41. However this may be, one point must be decisively emphasized,--international legislation can no longer be left to mere chance. Apart from the Declaration of London and the Geneva Convention, it has always hitherto been a more or less happy chance which has controlled international legislation. Of conscious legislative consideration and deliberation, based on far-reaching, thoroughgoing preparation, there is no trace. For example, the Declaration of Paris of 1856 was but a by-product of the Peace of Paris of the same year. So also the legislation of the first Peace Conference was simply due to the anxiety to accomplish something positive which might conceal the fact that the proposed aim of the Conference--general disarmament, to wit--had in no wise been realized. At the second Peace Conference we did indeed see individual states appear with some well-prepared projects of legislation, but the preparation was entirely one-sided on the part of the states in question, and not general; accordingly, the adoption, rejection, amendment, and final shaping of these projects were also none the less the result of chance. The second Peace Conference itself took steps to prevent a repetition of this, calling the attention of the powers in its Final Act to the necessity of preparing the programme of the future third Conference a sufficient time in advance to ensure its deliberations being conducted with the necessary authority and expedition: In order to attain this object the Conference considers that it would be very desirable that, some two years before the probable date of the meeting, a preparatory committee should be charged by the Governments with the task of collecting the various proposals to be submitted to the Conference, of ascertaining what subjects are ripe for embodiment in an international regulation, and of preparing a programme which the Governments should decide upon in sufficient time to enable it to be carefully examined by each country. [Sidenote: The Declaration of London thoroughly prepared beforehand.]