applause.) They brought the Roman Empire to their feet, and they exalted their standard above the eagles of the Empire. (Great applause.) Now don't you believe that any nation to-day, if it disarm in the name of justice, and especially if it were a strong nation, would be over-run by the world. It would attract to itself the whole moral force of the world at that instant; it would be the moral leader which would lay the way open for that higher civilization for which we are all pleading to-night.

And there was another experiment. During the whole of what we call the Middle Ages, Europe was just one seething mass of warfare. Every house was a castle; every highway was a danger, but there were men in those generations whose hearts were for Peace, and they simply went and withdrew themselves and built themselves little shelters in the woods. They never raised hand against any man; they left the postern gates of their monasteries open to anyone who would come in, armed or unarmed, and what was the consequence? The wiping out of the monasteries? Not a bit; the monasteries rose up and ruled the whole world. And yet we are told again and again by the wisest that we cannot disarm.

Suppose you were to see me here with a belt around me. (Great laughter.) What kind of a man would you take me to be? I am not afraid to go down into any street in the city to-night or any other night, just as I am. There is a chance that somebody may kill me, but it is a bare chance, and it is so remote that I will take the chance every time. Now, we individuals have already disarmed and none of us have suffered any evil consequence, and no evil consequence would come at all if the nations were to disarm. Not the slightest. We simply would all cease to be swashbucklers, and we would become civilized gentle folk, and we would take all the governors and the rulers, and the kings and the presidents, and we would make them squires, as Mr. Gompers is. (Great applause and laughter.)

Now my dear friends, that is my message to you to-night, and of course no one will heed it, but the day is at hand when it must be heeded, because all the Christian nations are on the point of bankruptcy. When I was in the Duchy of Baden some. years ago, I saw there a sight which impressed me very deeply. One morning I heard the sound of military music. I looked out of the window and saw regiment after regiment passing by. I

asked what was the occasion of their passing, and I was told that the forces of the Duchy were going down to Wurtemburg to engage in war manoeuvres there. Then I was out on the bank of Lake Constance, and I saw there a woman and a COW harnessed to a plow. Thousands of men were carried away down yonder to learn the art of war, and the women were compelled to labor, that these might have their martial trappings. And that is what war is. And you and I, gentlemen and ladies, have laid upon us the task of preaching the Gospel of Peace. (Great applause.)

MR. BUCHANAN:

It

The next speaker needs no special introduction to an audience acquainted at all with the American labor movement. is a pleasure to-night particularly to present him because of the fact that so many-two or three at least of his associates-whom we expected to be here, were detained elsewhere. Mr. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor. (Applause.)

Humanity's Growth Towards Peace

SAMUEL GOMPERS

MR. CHAIRMAN, FELLOW UNIONISTS AND FRIENDS: I am greatly gratified that circumstances should so have shaped themselves as to permit me to attend this meeting this evening, much as I really believed it would have been almost impossible to be here.

I want to be here to-night because I want to mingle my voice with the voices of men and women of labor of New York in protest against the horrors of war and in favor of the demand. for Universal Peace.

We men and women of labor have had large experience in the great movement of the toiling masses to secure some degree of recognition of the rights which have been too long denied us. The wrongs which we have had to bear for so long a period, the voices of the masses of labor for centuries, cry out in protest against the burdens that have been borne, and yearnings, unexpressed and often inarticulate, arise for the day when justice. shall reign among men. (Applause.)

We have had to fight as well as to argue for our rights, not that we loved the pursuit of conquest, not that we loved or had any heart in contest, but simply that we were permeated with the conviction that justice to labor would not and could not be secured until those who stood in the path of progress and success had manifested their design; that nothing would be gained for labor until the myriads of laborers of our country should determine and demonstrate to their opponents that though they loved Peace, they were not averse to bearing the burdens of war in order to establish justice and right. (Applause.)

It is perhaps only those who have borne the brunt of battle and can bear testimony of contest by their scars that realize its tremendous importance and responsibilities. It was not a mere expression which one of the greatest generals the civil war in our country produced used when he declared at the end of that great contest, "War is hell."

No man and no woman who is engaged in industrial conflict will designate it by a more euphonious term, but when in the course of human events, rights are denied to the toiling masses of our country, as the inalienable rights were denied to our forefathers in the Colonies of America, then the time comes when men and women must assert themselves in order to maintain their integrity, their manhood and their womanhood. (Applause.)

He who has gone through the great struggles, national, international, industrial; he who has borne some of the brunt of battle, will endeavor to find the means to maintain integrity and honor and promote interests without unnecessary contest. I am firmly persuaded that at least within a period of a quarter of a century, there has not occurred a war justified by necessity or by circumstances of human liberty and human rights. (Applause.) The old time land lust of Kings and Emperors must give way to the conscience and the justice and the right of homestead and manhood and independence and intelligence and humanity. (Applause.) Nor will we, as workers, longer consent to be utilized as the fighting forces, to be murdered and mowed down in order to conquer the markets of barbarians or savages. (Applause.)

I heard with a great deal of pleasure to-night the reading of the preamble and resolutions adopted at the Convention of

the American Federation of Labor held at Minneapolis last November, but I should be thoroughly ashamed of myself, as a member of organized labor, if I believed that it was left to the closing days of the year 1906 for organized labor to demonstrate its position upon this great question. I know of no instance within the past half century where the working people of our country, aye the working people of all civilized countries, have met that they did not declare unequivocally their position for International Peace and Brotherhood. (Applause.) Aye, the American Federation of Labor in 1886, in its convention at Baltimore, met the Union stonecutter, the Member of Parliament, William Randal Cremer, who was the first pioneer for International Arbitration. That convention resolved, by unanimous vote, to place the labor movement of America in favor of the abolition of war and for the establishment of Universal Peace. (Applause.) I say this, my friends, because of the fact that to-day we see a reversal of the situation which obtained so largely among the people of our country a few short years ago. All that was necessary then was for some politician, declaring himself a statesman and proclaiming that he was the embodiment of all that was patriotic, to carry some fanciful chip upon his political shoulder and challenge the world to take it off, and men, at the behest of political charlatans and industrial greedy gourmands, would fly at each other's throats in the name of patriotism and nationality; and the wave of enthusiasm that seemed to arise swept into the background any thought of a humanitarian character.

A great change has come over the minds of the working people of the world, and none the less of the American working men; due not to preachments, due not to those who, from the upper strata, wished the workingmen well, but due to the organization and the increased intelligence resulting from the reduction in the hours of labor secured by the organizations of labor. (Great applause.)

The opportunity for leisure and rest and the opportunity for the cultivation of the best that is in us, has made way for a new wave, not the wave of bigotry, of hatred, but the wave of universal love and affection and brotherhood, and the recognition of the principle that after all the man, because he happens to be born in Germany or France or England or Ireland or Scotland

or Italy or Hungary or Poland or Russia, is no less a man than the American citizen with all the claims of patriotism and humanity bestowed upon him. (Great applause.)

To-day we find a peculiar and encouraging condition of affairs. The wave of bigotry and hatred has receded and made way for the most beautiful, the most gratifying wave of enthusiasm for Peace. It is a strange spectacle but nevertheless gratifying. Usually those who love Peace, those who sought success and happiness by peaceful methods, were decried. It is strange indeed, it is wonderful, it is an awakening, a new era, when there can be, as we find to-day, world-wide enthusiasm for Peace. (Applause.) For centuries men have decried the white. flag. The white flag was always coupled with the idea of weakness, of cowardice. To-day, thank God, the development has come in the human conscience and mind and the white flag is no longer regarded as an accompaniment or an expression of the yellow streak. It requires some courage for men to assert Peace rather than war. (Applause.)

We have noted upon the battlefield men who, no doubt, have been heroic in their self-sacrifice, and under the stress of enthusiasm and excitement have manifested the largest element of human bravery. But, my friends, that element of warfare is about at an end, by reason of the wonderful effectiveness of modern armaments. Now, frequently men who are contending, army against army, do not see each other and do not know the whereabouts of the enemy. Modern warfare is robbed of the glory-yes, if that might be termed glory-modern warfare is robbed of the glory of hand-to-hand contest, it is now a cold calculation of mathematics written down in cold blood, and when followed, causes each man to be his fellow's murderer, and nothing less. (Applause.)

To-day we urge that it requires more heroism in men and women to bear the brunt of great sacrifice, of quiet, silent suffering for the betterment of the human family, than is manifested upon the gory field of battle. (Applause.) To endeavor to help, to uplift, to benefit our fellows, to make the burdens of life less onerous and to help bear our brother's burdens, to make life brighter and better, to permit the ray of sunshine to enter into the home and to dispel the gloom of the fireside, to make man brighter and nobler and woman more efficient and beautiful