SIXTH DAY-AFTERNOON SESSION. The meeting opened with a hymn by the congregation:

"O, sometimes gleams upon our sight-"

"Through present wrong the Eternal Right—"

followed by a solo by Mrs. Laura B. Farra:

"If I were a voice."

The HON. CHESTER HOLCOMBE, of Newark, Wayne county, New York, delivered the address of the afternoon. He had been a member of the United States Legation in China eightteen years and had been acting minister to that country three years. His discourse was entitled:

THE ETHICS OF THE RUSSIAN-JAPANESE WAR. He said in part:

It is of the utmost importance that we Americans should know more of, should understand, the happenings on the other side of the world during the past centuries. It is, however, extremely difficult for one of us to come into such intimate acquaintance with those orientals as to have a complete understanding of their peculiar ways and ideas.

In these days of broad development it ought not to be necessary to say before an American audience that the rules which guide in politics, whether national or international, ought to be co-incident with the rules of sound ethics; yet we continually find them widely divergent, as you know.

The question before us this afternoon is one of international politics and we are to find out, if we can, who is right or who is wrong in this war in the East; so we must test a political question by moral principles.

There are two queries, the answers to which have much to do in determining the character of international relations. They may be stated as follows: Has a race or a nation the right to force itself into political, commercial, or friendly relations with any other race, tribe, or nation, against the will of the latter? Will any facts justify the seizure, permanent occupancy and domination of any portion of the territory of any race, tribe or nation by another, except as a prize of war, or with the free consent of the occupant and owner?

An affirmative answer, forced by the greed and ambition of the so-called leading nations of the world, has been given to both these questions, in uncounted instances. The liberty, growth, proper development and happiness of all the branches of the human family depend on their being rightly solved and on this solution being accepted as a canon of international law. Yet they have never been seriously and thoroughly studied, in the light of the unvarying ethical principles which underlie them, by any whose conclusions would be received as weighty and authoritative, and it is high time such an unbiased, sober decision was reached and generally accepted.

These questions are suggested as having a direct bearing upon the topic of this lecture, yet neither they nor the general question of the ethics of warfare, are the subject of the present study. We have at this time to do, solely, with a practical rssue: The right and wrong of the present war between Japan and Russia.

A distinguished scholar who, for more than twenty centuries, has shaped the policy and determined the history of the oldest and most populous government known among men, who has swayed and controlled the lives, formulated the ethical principles and regulated the conduct of a larger number of human beings than any other man known since the beginning of time, declared that "all men within the four seas," i.e., upon the habitable globe, "are brothers." Five centuries later another wise man, claiming, like the first, to speak with highest authority, declared thus: "God * * * hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations." Here are two declarations of the ethical law which should govern individuals in their dealings with each other, and which also should determine the character of the relations existing between those vast bodies of humanity which we call nations. These are accepted as facts, not because they fell from the lips of two of the wisest masters of thought and leaders of men, whom the world has seen, but because they are true. No serious and closely observant student of the human being, as he investigates him in various races and widely

remote regions of the earth, can fail to be convinced of the accuracy of both these statements; of the absolute unity in origin of the entire human family, and of a determination for them, by a power outside of and higher than themselves, of the "bounds of habitation" of the several branches of the one race. Underneath surface differences, the MAN, in all essential characteristics, is and has been the same in all times and in all parts of the world. Variation in color, language, customs and grades of development are the slowly accumulated result of local conditions and influence. They show how the man has been helped or hindered by his surroundings. He is brown, black or bleached by centuries of excessive heat and sunlight or by the lack of them. He is made energetic by centuries of continued struggles for existence, or indolent by centuries of an over-easily secured livelihood. Differences of language? They are only the fortuitous use of different vocal chords to express the idea. The soil upon which man has lived and from which he has won the necessities and luxuries of life, has stamped itself upon him, while he has fastened his imprint upon it. The climate which has colored, and has either fondled or buffeted him, has had much to do with determining both his physical and mental peculiarities; for man is something of a chameleon and absorbs color and character from his surroundings. We of the Anglo-Saxon and other races of the unkindlier regions of the northern zones, have great reason for satisfaction with the rough step-mother we have found in harsh climates and unresponsive soils, which have developed physical force and endurance, breadth and grasp of mentality, ambition and tenacity of purpose, by the hard lessons of necessity extended through centuries and many generations, and which, thus, have forced us to be what we are to-day :-the leaders of the world's thought, purpose and progress.

If these two declarations of fact mean anything, if they are of force or import in the practical affairs of life, whether the great or the unimportant, they establish two rules of guidance, two ethical principles:

First. That political and geographical limitations ought not to govern the moral relations and the duties of man to his fel

low-man. These are unvarying in their character, universal in their application. Right and wrong are not determined by tribal, racial or national boundaries. If all men are brothers of one blood, it follows that what is right between individuals, must be right between nations, which are mere territorial segregations of the members of one great family; and what would be wrong between individuals of a common parentagebetween brothers-must be equally wrong between nations. There cannot be one ethical law for two individuals and another, diverse and inconsistent with the first, for two vast aggregations of men.

Second. Each race, tribe or nation holds the territory of its occupancy and domicile in absolute fee simple, by the direct gift and determination of a higher authority. It cannot be rightfully deprived of any portion of this patrimony, or interfered with in control of it, except by its own free choice and volition.

If these two rules of guidance appear to be too strongly put, too broadly stated, and to require large qualifications, compare them with that single sentence-old as mankind-which forms the root and body of all ethical teaching the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and notice how closely and truly they fit and fall into line with it.

As recently as 1882 Corea emerged from the seclusion of centuries and entered into treaty relation with the United States, Japan and the leading nations of Europe, in the vain hope that by giving each of these great powers of the world equal commercial privileges, thus making it for the interest of each that her independence be preserved, she would the better secure herself from the seizure of her territory by any one of them.

The partition of China-i.e., the destruction of its government and the division of its people and territory into a number of colonial dependencies, has long been desired and discussed by some of the Powers of Europe. It is injustice to none of them to say that it would have been attempted years ago had these greedy comorants seen any possibility of agreement upon

their respective shares of plunder. This discussion was renewed with brutal frankness after the war between China and Japan. It was accentuated by the seizure, by Germany, of Kiao Chow and surrounding regions, under the flimsy pretext of compensation for the murder of a German missionary; of Port Arthur by Russia upon no pretext whatever, and of Wei Hai Wei by Great Britain, to get even with the other two, and to secure an impartial distribution of forced gifts on the part of China. The knowledge of these facts, universal among the Chinese people, had a large influence in causing the Boxer movement. Ill-guided and impracticable as was that uprising it still was a patriotic effort to save the country from continued foreign depredations and ultimate destruction. As such it had the sympathy of millions of the Chinese who took no active part in it.

After this disturbance had been suppressed the proposition was again broached. The United States, Japan and Great Britain, ranged themselves together, as unqualifiedly opposed to it. As a result, the Powers of the world, Russia among the number, entered into a common agreement to preserve the independence and territorial integrity of China, and the "Open Door" in commercial affairs. Thus the Czar then pledged himself to the maintenance of what he is now seeking to destroy. Since that time, in response to inquiries from his associates in the agreement, he has often asserted his intention to withdraw his forces from Manchuria, but has shown no active disposition to do this. On the contrary he has gradually increased the military force, with which he had garrisoned the province during the Boxer troubles, under pretext of protection to the branch of the Siberian railway which runs the entire length of Manchuria with its terminal at Port Arthur. He has spent millions of dollars in strengthening Port Arthur. In literally building up new cities and furnishing them with permanent, costly and elaborate residences for Russian officials. He has caused a forced immigration of colonies of Russian farmers and their families and subsidized the development of varieties of Russian industry. In all this the Czar has, evidently, taken a leaf out of British policy, which, as is well known, has been