It is a good deal with a nation as it is with an individual. When it once gets started in the wrong direction it is not easy to stop. Within the last ten years Great Britain has increased its expenditure on its navy from $174,000,000 to $222,000,000. Germany from $47,000,000 to $110,000,000. The United States from $80,000,000 to $132,000,000. Few sane men will dare question whether or not it would have been wiser to have spent this tremendous sum in the education and enlightenment of the people of these countries instead of investing it in iron and lead which will prove a body of death about the neck of these nations. A shot from one cannon can destroy in a single moment that which it has required years

to create.

In the last analysis, the carrying of a pistol and gun on one's person or keeping them in his home does not protect an individual. I should be ashamed to live in a community where I depended for the safety of my life upon the use of lead and powder. The greatest protection that an individual can have is in his service to the community, and the same is true of nations.

Not many months ago I was in Denmark. As many of you know, in Denmark there is tremendous public sentiment in favor of complete disarmament, of getting rid of army and navy. When I asked the Danish people how, if they got rid of their army and navy, they meant to protect themselves, they replied that they meant to protect themselves through their service to the world; that they meant to supply Europe with a large part of its dairy and poultry products, and that in proportion as they let Europe understand that it was dependent upon them for a large part of the necessities of life that this would prove a greater protection than either army or navy could bring about.

A nation can not teach its youths to think in terms of destruction and oppression without brutalizing and blunting the tender conscience and sense of justice of the youths of that country. More and more we must learn to think not in terms of race or color or language or religion or of political boundaries, but in terms of humanity. Above all races and political boundaries there is humanity. That should be con

sidered first; and in proportion as we teach the youths of this country to love all races and all nations, we are rendering the highest service which education can render to the world.

For years we have been sending our missionaries to Japan to teach them Christianity, to teach Japan our methods of industry and civilization. The Japanese have learned to believe in us, have thought that we were sincere and in earnest in our endeavor to help them. But our nation is placed in an awkward position when a few thousand of the Japanese come to our country and attempt to put into practice the very lessons of economy and industry which we have taught them, and in return for this we attempt to humiliate them and degrade them as a people. Such a course is unworthy of our civilization. I pity the white man in America who is afraid to stand up in open competition in the commercial world by the side of a few thousand Japanese.

The Great Book, in whose teachings we believe, says in effect that which is temporal passes away. but that which is spiritual remains. Let us teach the youths of America that in proportion as we cling to the higher and not lower things that our nation will be made strong, useful and influential throughout the world.

THIRD GENERAL SESSION

THE PROBLEMS OF THE HAGUE CONFERENCE

Friday Morning, May 2, at 10 o'clock

THE ODEON

MR. JAMES BROWN SCOTT, Presiding

PRESIDENT BARTHOLDT:

In opening this session it becomes my pleasant duty to introduce to you as presiding officer for the meeting, Dr. James Brown Scott, former solicitor of the State Department and technical delegate of the United States to the Second Peace Conference at The Hague. His life work now is to perfect the legal machinery for the settlement peacefully of international difficulties. I take great pleasure in presenting to you Dr. Scott.

CHAIRMAN SCOTT:

It is my very great pleasure and honor to introduce as the first speaker a gentleman with whom history has been the study of his life and who in these latter years has brought his knowledge of history and power upon the great problems concerned in international peace. I refer to Professor William I. Hull, Professor of History at Swarthmore College, an institution one might say, dedicated to the cause of peace, a college of the Friends, and who wrote and published shortly after the adjournment of the Second Hague Peace Conference an admirable survey of the labors of the two conferences. In introducing to you Professor Hull and commending him to your thoughtful attention I would like, at the same time to commend to you Professor Hull's admirable little work upon the Hague Conferences. Ladies and Gentlemen, Professor Hull.

The Hague Tribunal, Its Present Meaning and Future

Promise

PROFESSOR WILLIAM I. HULL.

In the first great crisis of our country's history, when the people of the thirteen original States of the American Union. were called upon to accept or to reject the Constitution which was to give that Union birth, Alexander Hamilton uttered these words of solemn warning: "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. A wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind." The world knows how our fathers answered that question for themselves and for the world, and "brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

In the second great crisis of our country's history, when the people of twenty-two of the thirty-three States were striving to maintain the Union between them all, the great champion of that Union uttered these words of solemn appeal, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

In this third crisis of our country's history, when we are standing with our fellow-members in the Family of Nations at the parting of those ways which lead respectively to Armageddon and to The Hague, it may in solemn truth be said that the conduct and example of our American Union will be decisive in the establishment and maintenance of a government of international relations, by international law, and for international justice.

1 The Federalist, No. I.

Our own past history and the dire difficulties in which the nations of the Old World are at present involved alike summon our New World Republic-if only in gratitude to its Old World progenitors, and in gratitude to the Giver of its own abounding peace and prosperity-to seize its present opportunity, to obey its bounden duty and, bearing the ark of a new international covenant, to lead the Family of Nations within the Temple of Peace and Justice at The Hague.

It must be frankly admitted that this opportunity is not readily or widely appreciated, nor is this duty highly popular or deeply relished. When Hamilton was urging his fellowcountrymen to adopt the Constitution and the Union of the States, he sorrowfully admitted that "human affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of their object," and that "upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their governments than towards the government of the Union."1 How much stronger would be the bias toward national governments than toward an international tribunal, could be foretold from the strength of modern patriotism. But just as the American Union sprang from "the grinding necessities of a reluctant people," so The Hague tribunal has arisen and will be developed from the dread alternative of an international magistracy or continued and ever more terrible international war.

"The firm basis of government is justice," said President Wilson in his remarkable inaugural of 1913; and "Justice," said Volney, "is the fundamental and almost only virtue of social life." Truly the majesty of the American Union is manifested chiefly, not through its armaments on land or sea, but through the medium of its Supreme Court of Justice, which now flourishes like a mighty oak at Washington; the majesty of the Family of Nations must be manifested chiefly, not through the armies, the dreadnaughts, or the airships of its "Great Powers," but through the medium of its court of

1 The Federalist, No. XVII.