pitable land from which the Pilgrims sailed, to lay the corner stone of this nation, the representatives of all civilized nations are gathered about the sacredest round-table of history, called by a higher and a holier call than any which ever came to Galahad or Arthur. It is the year which strikes the first stroke of the hour of Universal Peace, the year for which prophets have yearned and of which poets have sung, when the nations of the world first echo the strain of the Christmas angels of God. Is democracy to choose this year of years to put on the old armor which even sickened despotism seeks to cast away? Is this Great Republic, whereto waiting, praying Europe has looked for leadership, to choose this year to turn her face from the future back toward the blood-rusted past and make it the Year One of her era of armies and navies, conquest and subjugation, partitions of Poland and opium wars? Tragical was the irony by which the hour of the Peace Congress found her hands alone bloodstained, and which made the song of her poet an "Ichabod." The faces of Whittier and Whitman and Lowell and Emerson are turned to the wall to-day, to remind us solemnly how "false is the war no poet sings" and that no line of theirs can be made to keep step with the situation. But to-morrow-who dare doubt it-her step shall be set once again to song; to-morrow-who dare doubt it-the nightmare shall end and she will come to herself. Things present and things past shall not persuade us that the heart of the people is not sound and that the nation shall not rise triumphant over every passion and temptation of the hour, disciplined by the hour's heart-searchings to better fitness for the imperial task to which God has called her in the family of nations. Imperial shall she rise? Yes, imperial; but an "imperial Salem, crowned with light." She shall go out into all the world, with new dreams, larger ambitions and bolder venture, conquering and to conquer. But she shall not go with lust or greed or cruelty or oppression in her heart. She shall go the herald still of liberty, proclaiming liberty to all the earth. She shall found an empire that shall be a universal commonwealth, an empire based not upon the fears, but upon the aspirations and the hopes of men. HON, STANFORD NEWEL. HON, SETH LOW. CAPT. WILLIAM CROZIER. F. W. HOLLS. HON. ANDREW D. WHITE. CAPT. ALFRED T. MAMAN. THE AMERICAN DELEGATION TO THE PEACE CONFERENCE. I THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE AT THE HAGUE. By Benjamin F. Trueblood. N 1869, in the preface to the French edition of Bluntschli's "International Law Codified," Mr. E. Laboulaye wrote these significant sentences: "Steam and electricity have so mixed peoples up, so run together all civil and commercial interests, that men have clearly seen all the horror and folly of war, all the wisdom and beauty of peace. By repeating, with every possible variation, that labor and exchange are the law of the world, that therein only are found the happiness of peoples and the greatness of states, economists have everywhere propagated ideas promotive of peace. Publicists have followed them in this fruitful path. The political ideal has changed, and so changed that we are not far from having done with the old, destructive admiration which our There may be doubt as to whether Laboulaye's estimate of the ambition of peoples was not much too high for his day, or even for ours. But the THE CZAR OF RUSSIA. fathers had for those scourges of humanity called conquerors. Napoleon is decreasing; Washington is increasing. To abolish war, or at least to limit it and cut off some of its barba same thought has, in one way or another, been repeated by a multitude of pens since he wrote. If he were living now he would certainly feel that, with the progress that is being made toward the constitution of the different peoples into a world-society, kings and ministers have ripened, beyond his expectation, into peacemakers. The International Peace Conference just held at The Hague furnishes abundant proof of this. It was an emperor who issued the great peace manifesto calling for the conference. "The oldest queen in the world and the youngest queen in the world," as a preacher at The Hague felicitously referred to Victoria and Wilhelmina, are strongly, almost passionately devoted to the peace ideal. The other sovereigns of Europe, the Emperor of Austria, the King of Italy, the Queen Regent of As to Laboulaye's ministers of state, won to the ideas which he attributed to peoples, if he had been at The Hague he would have found them there. One of the most satisfactory and significant features of the conference was the evidently sincere. and earnest and what, as the deliberations went on, showed itself to be the persistent wish of most of the members to do something real toward the promotion of a better understanding between the nations and toward laying the foundations of a durable peace, out of which should come ultimate disarmament. There may have ENTRANCE TO THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS. been something of policy and self |