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siders; we are not accustomed to this thought. Your majesty, we hardly dare undertake that which you counsel, nevertheless, if it be your majesty's will, we will enlist actively in this cause." He dismissed them, and then took counsel with himself and said, "Not even to those who have come to the full maturity ot their powers can I turn; their thoughts are firmly directed along certain wonted lines; I must go to the morning of my kingdom where faith and hope still shine with undiminished radiance." And so proclaiming a holiday to all the schools throughout his kingdom, he assembled the children and the youths in his great courtyard the blossoms, the human spring blossoms of his kingdom.

He was loved by all his people, and in tender, fatherly words he delivered to the children the same message which he had spoken to their grandsires and their sires, and he asked: "Have you faith, have you hope? Do you believe, my children, that we can level that mountain and that we can trust to the growing friendship between those who live beyond that mountain and ourselves? In their schools are children resembling you here, with the same earnestness, the same morning freshness which your upturned faces show." He did not have long to wait for an answer. A little girl in the very front row of the children clapped her hands, and cried, "Sire, Sire, we will be your servants, we will help you to level that mountain." The words of the child were repeated swiftly from group to group, to the outmost circle, and with the clapping of hands and the exultant voices of children, re-echoed by that frowning mountain that had been for centuries shutting out the day and the sunlight, the children resolved that their lives should be spent henceforth in leveling the mountain that separated man from man, preventing close relations, preventing love growing between peoples kindred in blood and near in dwelling.

I am not going to tell you that in a day all was accomplished, but I am going to say to you this, that what had been heaped up in twenty years was leveled in one year, the work of a month undone in a day, for when faith and hope and the full consummation of life that comes with faith and hope set themselves to a task, that task is accomplished with speed and joy. So the word passed quickly beyond the mountain, and the children of the peoples beyond took up the work until the mountain

was leveled, and the material wherewith it had been built was used to fill the swamps and to construct broad highways between people and people. So when those children had come to mature years, not a frowning mountain shut out the day, but broad ways opened leading man to man, and over those ways peace and friendship and all that comes with them passed to and fro.

That is a story of bygone days. But there is also a story of the present. Ours is a land favored above all lands of the earth, protected as none other by nature against hostile force or skill. The thought of Peace has come, is coming fast herethe appeal from the less favored nations to our America to lead the world to Peace. The word is spoken to those passing into older age; to those who are coming to the full maturity of ripened power. In both instances it finds enthusiastic recruits; but it finds also many who hold back. And so it turns to the children. Oh, if the children of America, that nation to which has been given supremely the gift of liberty, the gift of opportunity-if the children of America would to-day join hands from sea to sea and resolve that Peace shall now come to the world, and send forth that message to their brothers and sisters in other nations, by the time you, our children here, had reached your maturity Peace would come to abide. And so it is that in the name of Peace I have ventured to draw up a resolution, and I am going to say to you children that I am very much spoiled as regards resolutions. Whenever I read them down in my working home at the Cooper Union, they are passed unanimously by the audiences, and so I expect them to be passed unanimously here.

This is the resolution:

"We, the representatives of the public and private schools of New York, and delegates from the schools of the country at large, believe that the time has fully come to substitute arbitration for war as the only right method for the settlement of disputes between nations, and that in this work for Peace the children of to-day, the adults of to-morrow, are to do a large, if not the largest part.

"Resolved, that it is the sense of all present that a Children's Peace League be now formed, and that invitations be sent to the children of other nations to organize similar leagues."

DR. MAXWELL:

All in favor of passing the resolutions will say "Aye"; those opposed "No." The resolutions are unanimously passed. (Applause.) I shall ask Professor Dutton to read two telegrams which will interest you.

PROFESSOR SAMUEL T. DUTTON :

It will interest the boys and girls who are here to know that this is not only a National Congress but it has become an International Congress by the fact that we have so many here. from abroad, and because of the greetings that are coming to us from different countries. I have here several cablegrams which have been received during the last two or three days, but I want to read only two; one from the King of Norway: "I beg you to bring my best greetings to the National Arbitration and Peace Congress whose work, I hope, may promote the great purpose of advocating peaceful settlement of international misunderstandings, a purpose in which the Norwegian people take such lively interest."

And one also from a Southern nation, from the King of Italy: "Cordial thanks for the courtesy of your invitation, with the good news that the Arbitration and Peace Congress by the illustrious benefactors of humanity engaged in it, should be able to bring to pass actively and speedily the realization of their highest ideals." (Applause.)

FESTIVAL HYMN....

..Dudley Buck

O Peace! on thine upsoaring pinion,
Thro' the world thine onward flight taking,
Teach the nations their turmoil forsaking,

To seek thine eternal dominion.
From the Infinite Father descending,

O come with thine influence tender;
And show us how duly to render,
To Him our glad praise never ending.
O Music! thy source, too, is holy,

Thro' thy pow'r ev'ry heart now uniting;
With thy magic each true soul delighting,
Blessed bond 'twixt the high and the lowly.
Thro' thee, the great Father adoring,

Thy language is known to each nation,
Thro' thee, the vast Hymn of Creation,
From tongues without number outpouring.

O Music! O Peace!

Happy blending of voices and hearts,
Of voices and hearts in sweet lays:
In this union, to God's holy, praise,
Ever thus your pure influence lending.

Jehovah! thou Sov'reign of nations!
Sweet Peace to our land Thou hast granted,
Be Thy praises eternally chanted,

In Music forevermore!
Jehovah! thou Sov'reign of nations!
Sweet Peace to our land Thou hast granted,
Be Thy praises eternally chanted,

In Music forevermore.

Aye! forevermore, aye, forevermore,
In Music forevermore.

Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen!

DR. MAXWELL:

The next address will be made by a gentleman whom we all delight to honor, a Senator of France, and a member of the International Board of Arbitration of The Hague, President of the French Branch of the Interparliamentary Union, who comes to us as a representative of a sister Republic on the other side of the Atlantic, the land of Lafayette. (Applause.)

I have the honor to present to you Baron d'Estournelles de Constant.

National Understanding

BARON D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT.

(First addressing the children in French.)

You ask me to speak English. Is it possible? That isn't nice, you know. It is much more difficult to speak English than French. Then, why do you oblige me to speak English? You could very well listen to me speaking French. Let me tell you very frankly, as a friend of children, I think it is a little selfish to ask me to speak in your own language and refuse my poor French. But suppose that I could not speak English and that you would not speak French, what would be the result of that? With all my good feelings for you, and with all your good feelings for me, if we could not understand each other there would

be an enormous distance between you, dear children, and me, and between all the good people and the good children of my country. I never felt that as I do to-day. If we live each one for himself, and don't take the trouble to learn the language of other countries, what will the result be? The result will be that we will get into a misunderstanding; instead of Peace we will have quarrels; that is very easy to explain. Suppose people tell you that Baron d'Estournelles is a very bad man, that he speaks in French very bad things which you do not understand, then you will be angry with him, and that may be the beginning of a war. (Laughter.)

My dear friends, you are laughing, but I am sorry to say it is generally from that that war begins. It is simply because people do not understand each other. (Applause.) You will understand in perfection when I say that if my children, who are like you children, exactly the same, and they would be so pleased to be here in your presence and to sing with you,—if my children read in the French newspaper that the American children instead of singing of Peace are singing of war, that they are very bad children, very quarrelsome, of course my children will be very sorry; but they will say, we are obliged to go to war with these American children. If you see the same thing in the paper, the American newspaper, about the French children, or the English children, or the German children, of course you will think them very bad, if you do not know; and you may not know because an ocean, a big ocean, separates our two nations. It is easy to have a misunderstanding when people, when children do not understand each other's language.

I remember very well, and can give you a few instances of that. England, you know as well as I do, is not far from France, only one hour across in a boat; still, do you know that the English children used to believe, only ten or twenty years ago, that every young Frenchman lived upon frogs only! When they were speaking of the French boys at school they called them "frog-eaters." (Laughter.) And in France they believed things like that about the English boys, and it was a kind of foolish fashion to think it was not patriotic to learn the language of other nations.

I am thinking of a good instance. I had a very good friend of mine, a very good fellow, an Englishman, who has a little

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