In 1875, England joined the other important European powers in a telegraphic agreement which went into effect in January of the following year. By this agreement each of the contracting parties agreed to devote special wires to international service, government telegrams to have precedence in transmission and to be forwarded in code if desired. Private telegrams could also be sent in code between those countries which allowed them, and the signatory powers agreed to pass them in transit, but each country reserved to itself the privilege of stopping any private telegram. For the purpose of making charges, any country might be divided into not more than two zones, and each of the signatory powers owed to the others an account of charges collected.[815] So far as foreign telegrams were concerned, the use of manufactured expressions in place of real words gave rise to considerable trouble in view of the fact that such combinations were difficult to transmit. In 1879, the languages which might be used for code words were reduced by common consent to English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Latin. At the same time the use of proper names as code words was prohibited. This did not remove the evil, as the roots of words in one language with terminations in another were used. An official vocabulary was compiled by the International Telegraph Bureau, to become obligatory in 1898, but its publication in 1894 aroused considerable opposition, as many of the words were dangerously alike, and in 1896 the decision of the Paris Conference of 1890, by which the official vocabulary was to become compulsory for European telegrams in 1898, was rescinded. It was also decided that an enlarged vocabulary should be published by the International Bureau, but, owing to the action of the English delegates, the official vocabulary was not made compulsory at the meeting of the International Telegraph Conference in 1903, although artificial words were allowed if pronounceable in accordance with the usages of any one of the eight languages from which the ordinary code words might be selected. It was also decided to admit letter cipher at the rate of five letters to a word, and several countries agreed to lower their charges for the transmission of extra-European telegrams, the English delegates contending that the rates for such telegrams should be made the same as the rates for European telegrams.[816] In 1878, negotiations with the German and Netherland Telegraph Administrations resulted in a charge of 4_d._ a word being fixed as the rate between the United Kingdom and Germany and 3_d._ a word between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. [815] _Acc. & P._, 1876, lxxxiv [c. 1418], pp. 116-119. [816] _Rep. P. G._, 1904, pp. 15-22. In 1885, the following reductions in rates were announced:--