10. Lastly, it is noteworthy that in the Final Act of the second Hague Conference a recommendation was expressed that the powers should call a third Conference in the year 1915, and two years before its meeting should appoint a preparatory committee, entrusted, among other things, with the task of proposing a system of organization and procedure for the coming Conference. This recommendation gives the first impetus towards making the Hague Conferences a permanent institution and so ensuring their periodic assembly without the need of initiative on the part of some one power or another. [Sidenote: Uncertainty as to the fate of the Declaration of London and of some of the Hague Conventions.] 11. Neither all the results of the second Hague Peace Conference nor those of the London Naval Conference are as yet assured, for the Declaration of London has not yet been ratified, and so the fate of the International Prize Court is still involved in doubt. The fate of some of the numerous conventions of the second Hague Conference is still in similar doubt, and many of those conventions which have been ratified present only a fragmentary and provisional settlement of their respective topics. Whatever may be the fate of these agreements which are still in suspense, this much is certain, that international legislation, international administration of justice, and international organization occupy the foreground of affairs, have already been in part established, and must be in ever-increasing requisition by the present and the coming generation. [Sidenote: The task of the future.] 12. If in the following pages I undertake the discussion of these three weighty matters, it is entirely foreign to my purpose to peer into the future with the eyes of prophecy or to busy my fancy with building castles in the air. What I propose is only to place in clear light the problems which are now coming into view and to furnish some indications which may contribute to their successful solution. If it is only to happy accident that we owe the assembling of the Peace Conferences, and likewise the issues of the same, we must all the more attempt in the future to assure success by dint of careful deliberation, systematic preparation, and a purposeful consideration of the problems which press for attention. And the science of international law must bethink itself and devote itself, with a more exact method than has hitherto been usual, to the elaboration of the results of past and future Conferences and to the incorporation of them in its system. CHAPTER I THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SOCIETY OF STATES [Sidenote: Is the law of nations an anarchic law?]