the hague peace conference of 1899

The Hague Peace Conference of 1899Author(s): Stephen BarcroftSource: Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1989), pp. 55-68Published by: Royal Irish AcademyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30001758 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 08:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Royal Irish Academy is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Studies inInternational Affairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.78.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 08:02:45 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ria

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30001758?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1989)

The Hague Peace Conference of 1899

Stephen Barcroft

Dublin Tutorial Centre

BACKGROUND TO THE TZAR'S RESCRIPT

The Imperial Rescript of 1898, in which Tzar Nicholas II invited the powers represented at St Petersburg to meet for a conference on arbitration and disarmament, was certainly the least expected development in an eventful year. Looked at from a modem perspective, however, it can be seen that by the end of the nineteenth century a number of trends were converging which made such a proposal likely and, furthermore, likely to come from Russia. Two were negative: the increasing number of incidents reflecting international tension and the inexorable rise in the level and sophistication of armaments. Two were positive: a growing number of areas of practical international cooperation and in particular the development of an international peace movement whose views were starting to penetrate to those who controlled the levers of power. Taken together, these four trends were likely to produce some initiative - but why from Russia, traditionally feared as expansionist, militaristic and isolated from progressive thinking? The answer may lie in the great gap that existed between the perceived threat of Russia - felt the most strongly by those who had least to fear from her - and her actual vulnerability and weakness, of which her own leaders were aware.

Since the retirement of Bismarck in 1890 the international order had lacked the discretion and coherence which his long tenure of office and desire to preserve the status quo had given it, while continuing to suffer from the atmosphere of threats and duplicity which was the less attractive side of his legacy. To mention only the maior events in the decade of the Tzar's Rescript: there had first been the progressive consolidation of the Franco-Russian alliance between 1892 and 1894 which had correspondingly increased German neuroses. The Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5 had drawn attention to the power vacuum which China represented in the Pacific, and to the appearance of two powers, the United States and Japan, previously virtual non-participants on the international scene. In 1896 the Kruger telegram had for the first time shaken the essential harmony between England and Germany, until then taken for granted. The year 1898 itself saw war between the United States and Spain, a provocative visit by the kaiser

55



to Constantinople in which he proclaimed himself the Protector of Islam, and an African colonial clash between Britain and France at Fashoda which appeared temporarily to threaten war. Compounding all this was the influence of bellicose press organs, influential in countries already enjoying a democratic franchise and even in those which did not, and a brutalisation of international morality, observed by perceptive cosmopolitan writers like Conrad and best reflected in governmental (though not public) indifference to the massacre of the Armenians in 1896.

Parallel with the increasing number of international disputes, and the resort to force in solving them, was the increase in the general level of armaments, the inevitable result of the application of new industrial technology to the instru- ments of war, and the growing acceptance of conscription and large peace-time armies. Germany's success in the Franco-Prussian war, the continued expansion and development of her army and her taking to the water in 1897-8 with the Navy Laws, which almost tripled her fleets, created international fears and encouraged others to attempt to follow her example. The costs of doing so, both direct and indirect, became increasingly burdensome, partly through the size of forces now considered necessary for security and partly through the rapid obsolescence of existing weapons. Budgets, already under pressure from demands for social welfare, were distorted by the claims of what today we call the military-industrial complex. Governments as well as public pressure groups were becoming concerned; in 1891 Lord Salisbury had sent a memo on armament spending to the kaiser (who considered a peace initiative but found France still too hostile); in 1894 Lord Rosebery, responding to a memorandum against armaments signed by 35,000 people, suggested that Alexander III of Russia should take the initiative in calling for disarmament; and in 1897 Salisbury again deprecated the continued increase in arms spending.

The rise of the peace movement must be seen against a pattern of increasing international interdependence and cooperation, visible over the previous gen- eration. A substantial amount of international machinery had perforce come into existence to coordinate postal and telephone communication, railways and shipping. International cartels, trade unions and cooperative movements had developed, as had organisations to counter slavery and prostitution. The founding of the Red Cross and the issuing of the Geneva Convention in 1864 had found an interesting early response in the St Petersburg Declaration on explosive bullets in 1868. The founding of the First and, even more, the Second International, in 1865 and 1898 respectively, set a further precedent for large-scale international cooperation for specific purposes.

These hopeful trends sufficiently qualified an increasingly unpromising international scene to explain the emergence of an international peace movement. In 1867 peace movements were started in France by Passy, in Switzerland by Lemonnier and in England by Cremer. The revelation of new military technology in the Franco-Prussian war and Britain's acceptance of the Alabama Judgement in 1872 (the first instance of the acceptance of international arbitration) led to a conference of international lawyers in Brussels in 1893. Subsequent widening of national franchises led naturally to the peace movements deciding to work through parliaments and to cooperate at that level.

56



The first Inter-Parliamentary Conference was held in Paris in 1889 - coinci- dentally the same year and place as the founding of the Second International - and met almost annually thereafter. Behind this higher-level political grouping, which concentrated its efforts on establishing the arbitration principle, lay the more idealistic national peace movements which, also in Paris in 1889, combined into the Universal Peace Congress. This was also to meet regularly, at the same times and places as the Inter-Parliamentary Conference'.

Thus, even before the opening of the 1890s, a substantial and coordinated peace movement existed. In that decade its momentum was maintained by, for example, the founding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1895, and the successful pressure which encouraged Britain and the United States to accept arbitration over the Venezuela dispute. It was, however, a sign of underlying realities that efforts to get a permanent Anglo-American arbitration treaty during 1896-7 were first obstructed by Britain and then rejected altogether by the American Senate.

If the strong British and American peace movements could produce no more than this, Russia, where no peace movement was allowed and which for the obvious reason of having no parliament could not participate in the Inter-Parliamentary Conference, seemed an unlikely alternative. But a number of diverse, almost accidental factors were to make this possible.

THE RESCRIPT AND ITS IMPACT

Tzar Nicholas's Rescript was issued on 24 August 1898, appropriately just a month after the death of Bismarck. It was handed out informally enough at the Russian Foreign Office's weekly reception, where 'as each Ambassador entered, Count Mouravieff took a paper from a pile ready and handed it to the visitor'2 It came as a complete surprise. The British ambassador reported: 'The Emperor's circular has naturally formed one of the principal topics of conversation .... none of my colleagues had the slightest inkling beforehand ... all agree that the idea has long been maturing in the mind of the Emperor and readily encouraged by de Witte and Mouravieff'3. What did the document contain and what were its sources of inspiration?

Mentioning universal peace as a general ideal, and how for twenty years hopes of achieving this had led to alliances and military development without any beneficial results, the imperial government considered the present moment a favourable one for discussing disarmament.

The ever increasing financial burdens strike at the root of public prosperity. The physical and intellectual forces of the people, labour and capital, are diverted for the greater part from their natural application and wasted unproductively. Hundreds of millions are spent in acquiring terrible engines of destruction which are regarded today as the latest inventions of science,

1. For the preceding two paragraphs and elsewhere in this paper, I am indebted to F.S.L. Lyons, Internationalism in Europe: 1815-1914 (Leyden, 1963).

2. Review of reviews, article by W. T. Stead, February 1889, p. 118. 3. Sir C. Scott to Lord Salisbury 1/9/98, PRO 65/1555 Doc. 296.

57



but are destined tomorrow to be rendered obsolete by some new discovery. National cultural, economic progress, and the production of wealth are either paralysed or developed in a wrong direction4.

Cynical observers could and did comment on the problem posed for Russia by her neighbour Austria-Hungary having modernised her army; the Russian finance minister Count de Witte was strongly opposed to the extra expenditure needed to maintain parity and claimed later to have thought up the peace initiative as a diversion, along with the foreign minister. But there were idealistic influences acting upon the Tzar, only four years on the throne, young, impres- sionable, and humanitarian in spirit. The Tzar had read Die Waffen Nieder ('Lowered arms'), a then immensely popular pacifist novel by Baroness von Suttner, the friend of Alfred Nobel and the inspiration behind the Peace Prize founded in his name. A third possibility, combining the realistic and idealistic and suggested by two very different sources5, was that the Tzar was under pressure from Pobyedonostzeff, his former tutor and procurator of the Holy Synod, to save funds to devote to the Orthodox Church, to counter 'westerni- sation'.

Whatever the reservations, the British ambassador thought the fact that the proposal 'was coming from the sovereign of the largest military power, with resources for increasing its military strength unrestricted by constitutional and parliamentary limitations, would appeal.... to a very large section of the civilised world'6

Its appeal, so far as the British government was concerned, was initially limited by all the cabinet except the foreign secretary, Mr Balfour, being scattered on holiday when it was issued (the Tzar being ignorant of pheasant-shooting dates). More seriously, British hostility to Russia, deep-rooted though by now out of touch with the facts of the international balance, was currently being exacerbated by rivalry over Chinese railway concessions and fears of Russian penetration towards the frontiers of British India, along with smaller factors such as public indignation over the treatment of Finns and students, and the dis- turbances leading to British property in Riga being damaged and the British consul in Odessa beaten up.

Nonetheless, Balfour was interested enough to send a list of queries to the ambassador. 'Do you suppose the U.S. Government have thought out their own plan... is the conference to be summoned by one or a majority of powers to discuss problems, e.g. Alsace-Lorraine, Afghanistan, Constantinople ... are armaments to be fixed by area, population, wealth or all three? Is the defensibility or the reverse of the country to be taken into account and if so, who is to be the judge of it? If any country refuses to disarm, are the other countries to go to war with her in the interests of peace?" And by the end of September the British, rather later than the other governments circularised, had in principle accepted the Tzar's proposal for a conference. (A curious parallel event in September,

4. Documentary history of arms control, R.R. Bowker, New York, 1973, pp 49, 50. 5. Autobiography A. D. White (1905), p. 69; Stead, Review ofReviews, op. cit. in n. 2, p. 109. 6. Scott to Salisbury, PRO 65/1555 Doc. 293. 7. Balfour to Scott, PRO 65/1558 Doc. 51.

58



with some significance for the future Hague conference, was an Italian proposal for concerted action against anarchists; this meeting assembled as early as 24 November, reflecting perhaps the greater perceived priority.)

While response at official level was lukewarm, the momentum of activity among the various peace movements which had been developing since the 1870s built up so much popular enthusiasm that governments were forced to respond. The British peace movement had attracted the support of W. T. Stead, the great crusading journalist. Stead was unusual in having been a Russophile (enemies called him 'the MP for Russia') since the 1870s; he had visited Tzar Alexander III in 1888 and had been promised another interview 'when he wanted it'. Characteristically Stead responded to the news of the Rescript by deciding to visit as many European heads of state as possible. Before leaving he called on Balfour - who wisely refused either to endorse or discourage him - and had a curiously prophetic conversation. 'I do not believe', said Stead, 'in long looks ahead. For at this moment some obscure chemist may be making a discovery in his lab which will revolutionise the relations of human beings.' 'You mean', said Mr Balfour, 'by some explosive which may render war impossible?' 'Either that, or some invention which may enormously increase the power of the small units against the big political aggregations... Depend upon it, God Almighty has many tricks up his sleeve of which we know nothing...' 'There's a great deal to be said for that, Mr Stead'8, the Anglican sceptic replied cautiously.

After seeing Balfour, Stead set off on his one-man summit tour, backed by the support of the peace movement, his command of publicity and his extra- ordinary self-confidence. Attempts to gain audiences with the king of the Bel- gians, the kaiser and the pope were unsuccessful, and the French premier, Clemenceau, whom he did not meet, was discouraging. But in Russia he was much more successful. He first met Count de Witte, who said he would like to have saved the £10 million recently allocated to the navy and that the Tzar's peace proposal gave him a strong hand against the military chiefs. Stead then visited the Tzar at Livadia in the Crimea (scene of the 1945 Yalta Conference) and had three interviews spanning the period 26-28 October. These were successful, the Tzar getting much favourable publicity in a country where Russia was traditionally seen as an enemy9 and Stead reassuring himself of the Russian leader's seriousness and sincerity. Stead's biographer later wrote that 'the Tzar was typically Russian in his responsiveness and desire to please... his visitor evidently saw him at his best'lo.

Back in England, Stead started an International Peace Crusade at a big meeting on 10 December. This was attended by Balfour and supported by Morley, the old Gladstonian Liberal who wrote that 'militarism, in swallowing up resources that ought to go to the elevation and contentin1 of the people, engenders the whole dark progeny of Continental anarchism '. This was an

8. F. Whyte, Life of W. T. Stead, pp 128-9. A contemporary, Lord Lytton, had predicted the end of war by discovery of 'Uril', a combination of lightning and dynamite, 'by which a child could annihilate an army'.

9. An interesting oddity, The Great War of 1897 by S. le Fanu, published in 1898, had imagined Britain being attacked by Russia and France and repulsing them with the aid of gallant German allies.

10. Whyte, op. cit., p.140. 11. Whyte, op. cit., p.140.

59



argument much used as, later, was the related idea that failure of the Hague conference would also leave the way open for anarchists, etc. Every effort was made to influence the press; a million copies of a broadsheet were printed and a new weekly journal, War against War, started. A plan for a 'Peace Pilgrimage', involving marches of sympathisers within and between different capitals, proved too ambitious.

Within the British Isles Stead had very substantial support, often in the form of town meetings leading to mass signing of peace petitions. Readers of James Joyce's Portrait of the artist as a young man will remember an early and dis- missive reference to one of these in Dublin in 1898. 'On a table near the door were two photographs in frames and between them a long roll of paper bearing an irregular tail of signatures... Stephen pointed to the Tzar's photograph and said "He has the face of a besotted Christ".' Further irritated by being pressed to sign, 'he jerked his shoulder angrily in the direction of the Tzar's image, saying "Keep your icon. If we must have a Jesus, let us have a legitimate Jesus".2

Another writer who was critical was Rudyard Kipling who thought peace would arrive by itself because of 'some new engine of death so devastating that war must end'.13

Stead quoted the Tzar freely in his publicity, not always tactfully. 'The Sovereigns may propose but it is their subjects who dispose. The Rescript of the Autocrats is mere waste paper, unless countersigned by the Democracy.14' A report from the British Embassy in St Petersburg mentions that the Tzar was much embarrassed by Stead's exaggerated use of their conversation. 'He credits Mr Stead with the best of intentions but thought he ought to be more careful to remember... he was a journalist'5. Later, however, Mouravieff, in taking care to point out that Stead's War against War was not banned in Russia, admitted that though 'Mr Stead was perhaps a rather wild enthusiast, he had influence... and the views he expressed were in support of the Emperor's aims'"

The Russian authorities had in fact been discouraged by the slow official response to their proposal in the remaining months of 1898. Britain and France were still bellicose and arming in the backwash from Fashoda, and Germany had added 26,000 men to its army immediately on the kaiser's return from Constantinople. But the success of the peace movement, with implied conse- quences for the parliamentary democracies, encouraged Russia to persevere, though in less ambitious terms. The Russian government's Circular Note of January 1898, setting out a proposed agenda for the conference, was a much-watered-down version of the original Rescript. There was less talk of calling a halt to arms production, more on establishing laws of war and banning new weapons. The original proposal on mediation and arbitration was now qualified with major reservations concerning national sovereignty. 'It is well understood that all questions concerning the political relations of states and the order of things established by treaties... must be absolutely excluded...' The

12. J. Joyce, Portrait of the artist as a young man (Penguin edn.,), pp 194, 197. 13. Whyte, op. cit., p. 149. 14. Whyte, op. cit., p. 148. 15. Scott to Salisbury 16/1/99, PRO 83/1699 Doc. 13. 16. Scott to Salisbury 23/3/99, PRO 85/1577 Doc. 359.

60



location of the Hague arose from the concluding wish that 'in the interest of the great cause... His Imperial Majesty considers it advisable that the Conference should not sit in the capital of one of the Great Powers'7. The Tzar, like his modem Soviet or United States counterparts, had found he was forced to take his allies' views into account. He had had, for example, to promise his main ally France that no major accords were likely to result before the French would even consent to attend. Finally, there were strong pro-armament pressures within Russia itself. The minister of war, General Kuropatkin, had warned the Tzar that disarmament was 'impossible' until Austria-Hungary had been partitioned, Russia had occupied Constantinople, and other unlikely conditions had been fulfilled.

Nevertheless, there was now a commitment to an international conference, and by early March a commitment to a definite time, May, and a definite place, the Hague. The following four months were devoted to choosing delegations and drawing up instructions for them. These were most specific in the case of Britain and the United States. The attitude of the American secretary of state, John Hay, was ambiguous. On the one hand he felt that limitations on armaments could not be applied to the United States as their military establishments were so much smaller than the European powers and they were only beginning to expand them. He was also opposed to prohibiting new weapons since this might mean 'restraining the inventive genius of our people in the direction of devising means of defence'. He further felt that making wars less destructive was likely to encourage rather than discourage their outbreak18 . But on the question of arbitration Hay's position was positive and constructive. Two annexes were attached to the instructions, firstly detailing the long support of the American people for the establishment of an international court, and secondly putting forward eight suggestions towards this end. These provided for a tribunal of judges, one from each signatory, to meet first six months after agreement was reached, and subsequently in panels of three to five judges to consider questions submitted by states, questions which did not affect their political independence or territorial integrity. The head of the American delegation later commented: 'Ours is the only delegation which has anything like a full and carefully adjusted plan for a court of arbitration'"9. The British also preferred to concentrate on arbitration rather than armament control or the laws of war. In a biography of Lord Pauncefoot, head of the British delegation, we read that experts of the Admiralty and War Office sent a report to the Foreign Office opposing limiting the number of armaments of British effectives, and objecting even to a code ameliorating the laws of war. Though it was claimed that 'the British Govern- ment never allows the Admiralty or War Office to dictate to it'20, the course of the Hague conference was later to suggest otherwise. As for the Russian delegation, though they came with a scheme for a non-permanent international court, meeting when required, they were in fact more interested in proposals limiting armament growth.

17. Documentary history of arms control, p. 50. 18. Documentary history of arms control, pp 51-2. 19. White, op. cit., p. 254. 20. R. B. Mowat, Life of Lord Pauncefoot (1929), Constable, London, p. 229.

61



Various reactions and problems emerged in the early months of 1899. Italy refused to come if the pope was invited. Britain offended Dutch susceptibilities by dismissing in cursory terms the proposed attendance of representatives of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The British ambassador in Vienna 'thought of all powers the (military) activity of Russia would be the most difficult to check'21. His Berlin counterpart said he had heard that the Russian willingness to meet in the Hague rather than St Petersburg was because Mouravieff was convinced that the conference would not be a success and did not wish to be associated with it22. Later he drew attention to one of the German delegates actually believing in the inevitability of war and having written a book against disarmament. All of this helps to explain Ambassador White's celebrated remark that 'probably.... never has so large a body come together in a spirit of more hopeless scepticism as to any good results'23.

THE CONFERENCE

On 25 May 1899 the conference opened at the Hague, meeting in the Orange Hall of 'The House in the Wood', a seventeenth-century palace a few miles from the capital. It was to deliberate for two months. Twenty-six states were represented, all European, except for the US, Mexico, Persia, Siam, China and Japan. This was the first conference where the Japanese had been present as equals. Japan had recently been engaged in war with China - so successfully that she had had to be restrained by the Western powers. Their delegate at the conference had an ironical comment to make: 'We show ourselves at least your equals in scientific butchery and at once are admitted to your council chambers as civilised men'24. This focussed on the essential contradiction of an age which, while allowing free rein to an accelerating arms race, prided itself on the spread of humanitarianism and ever-greater international interdependence. Was the Hague Peace Conference going to be allowed to face up to this contradiction?

In its background and personalities the atmosphere of the conference lies somewhere between the Congress of Vienna and the Versailles Conference. There was much sociability, at the official level from the Dutch government - whose seventeen-year-old Queen Wilhelmina was much admired for coping with delegates in four languages - and from the heads of major delegations. Less official but overlapping with these were the activities of Baroness von Suttner and other members of what was unkindly called 'le high-life politique', aris- tocratic supporters of the peace movement. In a category by himself was W. T. Stead, the spokesman of the movement's grass-roots, who knew all the delegates25, produced a trilingual column on conference proceedings in a newspaper, and found time to write a series of chatty personal letters to the Tzar

21. Sir H. Rumbolt to Salisbury 3/2/1899, PRO 83/1699 Doc. 37. 22. Sir F. Lascelles to Salisbury 17/2/1899, PRO 83/1699 Doc. 49. 23. White, op. cit., p. 256. 24. M. Howard (ed.), Restraints on war, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 22. 25. He was even a friend of the redoubtable Admiral Fisher, whose flagship he had boarded (il-

legally) from a dinghy some twenty-five years previously.

62



of Russia26. Beyond Stead lay a confused world of would-be delegates (an Armenian professor anxiously investigated by Scotland Yard, a young Turk challenged to a duel by an official Turk), observers, and a flood of callers and correspondents, particularly from America and Britain, who drove several heads of delegation to distraction.

As a British delegate pointed out, there were obvious difficulties in hosting an international conference in a country where freedom of speech and liberty of the press were even then almost unlimited. The Dutch government did their best to shield delegates from annoyance (and a Dutch diplomat was dismissed over the question of Transvaal's representation) and accepted an early resolution that the press should not be admitted to meetings. Some delegations, such as those from the United States and Sweden, would have preferred to admit the press, and some correspondents left in disgust. But Stead's contacts and columns made sufficient nonsense of this secrecy for it to be abandoned in favour of regular reports from conference spokesmen.

Examining the personnel of the delegations, one is immediately struck by the number of military and naval advisers and their inevitable dominance for technical reasons of two of the conference's three commissions, those dealing with disarmament and the rules of war. Furthermore, in the British and even more the American delegations the elderly diplomats who headed them, Sir John Pauncefoot and Ambassador White, were often overshadowed by powerful and well-briefed figures like Admiral Fisher and Captain Mahon, who were national figures in their own right. Traditional democratic subordination of the military to the civil power was not always so apparent at the Hague.

After its early plenary meetings, most of the conference's work was done in three separate commissions. The first, that dealing with general disarmament, had probably the least chance of success, given the attitude of its leading members. Admiral Fisher wrote near the end of the conference: 'I have not found it practicable to accept any agreement for limiting armament on budgets', adding complacently that 'all Naval delegates have worked together most cordially and harmoniously and ... used every effort to reach a satisfactory conclusion'2 . The German delegate, Count Munster (a man described by a colleague as 'saturated with the ideas of fifty years ago'), said that he 'did not consider the German people were crushed by the weight of their expenditure ... their standard of living was rising ... comnpulsory military service was not a burden but a sacred and patriotic duty ...' . Captain Mahon felt that American responsibilities in the Pacific made it impossible even to discuss any reduction of naval armaments. An interesting view which seems to have been accepted by many leading delegates, though voiced by Admiral Fisher, was that proposals to restrict improvements in weapons 'would favour savage nations at the expense of the more highly civilised' (here readers of Conrad's Hearts of darkness will recall the episode of the French warship solemnly firing off shells into the West African jungle). The First Commissioner's final resolution, 'The Conference is of

26. Not always tactful; sympathising on the death of the Tzar's brother, he wrote: 'before the open grave, Emperor and serf are the same'.

27. PRO 83/1697 Doc. 67. 28. PRO 83/1696 Doe. 44.

63



opinion that the restriction of military charges, which are at present a heavy burden on the world, is extremely desirable for the increase of the material and moral welfare of mankind', is rightly described by Professor Lyons as 'the acme of platitude'29, and has a sonorous vacuity which even a modem airport spokesman would be pushed to achieve.

The Second Commission had the less generalised objective of revising the rules of war, an area where there were at least some precedents, as we have seen, in the 1864 Geneva Convention, the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration on explosive bullets and the 1874 Brussels Declaration. A variety of new technical develop- ments came up for discussion - submarines, asphyxiating gases, 'projectiles launched from kites and balloons', explosive or 'dumdum' bullets - and more legalistic ones concerning the immunity of private property at sea and responsibility for international telephone cables.

Dominated by their military representatives, the British and American delegations took stances at the Second Commission which now appear unnec- essarily negative. In the lengthy debates on dumdum bullets the British delegate, General Ardagh (a colonial soldier, originally from Waterford), surprised many by defending them vigorously. Claiming that they were very necessary in view of recent experience at Omdurman in the Sudan, he painted a vivid picture of the embattled European infantry-man:

Your fanatical barbarian, when he receives wounds which are insufficient to stop or disable him, continues to dash on, spear or sword in hand, and before you have had an opportunity to reply to him that his conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relating to the proper course for a wounded man to follow (i.e., lying down on a stretcher), he may have cut off your head30

This view gained little sympathy except from the United States. Salisbury wrote to Sir John Pauncefoot: 'It appears to me that in view of the manifest indisposition of the large majority of delegates to listen to any explanation... it is useless to make any further declaration'31. Britain was duly outvoted 18-3; The Times (no friend of the conference) compared the resolution against dumdum bullets to the pope's unsuccessful denunciation of the crossbow in 113932.

The United States found itself out on a limb in the same way in the discussion on asphyxiating explosives or poison gas. Captain Mahon resolutely opposed the banning of these, using the curious arguments that they had not yet been invented, and that in any case submarines and torpedoes were 'more cruel'. They were duly outvoted 25-1. Ambassador White, after remarking that he was in fact impressed by the opposing arguments, went on revealingly to add: 'I am not

29. Lyons, op. cit., p. 346. 30. PRO 83/1695 Doc 27. 31. PRO 83/1698 Doc. 30. 32. The Times, 13/6/1899.

64



satisfied with our attitude on this question, but what can a layman do when he has against him the foremost continental military and naval experts? My hope is that the United States will yet stand with the majority on the record.33'

The Second Commission concluded its work with three declarations in which the signatory powers agreed (1) 'to prohibit the discharge of projectiles and explosives from balloons or in other analogous new ways'; (2) 'to prohibit the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases'; and (3) 'to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core or is pierced with incisions'34. These were binding only in the case of war between two or more of the contracting parties - pre- sumably the less 'civilised', or Sir John Ardagh's 'fanatical barbarians', were excluded from

protection". In the work of the Third Commission, covering international arbitration in disputes, lies the chief claim to success of the Hague Peace Conference. Though the original proposals had come from St Petersburg, it was in fact the British and American delegations which arrived best briefed. Both Pauncefoot and White agreed that no power would accept compulsory arbitration, but that permanent or semi-permanent arbitration machinery would be a great gain. Much discussion centred on how activities would be chosen in a dispute - by the College of Arbiters itself, or by the litigants from among members of the College.

Britain's position had been expressed in June, when Lord Salisbury spoke remarkably frankly about Britain's sense of isolation. 'The danger of making mediation in the least degree obligatory is that the weaker power, if he had no case, would always use it for purposes of delay. Great Britain has from so many years been so profoundly unpopular with all powers, that she would be much embarrassed if she was asked to what powers she would be disposed to entrust mediation, for she would either have to confess to her want of friends or to accept a rival. It is a provision which will not make for peace and can do nothing but harm'36.

With Britain, the United States and Russia in basic agreement except on points of detail, the chief obstacle to an arbitration agreement was likely to be Germany. The kaiser's first reaction was indeed a flat negative to any form of arbitration or any type of tribunal. In bringing about Germany's eventual adhesion, the American chief delegate had the greatest share. He saw the German rejection as a catastrophe, noting in his diary that 'the immediate results will be that the Russian Empire will become the idol of the "plain people" throughout the world, the German Empire will be bitterly hated, and the socialists who form the most dreaded party on the continent of Europe will be furnished with a thoroughly effective weapon against their rulers'. Considering the problem of explaining to the kaiser that he should not incur such hostility, White remem- bered hearing that Jean Jaures (the French Socialist leader) 'had told a French delegate leaving Paris for the Hague that the Conference would achieve nothing

33. White, op. cit., p. 319. 34. Lyons, op. cit., p. 346. 35. As were the Ethiopians from Italian poison gas in 1935-6. 36. PRO 83/1695 Doc. 19.

65



and that they (the Socialists) would triumph'. This, White thought, 'shows how failure to achieve arbitration will help in promoting the designs of the great international socialist and anarchist combinations'".

White, who preferred Germany to Russia (he had been an ambassador to both countries), brought to bear all the pressure he could, both direct and indirect, to change Germany's attitude. He urged the German delegates to avoid bad publicity, and to outbid the Russians by leaning further towards arbitration, not lagging behind. Then, against the opposition of both the British and his own delegation, he sent a special envoy to Berlin, pressing this argument and repeating the Jaures prophecy. This shrewdly chosen argument worked and Germany accepted the arbitration tribunal with some further limitations. Minor problems were overcome, such as Captain Mahon's three-day delay over arbitration's implications for the Monroe Doctrine, and the reservations of small states who feared pressure from great powers in the guise of arbitration. Provision finally was made for a Court of International Arbitration, based at the Hague. It was not permanent (the Permanent Court of International Justice was not set up until 1981) being formed afresh for each dispute as it arose, and consisted of nominated arbitrators rather than judges. States were not bound to resort to it and, on Lord Salisbury's insistence, disputes had to be excluded which involved 'the honour and vital interests of a State'. Limited as this achievement was, it did establish a principle, and the court later dealt successfully with several cases such as the Dogger Bank incident in 1905, when the Russian fleet en route to Japan opened fire prematurely in the English Channel, sinking some fishing boats, or the clash between France and Germany over Casablanca in 1909.

The Final Act of the conference contained three items, concerning respectively arbitration, the extension of the Geneva Convention rules, and the laws and customs of war. Great Britain and the United States signed the first of these but abstained on or voted against the second and third. To some extent in the British delegation, and to a much greater extent in the American, this reflected a divergence of view between the civilian heads of delegation and their domi- nating military and naval advisors. The civilians were more aware of the ground swell of sections of public opinion in both countries in favour of peace, and of the need to avoid undue international unpopularity; the military, cocooned in their professional castes, were concerned only with technical advantage. At the personal level the two naval experts, Fisher and Mahon, dominated those around them.

Pauncefoot might regret that 'it seemed to me unfortunate if Great Britain were the only nation to stand out... and expose Her Majesty's Government to unfavourable comment'38. White might feel 'especially embarrassed that the wording (of the arbitration agreement) must be suited to the scruples of Captain Mahon'. But he 'deferred' and 'didn't care to contest the matter'39. In the on- going struggle between idealists and realists - which has often characterised American foreign policy - the Hague conference was a victory for the latter.

37. White, op. cit., pp 299-300. 38. PRO 83/1695 Doc. 35. 39. White, op. cit., pp 347-8.

66



So it was that the two countries whose populations were probably the most pacific at that time appeared both to endorse the arms race and to oppose any restriction on the development and use of new weapons. Why should this have been so? We have noted the disproportionate influence of the military advisers, the more marked because of the relatively low standing of their civilian delegation heads. There was also a none-too silent majority in both countries who were unimpressed by the peace movement, often perceived as cranky and disorganised, and whose public pressures could be counterproductive. This majority supported their country's delegation in any hard-line approach.

EPILOGUE: THE 1907 HAGUE CONFERENCE

Future Hague Peace Conferences were planned at seven-year intervals and the second, delayed by the Russo-Japanese war, met in 1907. Again, the Tzar had called for the conference, though President Theodore Roosevelt had previously been interested. But the Tzar's position was, for the cynics, now weakened by military defeat by Japan and, for the idealists, by the sustained anti-semitism of his ministers and the repression of Russia's 1905 revolutionary upheavals. There was no Joycean Christ-like icon now, besotted or otherwise, but the man behind the massacres at the Winter Palace and the Odessa steps. Superficially the second Hague Peace Conference was more impressive - it sat for twice as long, four months, and had nearly double the number of states represented (45, more, in fact, than initially joined the League of Nations). But little of significance was added. The conference could only endorse the 1899 resolution on disarmament, pointing out the (fairly obvious) fact that 'military expenditure has considerably increased in almost every country since that time' and recommending that governments 'should resume the serious examination of this question'. Concerning the use of weapons, a number of new declarations were added and more powers ratified those of 1899. The principle, if not the practice, of compulsory arbitration at the Hague court was accepted. Finally, another Hague Peace Conference was scheduled to take place in 1915, by which time, of course, the old nineteenth-century world, to which the conference in spirit belonged, was being pounded into oblivion in the trenches of the Western Front. There is a story that an American general in 1914 sent a copy of the 1907 Hague restraints on war to Pancho Villa, a Mexican guerilla leader. 'He spent hours poring over it. It interested and amused him hugely... "What is this Hague Conference? Was there a representative of Mexico there? (There was).... it seems to me a funny thing to make rules about war. It is not a game. What is the difference between civilised war and any other kind of war?"' The guerilla had a point; the real achievement of the Hague Peace Conference lay not so much in tinkering with the rules of warfare as in bringing the nineteenth century's diffuse but widespread desire for peace to the level of international discussion, and in forcing governments at least to consider schemes of arbitration in response to popular demand. Could more have been achieved? Had the Tzar been less notoriously tainted by the anti-semitism of his regime would he have perhaps gained the support of a powerful, articulate and internationally-minded section of European society?

67



The last word can come from the novelist Joseph Conrad who took an intense interest in the first Hague conference; he had grown up in what was then Russian Poland but lived and wrote in England. More than almost any other writer he saw the way the world was going, how the brutality and racialism of the great colonial and commercial expansion of the age was coarsening European political morality and was soon to boomerang upon Europe itself. His pessimistic verdict on the work of the first Hague conference was that it represented 'the solemnly official recognition of the Earth as a House of Strife'.

40. This paper was delivered in the autumn of 1987. Since then Mr Gorbachev's initiatives, in particular in the area of arms reduction and control, have offered further scope for comparison and contrast with the Tzar's proposals. In each case, for example, a leading Russian military figure opposed the initiative; it is encouraging that while the Tzar's minister of war stayed in office (and was soon again - unsuccessfully - on the battlefield) Mr Gorbachev's chief of staff's health soon declined to the extent that he felt bound to resign. And while the Tzar had to water down his proposals to accommodate his allies, it is unlikely that Mr Gorbachev will be greatly inhibited by foot-dragging from his more timid or blinkered satellites.

68



the hague peace conference of 1899

Documents