general agreement for many centuries. Among such rules are those for the
carrying out of treaty obligations, the punishment of piracy, the
protection of each other's ambassadors, the rights of citizens of one
country to the protection of the laws of the country they are visiting,
the protection of women and children in time of war.

As in community law so also in international law rules have frequently
grown up as matters of custom. In the second place agreements have
sometimes been reached through negotiation and written out in the form
of treaties between the two nations concerned. In the latter half of the
nineteenth century several attempts were made to strengthen
international law by means of general conferences of the nations. One of
the most famous of these was the Conference of Geneva in 1864, which
reached a number of valuable agreements on the care of wounded soldiers
and gave official international recognition to the Red Cross. At the
very end of the century occurred the first of the two famous
international conferences at The Hague.

Toward this growing movement in the direction of the setting up of a
community of nations in which each has equal rights and equally
recognizes the force of international law, the German Empire has taken
an attitude of opposition. She has steadily refused to accept her place
as a member of a family of nations. Her leaders have taken the ground,
as explained in Chapter II, that strong nations should control weaker
nations whenever it is to their own interest. As a principle this is
just as barbarous as if in a community the man with the strongest
muscles or the biggest club should be permitted to control the actions
of his neighbors who happened to be weaker or less effectively armed.
Just as the strong brutal man must be taught that laws apply to him as
well as to the weaker members of the community, so must Germany learn to