The Second International Peace Conference, like its predecessor of 1899, endeavored to humanize the hardships necessarily incident to war and to substitute for a resort to arms a pacific settlement of international grievances, which, if unsettled, might lead to war or make the maintenance of pacific relations difficult and problematical. The conference of 1907, no more than its immediate predecessor, satisfied the leaders of humanitarian thought. War was not abolished, nor was peace legislated into existence. Universal disarmament was as unacceptable in 1907 as in 1899, and some few nations were still unwilling to bind themselves to refer all international disputes not involving independence, vital interests, or national honor to a court of arbitration.

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.

One accustomed to the administration of municipal law who turns his attention for the first time to the discussion of practical questions arising between nations and dependent upon the rules of international law, must be struck by a difference between the two systems which materially affects the intellectual processes involved in every discussion, and which is apparently fundamental.

When no distinction was made in theory and practice between the status of private property of the enemy upon land and upon sea it necessarily followed that such property was liable to seizure and confiscation wherever found.

The First Hague Conference had as its main object a consideration of a “ possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations,” or, at least, a discussion of the possibility of “ putting an end to the progressive development of the present armaments.” The conference early realized that even a limitation of the increase of military and naval expenditure was impracticable at that time, and devoted its chief energies to the secondary purpose for which it was called, viz., to discuss and devise “ the most effectual means of insuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and durable peace.”

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 seventh of the Hague conventions bears the title, “Convention relative á la Transformation des Navires de Commerce en Bâtiments de Guerre.” The convention really relates to vessels which have already been converted into war ships rather than to their conversion.

The twelfth convention adopted by the Hague Conference of 1907 provides for the establishment of an International Prize Court to which appeals may be carried in certain instances from the prize courts of the captors. The proposal for such a convention was presented very early in the proceedings of the conference.

This subject, which was brought so forcibly to the attention of the civilized world by the operations of the Russo-Japanese war in the vicinity of Port Arthur, was one of the questions at the Hague conference last year, being thus brought for the first time to the attention of an international conference.

The convention as drawn up is substantially the same as the proposition submitted by the French delegation — and that proposition follows in the main the text adopted by the Institute de Droit International at its meeting at Ghent (September, 1906), when the whole subject was carefully discussed.

Had the Second Hague Conference done nothing more than adopt the convention for the establishment of an International Prize Court, it would have sufficiently justified its being called together and refuted the criticisms of those who, because it did not accomplish all its most enthusiastic supporters desired, have sought to belittle its results.