The oddness of international law (part 234): Montenegro’s independence has finally allowed the country to conclude a peace treaty with Japan. Europe’s newest state had technically been at war with the land of the rising sun since the 1904-05 Russo-Japan War – in much the same way that the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed and Russia were supposedly in a state of war from 1853 to 1966 (when a Soviet official and the mayor of the town formally ceased hostilities, the latter supposedly asking his commie counterpart to “Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds”).