Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill DISARMAMENT IN the circular letter of the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs of January 11, 1899, following the Rescript convoking the Conference, the subjects to be submitted for consideration were set forth in detail, and the first of these was as follows : — "1. An understanding not to increase for a fixed period the present effective of the armed military and naval forces, and at the same time not to increase the Budgets pertaining thereto; and a preliminary examination of the means by which reduction might even be effected in future in the forces and Budgets above mentioned." The evil effects of the vast armaments oppressing the nations of the earth were most strikingly set forth in the Rescript of the Czar. I quote from that paper: — " In the course of the last twenty years the longings for a general appeasement have become especially pronounced in the conscience of civilized nations. The preservation of peace has been put forward as the object of international policy; in its name great States have concluded between themselves powerful alliances; it is the better to guarantee peace that they have developed, in proportions hitherto unprecedented, their military forces, and still continue to increase them without shrinking from any sacrifice. " All these efforts, nevertheless, have not yet been able to bring about the beneficent results of the desired pacification. The financial charges following an upward march strike at the public prosperity at its very source. " The intellectual and physical strength of the nations, labor and capital, are for the major part diverted from their natural application, and unproductively consumed. Hundreds of millions are devoted to acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which, though to-day regarded as the last wo...