ABSTRACT
The Hague Convention of 1899 and its successor in the same place in 1907 were correctly hailed by statesmen as precendent-shattering achievements. The first Hague Convention was held on Czar Nicholas's initiative, the second at the urging of the United States. The topics covered at the two Conventions included all aspects of international law and behavior, from maritime law, to declaration of war, to neutrals' rights, to that of concern the status and rights of noncombatants. The Thirty Years' War was finally ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, and a battered and bloody Europe faced the task of restoring some modicum of order and humane existence. An ideological fervor, absent for a century, would engulf Europe in a massive struggle, resulting in a new European power alignment that would temporarily restore the civilian to his eighteenth century status but that ultimately would seriously challenge the permanence of that status.
