EXPOSITION, PARIS UNIVERSAL. 



205 





adoption of the convention agreed to at the con- 

 ference at The Hague several matters for inter- 

 national concord were submitted, notably the crea- 

 tion of a press union for the purpose of influencing 

 public opinion in favor of the pacific settlement 

 of international disputes. In Hungary newspaper 

 groups were already organized for the promotion 

 of peace and arbitration. The South African war 

 could not be discussed because it had previously 

 been so decided, and the English members threat- 

 ened to withdraw if the subject were introduced. 

 The congress expressed a hope that the just re- 

 pression of the Chinese massacres would not lead 

 to conquests entailing a general war or to enter- 

 prises contrary to the economical, social, and po- 

 litical future of Europe. 



The nineteenth conference of the International 

 Law Association met at Rouen on Aug. 21. A 

 question raised at the Buffalo conference of 1899, 

 that was referred for fuller consideration to com- 

 mittees in the United States and in England, was 

 whether private property at sea should be free 

 from capture during war. In the reports of the 

 committees and in the discussion of them in the 

 conference the opposition of the views of European 

 statesmen, both British and Continental, to those 

 of the statesmen of the United States was as de- 

 cided as when the subject was considered at the 

 international conference of maritime powers at 

 Paris in 1857. The accession of the United States 

 was withheld from the declaration of Paris that 

 enemies' goods in neutral bottoms and neutral 

 goods in enemies' bottoms are free from capture, 

 not because the United States clung to the right 

 of privateering, which the signatory powers re- 

 nounced, but because the representatives of the 

 European powers would not carry the principle 

 further by adding to the declaration the words 

 *' and that the private property of the subjects or 

 citizens of a belligerent on the high seas shall be 

 exempted from seizure by public armed vessels 

 of the other, except it be contraband." At The 

 Hague convention of 1899 the Government of the 

 United States brought forward the question again 

 and endeavored to obtain a decision in favor of the 

 proposition that private property, with the excep- 

 tion of contraband of war, shall be exempt from 

 capture or seizure on the high seas or elsewhere 

 by armed vessels or by military forces, but the 

 exemption shall not extend to vessels and their 

 cargoes attempting to enter a blockaded port. 

 The convention declined to take up the question, 

 as the majority of the delegates of the powers 

 held that it did not come within the scope of their 

 instructions. The American committee of the In- 

 ternational Law Association reported in favor of 

 a resolution that there should be a modification 

 of the present rules of naval warfare so far as the 

 right to capture peaceful and nonoffending mari- 

 time property is concerned, and that such result 

 can best be obtained by a conference of repre- 

 sentatives of all the maritime powers empowered 

 to consider the question in all its aspects. The 

 proposition found support from Italian representa- 

 tives, and a French delegate suggested an alternate 

 resolution that it was desirable to have the same 

 rules apply to private property on the sea as to 

 private property on land, contending, however, 

 that there is no rule against seizure of private 

 property on land. American delegates held that 

 the law of nations does not justify the seizure 

 of private property on land except contraband of 

 war, unless it be necessary for the belligerent 

 operations or required for military purposes, and 

 they argued that the right to seize at sea non- 

 combatant property not useful for the belligerent's 

 purposes is of little value, as the real method of 



destroying an enemy's commerce lies in the right 

 and power of blockading his ports. The British 

 view was that the liability to capture of private 

 property afloat deters nations from going to war 

 and impels them to bring wars to a close, and 

 that its deterrent effect is felt by the most power- 

 ful maritime powers as well as the weaker ones. 

 The conference resolved not to advocate a congress 

 of maritime powers to consider the matter and 

 decided not to pass any resolution on the subject. 

 A committee of American and English lawyers 

 appointed at Buffalo to draw up a code of inter- 

 national marine insurance rules adopted, in regard 

 to the test for constructive total loss and the 

 effect of unseaworthiness of the ship on sailing 

 upon her voyage, which are the two most impor- 

 tant matters upon which the laws of different 

 nations are divergent, the rules accepted in Con- 

 tinental Europe in preference to the English and 

 American rules. The loss by perils insured against 

 of three fourths of the value of the ship or cargo 

 would, by the rule approved by the committee, 

 be treated as a total loss entitling the insured to 

 payment of the amount of the insurance on aban- 

 doning the thing insured to the underwriter. As 

 to unseaworthiness, instead of following the Eng- 

 lish law, which in a voyage policy infers a war- 

 ranty of absolute seaworthiness of the ship on 

 sailing, but in a time policy infers no undertaking 

 by the assured even of care to make the ship 

 seaworthy, or the American law, which imposes 

 the strict condition of seaworthiness on the as- 

 sured whether the policy be for the voyage or for 

 a specified time, the committee recommended the 

 general rule adopted by Continental nations that 

 due care must be taken to have the ship stanch 

 and fit at the beginning of every voyage under 

 the policy. The adoption of the committee's code 

 of rules in the laws of the various maritime states 

 w r ould have the effect of putting all policies, wher- 

 ever made, on the same legal basis and would 

 remove the obstacles now existing to insuring a 

 ship or cargo by several policies in tw r o or more 

 countries or to reinsuring in other countries. The 

 French members w T ere unwilling to vote on the 

 proposed rules until they could study them in a 

 French version, and therefore action was postponed 

 till the next conference, at which any amendments 

 or substitutions that may be suggested will also 

 be considered. 



The Socialist congress was disturbed by the dis- 

 sensions between the two branches of the French 

 Socialists, the followers of Jules Guesde, the chief 

 organizer of the party, who condemns co-operation 

 with other parties, and especially the acceptance 

 of office by M. Millerand, and the Independent 

 Socialists, among whom are the parliamentary 

 orators Rouanet, Jaure's, Millerand, and Viviani. 

 The challenge was given in the eighteenth annual 

 congress of the French Labor party, which met 

 on Sept. 20. The cleft between the factions was 

 widened by a difference of opinion on the Dreyfus 

 case, which led the Guesdists to join the Anti- 

 Semites. The International Socialist Congress was 

 the successor of the congresses of London in 1896 

 and of Zurich in 1893, which followed the united 

 Trade Unionist and Socialist Congress of Brussels 

 in 1891, in which the division that led to rival 

 congresses at Paris in 1889 was healed, this di- 

 vision having been caused by the preponderance 

 in the London congress of 1888 of English trade 

 unionists, who made their views prevail over those 

 of the Continental Socialists that planned the in- 

 ternational gathering in the conference held at 

 Paris in 1886 and organized the Paris congress of 

 1886. The congress of 1900 assembled in Paris on 

 Sept. 23. When the French section elected M. 



