ouis, President Roosevelt,
on October 20, 1904, invited the nations which had taken part in the
first Hague conference to another conference at the same place. But in
his message to Congress of that year he defined very clearly his own
position, condemning in no uncertain terms the thought of peace at any
price. "There are kinds of peace," he said, "which are highly
undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. The
peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of
injustice--all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war."

[Illustration: Building appears to be a church.]
Building where the second Peace Conference
was held, The Hague, Holland.

Favorable replies to the invitation sent by President Roosevelt were
received from all the nations. Russia, then in the midst of war with
Japan, while approving, stipulated that the conference should not be
called until the end of that war. When peace was restored, in the summer
of 1905, Emperor Nicholas II issued an invitation to fifty-three nations
to send representatives to such a conference. For the first time, nearly
every independent nation on the globe was represented among the
delegates in an international gathering of this nature. It met at The
Hague during the summer of 1907.

[Illustration: About one hundred delegates.]
First session of the second Peace Conference, The Hague, Holland.

Delegates from the United States were instructed to favor obligatory
arbitration; the establishment of a permanent court of arbitration; the
prohibition of force in the collection of contract debts; immunity from
seizure of private property at sea; a clearer definition of the rights
of neutrals, and the limitation of armaments.

While belief was reasserted by the conference that there should be the
obligatory arbitration of all questions relating to treaties and
international problems of a legal nature, the principle was not adopted,
although thirty-two nations of the forty-five represented favored it.

The resolution adopted, which provided for the collection of contract
debts, is as follows: "In order to avoid between nations armed conflicts
of a purely pecuniary origin arising from contractual debts claimed of
the government of one country by the government of another country to be
due to its nationals, the signatory powers agree not to have recourse to
armed force for the collection of such contractual debts. However, this