States has the same right as every other citizen. By the time you grow up to be men and women, and take your places in the world-in the United States of the world, the thousand grievances and difficulties such as your fathers and mothers have suffered will be done away with. (Signed) DR. MAXWELL: "I remain, very truly yours, "EDWARD EVERETT HALE." The next address will be upon "Young America and WorldPeace." I have the pleasure of introducing Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Young America and World-Peace RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE. In 1492, in a little town in Germany, there lived a schoolmaster, who, every morning, as he crossed the threshold of his class-room, very reverently bowed before the assembled children. When he was asked the reason for his act, he replied: "Because the young boys now seated before me will in the years to come be the physicians, the lawyers, the priests, the burgomasters, the chancellors of the nation." One of the boys to whom John Trebonius was wont to bow became one of the great figures of history-Martin Luther. To-day, in the spirit of John Trebonius, we, the teachers and parents of the Republic, by delegates assembled, turn to you young Americans, to you who are the heirs of the ages, to you standing in the foremost files of time, to you who will be the masters of to-morrow as we are the arbiters of to-day. Reverently we bow before you, and, knowing that our hopes will be in vain unless you choose to continue and magnify the work of this hour, we ask you, we adjure you to help the cause of the world's peace, which is the cause of international justice and international right-doing. (Applause.) We, the elders here gathered. will soon be gone, but you, our children, will long survive us. and as we think of our high cause and look upon you, younger brothers and sisters of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, we are moved to exclaim with the poet: "For earth's best hopes rest all with thee." No need to ask you to be true to the flag, for you are American girls and boys. For the same reason, because you are representatives of young America, we expect you to be true to the sacred trust to which you are committed by the word and song of this hour. To you, the youth of America, we address our appeal, because to-morrow you will be the sovereigns of this democracy which knows no other sovereignty than its citizenship. (Applause.) You may ask me this afternoon: "What can we young Americans do in behalf of peace? Is not World-Peace merely a dream?" I answer: America, this American democracy, was a dream until your fathers made it real. You ask me: "Can the way leading to Peace be traveled without arduous pioneering?" I answer: "The American is a pioneer by virtue alike of the heritage of his history and his destiny." The Pilgrim Fathers were pioneers. The men who settled Jamestown three hundred years ago were pioneers. Lewis and Clark, who won a continent for their country without shedding one drop of human blood, were pioneers. Young Americans, yours it is to be pioneers in every true and high cause of the world. You ask me finally: "What can we, Young America, achieve in the cause of Peace?" Let me remind you that this is not the first International Peace Congress held upon American soil. There was another Peace and Arbitration Congress held two years ago at Portsmouth, which ended one of the bloodiest wars in history and brought Peace to two hundred millions of people in Russia and Japan. That Arbitration Congress and that Peace were made possible by the courage and statesmanship of a onetime New York boy-Theodore Roosevelt. (Cries of Hip! Hip! Hurrah! were echoed by the boys in the chorus.) Again, I say unto you that you can do everything in the cause of Peace. Remember that in this land of ours all the races, all the peoples, all the faiths of the world are being brought together and are being fused into one great and indivisible whole, as if to prove that, if men will but come near enough together to know one another, whatever their nationality, their race, their religion, hatred and ill-will and prejudice and all uncharitableness are sure to pass away. Herein let America pioneer. Our country seems destined in the Providence of God to be the meeting-place of all the peoples, to be the world's experimental station in brotherhood all of us learning that other nations are not barbarians, that other races are not inferior, that other faiths are not Godless. War will be and must be as long as we hate the stranger. We are to teach the world that moral, not military, preparedness makes war inevitable, as moral preparedness for Peace makes war impossible. He is no true Christian who harbors hatred of a Jew in his heart. (Applause.) He is no true American who cherishes ill-will toward German or Frenchman or Englishman or Austrian. I turn to you, teachers of the land, and urge your higher duty. You are not to teach history as if the American Revolution had not yet ended or had ended yesterday. It ended more than one hundred years ago. Instead of execrating King George and Lord North in our classrooms, let us in the great American cities raise monuments in gratitude to Pitt, who in the House of Lords, said: "I contend not for indulgence but for justice to America" (applause), and to Edmund Burke, who thundered at the House of Commons, "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people." Let us forget with charity the Union's foes across the sea in the days of civil strife, and remember with gratitude John Bright, friend of the Union, and Queen Victoria, our truest friend in the dark years of '61-'65. (Applause.) I close by reminding you that, after the Battle of Koeniggrätz had been won by the Germans, Bismarck said: "The schoolmaster has conquered." I say to you to-day that the greater conquest of the school-master begins in this hour. The school-master and his pupils have nobly conquered when the Peace of justice and righteousness shall obtain in the world. Beautiful ever is our flag, but never, never, never has our flag seemed as beautiful as to-day, surrounded by the flags of the nations and bordered by the stainless white of Peace and love and brotherhood. Under the inspiration of this hour, do you, young America, highly resolve touching the flags of the nations, in the words of Tennyson: "Our flags together furled, Henceforward no other strife, Than which of us most shall help the world, DR. MAXWELL: The next address will be "The Struggle for Life and Peace." I have pleasure in presenting to you Dr. James Walsh, of St. John's College, Fordham. The Struggle for Life and Peace Unfortunately the idea has become prevalent in modern times that Peace is not a normal condition among living things, but that evolution has been brought about by means of the struggle for life. This idea had been transferred to human affairs, and the strong man has excused his selfishness on the plea that it was but natural for him to conquer others and that in the course of time the weaker must inevitably go to the wall. The principle has even seemed to justify the struggle between bodies of men for supremacy or for territory and to provide opportunities for the stronger nations. Even war was supposed to have some justification on this principle. The struggle for life, however, is not a more potent factor in biology than is mutual aid. The study of mutual aid shows how much has been accomplished by means of it. There is practically never a war to the death between individuals of the same species in biology. On the contrary, they are always found to be helping one another. It is true that when men make them solitary by persecuting them, they lose some of their social instincts, but these exist in profusion among the animals in a state of nature. One needs only to go to Yellowstone Park to see how the animals herd together in communities without interfering with one another, to see even how they play, for play is a characteristic of the animals in a state of nature; to be convinced that the so-called struggle for life, in as far as it refers to individuals of the same species, is a myth. On the contrary, probably the most interesting phase of modern biology is the study of the social instincts of the animals. Careful observation shows that they are constantly ready to help one another. This is true from the lowest to the highest. The ant because of his social instincts is considered by many conservative scientific students as the creature nearest to man in the exhibition of intelligence. The bee occupies a place only a little lower in the scale because of its similar social qualities. Elephants in the jungle always live together in herds, and it is well known that this is for protective and feeding purposes. All through the animal creation, however, this same thing is found. Fishes in the sea live in schools, and though, perhaps, to youth, school may not seem a good term for the pleasant ways of the wandering groups of fishes, who go where they will or fancy leads, it must not be forgotten that the root of the word school is from a Greek derivative which means leisure. This would eminently accord with the ways of the fishes, and perhaps would hint how knowledge should really be obtained to those who take school too seriously and over-strenuously. All the birds live in flocks, especially when they migrate from one part of the country to another and are more likely to meet enemies on the way. The parrots, wise creatures, have such close communion among themselves that even the old birds are faithfully protected from enemies, and it is said that in their native haunts most parrots die of old age. Wild horses live together in herds; and the domestic cow drifts so naturally into herds as to make it sure that this is a primitive instinct. Our herds of bison on the plains succeeded thus in protecting themselves from enemies as a single animal or even family group could not have done. The herds of animals are always most closely associated at the time of the year when, because of the presence of many young, such protection is needed. Even the seals, though we are not apt to think of them as wise creatures at all, live together in herds. Fierce as are the wolves and ready as they may be to take advantage of one another, they hunt in packs, partly because they have realized that thus they can get their prey better, but partly also because of the feeling that they are thus more readily protected from their enemies. |