HAGUE 



3776 



HAGUE CONFERENCE 



The Hague. 1. The Vyver, an ornamental water in the centre of the city, with part of the Binnenhof on left. 2. The 



Palace of the Queen, with statue of William the Silent, by Count Nieuwekerke, 1845. 3. The Huist en Bosch, built 



1645. 4. The Mauritshuis, rebuilt 1704-18, containing the famous picture galleries. 5. The Hall of the Knights, 



in the Binnenhof, meeting place of the Dutch chambers 



180G The Hague only held the 

 status of a village, when Louis 

 Bonaparte raised it to that of a 

 town. 



Apart from the modern Hague 

 conferences, The Hague has long 

 been an important centre of diplo- 

 macy, and has given its name to 

 several treaties. Among the most 

 important are the alliance of Eng- 

 land, Sweden, and the Nether- 

 lands, 1668; and the treaty be- 

 tween England, France, and Hol- 

 land in 1717. The old-standing 

 tradition of The Hague as a peace- 

 making centre of the nations led 



many to support its claims to be 

 made the seat of the League of 

 Nations, but Geneva was selected 

 instead. Top. 352,079. 



J. E. Miles 



The Hague. The Palace of Peace opened in 1913 as a 

 seat for The Hague Tribunal and the peace conferences 



, CAP DE LA. Promontory 

 of the Cotentin peninsula, France, 

 in the dept. of Manche. It is at the 

 N.W. extremity of the dept. and 

 juts out into the English Channel, 

 12 m. N.W. of Cherbourg. Alder- 

 ney is 10 m. W. of the point, and 

 about 35m. E.S.E. is the road- 

 stead of La Hogue or La Hougue. 

 Hague Conference. Inter- 

 national conference held at The 

 Hague in the in- 

 } terests of peace. 

 The suggestion for 

 a conference of 

 this kind came 

 from the tsar of 

 Russia, Nicholas 

 II, and in 1899 the 

 first conference 

 met, representa- 

 tives from Euro- 

 peancountries and 

 from the U.S.A. 

 being present. The 

 members signed 

 three conventions. 

 Thefirstconcerned 

 the establishment 

 of an inter- 



national court of arbitration, known 

 now as The Hague tribunal; the 

 second dealt with the laws and 

 customs of war; and the third with 

 naval warfare. In addition it was 

 declared that the throwing of 

 missiles from balloons, the use of 

 poison gases and of expanding 

 bullets were illegal. 



A second conference met in 1907, 

 when a proposal put forward by 

 the British Government for the 

 reduction of armaments was re- 

 jected ; but in other directions 

 much was done. The conventions 

 of 1 899 were revised, and con- 

 clusions were reached on such 

 matters as the rights and duties of 

 neutral states in naval warfare, 

 the conversion of merchant vessels 

 into warships, the laying of auto- 

 matic submarine contact mines, 

 the bombardment of undefended 

 towns by warships, etc. It also 

 passed a resolution on the strength 

 of which a conference on prize law 

 met in London in 1908-9 and 

 drew up the Declaration of London. 

 Conferences of many European 

 powers were held at The Hague in 

 1893, 1894, 1900, and 1904 to deal 

 with matters of private interna- 

 tional law for instance, marriage. 

 See Blockade ; International Law ; 

 London, Declaration of. > 



