INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION respective citizens and which, in accordance with international law, can be submitted through diplomatic channels and can not amicably be adjusted through such channels, provided such claims exceed the sum of ten thousand dollars in gold; and provided, further, that such claimants shall not have voluntarily served or aided, subsequently to the ratification of this protocol, the enemies of the government against which the claim is presented." Such was the unanimous agreement assented to by the representa tives of the United States of America, of the United States of Brazil, of the United States of Mexico, of the United States of Venezuela, and of the republics of Argentine, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecua dor, Guatemala, Hayti, Paraguay, Peru, Salvador, and Uruguay. At the close of the Conference the Mexican minister for foreign affairs declared that it had ended in triumph. To employ his own words: "That triumph is undoubtedly the unani mous agreement of all the delegates, in spite of their apparent radical divergence as to the application of that great principle, to submit for settlement to the permanent arbitration court of The Hague all contro versies that may arise among the govern ments of America due to the claims of private individuals for indemnities and damages. As those claims, at least in America, and in cases where powerful na tions are involved, are without question the most frequent source of international con troversies, the importance of this achieve ment can not be doubted." Although little progress has been made towards the ratifi cation of these arbitration treaties signed at the Pan-American Conference, the fact re mains that they were unanimously approved by the delegates. But what is more to the point the first treaty of obligatory arbitra tion actually concluded was made in 1902 between two of the South American repub lics, Chile and the Argentine, who, after dis banding their armies and reducing their navies by a sale of a number of their battle
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ships, crowned the noble work by erecting on the highest peak of the Andes which marks their international boundary, long a subject of angry controversy, a statue of the Christ, the Prince of Peace. ANGLO-FRENCH TREATY OP 1903 AS A STANDARD FOR IMITATION.
The most signal support, however, which The Hague court has so far received has been drawn, during the last year and a half, from the treaties of obligatory arbitration signed by Great Britain and France, France and Italy, Great Britain and Italy, Holland and Denmark, Great Britain and Spain, France and Spain, and France and Holland, entered into under Article XIX of The Hague Arbitration Convention, which pro vided that any of the signatory powers may make "New agreements, general or special, with a view of extending the obligation to submit controversies to arbitration, to all cases which they consider suitable for such submission." Most notable is the fact that the treaty between Holland and Denmark is without limitations. Article I boldly pro vides that "The High Contracting Powers undertake to submit to the Permanent Court of Arbitration all mutual differences and disputes that can not be solved by means of a diplomatic channel." The other treaties reserve questions of vital interest and honor, whatever they may be. On that basis was made the treaty between Great Britain and France on the i4th of October, 1903, after one of the most re markable campaigns in the history of social progress. After a canvass conducted by Dr. Thomas Barclay and others, before all the important boards of trade and cham bers of commerce in both countries, nearly three hundred of them voted resolutions in favor of the treaty. The American Confer ence of International Arbitration is now appealing to the people of the United States in support of the treaties of arbitratino being negotiated by this Government with France, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico,
