Hague Peace Conferences

The Hague Peace Conferences as a Permanent Institution

Lassa Oppenheim, in the book entitled The Future of International Law, about The Hague Peace Conferences as a Permanent Institution, wrote in 1921: 10. Lastly, it is noteworthy that in the Final Act of the second Hague Conference a recommendation was expressed that the powers should call a third Conference in the year 1915, and two years before its meeting should appoint a preparatory committee, entrusted, among other things, with the task of proposing a system of organization and procedure for the coming Conference. This recommendation gives the first impetus towards making The Hague Conferences a permanent institution and so ensuring their periodic assembly without the need of initiative on the part of someone power or another.

The Hague Peace Conferences as Organs of the Family of Nations

Lassa Oppenheim, in the book entitled The Future of International Law, about The Hague Peace Conferences as Organs of the Family of Nations, wrote in 1921: 25. Reference must in conclusion be made to the Hague Peace Conferences themselves, for it is to be expected that such Conferences will assemble periodically in the future. If success attends the effort to bring all members of the international community to an agreement, in virtue of which a Hague Peace Conference assembles at periodic intervals without being called together by this or that power, then an organ of international society will have arisen, the value of which none can decry. It will then be possible to say that the international community has become an actually organized society, and it will then be no longer open to doubt that the organization of this society will gradually become more and more developed. Before everything else this at least will then be attained, that an organ of the international society of states, comparable to the parliaments of individual states, will have come into existence, which can attend to international legislation as the needs of the time require, and can cause a continuous growth in the range of matters submitted to international tribunals. All the same, I yield myself to no hot-blooded hope of a speedy realization of Utopian schemes. Even when this organization is already there, progress will be but slight and gradual, and will encounter unceasing opposition. Progress in this department has always to reckon on a conflict with adverse interests and efforts, and it must be expected that in the continuous struggle between international and national interests the latter will only slowly prepare themselves to yield.