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.

The twelfth convention adopted by the Second International Peace Conference at The Hague provides for the establishment of an International Prize Court, to which appeals may be taken from the national prize courts of the various signatory powers, or such of them as shall approve the convention.

Among the six voeux to be found in the final act of the First Hague Peace Conference is the following:

The conference expresses the wish that the proposal to settle the question of the bombardment of ports, towns, and villages by a naval force may be referred to a subsequent conference for consideration.

With a view to the systematic discussion of the questions inscribed upon its program, the membership of the conference was divided into four great committees, to each of which a related group of subjects was assigned for investigation with a view to the formulation of such stipulations as might be deemed worthy of insertion in a general convention.

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 convention of the Second Hague Conference respecting the subject of contract claims alleged to be due by one state to the subjects of another has a special interest to the citizens of the twentyone American republics, particularly the first article of the convention, which reads as follows:

The purpose of this convention, as indicated in the preamble, is to harmonize the existing divergent views of states concerning the relations between neutrals and belligerents in the event of naval war, and to anticipate the difficulties to which such divergence may give rise, by framing rules of general application to meet the case where hostilities may have unfortunately broken out.

We are here to give an account of the charge confided to us to draw up a text upon which to base your deliberations. Before giving a brief outline of each one of the propositions which we have the honor to submit, it may be useful to make some remarks of a general nature.

Hugo Grotius says, at the close of Chapter XVII, Book III, of his work De jure belli ac pacis, that it may be advantageous (for a neutral) to make a convention with each of the belligerents so that it may be allowed to abstain from the war with the consent of both sides. This opinion of the father of the law of nations might be deemed to be well reasoned in 1625, but it reads very strangely in 1908.

In the marked development which has recently taken place in aërial navigation, attention has not infrequently been directed to the practicability of “bombarding” fortified and unfortified places by dropping projectiles from balloons.

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.