Stead told me that the Emperor Nicholas, in speaking to him of his circular, had said: “Have I had a single letter, or has a single person ever represented to me that I exaggerate the danger? Not one! they all agree that I have spoken the truth. ‘But,’ they ask me, ‘what do you propose as a preventive?’ As if it were my affair and mine alone to prescribe a remedy for a disease from which all the nations are suffering!” Even on the peoples’ side there was not that enthusiasm which the author of the rescript might have expected. “How diminish the burdens that rest so heavily on the shoulders of the people?” he cries to his fellow-rulers, and he begs them to seek some means to avoid the evil that threatens the whole world. And what is the answer to it? The masses to whom the Emperor specially appealed remained indifferent. Although the threat of war between France and England seemed to be dispelled, the preparations were continued unabated on both sides. The German Emperor, on his return from his journey to Jerusalem, immediately insisted on increasing his army by twenty-six thousand men. In St. Petersburg a feeling of deep discouragement prevailed. By the beginning of December the disappointment was so great that the authorities almost decided to give up the project and call instead a conference of ambassadors in that capital. But the world had, after all, not remained so indifferent. In England mass meetings were held in behalf of the projected Conference. William T. Stead proposed the scheme of an international peace crusade. The peace societies of the Continent gave a mighty response; thus, for example, in Austria our Union provided for participation in that action by means of assemblies and public demonstrations, and for many weeks in succession the “International Peace Crusade” formed a standing rubric in the _Neue Freie Presse_ and the _Neues Wiener Tagblatt_. In the same way the peace workers were bestirring themselves in other countries. By this means, as well as through the influence of a few resolute members of the Russian government, the hope of success was again awakened in St. Petersburg, and the half-formed determination to substitute a simple gathering of ambassadors in place of the Conference was dropped; on the sixteenth of January a second circular was dispatched by Count Muravieff, once more inviting the governments to participate in the Conference as planned, and “suggesting” a programme of eight points: 1. An agreement not to increase, during a fixed period, the present strength of the armed military and naval forces, nor the budgets pertaining thereto, and a preliminary examination of the means by which a reduction might be effected in future in the forces and budgets above mentioned. 2. To prohibit the adoption, in the armies and fleets, of any new kind of firearms and explosives, or of any kinds of powder more powerful than those now in use either for rifles or cannon.