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rule, and in practice, as applied in the treaty between Italy and the United States.

The fact that this American proposition was pushed to no further conclusion should be viewed in the light of what was accomplished by the conference in the direction of arbitration. Ambassador White wrote in his diary at the time of his efforts in behalf of the exemption of private property on the sea: "What we are sent here for is, above all, to devise some scheme of arbitration; and anything which comes in the way of this, by provoking ill feeling or prolonging discussion on other points, will diminish our chances of obtaining what the whole world. so earnestly desires."

4. Neutral Rights and Duties

The comparatively unimportant right, or “faculty," of neutral states to send their naval attachés to the theater of maritime warfare, was the only neutral right or duty on the seas discussed by the Conference of 1899; and the conference declined to sanction even this right. But the raising of the question of neutral rights and duties in warfare on the land led to the adoption of a desire that the entire question should be referred to a later conference. This desire was heeded in 1907, and an important code of rules concerning the rights and duties of neutrals on both land and sea was adopted by the second conference.

5. Laws and Customs of Naval Warfare 3

An attempt was made to have one custom of naval warfare, that of bombarding unfortified seaports, regu

lated by international agreement. But the conference consented only to have this question referred to a later conference. This reference met with entire success in 1907, however; and the work of the first conference in codifying the laws of warfare on land inspired the second conference to regulate various other customs of maritime warfare than that of bombardment.

III. WARFARE ON LAND

1. New Arms and Methods

The various attempts to prohibit the introduction or use of new and more powerful kinds of explosives, cannon, and muskets came to naught in the conference, and have been commonly regarded as absolute failures. It may be noted, however, that these attempts were based on the Declaration of St. Petersburg of 1868, which was ratified by seventeen European powers; and that the spirit of this declaration was successfully appealed to in the case of a new kind of bullets the use of which was prohibited by the first conference.

2. Neutral Rights and Duties

Nothing was accomplished by the first conference in the definition and sanction of the rights and duties of neutrals in warfare on the land. But the importance

of the question was so impressively stated that the conference voted unanimously to refer it to the next conference; and the second conference made extraordinary progress in the solution of it.

B

IV. ARBITRATION

1. Obligatory Arbitration

Universal obligatory arbitration, that is, obligatory arbitration for all classes and cases of dispute, was considered by the conference entirely impossible under the existing circumstances, and no delegation even proposed

it.

On the other hand, the importance of obligatory arbitration for certain classes of cases as a means of asserting the principles of law in international relations and of eliminating many troublesome misunderstandings between states, was emphatically asserted and freely admitted. The attempt was accordingly made to secure a convention providing for obligatory arbitration in eleven classes of cases, in so far as these cases should not affect the vital interests or the honor of the parties to the dispute. In the face of strong opposition, and in order to insure unanimous support for the Permanent Court of (voluntary) Arbitration, this attempt was abandoned before the proposition was brought to a formal vote.

The conference did formally indorse (by Article 19 of the Convention for the Peaceful Adjustment of International Differences) the introduction of obligatory arbitration for certain classes of cases in separate treaties contracted by the individual states; and the large number and the success of such treaties which had recently been contracted were made very prominent in the conference's discussions.

The famous Article 27 (of the above-named convention), which made it the duty of the signatory powers

to remind the parties to a dispute that the Permanent Court of Arbitration is open to them, was also advocated and welcomed as a step in the direction of obligatory arbitration; while the exponent of Germany's powerful opposition to a general treaty of obligatory arbitration said that when the Permanent Court should be put in operation, the opportune moment might come when, after experiments between separate nations,-a list of cases could be agreed upon obligatory for all.

The impulse of the first conference towards obligatory arbitration is shown by the fact that after the adjournment of the conference the German government devoted itself to a profound study of obligatory arbitration, and adopted several treaties providing for it, and at the second conference announced its entire conversion to a belief in its efficacy and desirability in so far as treaties between separate nations are concerned.

This impulse is shown by the additional fact that various other countries, great and small, "have made haste," to quote Mr. Choate's speech in the Conference of 1907, "to interchange with other individual nations agreements to settle the very questions for which arbitration was recognized by the last conference as the most efficacious and equitable remedy, by that peaceful method instead of by a resort to war. I believe that some thirty treaties have been thus exchanged among the nations of Europe alone, all substantially to the same purport and jeffect."

And Baron von Bieberstein, of Germany, said in the second conference: "In the course of our debates the fortunate fact has been mentioned that a long series of other treaties of obligatory arbitration have been con

cluded between various states. This is genuine progress, and the credit of it is due, incontestably, to the first Peace Conference."

2. The Forcible Collection of Debts

The only class of debts, for whose collection obligatory arbitration was proposed in the first conference, was that class which arises from pecuniary damages suffered by one state or its citizens as the result of the illegal action or negligence of another state or its citizens.

It was recognized that since disputes having to do with such damages have formed the large majority of the cases submitted to arbitration they are especially suitable for submission to obligatory arbitration. Such disposition was provided for them by unanimous vote of a committee of the first conference, and by a vote of thirty-one to eight in a commission of the second conference. But in both cases this agreement failed when the other parts of the obligatory arbitration programme were discarded.1

b. THE CONFERENCE OF 1907

I. ARMAMENTS

The Russian government omitted the subject of the limitation of armaments from the programme of the second conference, and several other powers made a determined effort to prevent its being introduced

1 The arbitration of contract debts was regarded, in the second conference, as different from, or a different kind of, obligatory arbitration, and was made the subject of an international agreement.

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