The kinds or degrees of obligatory arbitration advocated in the two conferences were three in number, and may be called, respectively, universal, inclusive, and exclusive obligatory arbitration.

Universal peace is the hope of the whole world — peace between individual men, peace between social groups. It has been the heart’s desire of good men and the dream of poets and philosophers since time immemorial.

The question of limitation and even of gradual reduction of armaments must be carefully differentiated from that of disarmament, complete and thorough-going. The demand for limitation of armaments put forward by the leaders of the peace movement is often unfairly assumed to be a demand for total disarmament.

Before undertaking a systematic and analytical exposition of the project relating to the establishment of an arbitral court of justice as approved by the Committee of Examination B and referred to the First Subcommission of the First Commission, it may be useful to devote a few lines, by way of introduction, to the Permanent Tribunal of Arbitration created in 1899 by the First Conference and alongside which it is proposed to establish an arbitral court of justice.

Among the formal utterances which are embodied in the final act of the Second Peace Conference at The Hague three vœux, or expressions of opinion, are commended to the signatory powers. Two of these relate to the commercial and industrial relations between belligerent governments and neutral residents of belligerent or occupied territory; the third has to do with the preparation of a code of laws governing maritime warfare.

The First Conference of 1899 was an experiment for which there were precedents, although there was perhaps no single precedent like it in all respects. Congresses or conferences have been familiar since the Congress of Westphalia, which may be said to mark the conscious beginning of modern international relations, and at various times conferences or congresses have been called, usually at the end of war, to settle the terms of peace.