158 



DISCOVERY 



At that moment I took the liberty of submitting 

 to the Emperor the draft of a declaration which 

 I had drawn up this morning. In it the arrange- 

 ment of 1891 is confirmed ; but the scope is 

 singularly extended. 



The Tsar was inclined to agree that his own idea 

 was the same as M. Dclcasse's. He called in Count 

 Muravieff, who was waiting in attendance in another 

 room. 



An understanding already existed between the 

 Minister of Foreign Affairs and myself on the 

 fundamental basis of the plan. It was decided 

 that the new arrangement, of which the contents 

 and the very existence should remain absolutely 

 secret, should be established undeniably in the 

 form of letters which Count Muravieff and I 

 would exchange. (Delcasse to Loubet, August 12, 

 1899.) 



The "new arrangement," which, as M. Delcasse 

 said, "singularly extended" that of 1891, was to 

 make the Military Convention endure as long as the 

 diplomatic agreement. 



As originally made in 1891, the Franco-Russian 

 Alliance consisted of (i) a diplomatic agreement for 

 deliberation and action in concert when the genera] 

 peace was in jeopardy ; and (2) a military convention, 

 to endure as long as the Triple Alliance. But now 

 (August 9, 1899) by exchange of letters between M. 

 Delcasse and Coimt Muravieff it was agreed (i) "to 

 confirm the diplomatic arrangement formulated in 

 M. de Giers's letter of August 21, 1891," and (2) to 

 " agree that the draft of the military convention . . . 

 shall remain in force as long as the diplomatic 

 agreement concluded to safeguard the common and 

 permanent interests of the two countries." 



This was not quite all. The new arrangement 

 extended the scope of the alliance. In 1891 the two 

 Governments had agreed to "deliberate in concert 

 upon all questions of such nature as to put the general 

 peace in jeopardy." But in the letters of August 9, 

 1899, they declared, in the preamble to the new 

 arrangement, their motive to be the maintenance of 

 "the general peace and the balance between the 

 European forces." 



From the published docmuents it has become per- 

 fectly clear that the specific and the defined object 

 both of the Triple Alliance and of the Franco-Russian 

 Alliance was the maintenance of the status quo in 

 Europe. If that status quo came to be threatened by 

 the probable or imminent dissolution of the Austrian 

 Empire, the Franco-Russian alliance was to ensure 

 that out of the ensuing settlement, the territorial 

 weight of the Great Powers should still be kept in 

 balance. 



Thus the Triple Alliance was meant to preserve the 

 Austrian Empire. The Franco-Russian Alliance came 



to mean that, in the eventuality of the dismemberment 

 of the Austrian Empire, something like the previously 

 existing balance of power in Europe should ensue or be 

 maintained. Therefore, each in their own way, the 

 Triplice and the Franco-Russian Alliance aimed at 

 peace. That they failed to ensure peace shows that 

 it would be better if the system of separate diplomatic 

 groupings could be replaced by a system of general 

 diplomatic grouping in the League of Nations. 



[Note. — The most important documents of the French 

 Government Yellow Book have been translated and printed 

 by the Association for International Conciliation of New 

 York, U.S.A., in its publications for the year 1919, vol. i. 

 It is from this source that the extracts given in the present 

 article have been taken.] 



Invisible Light 



Its Physiological Effects and 

 Practical Applications 



By J. S. Dow 



It is common knowledge that the portion of the 

 spectrum that we recognise as visible light forms only 

 a " special case " of electrical waves. Just as a wire- 

 less receiver can be tuned with a maximum response to 

 a certain wave-length, and a diminishing sensitiveness 

 to the waves on their side of this maximum value, so 

 the eye is most sensitive to the yellow-green rays in 

 the visible spectrum ; and the luminosity becomes 

 less as we approach the red on the one side, and the 

 violet on the other. Indeed, the curve showing the 

 sensitiveness of the eye throughout the visible spectrum 

 and the corresponding curve connecting response and 

 wave-length of a wireless receiver resemble each other 

 very closely ; this has led some observers to conjecture 

 that the light-perceiving apparatus in the human eye 

 has much in common with a detector of electro-mag- 

 netic waves, such as that used in wireless telegraphy- 

 On either side of the visible region of the spectrmn 

 there are radiations which are non-luminous, but may 

 yet have an important influence on the human body, 

 and possess important industrial applications. As we 

 pass from the limit of visible red to the " infra-red," 

 radiations with a wave-length greater than that of 

 " light," we find radiations which are distinguished 

 mainly by their heating effect. As the writer's previous 

 article ' indicated, such radiation forms a considerable 

 proportion of the energy emitted by most incandescent 

 illuminants. Not a great deal is known regarding 



' "Artificial Light — its Production and Application," Dis- 

 covery, February 1923, p. 44. 



