(1) THE INTERNATIONAL CRUSADE OF PEACE. T is now eight hundred years and more since Peter Gautier, better known as Peter the Hermit, a dwarfish and somewhat ungainly figure, began the preaching of the first Crusade. He had a story to tell of the triumphant Infidel lording it over the sepulchre of our Lord, and subjecting the pious pilgrims, who sought to secure salvation by a journey to the sacred shrines, to all manner of tribulation and persecution. It was a forlorn enterprise upon which the French dwarf embarked. We think a good deal to-day of the divisions which distract the United States of Europe; but the Continent to-day is an organic whole compared with the anarchic chaos which prevailed in the eleventh century. There was unity of faith, no doubt. Protestantism had not yet made its protest, and the authority of Rome was recognised throughout Western Europe. But beneath that outward unity of the Catholic faith, there festered private, local, provincial and national feuds, the extent and savagery of which we can but faintly imagine. The right of private war in those days was regarded as indubitable as is to-day the right of national war. National wars now, in the nineteenth century, are seldom waged; private wars in the eleventh century were the order of the day. THE FIRST CRUSADE. Into a Continent distracted by constant warfare came the lone hermit Peter, with bare feet and bare head, riding upon an ass and preceded by his servant carrying a huge crucifix. This was the whole machinery with which he began his campaign. He had had a vision in Jerusalem, a voice had spoken to him from the Unseen, ordering him to go forth proclaiming Urban as Pope, and to preach a Holy War for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The odds seemed a million to one that his throat would be cut before he reached the scene of his labours. Supposing that he escaped the perils by land and by sea, and reached the confines of Christendom, the odds seemed very heavy that his message would be received with derision. To proclaim in the hearing of a brutalised and materialised generation the supreme necessity of laying aside all their favourite feuds and co-operating with their deadliest enemies, in order to attain an end so remote and so visionary as the expulsion of the infidel from the city of Jerusalem-surely never in the history of the world was there so forlorn a hope, undertaken under such difficult circumstances and with such inadequate instruments for attaining the desired result. PETER THE HERMIT. Nevertheless, Peter on his ass, with his crucifix bearer, plodded on from hamlet to hamlet, from city to city, toiling through winter snow and beneath summer sun, through Italy, Germany, France, everywhere proclaiming with accents of passionate conviction what was to him his divine message. He never failed, he never flinched in rain and storm, under noonday sun and in the darkness of midnight, but was ever up and about, a kind of human dynamo, whose words were pulsating with electric energy, rousing strange responses in the depth of the hearts of those to whom he spoke. For a time success wavered in the balance. Of ridicule he had plenty, of opposition much, but he persevered, and after a season it began to be perceived that some strange power abode with the man, and that the pleadings of that Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here! O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, AN OBJECT-LESSON FOR TO-DAY. Cer It is worth while to recall the story of Peter the Hermit and what he achieved at the moment when once more Europe hears the summons to a new Crusade. Opinions differ, no doubt, widely as to the extent to which the Crusades which began with the preaching of Peter the Hermit tended to the improvement of the world and the amelioration of the condition of the human race. tainly, many who took part in the great religious revival that sent the armed valour of Western Europe foaming like a torrent in spate upon the coasts of Western Asia were animated by motives far removed from the lofty enthusiasm and religious zeal which animated the preachers of the Crusade. Nevertheless, the first Crusade remains one of the greatest object-lessons in history as to the immensity of the result which can be wrought by the foolishness of preaching, whereby, as the apostle says, "we persuade men." No enterprise ever seemed so absolutely impossible; no enterprise ever achieved the same marvellous success. At this man's preaching lawless chieftains, who prosecuted their private grievances with the ferocity of brigands, abandoned their feuds; the jealousies and ambitions of nations were allayed, and Continental Europe set itself with unity of purpose to achieve an object which, although it seems to us remote and chimerical, seemed nevertheless to them a matter affecting their soul's welfare. Therejn, of course, lies the difference between the time of Peter the Hermit and our own. The men to whom Peter preached may have been rude, brutal, “beasts of prey and beasts of burden,” nevertheless they did at least believe they had a soul. Rude, untutored, bestial though they were, they accepted as a fact of which no one could doubt, that after their body perished their soul lived on in blessedness or in torment. And it was that "something after death" which enabled Peter, and those who came after him, to appeal with such tremendous force to their hearers. THE FULCRUM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Nowadays, although the immortality of the soul may not be denied in set terms by any, and although all nominal Christians profess to believe that they have to answer after death for the deeds done in the body, the sense of that something after death is no longer a motive operating upon human life and governing human conduct as it used to do in the Middle Ages. Faith in a future life may revive, probably will revive on a scientific basis, but for the moment the idea of retribution after death is regarded universally by practical men as the least effective of all the motives by which to influence their fellow-men. No doubt, if you had such a fulcrum outside the world, it could be used with powerful effect, but if the fulcrum appears to the majority of men to have evaporated into thin air, your lever is useless. This may seem to some a hard saying, but in proof of it we have only to look at the efforts which are being made by those who are most anxious to induce their fellows to change the course of their lives, whether in politics or in morals. The whole of our daily press, without any exception, absolutely ignores the possibilities or probabilities of the future life as material for re-enforcing their arguments or their appeals to their readers; our statesmen of all schools, our social reformers of whatever stripe they may be, with one consent abstain from any reference to the one argument which, if established in truth, transcends all other arguments in the force and cogency with which it appeals to the heart and mind of man. The sense of individual responsibility, of obligations the discharge of which will be exacted to the uttermost farthing after death, is by common consent ignored, largely even in the pulpit. A REAL WORKING HELL. We have, therefore, to face the fact that our new Crusade is to be preached and pressed home to the hearts and consciences of the peoples of the Continent by other arguments than those which were used effectively eight hundred years ago. Nevertheless, although the form of the appeal is different, its essence is the same. For modern Europe is confronted with a terrible lookingforward-to of judgment to come. It is not on the other side of the grave that the hell from which we have to escape is placed. The modern Crusader may have lost something in one respect, for he is no longer able to bring home to each individual whom he meets the sense that if he turns a deaf ear to the divine call he will personally hereafter suffer torment at the hands of a justly offended God, but he is not left resourceless. He can point to the certainty known and recognised of all men that the present system of armed peace does inevitably, in an everincreasing ratio, tend to make this world itself a hell. This is true in two ways, either of which can be demonstrated with the certainty of a mathematical proposition. One is the hell which comes from the steady automatic operation of economic laws. The other is the more violent, and what may be called sensational and scenic hell which is let loose in the world in a great war. Of the two, the first is immeasurably the most serious, because it is the furthest reaching and most continuous in its operation. The squalid horror of intense poverty such as prevails in many parts of Italy, and in the faminestricken districts of Russia, and which can be found more or less in the shadow of all our palaces, is a real enough hell to those who live in it and to those who understand it. HOW IT IS CREATED. It is there, in our midst, at our doors, and it is due primarily to two causes: first, to the fact that the available intellect of mankind, instead of being concentrated upon the warfare against social misery, is wasted in devising instruments of destruction and in studying as the first duty of the State the arts of offensive and defensive warfare. Second only to this diversion of human intellect and human energy as a source of mischief and misery is the waste of the products of human toil. Ask any one who has to grapple with the social hell which welters and seethes at the basis of our social system what might not be done if for even one year the whole of the resources squandered on armies and navies could be used in one international campaign against the misery of mankind. The armed peace bill of the Continent of Europe in this last year of the century is between 200 and 250 millions, nine-tenths of which might have been profitably employed in ameliorating the condition of the people. John Bright long ago declared, when our naval and military expenditure was less than half of what it is to-day, that if the funds devoted to war had been employed in a fruitful campaign of peace, the whole of England would have been a garden, and every Englishman could have been housed in marble. A PRACTICAL PARADISE. It is on these lines that the new Crusade will hope to achieve its victories. It has its hell to start with, and the realising and visualising of hell has in every age been the great motive power of all efforts to improve mankind. But the preacher must not only have the hell to escape from, he must also have a heaven to attain. And here, again, though the heaven which the preacher of the modern Crusade can unfold before the eyes of his listeners is but a prosaic affair compared with the bright visions of Jerusalem the Golden— That sweet and blessed country, That eager hearts expect," nevertheless, it is even as a Paradise of God compared with the existing social order. Even supposing we reckon that the armaments could be reduced to the cost of thirty years ago, and that the whole of the extra taxation spent in maintaining the armed peace at its present standard could be devoted to the social amelioration of the condition of the people, we should at once have a hundred millions a year-that is equivalent to a capital sum at three per cent. of three thousand million sterling. That is the inheritance of the people, from which they are kept out as by a flaming sword which turns every way, by international hatreds, ambitions, rivalries, jealousies and suspicions. It is no flaming sword of a celestial guardian, but rather the sword of Satan forged in the hell of national hatreds and race prejudice. To escape from the present hell and attain that promised Paradise one thing only is needful-namely, that the preaching of the Crusade of Peace should enter into the hearts and consciences of mankind, and that at the close of the nineteenth century, as at the close of the eleventh, the races inhabiting this Western continent should prove that they are capable of responding to a moral ideal, and of burying their feuds in a truce of God for the attaining of a common end. THE NEW CRUSADE. Such are the ideas that underlie the International Crusade of Peace which was proclaimed in St. James's Hall on Peace Sunday, and which is now being carried on throughout the country. At present, in the first days of the New Year, it is too soon to speak confidently as to the chance of this new Crusade awakening a response in the hearts of our people, but so far the omens are favourable indeed. For the first time, the whole of the organised Christian Churches find themselves in hearty accord in the promotion of an object to which none can take exception. The Churches find themse'ves also in line with all the humanitarian and non-theological organisations which seek for the improvement of the people. Our people too are suffering from a surfeit of conquest, they have just emerged from an orgie of 'drunken Imperialism "of which the more serious amongst them are already heartily ashamed. Party feuds have for the moment practically ceased amongst us, owing to the virtual disappearance of an organised Opposition. In Lord Salisbury we have a Prime Minister, not indeed fitted to play the part of Peter the Hermit or even of Urban II., but a man who, even from the defects of his qualities as well as from the qualities themselves, is singularly well fitted for the position which he occupies. But far and above all else, we have on the throne of the greatest military Empire in the world a young and ardent sovereign who realises almost too vividly the horrors of the existing system. Certainly, when Peter Gautier mounted his ass to ride through Christendom, he had no such array of forces at his back as that which bids our new Crusaders to thank God and take courage. THE DATE OF THE CONFERENCE. There is only one change that has taken place since the publication of the article on "The Pilgrimage of Peace" in last month's REVIEW OF REVIEWS-and that is as to the date of the Peace Conference. It is probable that the Conference may not meet quite so soon as was anticipated that is to say, instead of meeting on March 1st, it may not meet until the beginning of April or May. This is all to the good, from the point of view of the International Crusade. That Crusade, launched on Peace Sunday, December 19th, takes much time to organise, and it can hardly be said to have passed beyond its initial stages until the middle of the month. The preliminary work of organisation has been undertaken by a strong General Committee, of which the Bishop of London has accepted the Chairmanship. Mr. Corrie Grant, who has achieved great reputation as an organiser of political forces in the past, has devoted himself entirely for the last month to the organisation of the Crusade. A full report of the St. James's Hall Conference, together with a copy of the Tsar's Rescript, the appeal of the Executive Committee of the Crusade, backed up by the opinions of British statesmen, has been issued as a broadsheet, one million copies of which have been printed for distribution throughout the United Kingdom. A copy of this broadsheet is issued with each number of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, and if any subscriber does not receive it, it will be sent on application to our office. THE BEGINNING OF THE CRUSADE. Copies of the national appeal for action have been issued to every person of influence in this country, including Mayors, Chairmen of County, District and Parish Councils, to Bishops and Rural Deans, the Chairmen of the Free Church Councils, to all newspaper editors, heads of Trades Councils, &c., &c. Special appeals have been made to churches to appoint representatives to undertake to co-operate in the work of the Crusade in their own districts. This has been very extensively done. Conferences of delegates and others of the Friends of Peace are to be held in various districts up and down the country. At present they have been arranged for Manchester on January 16th, Birmingham on the 19th, and at Scarborough, Colchester and other places arrangements are in progress. It is the first time that any distinct effort has been made to yoke together the Churches, Established and nonEstablished, with the ordinary machinery of the town's meeting, the idea being that, as far as possible, the initiative should be thrown upon the representatives of the Churches, who should then appeal to the representatives of the trade unions and other societies for the purpose of getting up a requisition to the mayor or chairman of the District Council, who would, in the ancient constitutional method, summon a town's meeting of the inhabitants for the purpose of considering the question. "GOING ONE BETTER THAN 1876. The nearest approach to anything of this kind was at the time of the Bulgarian agitation, but, owing to the hostile attitude of Lord Beaconsfield to the agitation, it was found impossible to secure the support of many of the Conservatives, and towns' meetings were only held where the Gladstonians were very much in the ascendant. The County Government Act at that time had not been passed, and there was therefore no constitutional machinery available for holding anything approaching to a town's meeting outside Corporate towns. Neither was the London County Council in existence, and London itself had hardly come into political being. There are, therefore, good reasons for anticipating that before March 1st the English people will have been appealed to in more varied ways, and have been afforded more ample opportunities for expressing their wishes and of listening to what is to be said in support of the Crusade of Peace, than has ever been the case on any previous occasion. In order to promote the success of the Crusade, a weekly paper, entitled War Against War, has been started, the first number of which appeared last week. It is devoted entirely to the service of the Crusade, and any profits that may accrue from the publication will go to the Crusade Fund. REPORTS FROM THE CONTINENT. From the Continent the reports have been unexpectedly encouraging; the idea of the Pilgrimage of Peace has struck the public imagination. Conferences have already taken place on the subject in Paris and in Belgium. In the latter country the election of a delegate to represent the Belgians in the Pilgrimage will probably have taken place before this number is issued. After this is done, public meetings will be held in all parts of the country, in order to approve the nomination, and to express the determination of the Belgians to support the Crusade of Peace. In Holland and in Scandinavia the reports are equally favourable. In Germany, in AustroHungary, in Italy and in Switzerland the Friends of Peace are at work, and everywhere it is felt that the movement in favour of peace will receive a more powerful stimulus from the Crusade than anything that has been projected in our time. All questions as to the choice of representatives at the present moment are premature so far as England and America are concerned. What is necessary is in the first place that the hearts of the people should be thoroughly stirred, and then it will be seen that the work of representing the awakened national sentiment can only be entrusted to those who are in the very highest sense the representatives of all the forces and factors which make up the British nation. I will only say in concluding this very fragmentary survey of the situation, that I have placed myself at the service of the Executive Committee, and during the next few weeks there will be very few days on which I shall not have to address meetings somewhere or other. The arrangements, however, are in the hands of the Committee, to whom all applications should be made. WAR AG THE CRUSADE DECLARED ever made by the do hereby all that in me ternational dis natural or necessary antagonism between England The Programme of peace, and, and Russia. There are representative Russians here to-day, and I hope that they will inform his Majesty that this singularly representative gathering of English men and English women firmly believes in the sincerity of the Tsar. We have this standing evidence of it that the very proposal which the Tsar makes is the most astonishingly kind and conciliatory proposal ever made to the English people. For what does it mean? I do not know whether newspaper men and politicians will grasp it. Any fool may. (Applause.) It is obvious to the most ordinary intelligence. But what does he propose! The continuance of the status quo. What does the status quo mean? English supremacy on the sea. What the Tsar merely proposes, in plain English, is that our fleet shall continue to dominate every ocean in the world; and he does it with his eyes open. Russian statesmen are not fools. They know perfectly well that at sea, at any rate, England is supreme today, and if there is to be no alteration in the relative strength of armies and navies, of all countries under heaven England will gain the most; and the more I think of that the more I feel profound gratitude to that mighty potentate who is willing that we should be supreme at sea in order to secure peace on land. (Applause.) I have been proposing for years that the working men of Europe should have an international strike against war, and I have offered myself as the unpaid secretary of that strike. Now, blessed be God, for the first time in human history, we have a mighty Emperor leading that strike. Now, I think that the least that the poor can do is to respond to that astonishing appeal. We never had such an opportunity before. May God rouse us to take it. We want leaders. There are a few eminent politicians in this country who are out of work just now. (Laughter and applause.) Let them take up the greatest and finest job that God and man ever offered them. Whatever human selfishness or human temper may say or do, we have always been brought at last to the conviction that war, instead of being the glory of man, is the curse of man. Our consciences are on the right side. Let men of eminence, who should take the lead in this matter, appeal to the English conscience, and the result will astonish the whole world. If they won't do it, let us do it. God has often chosen the weak and the poor and the obscure of this world to effect a peaceful revolution in the direction of human progress. Assuredly this is the greatest opportunity that has ever come in this century, and it will never occur again. We have three months in which to make our voices heard, and to appeal to everything which is free and just and true in every civilised land. I believe the thing can be done, and I have sufficient confidence in my fellowcountrymen to believe that if we all do our duty it will be done. Applause.) The Resolution was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously. The Archdeacon then closed the Conference by Delegates locally elected from every part of the country, together with representatives of existing organisations LONDON, W.C. shall be invited to a Central Nationa Convention, to be held in London to wards the end of January. Othe countries to be respectfully invited t make their own arrangements, anar. hold their own conventions in thei own capitals. ANGLO-AMERICAN INITIATIVE. By the National Conventions i Britain and the United Sta ers for the conarrangements should be made o" a joint English-speaking deputab to proceed to St. Peterab APPEAL TO OTHER NA hould seriously ins of securing Other nations should be respecting an end to fully invited to elect at National Cor ventions deputations to participat with the Anglo-American deputatio in presenting an Address to the Tsa TO ALL WHO If you wish to help in this Camr V.C., 36 of conquest, they, AINST WAR. "drunken Imperia amongst them are feuds have for the us, owing to the v Opposition. In Lo not indeed fitted t even of Urban II., of his qualities as is singularly well occupies. But far[ throne of the grea young and ardent vividly the horrors when Peter Gauti Christendom, he back as that whie God and take cour THE DA There is only one publication of the in last month's R to the date of th that the Conferent was anticipatedMarch 1st, it ma April or May. Th view of the Inte launched on Pea much time to org [JANUARY, 1899. A CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS! and expressing the earnest desire of the civilised world for the success of his proposals. A PILGRIMAGE OF PEACE THROUGH EUROPE. con 4. To this English-speaking deputation there should be invited representatives of the smaller Western States of Europe. The deputation thus stituted should then make a progress through the Continent, beginning with Paris, and visiting each capital, in order to appeal everywhere for the support of the nations through which it passes. VOLUNTEERS WANTED. 5. That the members of this organisation should be enlisted for a term of have passed beyot service under certain definite obligations. of the month. tion has been und mittee, of which the Chairmanship. great reputation as past, has devoted · the organisation o A full report together with a co the Executive Com the opinions of BL broadsheet, one i printed for distribu A copy of this bre the REVIEW OF R receive it, it will br THE BE Copies of the issued to every f including Mayors Parish Councils, Chairmen of the F editors, heads of1 appeals have bee sentatives to under Crusade in their extensively done. Conferences of Peace are to be he country. At prese chester on January. Scarborough, Col are in progress. It is the first t made to yoke toget Established, with: meeting, the idea Each volunteer should be asked to subscribe to a pledge as follows: WISH TO HELP! on of Peace— APPEAL TO THE NATION. 7. That the names of as many influential persons as possible should be obtained as members of the general council, and that they should be asked to join in a general appeal for immediate action in this matter to all persons of influence in this country, especially to bishops and rural deans, to mayors and chairmen of district and parish councils, to the presidents of the local Free Church councils, to the heads of all the religious denominations, to trade councils and other labour organisations, and to any other persons who may be in a position to take the initiative in this matter. 8. That at least one million copies of the broadsheet containing the report of the Conference last Sunday, and a statement of the objects and methods of the Crusade, be printed and circulated at once. Sir Robert Peel on Armaments. Jeremy Bentham long ago declared that "whatsoever nation should get the gt of the other in making the proTO TECNCO Mnd fix the amount of its armed force would revu itself with English everlasting honour." It v. Conservative statesman, Sir Roue feel, who as long ago as 1841 pressed standing to reduce armaments on the importance of an international unde. House of Commons. Sir Robert Peel's words, although uttered more than half a century since, have gained rather than lost in force since they were uttered:— mah then fira me when the "werful |