Minister von Bülow. In this letter he made a noble and powerful plea for the principle of arbitration and showed what wrong the Kaiser's ministers would do if they should permit him, a "ruler of such noble ambitions and admirable powers," to draw upon himself the resentment of the world through frustrating progress at the Conference. Mr. Holls carried with him manifold evidences of American enthusiasm for arbitration -among others a cable message from thirty-one Baptist clergymen in Oregon and a prayer written by the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Texas, to be used every Sunday during the session of the Conference. Chancellor Hohenlohe, though a Roman Catholic, was especially affected by reading a copy of this prayer. The letter of Mr. White was presented to the Kaiser with friendly recommendations from these statesmen; and Count Münster, head of the German delegation had sent Dr. Zorn to Berlin on a similar mission; indifference gave way to co-operation and hostility ceased.

The diaries of Dr. White and the Baroness von Suttner reflect vividly the stress and strain of the momentous experience until, after necessary compromises and the reservation by the Americans. that nothing agreed to involved any abandonment of the traditional attitude of the United States towards questions purely American, the conventions at last were signed and sealed. The problem proposed by the Czar of lessening the burden of

armaments had not been solved but the logical precedent condition for the reduction of armaments had been decreed. The Permanent International Tribunal of Arbitration, with a panel of judges appointed by the signatory powers, was now assured. More had been accomplished for world organisation in three months than in the previous three centuries. Mankind entered the new century with the rational hope that ere it ended duels between nations would be as obsolete as are to-day duels between men in all Englishspeaking countries.

After the ratification of the conventions and the opening at The Hague, in April, 1901, of the mansion which was to be the temporary headquarters of the Permanent International Tribunal, scepticism again prevailed. "You have got your court, but no one has used it, and no one will use it except for trifling issues," was the cry. The smart critic is far too ready to help the public to forget that in all progress there must be first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, and that evolution in efficiency and gain in confidence are as necessary in achieving world-organisation as in achieving aviation. But in much less time than it took the Supreme Court of the United States to receive its first case, that Court having met and adjourned repeatedly for over two years without being called to adjudicate, President Roosevelt, acting on the suggestion of Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, then on a visit to the United States,

arranged with President Diaz to send to the Tribunal a long-standing case, involving money, known as the "Pious Fund Case." According to the Hague Convention, each country selected two judges from the large panel of judges and these four selected a fifth to try the case. This was soon settled in favour of the United States. It was of signal service in giving prestige to the court and was soon followed by the Venezuelan case, involving eleven nations, which was at first referred to President Roosevelt for arbitration, but again, following wise counsels, he declined in favour of the Hague Tribunal.

During the Russo-Japanese War, which followed close upon the Conference, the Dogger Bank episode, as it was called, once more showed the result of that momentous conference of 1899. As the Russian Admiral's fleet was passing through the North Sea, on its long and fateful voyage around two continents, after being warned to beware of possible Japanese torpedo-boats, it fired upon some English fishing vessels in the dusk killing two men, wounding others, and hurried on apparently unconscious of the evil it had wrought. Instantly England was in white heat; the press breathed forth threatenings and it seemed for a few days as if only blood could wipe out blood. Fortunately the provision for a Commission of Enquiry, one of the provisions of the Hague conventions was invoked by France. The admirals were halted, sent to Paris to face the surviving

fishermen, and an impartial committee composed of admirals from five countries listened to the testimony. The Russians were exonerated of any purpose to wrong England, but asked to pay $300,000 to the widows and injured, which they were only too glad to do.

A few months later, after the destruction of the Russian fleet by Admiral Togo, President Roosevelt wrote the preface to one of the greatest romances of history by inviting the belligerent nations at our antipodes to send representatives to settle in Kittery navy-yard one of the greatest of modern wars. Had it not been for a third provision of the Hague conventions, providing for Mediation as well as for Arbitration and Enquiry, this romance of the Portsmouth treaty could hardly have been recorded in the annals of history.

The cynicism of many who thought the Hague Court useless because it did not prevent the Russo-Japanese War and the Boer War was due to ignorance of the situation. The Transvaal was not represented at The Hague as it was not a truly independent state. Needless and terrible as the Boer War was, it does not in the least discredit the Hague Tribunal's usefulness when nations pledge themselves to use it. The Russo-Japanese War ought to have been prevented had the world been a little further organised. It accused the powers as well as the two nations involved. Whatever the weakness, follies, and cruelty of which the Czar is

guilty, his sincerity in calling the Hague Conference ought not to be questioned.

In 1904, Congress invited the Interparliamentary Union to our shores, voting fifty thousand dollars for the entertainment of its members, and President Roosevelt welcomed a delegation of two hundred of these in Washington after their meeting at St. Louis. At their request, he at once took steps to convene a second Hague Conference. Owing to the fact that the Russo-Japanese War had not then ended and, later, to the occurrence of the Pan-American Conference in South America, the Conference finally called by the Czar of Russia with the President's consent did not meet until the summer of 1907.

This time, not twenty-six only, but forty-six nations were invited-practically the whole civilised world-and all nations but Costa Rica and Honduras were represented in the Hall of the Knights, a thirteenth-century banquet hall, called into requisition at The Hague for the two hundred and fifty-six delegates. As one looked down from the gallery upon this long hall hung with rich Oriental rugs, one saw half-way down its length the whiteheaded President Nelidoff of Russia, sitting on a green dais beneath a green canopy, and encircling him from right to left, in alphabetical order, the groups of delegates, varying from one to fifteen, yet each nation voting as a unit. Beginning with Allemagne, was the imposing figure of Baron Marshal von Bieberstein with his colleagues;