As in community law so also in international law rules have frequently grown up as matters of custom.  In the second place agreements have sometimes been reached through negotiation and written out in the form of treaties between the two nations concerned.  In the latter half of the nineteenth century several attempts were made to strengthen international law by means of general conferences of the nations.  One of the most famous of these was the Conference of Geneva in 1864, which reached a number of valuable agreements on the care of wounded soldiers and gave official international recognition to the Red Cross.  At the very end of the century occurred the first of the two famous international conferences at The Hague.

Toward this growing movement in the direction of the setting up of a community of nations in which each has equal rights and equally recognizes the force of international law, the German Empire has taken an attitude of opposition.  She has steadily refused to accept her place as a member of a family of nations.  Her leaders have taken the ground, as explained in Chapter II, that strong nations should control weaker nations whenever it is to their own interest.  As a principle this is just as barbarous as if in a community the man with the strongest muscles or the biggest club should be permitted to control the actions of his neighbors who happened to be weaker or less effectively armed.  Just as the strong brutal man must be taught that laws apply to him as well as to the weaker members of the community, so must Germany learn to respect the laws of nations and the rights of weaker peoples.

THE CALL FOR A WORLD PEACE CONFERENCE.—­In spite of the rapid growth of armaments in Europe after 1870 there was growing up among many of the leading thinkers of the nations a movement looking toward permanent peace in the world.  The movement soon gained great strength among all classes.  Peace societies were formed, meetings were held, and pamphlets were prepared and distributed.  Toward the close of the century public opinion in most countries was leaning more and more toward the idea of universal peace.  Governments, however, were slower to take up the problem.  Strangely enough the first government to take action in the matter was that of Russia, at the time the most autocratic of all the nations of Europe.

Two years before the close of the century Czar Nicholas II sent out an official invitation calling upon the nations to send representatives to an international conference to discuss the problem of the prevention of wars.  The Czar pointed out the dangers which must surely result if the military rivalry of the nations were not checked.  He referred to the fact that European militarism was using up the strength and the wealth of the nations and was bringing about a condition of military preparedness which must inevitably lead in the end to a war more disastrous and terrible than any war in the history of mankind.  The Czar