure on the Moldavian delegates. The question of a new election and of joint or separate assemblies was referred back to the home governments. The reply of the Russian government in the dispatch read by Brunnow is interesting. The Russian government replied that the chief requisite for a decision was light. “This light,” ran the dispatch, as read by Brunnow, “can be obtained only through a new resort to the vote of the two Principalities, surrounded by all the guarantees which could assure its sincerity." The Principalities had, however, not waited for the Powers to determine the question of an assembly. In the interval the provisional government of the Principalities had taken the matter into its own hands, had dissolved the Assembly and had convoked a new one. Against this action the Conference strongly protested, but ultimately allowed the vote for union cast by the assembly so elected and also granted the wish for a foreign prince, a desire

1 Metternich declared "Son gouvernement désire dans tous les cas que les populations Moldaves puissent émettre leurs vœux sous certaines garanties de liberté et indépendence." Conference of Paris, 1866, Protocol No. 2, Martens, N. R. G., vol. 18 p. 175.

which had been often expressed by the Principalities and which had finally been put to a direct vote of the people by the provisional government.

This same year of 1866 saw a second treaty of cession containing a stipulation for a plebiscite. The Treaty of Prague, signed on August 23, 1866, terminated the war between Prussia and Austria over the spoils which they had seized from Denmark in 1864. Article V contains the stipulation that Prussia shall incorporate the duchies only on condition that the populations of Northern Schleswig shall be ceded to Denmark if by a free vote they express such a wish. Contemporary observers and later historians agree in crediting the clause to the influence of Napoleon, who had acted as mediator. Whether or not this is the fact, it is obvious that the suggestion as to Northern Schleswig was far from novel and had acquired its original prestige from Prussia. Parentage, however, did not prevent Prussia from at once unconditionally annexing the duchies in toto on January 12, 1867, before any negotiations had been begun with Denmark.

Bismarck had at first shown every intention of carrying out the plebiscite in Schleswig. On December 20, 1866, he had declared before the Prussian lower house that in his opinion a people unwillingly annexed could not be an element of strength and that the government could not refuse to redeem the pledge made in that treaty.1 The yielding of Bismarck to pressure from the military party marks the maturing of another philosophy — the negative of that of popular sovereignty- the maturing, in fact, of a philosophy which had been developing across the Rhine, where a new nation was being erected, based on the principle not of consent, as in Italy, but of conquest. The national democratic movement of 1848 having failed in Germany, thanks to the determination of Prussia to play a leading part in the new nation, German political philosophy had become enamored of another method, the method of blood and iron. Far different from the unification of Italy, which had been effected under the spirit of 1848, German unity represented a counter move

In her annexation of Hanover and Hesse in 1866, Prussia had shown. no regard to the popular will. In 1867 she annexed Schleswig in spite of the conditional clause in the treaty. After 1867 and especially after 1870 any support of national self-determination constituted an indictment of the whole German political structure as well as of German action in Schleswig, a fact which German writers were not slow to discern.

1 Emil Elberling, Partage du Slesvig, in Franz C. de Jessen, Manuel historique de la question du Slesvig, pp. 154 and 307; Fusinato, p. 103, quoting from Lawrence, pp. 80-82. Elberling in his chapter on the partition of Schleswig in de Jessen, p. 154, says that on October 13, 1864, Bismarck had declared that, in his opinion si le Slesvig du Nord à un moment donné était restitué au Danemark, cet événement ne serait pas un grand malheur."

The subsequent history of the doctrine becomes, after 1867, primarily one of discussion rather than of practice. There are, to be sure, a few scattering examples of a resort to self-determination after the Treaty of Prague. Denmark, while still hopeful of arriving at an agreement with Prussia, insisted on a plebiscitary clause in the treaty of cession of the islands of St. Thomas and St. John to the United States, and the plebiscite was actually held in January, 1868. The Italian government insisted on a plebiscite being held in Venetia in 1866, and in Rome in 1870, before the annexation of these provinces to the kingdom. The treaty of cession signed by France and Sweden in 1877 provided for a plebiscite in the island of St. Bartholomew. A clause stipulating for a plebiscite was incorporated in the Treaty of Ancon in 1883. But although all of these plebiscites, except that of the Treaty of Ancon, were duly carried out, nevertheless the cynical disregard of obligation under the Treaty of Prague shown by Prussia was a blow to the prestige of the principle, a blow the greater because of the growth of Germany as a world Power, and because of the growing custom of students of history and political philosophy to seek instruction in German universities. The philosophic arguments there propounded were too valuable as support for the imperialistic and anti-democratic desires of individuals and groups in other countries not to gain eager credence.

In attempts at settlement of questions of sovereignty and boundaries by the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878 and the Congress of Berlin in 1878 the doctrine and method were both ignored. The last case of successful appeal to the doctrine before the war of 1914 was that of Crete, which, after constant disregard by the Powers of its repeated vote for union with Greece, passed by each successive elective assembly, at last, in 1912, won their final consent to the ending of a situation grown untenable through continued discontent and made acute through the threatened hostilities between Greece and Turkey. The doctrine had, however, been abandoned by statesmen as being inconsistent with the policy of Balance of Power. Diplomacy had returned to the methods of the Congress of Vienna. Once more, as after Vienna, the doctrine was to find its support from the people whose national aspirations had been thwarted and from political students interested in perfecting tools suited to achieve the stability which had become more than ever essential to the delicate balance of the complex organization of society.

The period of discussion of the position of the doctrine of self-determination in international law begins with the years following 1866. Liberal thought in Europe was insistent that the pledge of the Treaty of Prague be fulfilled. In one of the first issues of the newly instituted Revue de droit international at Brussels, the editor, Rolin-Jaequemyns, made a short but eloquent attack