THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE.

THE FORUM, I believe, owes to its readers some review of the admirable treatise by Mr. Frederick W. Holls,' one of the six American delegates at The Hague, who has given to us what will be a leading authority on the history of the great Peace Conference.

Mr. Irving said to me, not long before his death, that the rub-a-dub has much more interest for the average reader of history, and for the average writer of history, than do the years — much more important than battles which go to the establishment of states and the advance of civilization.

This is true, it is too true. And, at the same time, it is true that the literature of International Law, which is, in practice, the history of advancing civilization, is shut off from the history of what are called events. The development of international intercourse, in commerce, in travel, and in social order, is described by one set of men in one set of books. And it is not handled, it is hardly attempted, by the writers who describe for us battles by land and sea, or who, perhaps, go so far afield as to tell us of the fall of a dynasty or the birth of an infant, if that infant happens to be born in the purple.

Now, this entire separation of the history of outside facts and the history of advancing civilization is a misfortune. It leaves the "average reader" quite in the dark as to most points on which he ought to know something if he would do his duty as a voter, as an educator of public opinion, or as a leader of society.

Meanwhile, there grow up, all the same, a class of men who do care to know what have been the real steps of advance. Outside such special matters as those to which the Congress at The Hague call our present attention, the battle of the Nile or the battle of Austerlitz has, in itself,

New

"The Peace Conference at The Hague and Its Bearings on International Law and Policy," by Frederick W. Holls, D.C.L. "Justicia elevat gentem." York: The Macmillan Company. "The International Court of Arbitration," by the same author. A paper read before the New York State Bar Association, January 15, 1901.

no value, nor even interest, as a bit of history. The value or interest of such battles depends upon the social changes which followed from them, on the steps upward and forward which civilization has made because of them. Some men interest themselves in such steps in human society. They exist, perhaps, in quiet life in all civilized nations. In the nations most civilized there are the most of them.

The great Peace Conference at The Hague called to the front a hundred such men. Not one in ten of them is named in such books of fame as "Who's Who"; nor is one in ten of them ever mentioned, even by accident, by the "Associated Press," which is the "Herald King-atArms" of modern life. But they are men known in cabinets. They are advised with by princes, ministers, and secretaries of foreign affairs. They know something, and what they know can be anchored to, and this is more than you can say of most men. This is a condition of very great value as we watch the whirlpool of daily life, where a stray log pops up at one moment, and a man swimming for his life at another; and you want to have somebody at hand who can tell which is the man and which is the log.

Now, in the early months of 1899, nobody believed much in The Hague Conference; but, at the same time, no ruler meant to make a mistake about it. The responsible people, therefore, sent to it one hundred of the men who knew about treaties and international relations, and who had given them good advice in the last twenty, thirty, nay, fifty years the best-informed hundred men, and, on the whole, the hundred men least prejudiced, who have ever sat down to one purpose since the world began.

Mr. Holls, who is more of an artist than he thinks he is, has, in his admirable history of the Conference, given us, almost without thinking of it, an excellent view of the place and its surroundings. Mr. Stead,' in his article in THE FORUM, has sketched some of the outlines. Everybody knows that The Hague is a very charming place. All the people there, including the members of the government, etc., were pleased that The Hague was, in a way, acknowledged as the centre of the civilized world; and so everybody honored himself and honored the Conference by the most assiduous hospitality.

"May decked the world, and Wilhelmina filled the throne."

The line limps a little as one substitutes for " Arthur " the pretty name of the young queen, but the interest and charm of her personality, at an

1 See THE FORUM for September, 1899.

era of her life so critical, will be an excuse for the halting prosody. It was on a perfect spring day that the Conference was opened, on the eighteenth of May. This day had been chosen because it was the birthday of Nicholas II, to whose initiative was due the agreement of twenty-six independent nations to meet for a purpose so important. At ten in the morning the Russian delegation, with the members of the Russian Legation, went in full uniform to the small chapel of the Greek Church, where a Te Deum was chanted. At two in the afternoon the Peace Conference was opened. This meeting and the subsequent meetings were held in the palace which will now be more famous than ever - which is the summer palace of the Dutch royal family. It is about a mile from the city, in the beautiful park known as the Bosch. The "Huis ten Bosch," or House in the Wood, is its popular name. The finest of the magnificently decorated rooms of this palace is the Oranje Zaal, or ball-room. This was finished by Jordaens and other pupils of Rubens in 1647, in honor of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. In this room the full Conference met.

Four rows of semi-circular tables, giving one hundred seats, had been arranged in the form of a parliamentary hall. The presiding officer's chair itself had been placed in the bay window. The seats were allotted in alphabetical order, in the French language. That Providence of which a Portuguese diplomatist once said that it takes equal care of drunkards, crazy people, and the United States had arranged that "Amerique" and Allemagne " (Germany) should come at the top of the alphabet. So our six delegates "got the best," if we may use the fine national phrase, and shared with the German delegates the seats of honor, in the centre of the room, directly in front of the chair. There was very little room for spectators. But this made the less difference, because the sessions were all strictly private, excepting on occasions of ceremony.

As our readers know from Mr. Stead's article, before referred to, the work divided itself, of course, under three heads; and, in truth, three conventions" followed from this subdivision, which are as distinct from one another as if they had been made by one conference at The Hague, another at Paris, and another at Geneva. But the general Conference had the good sense to accept, almost without alteration, these results of what may be called its sub-committees. In the same spirit Mr. Holls has subdivided his history into three parts. Not attempting a chronological order of work for the whole session of the Conference, he gives in his Chapter III the work of the first Committee, in Chapter IV the work of the second Committee, and in Chapter V the work of the third Commit

tee, which includes the establishment of the Commissions of Inquiry and Arbitration, and what was done in the way of "good offices" and "mediation." This last has probably the most general interest, and may be called, indeed, the most important subdivision. But Committees Number I and Number II have made advances in the international system of the world which are truly important, and which would always be called so were they not in a way overshadowed by the establishment of the High Court of Nations, by Committee Number III.

Committee Number I was called in convention the "Disarmament Committee"; and in general conversation among persons who know little about the Conference, and among those who wish to discredit it, the Conference is generally called the "Disarmament Conference." This is a pity, seeing that the word disarmament does not appear in its proceedings from the beginning until the end. But in the original circular of Emperor Nicholas, dated August 24, 1898, the very first lines spoke of a "possible reduction of excessive armament." In the English Ambassador's despatch of the next day, he said distinctly that Count Mouravieff had said that the Emperor "did not invite a general disarmament."

But, all the same, all that class of people who like to say that a new thing is impossible seized on the words "reduction of armaments," for the purpose of showing that the Emperor's scheme was purely Utopian. Baron Staal, in one of his opening speeches, referred to the false impression which had thus been given. Confessing that the Conference could in no way interfere with the independent acts of sovereign states, he did say: "This is the place to ask whether the welfare of peoples does not demand a limitation of progressive armaments." "The welfare of peoples" is a fine phrase taken from the end of Baron Mouravieff's first circular.

With the absolute avowal by the representatives of the Tsar, and by other leading powers, that no one proposed any plan for diminishing the existing military force of any nation, or, indeed, for interfering in any way with its sovereignty, it might have been supposed that the First Committee, so called, had lost the reason of its existence. But there were, in fact, referred to it three clauses of Count Mouravieff's second circular, treating of the "Humanizing of War"; and the results of its discussions on this subject appear in what is known as "the Convention regarding the Laws and Customs of War by Land." Recognizing as a part of international law the Geneva Convention, it consists of sixty articles, and may be considered as the Code of the Laws of War as they now exist among the nations which agree to this "Convention." The general subjects, under the head "Belligerents," are:

On the Qualifications of Belligerents,

On Prisoners of War,

On the Sick and Wounded.

Under the head "Hostilities," seven articles treat of the Means of Injuring the Enemy, of Sieges, and of Bombardments, and three treat of Spies. The third chapter covers Flags of Truce; the fourth, Capitulations; the fifth, Armistices.

A separate section regulates Military Authority in Hostile Territory. One short article, No. 47, worth remembering just now, is entitled, "Pillage is absolutely prohibited." The fourth general section regulates the Detention of Belligerents and the Care of the Wounded in Neutral Countries.

It has been well said that if The Hague Conference had done nothing but to place these rules intelligently on paper, and to secure for them the assent of a considerable number of civilized powers, it would have fully justified its existence. In fact, however, the importance of these rules seems so overshadowed by the great "Convention" which creates the High Court of Nations, that they have been generally overlooked in the estimate made of the value of the Conference to mankind.

To this "Convention" there are added two "Conventions," or agreements, binding on such powers only as assent to them. The first prohibits for five years the launching, in war-time, of projectiles or explosives from balloons; and in the second, the powers agreeing to it promise to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body. This is the "dum-dum bullet" question, of which it may be safely said that the man who rushes into it hastily, who is not an expert, is certainly a fool. This is sure, that angels would be very cautious in undertaking its discussion without scientific preparation.

These determinations alone, as has been said, would have given the Conference of the One Hundred" a distinguished place in history. But its crowning work, that which gives to it its name, is the first agreement, or "Convention," that which establishes a High Court of Nations. The title to the first article in this "Convention" expresses the central reason for the existence of the Conference. It is on the maintenance of a general peace.

It is now generally known that the initiative in the assembly of the measures which have proved so important is due to the resolute union of England and America. The Russian Emperor may well have been discouraged by the halting interest which the rest of the civilized world had taken in his original proposal. It had even been bitterly assailed