AMBASSADORS, CONFERENCE OF. The term has been used in times past to denote the sessions or reunions of am bassadors at a certain centre, generally for the period of the exe cution of a treaty. The best example of this is the Ambassadors' Conference which sat at Paris and Vienna during 1815-26. After the World War a similar conference meeting at Paris became one of the organs concerned with the execution of the Versailles Treaty. It consisted of the representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan, with the American Ambassador attend ing in the capacity of a spectator after 1921. Many of the tech nical decisions under the treaties were actually taken by the ambassadors, and in a large number of cases important interpre tations were given.
It is difficult to give details of their activities when so much mystery obtained concerning them. Except in the case of Memel and the plebiscite areas, the complicated frontiers of Poland, left unsettled by the Peace Conference, were decided by the ambassa dors. They also reorganized the frontiers established between Poland and Russia by the agreement of Riga. The most impor tant function performed by the Ambassadors' Conference was undoubtedly in Oct. 1921, when the ex-Emperor Karl for the sec ond time returned to Hungary with the intention of regaining his crown. The "Little Entente" (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania) threatened very strong measures against Hungary. But, largely as a result of the ambassadors' intervention, Karl was arrested (Oct. 24), and a law was passed by the Hungarian Parliament which abrogated his sovereign rights (Nov. 3) .
Its action in 1923, in connection with the Corfu incident, brought the conference into some discredit, and shortly after he became prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald announced that its powers would be limited to the execution of the Versailles Treaty, and this policy seems in effect to have been continued.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-H. W. V. Temperley, History of Peace Conference Bibliography.-H. W. V. Temperley, History of Peace Conference (1924) ; A. J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 192o-23 (1925).