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By Root 1159 0

himself independent rapporteur. Again he published a chronicle of the proceedings, personalities, disputes and private deals, this time in the form of a four-page daily newspaper, the Courrier de la Conférence. Bloch was dead but Andrew Carnegie took his place and laid the cornerstone for the new Peace Palace, to which he had donated $1,250,000. It was agreed that all member nations should contribute materials representing their finest products for the building that was to express “universal good will and hope.” As before, Socialists, and this time Anarchists and Zionists as well, held their international Congresses in Amsterdam during the Conference to capture some of the world limelight for their causes. The Dutch pastor and pacifist Domela Nieuwenhuis, who managed to combine Anarchism with religion and remain sincere, denounced Carnegie impartially with the delegates as a merchant of death who built a Temple of Peace, while accepting orders for munitions “even from the Japanese,” an accusation accurate in spirit if not in time. “Let all workers regardless of nationality strike on the declaration of war and there will be no war!” Nieuwenhuis cried out.

The work of the Conference was organized as before in Commissions—on Arbitration, Rules of War on Land, Rules of War at Sea—with an additional Fourth Commission—on Maritime Law. Bourgeois and Beernaert were chairmen as before of the First and Second Commissions, Tornielli of the Third and De Martens of the Fourth. At the opening session Nelidov’s address of welcome aroused no enthusiasm; the first days were gloomy, arrangements and assignments confused and acoustics in plenary session so poor that on one occasion delegates disputed energetically whether the last speaker had addressed them in English or French.

Carrying out their insistence that disarmament must be discussed if only to prove to the public its impracticability and their own honest intentions, the British brought the question to the floor. None of the nations walked out, because Sir Edward Grey’s explanations in advance, however foggy, had conveyed a sufficiently clear impression that the matter would not be uncomfortably pursued; nor was it. Sir Edward Fry made a grave and moving presentation of the case, describing the appalling increase in engines of death and moved a resolution calling for “further serious study” in the same phrase of postponement as had been used in 1899. Nelidov agreed that if arms limitation was not ripe in 1899 it was not more so in 1907, and the delegates adopted Fry’s resolution without a vote. The matter was disposed of in a total of twenty-five minutes. Stead raged at the “miserable and scandalous debacle” and even Secretary Root concluded that Grey’s support had been merely a gesture to “satisfy English public opinion.”

Although the world grew bored after Fry’s “funeral oration” as Marschall called it, and even the journalists lost interest, the Conference settled down to serious work on the laws and techniques of war. When busied in drafting and disputing the problems of their trade—the rights and duties of neutrals, the recovery of international debts by force, the rules for opening hostilities—all matters which took war for granted as a fact of human life, the delegates became absorbed. Indeed, they worked harder than at the First Conference, as if war was not only a fact of life but an imminent fact. Committee meetings were held twice a day, lengthy documents had to be read, expert opinions examined, new drafts prepared, and endless confidential talks held to work out compromises. “Never since my examination for the bar have I worked so hard as in the last six weeks,” Marschall reported to Bülow.

The launching of projectiles or explosives from balloons was reconsidered, and again avoiding any extremes of self-denial, the delegates renewed the prohibition for another limited term of five years. Neutral territory, a matter on which the Belgians were particularly sensitive, was agreed to be inviolable and a convention of twenty-five articles was worked out establishing rules