Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/317

 1899.] Russia. — The Peace Conference. [309

was abolished. The British vice-consul at Wiborg was com- pelled to resign his post on account of his sympathy with the Finns, and seven other British vice-consuls in Finland also resigned.

In accordance with the scheme of a Peace Conference started by the Czar in the preceding year (see Annual Kegister, 1898 p. 281), invitations were issued by Count Muravieff to the Powers to send delegates to a conference — not to sit in the capital of one of the great Powers — to consider the best means of putting a stop to the progressive increase of military and naval arma- ments and the possibility of preventing armed conflicts by diplomacy. The Count at the same time suggested that the following proposals should be submitted to the conference: —

1. An understanding not to increase for a fixed period the present effective of the armed military and naval forces, and at the same time not to increase the budgets pertaining thereto; also a preliminary examination of the means by which a re- duction might even be effected in future in the forces and budgets above mentioned.

2. To prohibit the use in the armies and fleets of any new kind of firearms whatever, and of new explosives, or any powders more powerful than those now in use either for rifles or cannon.

3. To restrict the use in military warfare of the formidable explosives already existing, and to prohibit the throwing of projectiles or explosives of any kind from balloons or by any similar means.

4. To prohibit the use in naval warfare of submarine tor- pedo-boats or plungers, or other similar engines of destruction ; to give an undertaking not to construct vessels with rams in future.

5. To apply to naval warfare the stipulations of the Geneva Convention of 1864, on the basis of the articles added to the Convention of 1868.

6. To neutralise ships and boats employed in saving those overboard during or after an engagement.

7. To revise the declaration concerning the laws and customs of war elaborated in 1874 by the Conference of Brussels, which has remained unratified to the present day.

8. To accept in principle the employment of the good offices of mediation and facultative arbitration in cases lending them- selves thereto, with the object of preventing armed conflicts between nations; an understanding with respect to the n.?de of applying these good offices, and the establishment of a uniform practice in using them.

9. All questions concerning the political relations of States and the order of things established by treaties, as generally all questions which do not directly fall within the programme adopted by the Cabinets, to be absolutely excluded from the deliberations of the conference.

The conference met at the Hague on May 18. The principal