Mr. Montague Bernard, the celebrated international jurist, -wrote an admirable
letter to the Times of Tuesday on the Luxem- burg guarantee. " Unquestionably," he says, " the guarantee is collective in the sense that each of the six Powers (excluding Belgium) has a right to insist that the aid of the other five be invoked, at the same time as its own, and that the liability be borne in common,—to demand, in short, the application of the ordinary principle of suretyship, which modern legislation has borrowed from Roman law, so far as that principle is applicable to such a transaction. But if it was intended to provide that the default of one should discharge all -the rest, and that the only case in which assistance could possibly he invoked should be the case in which it would be invoked in vain, this should have been expressed in a manner that would leave no room for misconception. But in truth it never is, or can be, right or wise to contract, be it never so openly, illusory engage- ments. Considerations of honour and prudence forbid it alike." The conclusion is that we have, in fact, in engaging to guarantee .(with other Powers) the neutrality of Luxemburg, contracted, as we have always contended, a new and most dangerous obligation, from which this nation cannot now honourably escape. And this is Lord Stanley's boasted caution !
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