A MAN OF PEACE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 577, 4 August 1909, Page 3

A MAN OF PEACE.

' 1 v : Tue most distinguished'apostle of peace, Professor De Martens who .died f reccntlj , is said'to have inspired the idea of-a.l.eace . Conference. "Peace by law was his motto. , He was a' great authority, on international -j law,, and. the second .Russian representative , on the Permanent Arbitration Court at ine - -Hague. Tor over thirty-five ; years lie was > ■Professor of International Law at St; Petersburg University; and was for long associated , with the Russian 'Foreign Office, ' • ' ■ Aiiice 'by his long experience of practica diplomatic' activities and by his theoretical and historical studies which, resulted in woiks such as "La Paix et la Guerre"-- and the exhaustive fourteen-volume collection ; ot "Treaties and .Conventions Concluded -by Russia with Foreign Powers, lie had.won for himself: an authority as an international lawyer which few of his contemporaries would care to have .challenged/ ... ' - Ho was keenly in favour of the peace idea, although ho realised that its fruition woillq como rather as the result of the dccis.pns of an international court, gradually erected into a system ofcase law, than- as the result of mcro expressions-of good: resolutions and sanguine dreams. _ , His views 011 this subject may be gleaned from the following extract from a wnversation which Professor deMartens had with a Router's correspondent. on^tho^occasio of his visit to London m 1907. _ I should say," he said, "that my .mission is not ca ; nected with tfie Utopian ideas of eternal and permanent peace which seem toexistinsoiiiu quarters. Such a mat er,must bo left for tho future. lam looking forward quite hopefully - to the results (if, tho conference,, because-this will be the first occasion on which the ciulised nations of the wor d have met together in a time of "peace, not as a result of force but of their own' freo mil, to legislati on their mutual relations. This is a great and noteworthy fact, and shows that they are'coming together in circumstances qu to unknown in the history of international relations."