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every local meeting, thrice during the year, there are asked and answered for the information of the Yearly Meeting, these three searching questions, "Are love and unity maintained among you? Are tale-bearing and detraction discouraged? When differences arise, are endeavors used speedily to end them?" Here, we reach the very roots of war! There is a tradition that when the Egyptians prayed again and again to Osiris for release from a plague of crocodiles, deliverance came finally through the little ichneumon that diligently destroyed the eggs of the great reptiles. For more than two hundred years the Society of Friends has carried on this work against war, at its very roots. It has striven to abolish armies by teaching men to be makers of Peace. In every community where Friends are to be found, small though their numbers be, and creating no apparent ripple upon the surface of its life, this leavening principle of love has been at work. It may be that this work nearly hidden in the seclusion of a small company of quiet people has helped more than could be computed toward the establishment of Peace. William Penn's plan in 1693 for a European Council of Arbitration may have been the seed of the International Peace Congress at The Hague in 1899.

"Are love and unity maintained amongst you?" Who that loves his neighbor could trespass upon his rights; could encroach upon his boundaries; could enter into a quarrel with him; could go to war with him in the courts? "Are tale-bearing and detraction discouraged?" We disinfect our houses when there is a suspicion of diphtheria germs; not less poisonous is the habit of repeating ill reports of our neighbor-it makes the very food. that the war spirit grows strong upon! "When differences arise is care taken speedily to end them?" How many times a calm word of explanation would take away all the sting of a "difference," and change haters into lovers! Think what it might be to the world if, in every church-service the world overChristian, Hebrew, Mohammedan, Buddhist, there were incorporated with its declaration of creed this further declaration, "I believe that love and unity should be maintained among us. I believe that tale bearing and detraction should be discouraged. I believe that when differences arise, care should be taken speedily to end them." Think what it might be to the world if in every

home the world over, there were established this family altar to Peace!

It should be added, that while this radical work for Peace has been a distinguishing characteristic of Friends, it is also true that they have labored in behalf of arbitration and in co-operation with other Peace Societies. Nor have they escaped altogether in these latter days the test of persecution. During the Boer War members of the Rowntree family in Scarborough, England, invited Mr. Cronwright-Shreiner to give an address on "The Conditions of a Durable Peace in South Africa." This was construed into opposition to the government; and a mob visited retribution upon the Rowntrees in the destruction of their property to the amount of many hundreds of pounds and their narrow escape from severe personal injury. The address of these Friends to their townsmen shortly after the riot is worthy of their inheritance from those who paid with their lives the price of liberty of speech. In this address they said: "We wish to state that it is not our intention to make claim against the Borough Fund for property damaged or destroyed during the riot which occurred. Our convictions on some great questions are, we know, different from those of the majority of our fellow-countrymen; but for these convictions we must render our account not to men but to God."

The world fears that without the discipline of war, for obedience to command, and fearlessness on the battlefield, life would grow "flat, stale and unprofitable"; and that heroism would become atrophied. This need not be feared. Obedience to command is one of the disciplines of business and industrial life. So long as railroad engineers drive their engines at express speed through the darkness of night, and sailors guide their great steamships in the face of the tempest, manhood will not lose its schooling for noble courage. I have seen college boys, much given over apparently to the sportiveness of youth, cast fear to the winds at the sound of the fire-alarm, and mounting the peak of the roof of their science building, their soaked garments freezing in the wintry cold, and the fire threatening the timbers which were their support, stand at their post of danger till the flames were subdued.

It is a high-water mark of civilization that this memorable Congress is in progress. It has opened to us anew the vast field

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for legislative and judicial action which waits the Conference at The Hague. And it has deepened our conviction that a great, availing service is delegated to each individual of us all in destroying the seeds and the roots of war by the nurture of those things that make for Peace.

MRS. MEAD:

We have among us, as you know, one great society which, with the Peace Society, has done much, at least among women of the United States, to promote the cause of Peace-the Women's Christian Temperance Union; and I have the honor of presenting to you this morning, as the representative of that society, Mrs. Hannah J. Bailey, of Maine, the Superintendent of the Peace Department of the National and International Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Woman's Place in the Peace Reform Movement

HANNAH J. BAILEY

It has been said that there is no important subject in which woman is not concerned. Certainly she has a place in the work for Peace and Arbitration. One of the most efficient lines of effort in which she can engage to promote the interests of this worthy cause is to help mould public opinion. Arbitration would be the only means resorted to in the settlement of national difficulties if people would always speak of it in as enthusiastic terms as they now often speak of warfare, and if they would cease declaring the world is not ready for it.

Mothers should teach their children that there is a higher form of patriotism than that whose aim is to destroy human life. They have too long taught that patriotism and military glory are synonomous terms. Probably there is no word made so susceptible of contradictory definitions as that one word "patriotism." "Through the use of it," as Mrs. Sewall has said, "appeals are often made to the lowest selfishness and the highest arrogance of the human heart." There is nothing in which the public needs revival of instruction more than in regard to this same quality, patriotism. If a woman really loves her country and is willing to live for it, and work for it, and to die working for it and for humanity, it does not follow that she believes that any wrong

should be overlooked. She simply claims that as she settles the children's disputes in her home, not in a haphazard way, but by reasoning with each, having a reckoning with those at fault, so should nations conduct themselves. When this time shall

come

"And sovereign law, the world's collected will o'er thrones and globes elate,

Sits empress crowning good, suppressing ill,”

the Golden Rule can be applied to society, custom and law, and the beautiful Golden Age will dawn for "only the Golden Rule of Christ can bring the Golden Age of Man."

The first duty which we have is to conform our ideas to the highest desirable attainment possible, and to hold them there till the world shall be lifted to that plane by our patient purpose.

Someone has said, "War will never cease till woman finds herself. The spiritual power of the awakened woman-soul would quench the spirit of war as water quenches fire." The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is seeking to awaken women to an interest in this great work of helping to rid the world of its hydra-headed enemy-militarism. Its department of Peace and Arbitration was adopted at an annual convention held in Nashville, Tenn., in 1887, and the World's W. C. T. U. adopted the department two years later. Since then auxiliary departments have been organized in twenty-eight States and one Territory, and in fourteen foreign countries. Good local work on its lines. of effort for the promotion of Peace principles has been done in all states and in all civilized nations. The department aims especially to promulgate these principles among women and children. It also sends Peace memorials to various conferences in this and other countries and secures the adoption of Peace resolutions in conventions and various religious and philanthropic organizations. It circulates petitions and sends protests and letters bearing upon the subject to the proper officials. It utilizes the public press as a potent agency. A very important part of its work is against military training in secular and Sunday schools. It aims to reach the children in the homes, the schools and the Loyal Temperance Legions, and to lift them to a plane where they will despise physical combat.

Many years ago thousands of children in Europe were enlisted in a crusade to Palestine with the hope of taking the

sepulchre of Jesus Christ from non-Christian people. This crusade forms one of the most cruel chapters of human history. Many of the boys and girls who entered it left their comfortable homes to suffer and to die on foreign soil.

The children of to-day are engaged in a nobler crusade that of saving living humanity from the almost certain sepulchre of militarism toward which it is drifting. They can save the world from warfare which is a form of fratricide. They can bring about a time when there will be: "A parliament of man-a federation of the world."

The World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union stands for the promotion of every moral reform. Next to the Temperance Reform, and closely in touch with it, is that of Peace as opposed to carnal warfare.

We have received reports the last year from twenty-three different countries. More general and local efforts have been put forth; more work accomplished; more peace sermons preached; public meetings with programs held; peace resolutions presented and adopted at conventions and conferences, and more personal work has been done and influence exerted for the promulgation of peace principles than ever before.

There is abundant evidence of a growing sentiment for Peace among nations all along the line. A sense of international justice is developing year by year, and we find the same regard for law which is found in civil society forcing itself into the relations of the world.

Our department of Peace and Arbitration is arrayed against lynching, capital punishment, carnal warfare, and every form of "man's inhumanity to man." We claim that to voluntarily take human life is overstepping the bounds of human authority, and should never be tolerated.

In those nations where the military life is regarded as the most important life, military achievements as the greatest achievements and military pursuits as the most honorable and fameworthy pursuits, the advancement of women has been longest retarded; but where the military functions have become least significant women have the greatest freedom and the largest sphere of action. Christianity brought with it a respect for womanhood which the ancient world never knew.

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