The 20th century has ended as it began. A deeply divided world is besieged by nagging questions and beset by the threat of violence. What will be the future of war? Has it been abolished? Is it simply redundant or has it undergone a grim metamorphosis? Just the same questions were being asked 100 years ago, urgently, by world leaders. Invited jointly by Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands and Tsar Nicolas II the last Tsar they gathered at The Hague Peace Conference in 1899 to try to abolish war. They failed, just as the Tsar's chief adviser said that they would. Jan Bloch was a Polish railway...