The high and humanitarian importance of this document can not fail to
recommend it to the absorbing interest of the President and
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people of the United States,
and the fact that Russia is the first to take a step in the direction of
a general disarmament, and toward that universal peace which all
Christian peoples must regard as the haven to which Christian progress
ought to tend, places her in the very front rank of the civilized
nations of the world, a position on which I did not hesitate to
congratulate his excellency, in full confidence of the entire sympathy
of our Government with the high aim to which the document gives
expression.
In handing me the paper Count Mouravieff requested me to obtain an
expression of our Government upon the subject.
[Inclosure.]
Translation of document delivered by Count
Mouravieff, Russian
imperial minister of foreign affairs to Ethan Allen Hitchcock, ambassador of the United
States, on Wednesday, August 12 (24), 1898.
The maintenance of general peace and a possible reaction of the
excessive armaments which weigh down upon all nations present
themselves, in the actual present situation of the world, as the
ideal toward which should tend the efforts of all governments.
The magnanimous and humanitarian views of His Majesty the Emperor, my
august master, are entirely in accord with this sentiment.
In the conviction that this lofty object agrees entirely with the
most essential interests and the most rightful desires of all the
powers, the Imperial Government believes that the present time is
very favorable for seeking, through the method of an international
conference, the most effective means of assuring to all nations the
benefits of a real and lasting peace, and of placing before all the
question of ending the progressive development of existing
armaments.
In the course of the last twenty years the aspirations for a general
pacification have become strongly impressed upon the minds of
civilized nations. The preservation of peace has been set up as the
end of international politics; it is in its name that the great
powers have formed powerful alliances with one another; it is for
the better guarantee of peace that they have developed, to
proportions hitherto unknown, their military forces, and that they
shall continue to augment them without hesitating on account of any
sacrifice whatever.
All these efforts have not, however, yet accomplished the beneficent
results of the much-wished-for pacification.
The ever-increasing financial expense touches public prosperity at
its very source; the intellectual and physical powers of the people,
labor and capital, are, in a great measure, turned aside from their
natural functions and consumed unproductively. Hundreds of millions
are used in acquiring fearful engines of destruction, which, to-day
considered as the highest triumph of science, are destined to-morrow
to lose all their value because of some new discovery in this
sphere.
It is true also that as the armaments of each power increase in size
they succeed less and less in accomplishing the result which is
aimed at by the governments. Economic crises, due in great part to
the existence of excessive armaments, and the constant dangers which
result from this accumulation of war material, makes of the armed
peace of our day an overwhelming burden which it is more and more
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difficult for the
people to bear. It therefore seems evident that, if this state of
affairs continues it will inevitably lead to that very cataclysm
which we are trying to avoid, and the horrors of which are fearful
to human thought.
To put an end to these increasing armaments, and to find means for
avoiding the calamities which menace the entire world, that is the
supreme duty which to-day lies upon all nations.
Impressed with this sentiment, His Majesty the Emperor has deigned to
command me to propose to all the governments who have duly
accredited representatives at the Imperial Court the holding of a
conference to consider this grave problem.
This conference will be, with the help of God, a happy augury for the
century which is about to open. It will gather together into a
powerful unit the efforts of all the powers which are sincerely
desirous of making triumphant the conception of a universal peace.
It will at the same time strengthen their mutual harmony by a common
consideration of the principles of equity and right, upon which rest
the security of States and the well-being of nations.
Cte. Mouravieff.
St. Petersburg, August 12,
1898.
(New style August 24.)
