he is ready and willing to defend himself upon his body. At about the same period Louis the Pious, in France, abolished the trial by battle and within thirty years it came back again because it was found impossible to secure justice through the institution of the jury.

In view of the manner in which international arbitration commissions are usually constituted and their lack of a settled body of law to govern their determinations and the grotesque results too often attained, is it any wonder that the nations hesitate to commit themselves without important reservations to this method of settling their disputes? It is hardly too much to say that a nation which resorts to arbitration to-day, shows that it cares very much more for peace than to secure justice.

That man is a fighting animal and must have blood finds frequent expression even on this floor, and it seems to be assumed that he will have blood whatever institutions may be developed to furnish him with a reasonable satisfaction for the injury sustained by him, a reasonable satisfaction which does not involve his glut for blood. The ape and tiger have not completely died out of our common humanity. We have not been obliged to wait for its complete elimination before reaching the point where we could settle our private controversies without resorting to arms. Must we indeed wait for its complete elimination before we reach that stage of legal development when we shall settle our international controversies without a resort to arms? Can there be any doubt that the time is ripe for a resort to arbitral justice instead of arbitrament of war in the settlement of international disputes? The growing strength and influence of this conference is a testimony to the contrary. The cry for peace and a shrinking from war which every civilized nation manifests to-day are conclusive, it seems to me, upon that point. The penalties which would be visited upon me individually, if I were to seek to right my private wrongs by the arbitrament of battle, would be trifling to me in comparison with the penalties that are visited to-day upon the nation which seeks to adjust its differences with other nations by that method. The development of terrible and destructive engines of war, the enormous, the almost prohibitive cost of war, the growing sentiment of internationalism, the extension of commerce, the developing sentiment of a common Christian humanity, all of those tend to render war abhorrent not only to the ladies and gentlemen here gathered, but to the people at large, and more particularly to the rulers of Christendom. No, there will be no resort to war by the nations of the earth if any proper system of arbitral justice is pre

sented to them as an alternative. They seek war to-day because war is the only means by which justice can be secured; for the same reason as that which led our remote ancestors to resent the institution of indifferent tribunals to settle their controversies. You may say that war does not satisfy the sense of justice. I think you are wrong. It does not do justice, but it satisfies the sense of justice. And we must have a tribunal which may perhaps come no nearer to doing justice than our tribunals do in the settlement of our private affairs, but which will satisfy the sentiment of justice. And when you have that, the nations will no longer resort to arms for the settlement of their controversies.

The first requisite, then, of a system which shall substitute a judicial trial for trial by battle in international affairs is the creation of a tribunal to which the nations will resortnot under the compulsion of treaties, for whose evasion there. will always be an excuse if injustice be feared, but from a conviction that its cause of difference with a sister nation will be fairly and impartially heard and decided in accordance with settled principles of law and justice.

This it is which lends such significance to the declaration of the recent Conference at The Hague in favor of the establishment of a High Court of Arbitral Justice- a declaration which, though it failed to secure embodiment in a resolution, seems to me to be far and away the most important result of the Conference. If that tribunal-soon I trust to stand forth an accomplished fact-shall be wisely constituted and administered, it will, I believe, do more in a single decade to avert the arbitrament of war in the controversies of nations than all the arbitration treaties that could be written in that time.

But that the reign of law shall become a reality, one thing more is needed-needed not only to remove causes of friction among nations but also to furnish the High Court with a body of jurisprudence to administer-and that is a substantive international law which shall define the rights and obligations of nations toward one another.

May I venture, in the presence of the many international lawyers here present, to say that this law is to-day of the most meager description? The national or domestic law of substantive rights has to do mainly with contracts, quasi-contracts, torts and crimes and with the definition of property rights, and all of these find their analogies in the developing relations of the nations among themselves. This is not the place nor, indeed, is there time here and now to trace these analogies and to show to what extent each of these departments of national law finds its counterpart in the law of

nations, and how poorly it is there represented. Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, here is the true and ample field of the international lawyer-by discussion, by legislation, by treaty and, most of all, by guiding the deliberations of the High Court that is to be-to aid in the development of this body of substantive law. That such an international law will, by its moral operation alone, be a powerful factor in maintaining peace and good will among nations is certain. Mr. Root, our accomplished Secretary of State, has recently called attention to the fact that laws are for the most part self-executing! that the sanction of which we speak as giving validity to positive law is too rarely called into play to permit us to regard it as the real force behind law. The truth is that the very definition of our rights and obligations by the law furnishes us, men and nations alike, with a standard of conduct to which we easily conform and which, as the habit of conformity grows upon us, we disregard with increasing reluctance and difficulty.

If this analysis of the situation and its needs seems to place the lawyer in the van of the movement for international peace, let it be remembered that without you and such as you—the moulders of public opinion, the prophets of the new dispensation-his labors will be in vain. (Applause.)

THE CHAIRMAN: The gentleman now to address us is one distinguished in his own country and well known in the peace movement, the Rev. WALTER WALSH, of Dundee, Scotland.

THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF PEACE AND GREATNESS

REMARKS OF REV. WALTER WALSH

Ladies and Gentlemen: It may not be out of place for a plain Scotsman to draw your attention to the first principles, or at least to one or two of the first principles, which I have always understood animated and gave rise to this movement.

One of those first principles undoubtedly is that the paxists or pacifists, however you phrase it, by their very nature are men of large charity, comprehension of mind, liberality of judgment and peacefulness of disposition. That first principle is eminently illustrated in this assembly; for what would be thought of a gathering of teetotal prohibitionists who should nevertheless be willing to listen calmly to eulogies of drinking? And as this is impossible, because the prohibitionists do not have the catholicity of the pacifist mind, it is given to us to have the unique privilege of hearing 'people speak presumably in praise of peace, and yet inculcate most of the principles which lead directly to war! We may admit, undoubtedly, the probability of wars in the future;

and yet while prohibitionists admit that drinking will persist a little while longer, yet they turn their attention not to the means of promoting it, but toward removing it with all the speed that they may. So I think that we pacifists are rightly employed not in extolling such abominable and historical heresies as, "If you wish for peace, prepare for war," but in preparing the implements, and the principles, and the means of peace all the world over. But the pacifist is the only man I know who, when smitten upon one cheek by the argument for a great army, turns the other cheek to the plea for a big navy! I sometimes wish, Mr. Chairman, that some Ram Das like Carlyle's Indian devotee of that name, would enter such gatherings with his great declaration that he had fire enough in his belly to burn up the sins of the whole world. We want a great fire to burn up these speciosities and fallacies which are sometimes promulgated in the name of peace!

I wish I had such an eminent Scotsman, sir, as Lord Aberdeen, here to quote you in his own words, which in his absence I must read to you; he said that he was disposed to dissent from the maxim which had of late years received very general assent, that the best security for the continuance of peace was to be prepared for war. Men, when they adopted such a maxim, said Lord Aberdeen, in the House of Commons, and made large preparations in time of peace that would be sufficient in the time of war, were apt to be influenced by the desire to put their efficiency to the test, that all their great preparations, the result of their toil and expense, might not be thrown away.

But why quote you merely a plain Scotsman,-even a titled Scotsman? Was it not the Czar of Russia in words which are surely familiar and memorable in the minds of every one present, who said in that immortal rescript which convened the First Hague Conference, "Economic crises," said he, "due in great part to the system and the continual danger which lies in this massing of war material, are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden which the people have more and more difficulty in bearing." "It appears evident, then," continued the Czar, "that if this state of things were prolonged it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which make every thinking man shudder in advance." And another European monarch, this time a crowned queen, our good Alexandra, is reported to have said a little while ago, I have always mistrusted warlike preparations of which the nations never seem to tire. Some day this accumulated material of soldiers and guns will burst into flames in a frightful war that will throw humanity into mourning on the earth. and grieve our Universal Father in Heaven."

These things are not whoily matters of speculation. It is burned into my memory and brain by the experiences during our own Boer War, that after our first great national peace crusade, led by that renowned and spectacular figure, William T. Stead, in which I took some little part as a crusader, and during which I was the means of calling together a large gathering of all the dignitaries of our little town-the same took place in every town of any importance in Great Britain, and also, of course, in Scotland-after that crusade when the Boer war broke out all the mayors and pacifists and magistrates and bailies, all the dukes and the earls and lords, all the journalists, all the jurists and pretty nearly all the preachers quit the peace crusade and were found going over in a mighty apostacy to the war party! Unless we can keep our feet firmly planted on first principles, rooted and grounded in faith and pacificism, some similar experience, some great and mournful apostacy that may blight the bloom of youthful minds and go far to shake the faith of ardent enthusiasts in humanity and in the righteousness of Heaven itself may not improbably await the American people. If we seek to build up an empire by the sword, have we not given us, in the immortal words of England's former poet laureate, in his magnificent and beautiful version of the "Legend of King Arthur," a great and imaginative presentment in the passing of King Arthur of what awaits empires or territory built up by the sword? Empires built up on brutality, blood and the beast inevitably reel back to the source and origin from which they came!

I can talk not out of any knowledge of history greater than I suppose all of you have; but I can talk out of a racial inheritance longer than many of you. We have in our own history a sad example of the results of conquests by the sword. I refer not to my own country, but to the sister country of Ireland, of which it has been said that Irishmen know how to govern every country but their own! I think it is important to remember that by reason of the fact that she was conquered by the sword and has been held by the sword, Ireland during eight hundred years has never had the chance to govern herself. The people of Ireland have been butchered, as in the massacre of "Drogheda" and many others which you will recall; her industries have been suppressed; her agriculture has been spoiled; education was forbidden to her people; even marriage was made unlawful unless by the legalized priests of an alien Established Church; the very wearing of her national emblem, the simple flower of the field, was made treasonable and subject to the gallows;-and is it any wonder that we have in our empire up to this very