world, of a permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. The existence of this court we look upon as a summons to the world to use it, as the only method of adjusting international grievances that expresses humane ideals, leaves no hate behind. it, and promises as substantially as any practical means can, to satisfy justice and honor.

We believe that the suspicion, the arrogance and pride of race, the greed of gain and the spirit of militarism, which alone prevent modern governments from referring all their differences to such fair arbitrament as is furnished by this High Court, are unworthy of enlightened and civilized, much less of religious men.

We therefore especially commend to teachers, educators, and journalists, and to all ministers of religion, the grand and patriotic duty of changing public opinion, so as no longer to excuse, justify, and encourage war, but rather to make war impossible. We seriously deprecate the use by parents of socalled "military schools" for their boys. We hold that the time has come when those who lead and teach, ought distinctly to exercise their influence against any increase of military or naval armaments. We call upon those who believe these the best methods, frankly to advocate them and and to urge their adoption.

After another fine solo by Charles Swayne the meeting adjourned.

SEVENTH-DAY MORNING.

The weather was bright and the attendance larger than on the preceding day. Mr. Allen C. Hinckley, as an opening exercise, sang Beethoven's Hymn of the Creation. Rev. FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY then read the following paper on

THE RACE QUESTION AT THE SOUTH.

The race question at the South is primarily and supremely a moral question. It is first, a question of honor and honesty; second, a question of gratitude; third, a question of human brotherhood. In order to show why I so characterize it I shall have to sketch briefly some conditions which though familiar to the older of us, are ancient history to the most active portion of our people to-day.

In the very year the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, a cargo of slaves was landed at Jamestown, Virginia, Neither landing was deemed as momentous as it proved to be. And, although African slavery which thus obtained a footing on this continent, became portentous enough in the early days of the republic to trouble the consciences of some of the fathers, it was held by many of them that, restricted to a small portion of the country it would gradually weaken, and in time disappear. This view, however, was doomed to disappointment. The institution grew until it was the dominating interest in what we know as the Southern States. The time came when its representatives were in the majority in the National Capitol and it spread its baneful effects throughout the Northern States. It finally claimed and exercised the right of following runaway slaves into the States where slavery had no existence, arresting them wherever found, and sometimes without process of law, always with scant process of law, taking them back into bondage. It sold little children on the auction block, it separated husbands and wives, and any person with any degree of negro blood was in danger of arrest in the free States, and of being carried away into the bondage of the South. It is quite impossible to make the younger people of these times understand the aggressive march of the slave power into all the departments of the government, and into all the habits and customs of the people. It threatened freedom of speech and of the press in all our large Northern cities; it shot Lovejoy at Alton; it mobbed Garrison and Phillips in Boston, George William Curtis and others in Philadelphia; and it assaulted Charles Sumner in his place in the United States Senate, as a Senator from Massachusetts, for words spoken in debate. I cannot begin to give you an idea of all that it did to overthrow the principles of the Declaration of Independence in the United States. It became the great national sin, and finally having through an administration of its own making, secured possession of large quantities of materials of war, it undertook to destroy the -country itself. The occasion for this attempt at destruction was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President by a party

pledged to resist the further extension of slavery. By this time there had come to be at the North a powerful antislavery sentiment, and when the Rebellion began, it was the general feeling of antislavery people that slavery was its mainspring, and that with the downfall of the Rebellion, slavery must go. Many and many a time, it It saddled the nation It cost, including both sides, more than half a million lives. It brought desolation into otherwise happy homes. It set the whole country aflame with the horrors of war. At a very early period in the struggle, the question of what to do with the slaves became prominent. Mr. Lincoln himself felt that if he could save the Union without interfering with slavery in the rebellious States, it was his duty to do So. Not because he liked slavery, he was at heart an antislavery man, but because he felt as many felt, that under the Constitution the National Government had no right to interfere with the institutions of the several States. But as time went on, events proved that the slave held the key to the situation. It was a long time before this was generally recognized, and more advanced thinkers of the North pleaded incessantly and long for the act of emancipation which finally came. I recall easily now the ringing words of Whittier :

For four years the conflict raged. seemed doubtful which side would win. with a great debt.

"What gives the wheat field blades of steel,

What points the rebel cannon,

What sets the roaring rabble's heel,

On the old star-spangled pennan?

What breaks the oath

Of the men o' the South,

What whets the knife

For the Union's life?

Hark to the answer: Slavery.

Then waste no blows on lesser foes

In strife unworthy freemen.

God lifts to-day the veil and shows
The features of the demon.

O North and South,

Its victims both,

Can ye not cry,

Let slavery die!

And union find in freedom?"

At length the crisis came. It was seen that the assistance of the negro slave as a soldier was an essential element of success for the Union arms. In the words of Lincoln, "As a military necessity," the slave was freed. In many cases he became a soldier, he fought well, and with his assistance victory was won and the Union saved. In its dire need the nation had turned to him, he had answered yes, and as a return it had made him free, and pledged itself to maintain his freedom. Again, the battle over, the nation confronted the problem of reconstruction It reached out to find its friends in the States.

lately in rebellion.

Who were they? The natural born white leaders? These were sullen, and angry under the sting of defeat. The great masses of the white people at the South? They had been heart and soul in the Rebellion; they were conquered, but not reconciled. Who then were the nation's friends at the South? They were the black men who had fought, and risked everything to help save its life. Should the nation leave these men at the mercy of their conquered, but unreconstructed masters? It did not think so then, it thought there was but one thing to be done, and it did it; it enfranchised its friends for its own sake, and for their sake, and it pledged itself to enforce and maintain this enfranchisement with all the powers of government at its disposal.

The results of the Civil War were embodied in three Amendments to the Constitution. The first of these, Article XIII, declares that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The second, Article XIV declares that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction therof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." It further declares that "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The third and last, the

XV article, says "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In order to remove all doubt as to the power of Congress to see that these provisions were enforced, a special section was added to each of these articles which says, "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." When it is remembered that it takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to propose an Amendment to the Constitution, and that the proposed Amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the States, we see how these three Articles successively adopted, represented the deliberate, and progressive purpose of the loyal people, at the close of the Civil War. Plainly when this progressive, fundamental legislation had been completed, there was but one thing to do. The nation had taken the negro out of slavery, made a citizen of him, placed in his hands a ballot. It had done this, well knowing that all the old slave States were necessarily many years behind in all the conditions that make for civilization. Never more than at the moment of which I am speaking, was it seen what a curse slavery is to any community in which it exists;-how it undermines honest labor, makes impossible high ideals of home life, and debauches everything it touches. Mr. Sumner had said, "Barbarous in origin, barbarous in law, barbarous in the instruments it employs, slavery breeds barbarians!" It was historically true, and the penalty for the great national sin was the awful problem of how to convert the whole section which slavery had barbarized, into a community where the privileges of universal education, free and happy industry, and gradual culture in all the useful arts, should prevail. The problem had been growing increasingly complex through many generations. It was useless to expect that it could be solved under the best conditions until at least two or three generations had passed away. Here if ever there was a call for the greatest honesty, the greatest wisdom and the greatest patience.

Another thing the nation knew perfectly well, that the