'WHEN the League of Nations,' said Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., on January 22, 1918, 'with its necessary machinery becomes an indispensable part of the national and international life, then, and then only, will it be possible for a world democracy to go forward to the full realization of its prosperity.'

There is less in a League of Nations than is dreamed of in Mr. Henderson's philosophy, or even in that of President Wilson, as Sir. F. E. Smith showed in his address to the New York Bar on January 11th. How is the question of Military Service to be settled, since if one Power has it and another has not, the weak will always be at the mercy of the strong? Or the Freedom of the Sea, when Land Powers might outvote Sea Powers? What of the alteration of frontiers and nationalities in the course of history? Or the problems of the Air, when 'peaceful' factories could turn out in secret unlimited quantities of war material? And if elementary questions such as these are unanswerable, what becomes of your League of Nations?

The League of Nations is no modern idea: it was tried nearly 2,500 years ago and found wanting. Go from Naples to Paestum, a Life of Piranesi in your hand, and you will see the most wonderful remains of Greek architecture extant with the exception of the temples at Athens. Among them are the remains of a Doric Basilica which Piranesi etched and called the House of the Amphictionic Council. That Council was the League of Nations of the democracies

VOL. XI-NO. 532

of the Ancient World, and its history is not without interest.

But, you say, those Ionians, Dorians, Phocians, Thessalonians, Magnesians and the rest who formed the League were not nations, but municipalities. In size, perhaps; but nations. they were in days when it took as long to go from Athens to Messene or from Platea to Pella as it takes to go from London to New York. The world was smaller then, and analogies must be founded on position and not on population. Everything is relative. What happened when this Council tried to enforce its own rules? Look at its history, and remember that in the days of its greatest activity. Demosthenes called it the shadow of a shade. Mr. Henderson will please note that.

The Council of the Amphictionic League was made up of representatives of twelve tribes, each with two votes. It met twice a year; at Delphi in the spring, at Anthela near Thermopylae in the autumn. Its duties were to watch over the interests of the Temple of Delphi and the Sacred Land; to regulate the relations of the leagued states in peace and war; to act as arbitrator; to take charge of roads and bridges; to arrange loans from the Treasury and a levy on capital was not an unheard-of measure on its part; to supervise the Pythian Games; to erect public monuments, one to Gorgias the orator, for instance, one to the heroes of Thermopyla; to adjust quarrels between members of the League, as in the case of the complaint of the Platæans about the boastful inscription set up by Sparta

113

on the monument at Delphi commemorating the battle of Platea; to punish offenders against international law, as in the judgment passed on Ephialtes for his treachery in showing the Persians the secret path over the hills which enabled them to destroy Leonidas and his Immortals. It possessed the right of sanctuary, of which Orestes took advantage; it exempted religious bodies from military service. The Amphictionic oath bound each state not to level an offending city to the earth and not to cut off the water supply from a belligerent; the oath thus contemplated a state of war as anything but abnormal. And how was the oath carried out? Look at the history of the First Sacred War: the very name is an irony. The city of Crisa levied dues on the pilgrims who passed through its land to consult the Delphic Oracle, the Amphictionic Council declared a Holy War, and, after a favorable response from Apollo proceeded to divert the water supply, poison it with hellebore, and make a way into the weakened city, which thereupon leveled with the with the ground: the Crisæan plain was laid waste with such 'frightfulness' that it was still a scene of desolation in the days of Hadrian, six centuries later.

was

Here, then, the Council, to gain its private ends and the political support of the Oracle, deliberately violates the provisions of its own oath treats them as Scraps of Paper and 'mitigates the horrors of war'- its official function-by employing the foulest means against its foes. Take the case of Platea again, when she had offended Thebes. Both were members of the League, yet because one is strong and the other weak, Plataa must go under. The Platean prisoners are put to the sword, their

city the savior of Greece at Marathon is destroyed, and their territory confiscated: the story is in Thucydides.

The decrees of the Amphictionic Council were indeed enforced when the interests of a powerful party were not involved. In the days of Cimon, the Dolopians, the safe return of whose ships had been guaranteed by the League, charged the people of Scyros with piracy for attacking those ships, and the offenders were duly punished. A century later, again, the Spartans were fined for besieging the Cadmea or citadel of Thebes. But it was the fatal weakness of the League, as of any later League of Nations, that powerful integral states could flout its judgments. Sparta did so; and an Athenian decree actually exists in which an Amphictionic decree is declared invalid, in spite of the fact that the League's status as arbitrator was never questioned, and was accepted even in the case of Athens and Delos, as it was later by the semi-barbarous powers of Macedon, in that both Philip and Alexander brought their Greek opponents before the Amphictions, instead of forcing them away to Macedonia for trial.

The voting powers of every state in the League were, nominally, equal; yet it was Athens and Sparta who fell out over the question of the exclusion from the League of states which had had dealings with the Persians, and it was the stronger power that won.

This Association of democratic neighboring states, with their representatives meeting at a common centre to transact the business of the League and to celebrate religious rites, with its record of international law, its binding oaths, its claim to arbitrate, so as to ameliorate the horrors of war, its nominal equality

of great and small, its plea for selfdetermination among smaller states, its guarantees against the abuse of power, presents an extraordinary parallel to the Hague Conference on the one hand and to the proposed League of Nations on the other. The result was just what might have been expected. Powerful democracies used the League for their own purposes, observed or ignored their obligations to suit themselves; there was no redress. Let those who hanker for a League of Nations recall the history of the democratic Amphictionic League; see it becoming the instrument of one powerful party after another, breaking its own laws, its own oaths; see Delphi itself taking vengeance on Crisa, Thebes on Phocis, Thespiæ, and Platea; Argos on Mycenæ, and see what comes of it in the end. As the First Sacred War had disclosed one member-city poisoning the waters of another and razing its walls to the ground, so the Second Sacred War showed the same cynical Welt-politik, followed in this instance by the tragedy of Chæronea and the rise of Macedon. In the middle of the fourth century B.C., Thebes, having been successful in getting the Spartans fined for their seizure of the Cadmea, saw an opportunity of using the League in the same way against the rival state of Phocis. A number of prominent Phocians were fined for alleged sacrilege, the League decreeing that if the fine were not paid within the time prescribed, their lands should be confiscated for the benefit of Delphi. Thereupon the Phocians seized Delphi itself; the League met at Thermopylæ and decided that an Amphictionic army should rescue the sacred city, whose treasures were being used by the Phocians to purchase new allies in

The Saturday Review

the North. Thessaly, threatened by this move, turned for help to Philip of Macedon, and thus changed the history of the world. While Demosthenes urged the cause of liberty and thundered out his Philippics, warning the Athenians of the intention of Macedon to subjugate all Greece, the League went on as usual. The board of temple builders met at Delphi; the Amphictionic Council with the trifling exception of the antiPhocian states assembled as before; Dorians and Ionians sat side by side and talked and talked and talked in the peaceful Council Chamber, and held the Pythian Games; while the world outside was a welter of blood and confusion brought on it by the League.

The crazy Declaration of London was the fruit of the Hague Conference; the rise of Macedon the fruit of the Amphictionic League. By their fruits

ye shall know them is as true of Leagues and Conferences as of men and states. Has the experience of the past no value for the future? Are we like the Bourbons, forever learning nothing, but, unlike them, forever forgetting? If so, we shall form and rely upon a League of Nations and talk and talk and talk, and cry out, when it is too late, for the regretted whips of independent states in place of the scorpions of 'Allies' in a League of Nations who work in secret and reward us openly with the penalties of a stupidity born of sloppy sentimentality, the offspring of self-deception.

Fear God and learn to take your own part, said George Borrow of the ancient city of Norwich. Not bad advice! If followed it will be more likely to prevent wrongdoing than will reliance on the insincerities of a League of Nations.

ANYONE who has been thrown with Turkish troops in Galicia, Macedonia, or Rumania and has employed his time aright, has gained more insight into the Turkish military system, organization, customs, and ways of thinking in a word, into the spirit of Turkey than the many who seek an understanding of its essence in Constantinople. The metropolis is European, a thoroughly cosmopolitan annex to the Ottoman Empire, an outpost far from the roots of Turkish strength and utterly dominated by west European influences-which, let us hope, are gradually being supplanted by those of Mitteleuropa. In Galicia, Macedonia, and Rumania the Turks were absolutely unconstrained even while under German command (which worked well for them). At all events they were more naturally themselves than in the capital of the realm. It is true that one cannot study Turkish strategy there; the facilities open to the German army are far too meagre for that purpose. As soldiers, however as human beings, as brothers in arms, as devout Mussulmans, as cordial and warmly hospitable friends in all these relations one can become better acquainted with the Turks through the expeditionary forces at the European front than in any other way. There the Ottoman individuality is presented as clearly as if framed in a picture or cut in relief and raised upon a pedestal. In Galicia, Rumania, and Macedonia,

*Translated from Deutsche Stimmen.

he who understands how to do it, gets to know our Turkish ally with most impressive distinctness.

It seems axiomatic that every German must make his own mistakes with Orientals. They are apparently like certain ailments of childhood, only still more inevitable, unescapable. Moltke, von der Golz, Else Kamphöver have tried prophylactics, have said and written much that is worthy of being taken to heart, but the fruit of their labors has been slight. It seems to be an almost hard and fast rule that a German in the Orient must first go through the process, often a painful one, of breaking off his western horns. When he has done that, then he is ready for a summons home, since he has demonstrated his uselessness in the East? Far from it! Precisely then he is available and adapted to the Orient -especially to the Turks; then he has begun to show promise of being serviceable in the East. Then he has learned that he may not take the initiative, and this negative way is, as experience teaches, the only possible, the only right one. We are not yet ready for the positive method which Moltke, Golz, and Else Kamphöver wanted to teach us. You North Germans, who have scraped off the horns of your Prussian-Berlin arrogance you Bavarians, who have come to grief with your peculiar variety of self-conceit, which the Turks do not in the least appreciate all you who have thoroughly put your foot in it' with your sense of the

superiority of the German officer, or functionary, or merchant, with your know-it-all attitude, your persistence, your smart talk, your pomposity, your lack of moderation, or whatever else your blunder may have been you all, I say, from now on are the right people for the Turks. You have your own antitoxin, and are with reasonable certainty proof against later blunders in the Orient.

There are some, indeed, who are incorrigible. Permit me to digress a moment into anecdote. A major in the artillery was commissioned to take several Turkish staff officers on a tour of the German 'inner front,' showing them the Krupp works at Essen and at Kiel, the great chemical plants, and more of the same nature. One Sunday, for which he happened to have no engagement, he found himself in a large city in western Germany undecided how to occupy his free time. He sought advice from a man who knew the Turks well. The latter had already made his own silent observations, had discovered that the major enjoyed gazing upon the wine glass, and that the Turkish gentlemen, who happened to be of more austere inclination (for there are others), found little pleasure in it, became thoroughly bored over their glasses of lemonade or soda water while their guide was deep in a confidential chat with his drinking pals. Accordingly, the inquirer received the suggestion of visiting some of the historic buildings dating from the Middle Ages in which that region abounds, or of taking a trip to the battlefields of the FrancoPrussian War, or of making an inspection of a great fortress all things which would give great pleasure to the Turks and be very interesting to them, for they are always eager for information and in quest of knowledge. Two days later the officer

to

telephoned the friend who had advised him: 'Look here, what you proposed to me the other day was nothing but tiresome piffle! I did something quite different drove with my "Turkish nuisances" * Assmannshausen and sat me down in the "Krone." They have an elegant brew there, I can tell you. My old Turks did n't join in, though; they sat looking out of the windows at the Rhine. . . .' The man must have been one of the incorrigibles, who would go through their whole lives perfectly willing that both the Near and the Far East should remain inaccessible.

The German who comes to the East on an official errand regards himself as a sort of demi-god. 'You can't show me how to do anything' is his fixed reservatio mentalis. Now the demi-god finds, to his astonishment, a very cool reception, experiences one disillusion after another, turns away in anger from those whom he was desired to regard as friends, seeks and obtains his prompt recall home. One should be very wary and distrustful of gentlemen whom he hears discussing Turkish affairs after they have been among the Turks a short time and have speedily returned. They are demi-gods who are in a bad temper, and the less the hearer believes them, the nearer he will be to the truth.

But the Turks are nevertheless so cold, so inconceivably unresponsive, and often so offensively suspicious? There is some truth in the suggestion

but whose fault is it that it has become so? They stand perpetually under the evil spell of the thought that we (according to occidental custom) come to the Orient only for adventure. That is so only for a time, however; the shell of distrust, cool

*A play on words; the original means also 'old tipplers.'