WILSON— LEGISLATIVE ASPECTS. 307 



The destruction of life without advantage to any state was one 

 of the first matters to receive attention as a subject for a formulated 

 international agreement. This proposition that a state should not 

 take or sacrifice lives of men without commensurate advantage would 

 seem almost self evident. Yet the first international agreement re- 

 lating to this matter to receive general assent was concluded in 1864, 

 and known as the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the 

 Condition of Wounded in Armies in the Field. The represen- 

 tatives of twelve European states stated in the preamble their pur- 

 pose to be to mitigate " the evils inseparable from war, to suppress 

 useless severities, and to ameliorate the condition of soldiers wounded 

 on the field of battle." It would seem a long time for the world 

 to wait for such legislation. This Geneva Convention of 1864, 

 which provided for the immunity of the hospital corps, was not im- 

 mediately ratified, however. The United States did not adhere to 

 this Convention till 1882, and this was the only international agree- 

 ment of general scope and relating to war to which even the United 

 States became a party before the end of the nineteenth century, a 

 fact seeming to indicate that there is difficulty in international legis- 

 lation. 



In regard to property there had been propositions and formal 

 declarations which had become embodied in law. The Declaration 

 of Paris of 1856 received the approval of many states, and by this 

 Declaration (i) privateering was prohibited; (2) neutral goods and 

 enemy goods under a neutral flag were protected ; and (3) paper and 

 ineffective blockades were discouraged, but the United States did not 

 adhere to this Declaration, though announcing in the Spanish Amer- 

 ican war in 1898 that it proposed to observe the principles of the 

 Declaration. 



Other matters became increasingly the subject of international 

 legislation, and before the end of the nineteenth century, general con- 

 ventional agreements had been made and signed by a large number of 

 states acting together upon such matters as an " International Bureau 

 of Weights and Measures" (Metric System), 1875; "International 

 Protection of Industrial Property," 1883 ; " Protection of Submarine 

 Cables " (in time of peace), 1884; " Exchange of Official Documents, 

 Scientific and Literary Publications," 1886; " Repression of African 



