Suchergebnisse

During the progress of the world war there came to thoughtful men everywhere the deepening conviction that fundamental among the causes of modern warfare are the policies that lead to colonial rivalry and the imperialistic exploitation of undeveloped regions and backward peoples.All belligerent parties looked forward to the peace settlement as an occasion for the satisfaction of territorial ambitions and the settlement of war damage claims in terms of colonial acquisitions. To humanitarians in all nations the peace settlement seemed to offer a precarious but possible occasion for the settlement of colonial claims upon terms of justice and in the interest of the hitherto little regarded native peoples.

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.

This conference, — the latest of the Hague Conferences to which the United States was a party, — was proposed by the United States on September 1, 1909, and convoked by the Netherlands Government on December 1, 1911. It dealt in a judicial manner with the varied and conflicting interests, diplomatic, moral, humanitarian and economic, of those governments represented and with the known similar interests of those not represented. Several of the governments in making pledges for the obliteration of the opium evil did so in the face of an eventual large financial sacrifice, but this was done thoughtfully and generously.The conference determined upon and on January 23rd last signed a convention for the suppression of the obnoxious features of their national and of the international opium, morphine and cocaine traffics, and for the regulation of that part of the production of and trade in the drugs which may be said to be legitimate. To China was confirmed much that she had contended for for a hundred years or more as to the vexatious export of Indian opium to her shores. This act, however, was but a broader recognition of what the British Government had, as between India and China, already yielded to China by virtue of the so-called Ten Year Agreement of 1907, and by the modification of that agreement signed at Peking on the 8th of May, 1911.