The following proclamation was cabled from Paris by the President and issued by the State Department on January 7th: "A proclamation to the people of the United States: "It becomes my sad duty to announce officially the death of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States from September 14, 1901, to March 4, 1909, which occurred at his home at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, N. Y., at 4:15 o'clock in the morning of January 6, 1919. In his death the United States has lost one of its most distinguished and patriotic citizens, who had endeared himself to the people by his strenuous devotion to their interests and to the public interests of his country. "As President of the Police Board of his native city, as member of the Legislature and Governor of his State, as Civil Service Commissioner, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as Vice-President, and as President of the United States, he displayed administrative powers of a signal order and conducted the affairs of these various offices with a concentration of effort and a watchful care which permitted no divergence from the line of duty he had definitely set for himself. "In the war with Spain he displayed singular initiative and energy and distinguished himself among the commanders of the army in the field. As President he awoke the nation to the dangers of private control which lurked in our financial and industrial systems. It was by thus arresting the attention and stimulating the purpose of the country that he opened the way for subsequent necessary and beneficent reforms. "His private life was characterized by a simplicity, a virtue, and an affection worthy of all admiration and emulation by the people of America. "In testimony of the respect in which his memory is held by the Government and people of the United States, I do hereby direct that the flags of the White House and the several departmental buildings be displayed at half-staff for a period of thirty days, and that suitable military and naval honors under orders of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy be rendered on the day of the funeral. "Done this seventh day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and nineteen, and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-third. "By the President: "WOODROW WILSON. "FRANK L. POLK, Acting Secretary of State." League of Nations At a luncheon given at the Yale Club, December 19th, 1918, by Samuel T. Dutton in honor of the officers of The World's Court League, it was voted to send a message as follows to the President in Paris, signed by all those present: "Fifty Americans from several states representing all organizations interested in a League of Nations wish you entire and effective success in your purpose to form such a League as will ensure justice between nations and enduring peace among men. "(Signed) Samuel T. Dutton, Dr. W. H. Schofield, Dr. Maurice Francis Egan, Everett P. Wheeler, Charles Lathrop Pack, Albert Shaw, Simeon E. Baldwin, Theodore Marburg, Henry Morgenthau, W. B. Millar, Harold A. Hatch, Henry Goddard Leach, John Wesley Hill, Charles H. Levermore, Norman Hapgood, Emerson McMillin, Stephen P. Duggan, James E. Russell, Henry S. Haskell, Frank L. Babbott, C. V. Vickrey, George Hugh Smyth, Robert Underwood Johnson, Frederick E. Farnsworth, Albert A. Snowden, Frederick Lynch, Henry N. MacCracken, John Bates Clark, Joseph Silverman, George W. Kirchwey, Paul Monroe, James G. Beemer, James L. Barton, Talcott Williams, A. S. Frissell, Charles F. Aked, Edwin R. Embree, Robert E. Ely, Roger H. Williams, George A. Plimpton, Paul U. Kellogg, William Buck Guthrie, Frank Chapin Bray." The following reply was received from President Wilson, December 23, 1918: "I warmly appreciate the message from fifty Americans and beg that you will thank them very warmly for the cheer they have given me. "(Signed) WOODROW WILSON." Samuel T. Dutton, General Secretary of The World's Court League and the host of the luncheon, said in welcoming the guests: I "I invited you here to-day not to seek aid for an organization, although The World Court League would be glad to have your support. We are stronger in our principles than in our material resources. have asked you to come in the hope that we may all agree to concentrate on the idea of a League of Nations, leaving the details of that League to the President and the delegates at the Peace Conference. There have been some differences in the point of view and still more differences in the placing of emphasis. Now the hour has struck when the fruits of the great war are to be garnered. What is there more to be desired than that the Peace Conference discover a plan by which all free Nations can enjoy a Peace which shall place Justice first, and back of which can stand the moral and physical forces of the world? It is probably fortunate that the President has not committed himself to any particular formula, for he can thus act more effectively. No matter what political party we belong to, I trust we all will agree that the President has shown to Germany and to the World that the path of honor and humanity is the only path which a nation may safely follow. No matter how sharply we may be able to criticise the Administration in some points, we must recognize the fact that the President has brought the moral aims of the war strongly to the front and has kept them there. As the United States has been unselfish in its aims, so the delegates to the Peace Conference can openly and candidly insist that the highest standards of honor and justice shall prevail. So I say again, let us push hard for the main objective and leave the details to the President and the others representing us." ULTIMATE GOOD FAITH AND COMMON FORCE Theodore Marburg, Ex-Minister to Belgium, said in part: back "A League of Nations is bound to be supposited on good faith and on the ultimate triumph of good sense and reason among the many. We begin with faith in Great Britain, France and the United States as our cornerstone, because of kinship kinship either of ideals and political institutions or of historic ground. We move forward to faith in Italy and Japan, as great nations which have a strong sense of right. We include without question the progressive Secondary Powers, such as Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and the Scandinavian countries. We can afford to, with these as a basis-in fact, we must found the League also on faith in our former enemies, burned white by the fire of an awful experience. "A principal reason for this is that all the leading plans for a league in America and abroad provide for disciplining a recalcitrant nation. A fundamental provision of all of them is that they will make war in common on the nation which attacks a fellow signatory without previous reference of the dispute to inquiry. "To omit this provision is to fail to discourage war. Development of the various international institutions we have now-Court of Arbitration, Commission of Inquiry, and Hague Conference-will, it is true, make for peace. But only general agreement to use force against a nation which attempts to go to war without previous inquiry into the dispute will positively discourage war. And the world is quite disposed to adopt the positive measure in order to secure that great end. "Now what will happen if a single great people, with real or potential military power, is left out of a league which is based upon that principle? Is it not plain that the nation we attempt to discipline will at once fall back on the outsider for help, and that world catastrophe will again ensue? In other words, a sine qua non of the present league plans is that the circle of the league must embrace an overwhelming preponderance of military power, force so overpowering that no nation will be so foolish as to refuse the reasonable demand for an inquiry." BUILD ON WHAT HAS BEEN DONE Ex-Governor Simeon E. Baldwin of Connecticut spoke in part as follows: "Is a world-court any new thing? We have had one for nearly twenty years, in good working order and do ing good work, though within too narrow limits. We have a plan for another and a better one, to extend those limits, agreed on by an assemblage of all but two of the nations of the world, a dozen years ago. "The whole family of nations met at the Hague in 1907, at the second Peace Conference. One of the best things they did was to draft a scheme for a permanent court of arbitral justice between nations to work side by side with the Permanent Court of Arbitration. ferences of opinion. Some would be for excluding her. This is a vital question, as to any international assembly that may be called to declare rules of justice between nations. It ought to embrace all nations. Germany and Austria-Hungary ought to be in it. Such a combination of nations would lose half its force and life, if they were not in it. "All such things must be based on processes of evolution. We must keep whatever we have achieved, and make it better. We agreed to that We cannot throw draft. Germany agreed to it, ad referendum. "This Conference of 1907 was a league of nations. It prepared matters of legislation. It declared rules for national conduct in time of war. It was to have been followed by another Conference within seven years, that is by 1914. That has never been convened. The war prevented. Why not convene it now? Why not preserve the advantages we have gained by the two Hague Conferences, and simply add to them? The last Conference contemplated, in all, three world courts: the Permanent Court of Arbitration, established in 1899 and improved in 1907; the Court of Arbitral Justice, planned in 1907; and the International Court of Prize Appeals, also planned in 1907. "I say, let a third Conference of all nations be called. But, it may be said, Germany was present at the first and second Conferences; if a third is called, Germany would necessarily be a member of it; she simply stays on. Here we must expect dif away the work of twenty years. For what is to be done in 1919 we must build on what was done in 1899." AMERICA MUST SEE THAT TURKISH RULĖ ENDS James L. Barton, LL.D., Chairman of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, said: "America entered this war for no selfish purpose but for the protection of the weak against the strong. President Wilson and the United States Government have unqualifiedly committed themselves to the policy of defending the small nations against the selfish aggression of the military strong. Now that the war is over the United States can no more withdraw into its former shell of exclusiveness than an egg can be unscrambled, because the shell is broken beyond repair. Neither can an artificial shell of exclusiveness be created into which it can enter and claim indifference to the fate hereafter of the nations incapable of self-protection. To be concrete, America must use her influence now to see that the Turkish Ottoman Government is made power less in the future to commit again the unspeakable atrocities with which for the last generation, and especially during the last three years, she has horrified the world. Neither can the United States forget the martyred Armenians and Syrians and Greeks in the Turkish Empire. They deserve for the future a liberty and freedom from Turkish rule under which they have suffered for five centuries and more. If Armenia and the Peace Conference turn to the United States and ask her to render the assistance which she is so well able to render in restoring order throughout the length and breadth of the Turkish Empire and in securing for the subject races of that country an absolute freedom from Mohammedan rule, America must not refuse. Unselfishly America entered the war and with an altruistic spirit she must continue her international relations, lending her mighty influence, her experience and her splendid strength to the protection of the weaker nations and to the assurance to them that they too are entitled to the same liberty and to the administration of a just government as much as the people of America. I appeal to every man present to use his influence to this end." HOPE FOR THE BALKANS The Rev. C. F. Aked, D.D., LL.D., said: "It is not possible to discuss the Balkan problem in four minutes, but it is possible to set down in order some considerations that inspire hope. European statesmanship of the doctrine of the Balance of Power. In this doctrine it has been formally declared that no European state or combination of states should be allowed to gain a preponderating power in Europe and in the world. A balance, of some approach to equal movement and measure, must be preserved. It must be preserved by enlarged and enlarging territory, expanding empire, ever-increasing military and naval armaments, and an unceasing and everlasting trimming and adjusting of understandings and alliances. The Balance of Power has seemed to be the last expression of political philosophy, while it has passed the wit and the wisdom of man to hold the balance level. "The doctrine of the Balance of Power is dead. The thought of the world turns in another direction. We look for a League of Free Nations, pledged to keep the peace of the world. "The second is the elimination from the Balkan problem, and, indeed, from all the problems that confront the enlightened statesmanship of our day, of Imperial Russia. We have not yet sufficiently taken into account the gain to mankind from the Russian revolution. We are watching too keenly the threat and the terror. We ought not to lose sight of the certain, immeasurable gain. The old Russia, the Russia of the Czars, was a menace to the world. John Morley, in his 'Recollections' published last year, says in plain terms that Russia 'for the most of a "The first is the abandonment by century has been the disturber of |