"The resolution is worthy of notice, because it shows the return of the Chamber to a sounder perception of this question. It seems at last to recognise the extravagance of the expectation certain fanatics entertain of bringing about a lasting peace by so apparently simple a means as a tribunal of arbitration. We have indeed, as Herr Hedin reminded us, now had experience ourselves of how unsatisfactory this can be; and it certainly appears that they must be lacking in common sense who would question the justice of the Foreign Minister's reminder, that arbitration cannot be appealed to when a nation's political freedom or independence is touched by the issue." I may here beg leave to calm the ruffled feelings of the honourable Government organ by bringing to remembrance the lesson, otherwise applicable also, which our dismembered sister-land on the other side of the Sound offers us. At the London Conference in 1864, the representative of England, Lord Russell, referred to the decision arrived at by the Paris Congress in 1856, that States which had any serious dispute should appeal to the mediation of a friendly power before taking to arms. In harmony with this the British plenipotentiary proposed that the question, whether the boundary line should be drawn between the lines of Aabenraa-Toender, on the one side, or Dannewerke-Sli on the other, should be decided by arbitration. Prussia and Austria consented to accept the mediation of a neutral power; but Denmark replied to the proposition with a distinct refusal. In the same way Denmark refused the proposal made first by Prussia, and later by France, that a means of deciding the boundary should be sought in a plebiscite of the people in Sleswick. _Denmark trusted too much upon might and too little upon right. Otherwise Sleswick had still been Danish._ If the axiom be correct, that disputes which affect the existence and independence of nations ought not to be submitted for solution to arbitration, it is of so much the greater moment to try to get international complications settled in this way, because they may swell up into questions of the kind first named; since in any case this means could be adopted as a last resource in time of need. History knows of no example of the destruction of a free nation by the impartial judgment of arbitration. * * * * *