opinion should express itself with appropriate vigor, there is nothing the conference would not try to do. The fact is that the delegates are only the hands on a watch; their movements are governed by a great invisible spring. This spring is public opinion: not the private opinion of individuals; but public opinion - opinion expressed, organized, made palpable and even disagreeable to those who oppose it. That is the master, and even the god, of the confer ence. Within the conference, too, this thought was expressed many times, perhaps most impressively by M. Beernaert, of Belgium, one of the most influential leaders in both conferences. In one of his addresses, M. Beernaert reminded his colleagues of their responsibility to public opinion, "that redoubtable sovereign," and said: “Public opinion is listening to and watching us; and to-day there is no assembly which must not sit with windows opened, listening to the voices from outside." Animated by this belief, the second conference made but feeble and unsuccessful efforts to keep its proceedings secret. From one to two hundred invited guests were present at all of the plenary sessions; and although the meetings of its commissions were attended by none but members, the conference at its second session authorized the president and secretariat to publish information as to their work. This was accordingly done by the general secretary of the editing committee after every meeting of a commission or subcommission; and as at the first conference, no sooner were documents printed and in the hands of the delegates than they found their way to the daily press. At one of the plenary sessions, about one month after the conference commenced, the president said that a great power had complained of the publication of certain documents, and urged the delegates to keep these secret; but the delegates did not respond completely to the president's plea and continued to give the documents to newspaper men as before. The journalists at The Hague, proudly calling themselves "the ambassadors of the peoples" and "the fourth estate of the conference," did their best to learn the facts and to publish them truthfully as well as fully. But it must be confessed that many of the newspapers unrepresented at The Hague treated the second conference with even more ridicule and misrepresentation than they had done the first. The great majority of the newspapers and journals, however, as well as the world of public opinion were profoundly interested in and hopeful of the conference, and did their best to help it to arrive at beneficial results. Thousands of addresses and dozens of deputations evinced this interest and sought to realize the hopes which they expressed. Among the most significant deputations and addresses may be mentioned those from: the International Council of Women, bearing the signatures of two million women living in twenty different countries; the Universal Alliance of Women for Peace by Education, representing nearly five million women of all civilized lands; English, American, and European churches, bearing the signatures of sixty archbishops and bishops and more than a hundred official representatives of non-episcopal churches; the International Federation of Students; the students of the Netherlands, a branch of "Corda Fratres"; twentythree colleges in the Central West of the United States, representing twenty-seven thousand professors and students; a petition for arbitration bearing two and a quarter million signatures, collected through the efforts of a single Boston teacher and presented by her to the president of the conference on the Fourth of July; two thousand students of the Summer School at Knoxville, Tennessee, who also cabled their address to the conference on the Fourth of July; fifteen thousand citizens of Sweden, meeting separately in their various localities; the International Bureau of Peace, with its headquarters in Berne; many peace societies of the United States, Great Britain, France, Portugal, San Marino, and Japan; and two very noteworthy peace congresses, that of April, 1907, in New York City, and that of September, in Munich, Germany. The Interparliamentary Union was an effective factor in the second conference as in the first, through the presence and influence of presidents and members of its various Groups, and especially through the plan of obligatory arbitration which it prepared, which the Marquis de Soveral, of Portugal, presented to the conference, and which became the basis of the agreement adopted by the conference for obligatory arbitration. The "oppressed nationalities" of the world made their voices heard at the second conference also, and with the same result as at the first, a reply, namely, that the conference had no jurisdiction over the internal affairs of the various governments. Among these deputations and addresses were those from the Albanians, Armenians, Bosnians, Coreans, Georgians, and Herzegovinians; and individual appeals were received from Boers, Egyptians, and Irishmen. The Zionists', Socialists', and Anarchists' international congresses also met in or near The Hague, during the sessions of the conference, and each of these had its word of appeal, reproach, or denunciation for the work of the Conference of Peace. VI. ORGANIZATION a. THE CONFERENCE OF 1899 Although the president of the conference Baron de Staal, of Russia, was entirely inexperienced in parliamentary government and law, the leading delegates from Western Europe, Great Britain, and the United States were remarkably well versed in their principles and practice; and under their guidance an excellent organization was effected. The first delegates from the various governments formed a kind of "cabinet" of advisers to the president, and within this cabinet there existed a kind of "steering committee," composed of the first delegates from the seven great powers"; to these were added later the other leading spirits of the conference, and although they acted entirely unofficially their influence was real and effective. In their first conclave on the day before the conference formally opened and the conference ratified their decisions the next day it was decided that on the basis of the three main topics proposed for discussion in the Russian Programme the conference should be divided into three main commissions." These were: I Commission, in charge of the question of armaments and the use of new kinds of implements of warfare; II Commission, in charge of the laws and customs of warfare; 2 II Com 1 Articles 1 to 4 of the Russian Programme; see later, page 45. mission, in charge of arbitration and other means of preventing warfare between nations. The I and II Commissions were each subdivided into two subcommissions dealing with military and with naval matters respectively; and the III Commission appointed a single "committee of examination," to report upon the various plans of arbitration submitted to it. Thus, the various organs of the conference were as follows: the Conference itself, which gave formal ratification to the proposals adopted by the commissions; the I, II, and III Commissions, which considered the reports of their subcommissions; and the five subcommissions, which did the difficult, constructive work of the conference. addition to these bodies there were also the Commission on Petitions, in charge of the various memorials sent to the conference, and the Commission on Editing, appointed near the end of the conference to edit the "conventions," or treaties agreed upon. In The various subdivisions of the conference having been determined, the method of procedure was very simple. In each subcommission the Russian members would explain the proposal of their government on the point in question; the subcommission, in its subsequent meetings, would reject, accept, or amend these proposals; a “reporter” appointed at the first session of the subcommission would then present his report of the decisions made by the subcommission, which would accept or amend his report; this amended report would then be discussed in a reunion of the commission concerned; and the commission's final report would be presented in a plenary session of the conference itself which would order its incorporation in the 1 Article 8 of the Russian Programme. |