To-day the opening session takes place in the House of Magnates. Before the building, on the edge of the street, fastened together with garlands of flowers, stand masts, from which float the flags of all the nations that participate in the Conference,—an object lesson for the passers-by. That conception of a “European Confederation,” still so strange, is here expressed in the language of emblems. We reach our places in the gallery before the members of the Conference make their appearance in the hall, so we watch them as they come in deliberately and take their places. In the ministerial chairs, where of late the King’s Hungarian councilors sat, now the foreign parliamentarians are taking their seats. Frédéric Passy is between Cardinal Schlauch and Minister Darany. Gobat mounts the platform and proposes that the president of the Hungarian House of Deputies, Desider Szilagyi, be chairman of the Conference. He accepts and delivers the welcoming address. Now follow the speeches of old acquaintances,—Pirquet, Descamps, Beernaert, Von Bar, Bajer, and others. Apponyi is new and surprising to me. What a speaker! He has a tall, elegant figure, a powerful barytone voice, and an easy mastery of foreign tongues. At the second session at four o’clock begin the actual transactions. Point I: “Permanent International Arbitration Tribunal.” Descamps reports that he has sent to all the sovereigns and governments the memorandum in regard to this question, drawn up in accordance with the motion of the previous year. Most of the governments had replied favorably to the principles, but the most decisive answer came from St. Petersburg, from the recently departed Prince Lobanof. In the evening a great soirée at the Prime Minister’s. I see that my diary has not kept a very strict account of the various phases of the transactions of the Conference. But the official protocol lies before me and I will here dwell upon something that seems to me important in the historical development of the peace cause. In that session of September 22, 1896, the following resolution was offered by Pierantoni: The Seventh Interparliamentary Conference requests all civilized states to call a diplomatic conference in order that the question of an international court of arbitration may be laid before it; at this conference the labors of the Interparliamentary Union shall serve as a basis for further resolves. A Conference of Diplomatists. In this term does there not already ring—how shall I express it?—a note suggestive of the conferences at The Hague, in which, indeed, the labors of Descamps and La Fontaine served as the foundation of the establishment of the Hague Tribunal.