THE PEACE CONFERENCE

(A.D. 1899)

ELEONORE D'ESTERRE-KEELING

"We are making a page of history; let us see to it that we make it well!"

HESE words were spoken lately by one

ΤΗ

of the ninety-eight delegates who, sent

by twenty-six States, met at The Hague on May 18 to form the greatest Conference of the century, and the speaker nowise overestimated the importance of his mission. That A page of page of history, which he helped to make, might be written in letters of gold.

For the last quarter of a century the nations of the world have been devoting all their ingenuity to the invention and perfection of means of destruction, with the result that a point at last was reached which meant that the next great war must terminate in the ruin of one combatant and the annihilation of the other.

Such a state of things was more than the most belligerent of Powers could contemplate with equanimity. Where was it all to end, and who would be the first to cry, "Holdenough!"

history.

The Tsar's

The answer came from the least expected quarter.

The foreign ambassadors to the Court of St. Petersburg, when paying their weekly visit, on August 28th of last year, were handed by Count Muravieff, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, a printed document which caused them no little surprise. This document has since become famous as the Tsar's Rescript. Rescript. It contained an invitation to all the Powers who were represented in the Russian capital to hold a Conference to discuss the possibility of putting "some limit to the increasing armaments, and to find a means of averting the calamities which threaten the whole world." At the same time the Tsar's

circular pointed out that

"The ever-increasing financial burdens attack public prosperity at its very roots. The physical and intellectual strength of the people, labor and capital are diverted for the greater part from their natural application and wasted unproductively. Hundreds of millions are spent to obtain frightful weapons of destruction, which, while being regarded to-day as the latest inventions of science, are destined to-morrow to be rendered obsolete by some new discovery. National culture, economical progress, and the production of wealth are either paralyzed or turned into false channels of development. Therefore the more the armaments of each Power increase, the

less they answer to the purposes and intentions of the Governments. Economic disturbances are caused in great measure by this system of extraordinary armaments, and the danger lying in the accumulation of war material renders the armed peace of to-day a crushing burden more and more difficult to bear."

Of the Conference which he proposed should be held, the Tsar went on to say:

"It would be a happy augury for the opening century. It would powerfully concentrate the efforts of all States which sincerely wish. to see the triumph of the grand idea of universal peace over the elements of trouble and discord."

ment of the

This paper was printed in the Times of Au- The comgust 29, 1898, and a comment upon it in a London leader of the same journal is worth quoting:

"The state paper which Count Muravieff, by direct order of the Tsar, has addressed to the representatives of the Powers accredited to the Court of St. Petersburg, is a very remarkable and most unexpected document. On the eve of inaugurating a memorial to his grandfather as the Tsar Liberator, the present Autocrat of all the Russias seizes the opportunity to appeal to the civilized world in the still more lofty capacity of the Tsar Peacemaker. Count Muravieff's note, in which the views and aspirations of his master are expounded, breathes a spirit of generous-perhaps, indeed, of almost quixotic-humanity, a spirit with which

Times.

The second circular.

Special

consideration.

we have long been familiar in the effusions of visionaries and enthusiasts, but have been too seldom privileged to find in the utterances of great sovereigns and responsible statesmen. Never perhaps in modern history have the aspirations which good men in all ages have regarded as at once ideal and unattainable found so responsive an echo in the counsels of one of the greatest and most powerful of the world's rulers."

The States to which the Rescript had been addressed having respectfully, if incredulously, expressed their desire for further information as to the proposed Conference, on January 11, Count Muravieff sent out a second circular, in which the points to be discussed were placed under eight headings, as follows:

"1. An agreement not to increase military and naval forces for a fixed period; also not to increase the corresponding War Budgets; to endeavor to find means for reducing these forces and their Budgets in the future.

"2. To interdict the use of any kind of new weapon or explosive, or any new powder more powerful than that which is at present in use for rifles and cannon.

"3. To restrict the use in war of existing explosives of terrible force, and also to forbid the throwing of any kind of explosives from balloons or by any analogous means.

"4. To forbid the use of submarine torpedo

boats or plungers, and any other similar engines of destruction, in naval warfare; to undertake not to construct vessels with

rams.

"5. To apply to naval warfare the stipulations of the Geneva Convention of 1864.

"6. The neutralization of ships and boats for saving those shipwrecked during and after naval battles.

"7. The revision of the Declaration concerning the laws and customs of war elaborated in 1874 by the Conference of Brussels, which remains unratified to this day.

"8. To accept in principle the employment of good offices in mediation and optional arbitration in cases which lend themselves to such means in order to prevent armed conflict between nations; an understanding on the subject of their mode of application and the establishment of some uniform practice in making use of them."

On January 17, the Times in a leading article expressed its opinion of this development as follows:

of the

"This document in a certain measure meets Genera the wish expressed by Lord Salisbury in his criticis despatch of October 24, for 'some indication Rescrips, of the special points to which the attention of the Conference is to be directed.' We now know what these points are to be, and the knowledge, we are afraid, can but confirm the view generally held by men of sense and expe