There are a large number of conventions which have been concluded between nations, by which social intercourse with regard to such matters as post and telegraph is facilitated, and of late years arbitration treaties between one Power and another have multiplied very rapidly. This is the one advance in which the efforts of diplomacy have borne fruit. The important treaty of Arbitration between Great Britain and the United States is the only one of these treaties mentioned in the list. Agreements with regard to the conduct of war have been made, such as the Geneva Convention of 1864 and 1906, and the Hague Declarations of 1899 and 1907, but they have proved to a large extent futile. Treaties are generally concluded for an undefined period, and lapse owing to deliberate breach or altered circumstances. But no people, and it may safely be said no government, was precisely aware which of the innumerable treaties were still in force, and what actually in given circumstances its obligations were. There may be many instances in which a nation may look back with pride at the victory of its arms and the achievements of its generals. There are but few instances in which a nation can look back with pride at the advantages gained by treaties of peace and at the achievements of its diplomatists. From the Treaty of Vienna, 1815, to the Treaty of Bukarest, 1913, the record of so-called settlements is not one to inspire confidence in the efficacy of warfare or in the methods of diplomacy. After the termination of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 there were great hopes of an era of peace. But two antagonistic elements existed in Europe which were bound sooner or later to come into open conflict. On the one hand the French Revolution had engendered in the peoples a spirit of unrest, of discontent, of impatience with the unfettered monarchical system, and at the same time confidence in their power and hope of success in the destruction of tyranny and arbitrary government. It was in fact the rise of democracy. On the other side the despotic governments were ready to co-operate, and, under the guidance of Metternich, endeavour to repress and exterminate the movement for the establishment of constitutional government, and for the expression of nationalist and democratic aspirations. Two waves of revolution passed over Europe in 1830 and 1848, and by the middle of the century the reactionaries could no longer hold their own, and many states had been freed from despotism and oppression.