This noon our delegation gave a breakfast to sundry members of the conference who are especially interested in an effective plan of arbitration, the principal of these being Count Nigra from Italy; Count Welsersheimb, first delegate of Austria; M. Descamps of Belgium; Baron d'Estournelles of France; and M. Asser of the Netherlands. After some preliminary talk, I read to them the proposal, which Sir Julian had handed me in the morning, for the purpose of obviating the objection to the council of administration in charge of the court of arbitration here in The Hague, which was an important feature of his original plan, but which had been generally rejected as involving expensive machinery. His proposal now is that, instead of a council specially appointed and salaried to watch over and provide for the necessities of the court, such council shall simply be made up of the ministers of sundry powers residing here,--thus doing away entirely with the trouble and expense of a special council. This I amended by adding the Netherlands minister of foreign affairs as ex-officio president, there being various reasons for this, and among these the fact that, without some such provision, the Netherlands would have no representative in the council. The plan and my amendment were well received, and I trust that our full and friendly discussion of these and various matters connected with them will produce a good effect in the committees. Count Nigra expressed himself to me as personally most earnestly in favor of arbitration, but it was clear that his position was complicated by the relations of his country to Germany as one of the Triple Alliance; and the same difficulty was observable in the case of Count Welsersheimb, the representative of Austria, the third ally in the combination of which Germany is the head. In the course of our breakfast, Baron d'Estournelles made a statement which I think impressed every person present. It was that, as he was leaving Paris, Jaures, the famous socialist, whom he knows well, said to him, "Go on; do all you can at The Hague, but you will labor in vain: you can accomplish nothing there, your schemes will fail, and we shall triumph," or words to that effect. So clear an indication as this of the effect which a failure of the conference to produce a good scheme of arbitration will have in promoting the designs of the great international socialist and anarchist combinations cannot fail to impress every thinking man.