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It may well be that among the most valuable services rendered to civilization by this Second Conference will be found the progress made in matters upon which the delegates reach no definite agreement.

With this view, you will favor the adoption of a resolution by the conference providing for the holding of further conferences within fixed periods and arranging the machinery by which such conferences may be called and the terms of the program may be arranged, without awaiting any new and specific initiative on the part of the powers or any one of them.

Encouragement for such a course is to be found in the successful working of a similar arrangement for international conferences of the American republics. The Second American Conference, held in Mexico in 1901-2, adopted a resolution providing that a third conference should meet within five years and committed the time and place and the program and necessary details to the Department of State and representatives of the American states in Washington. Under this authority the Third Conference was called and held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1906 and accomplished results of substantial value. That conference adopted the following resolution:

"The Governing Board of the International Bureau of American Republics (composed of the same official representatives in Washington) is authorized to designate the place at which the Fourth International Conference shall meet, which meeting shall be within the next five years; to provide for the drafting of the program and regulations and to take into consideration all other necessary details; and to set another date in case the meeting of the said conference can not take place within the prescribed limit of time."

There is no apparent reason to doubt that a similar arrangement for successive general international conferences of all the civilized powers would prove as practicable and as useful as in the case of the twenty-one American states.

Pursuant to these instructions the American delegation succeeded, by means of great tact and conciliation, in persuading M. de Nelidow, first Russian delegate and president of the conference, to introduce of his own motion the following recommendation, which was unanimously adopted:

Finally, the conference recommends to the powers the assembly of a third peace conference, which might be held within a period corresponding to that which has elapsed since the preceding conference, at a date to be fixed by common agreement between the powers, and it calls their attention to the necessity of preparing the program of this Third Conference a sufficient time in advance to insure its deliberations being conducted with the necessary authority and expedition.

In order to attain this object the conference considers that it would

be very desirable that, some two years before the probable date of the meeting, a preparatory committee should be charged by the governments with the task of collecting the various proposals to be submitted to the conference, of ascertaining what subjects are ripe for embodiment in an international regulation, and of preparing a program which the governments should decide upon in sufficient time to enable it to be carefully examined by the countries interested. This committee should further be intrusted with the task of proposing a system of organization and procedure for the conference itself.

A careful reading of the recommendation shows that the conference is to be held " within a period corresponding to that which has elapsed since the preceding conference" — that is to say, within a period of eight years; that the date is to be fixed "by common agreement between the powers," and that the program of this Third Conference is to be prepared "a sufficient time in advance to insure its deliberations being conducted with the necessary authority and expedition." The powers were willing to recommend a third conference, but they were not willing to specify the exact date. They felt it, however, to be essential that the program should be prepared in advance and communicated to the participants in ample time to enable them to mature their views and to present them in finished form at the opening of the Third Conference. Without reflecting upon any power or group of powers the conference felt that much time was lost by a failure to present at the opening the various projects for which consideration was requested and that the delay involved in communicating with the home governments was a waste of time for which there was neither a reason nor a compensating advantage.

The Second Conference felt that no one power should be burdened "with the task of collecting the various proposals to be submitted to the conference, of ascertaining what subjects are ripe for embodiment in an international regulation, and of preparing a program " which should include the proposals collected and ripe for submission. For this purpose a preparatory committee was to be appointed by agreement of the various governments "some two years before the probable date of the meeting" in the belief that the tentative program might be examined, approved, disapproved, or modified by the various powers within a period of two years. But a great step in advance

was taken by the conference in providing that "this committee should further be intrusted with the task of providing a system of organization and procedure for the conference itself," the obvious meaning of which is that the committee is to propose a system of organization and procedure for the conference which will meet the approval of the invited and participating powers, so that the future conferences will no longer be officered and dominated by any one power. The conference of 1899 was due to the enlightened statesmanship of Nicholas II; and it was in no uncertain degree his conference, for the first delegate of Russia was president and the presidents of the various commissions were chosen directly or indirectly by Russia. The Second Conference was not so directly the work of the Czar, for it was, as stated in the very first lines of the final act, "proposed in the first instance by the President of the United States of America," but the president of the conference was the first delegate of Russia, and the officers of the second, like the officers of the first, were chosen by Russia and notified to the Second Conference for approval. The Third Conference is, however, to have its "organization and procedure" designated in advance by a committee, which shall represent not merely one power but the community of nations. The conference, therefore, is to be international not merely in name but in fact, and its organization and procedure are to be the result of the wit and wisdom of the many, not of an individual power, whether it be the august initiator of the conference itself or of the individual who happens to propose its calling. In becoming an institution the child has outgrown tutelage.

Is the conference the first step to a confederation

that is to say, a political union of the states with legislative and executive powers or is it an institution composed of the diplomatic representatives of the various countries with the power to legislate ad referendum? In other words, is it based upon the idea of amalgamation with a representative parliament, or is it a diplomatic assembly with powers to recommend legislation to states which upon adoption by the states becomes binding upon them and thus international law? The dreamers have proposed confederation; the man of affairs, on the contrary, may well regard a federation as a sacrifice of local inde

pendence, much in the way that our thirteen States were unwilling to merge their individuality completely in a union. The outcome would seem to be an assembly of states composed of diplomatic representatives in which the nations remain equal and independent but consent on behalf of the community at large to renounce certain extreme national prerogatives. It may be, however, that this diplo matic assembly is in no small measure a legislature ad referendum, that the prize court and the proposed court of arbitral justice are the beginnings of an international judiciary, and that a committee, whether nominated at the conclusion of the conference or in advance of a conference, may be regarded as the germ of an executive." JAMES BROWN SCOTT.

2 For the various projects of federation, see Kamarowsky's "Tribunal International," French translation, by Westman (Paris, 1887), pp. 233-263.

BOARD OF EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL

OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, State University of Iowa.

ROBERT LANSING, Watertown, N. Y.

JOHN BASSETT MOORE, Columbia University.
WILLIAM W. MORROW, San Francisco, Cal.
LEO S. ROWE, University of Pennsylvania.
OSCAR S. STRAUS, Washington, D. C.
GEORGE G. WILSON, Brown University.
THEODORE S. WOOLSEY, Yale University.
DAVID J. HILL, Berlin, European Editor.

Managing Editor,

JAMES BROWN SCOTT, George Washington University.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

TREATIES OF ARBITRATION SINCE THE FIRST HAGUE CONFERENCE Readers of Mr. Holl's excellent volume on the Peace Conference at The Hague will recall that the First Conference attempted to frame and secure the adoption of a treaty of arbitration by which the nations bound themselves to arbitrate a carefully selected list of subjects. It is well known that this attempt failed, owing to the opposition of Germany. As a compromise article 19 of the convention for the peaceful adjustment of international differences was adopted:

Independently of existing general or special treaties imposing the obligation to have recourse to arbitration on the part of any of the signatory powers, these powers reserve to themselves the right to conclude, either before the ratification of the present convention or subsequent to that date, new agreements, general or special, with a view of extending the obligation to submit controversies to arbitration to all cases which they consider suitable for such submission. [Reenacted in 1907 as article 40.]

The article did not seem at the time to be of any special importance and it was generally looked upon as useless because independent and sovereign states possess the right without special reservation to conclude

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