furnish the strongest arguments for the League to Enforce Peace.

Preparedness is one of the watchwords of the hour. The Executive Committee of the League to Enforce Peace has pronounced more than once in favor of national preparedness to meet all emergencies and pointed out the fact that the plan it puts forward makes preparedness a necessity.

The duty to support the President in his foreign policy is plain. The League has declared a thousand times that it is not a stop-the-war movement, and has pledged its support in the defense of civilization and the rights of our citizens.

The reason we have protested against Germany's ruthless submarine warfare and broken off relations with her is because her conduct is subversive of any peace that is worth having.

As we are forced into the war, our sole purpose must be to secure the right kind of a peace after the war, for ourselves and for the whole world—a permanent and righteous peace.

This fact is fundamental to the whole situation, and ought to be kept constantly before the minds of all our people. We are contending for a righteous and permanent peace and for nothing else whatsoever. Preparation for such a peace is the most important part of preparedness. The President has this strongly in mind. If, through the growth of hatred and the cry for vengeance, the world should lose sight of its real purpose and come to the end of the war not knowing what it most wants and needs, and so should fail to roll the burden of militarism off its shoulders and to establish lasting peace, it would be a tragedy in the history of the world.

The League to Enforce Peace presents the elements of a program that has been recognized as having in it promise of a better future, a program that has the support in general terms not only of the President but of leading statesmen in all or nearly all of the leading nations. The latter have espoused it while their countries were at war and both they and the President are watching the growth and expression of public opinion in the United States as the deciding factor in the formation of a league.

During the present crisis and throughout the war which is at hand, the duty of the League to Enforce Peace is to stimulate military preparedness on the one hand, and on the other to spread its gospel of world organization for permanent peace after this conflict is over.

THE MENACE OF A PREMATURE PEACE 1

We are engaged in the greatest war of history to secure permanent world peace. We are fighting for a definite purpose, and that is the defeat of German militarism. If the Prussian military caste retains its power to control the military and foreign policy of Germany after the war, peace will not be permanent, and war will begin again when the chauvinistic advisers of the Hohenzollern dynasty deem a conquest and victory possible.

Our Allies have made a stupendous effort and have strained their utmost capacity. Unready for the war, they have concentrated their energy in preparation. In this im

1 Address delivered at General Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches at Montreal, September 26, 1917.

portant respect they have defeated the plan of Germany "in shining armor" to crush her enemies in their unreadiness.

But the war has not been won. Peace now, even though it be made on the basis of the restoration of the status quo, "without indemnities and without annexations," would be a failure to achieve the great purpose for which the Allies have made heartrending sacrifice. Armaments would continue for the next war, and this war would have been fought in vain. The millions of lives lost and the hundreds of billions' worth of the product of men's labor would be wasted.

He who proposes peace now, therefore, either does not see the stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German military autocracy still to control the destinies of all of us as to peace or war. Those who favor permanent world peace must oppose with might and main the proposals for peace at this juncture in the war, whether made in socialistic councils, in pro-German conferences or by Pope Benedict. That the Pontiff of the greatest Christian Church should wish to bring to an end a war in which millions of its communion are on both sides is to be expected. That he should preserve a difficult neutrality is also natural. That his high purpose is to save the world from further suffering goes without saying. But the present is not the opportunity of an intervening peacemaker who must assume that compromise is possible.

The Allies are fighting for a principle the maintenance of which affects the future of civilization. If they do not achieve it they have sacrificed the flower of their youth and mortgaged their future for a century, and all for nothing. This is not a war in which the stake is territory or sphere of influence. The Allies cannot concede peace until they

conquer it. When they do so, it will be permanent. Otherwise they fail.

There are wars like that between Japan and Russia, in which President Roosevelt properly and successfully intervened to bring about a peace that helped the parties to a settlement. The principle at stake and the power and territory were of such a character that a settlement might be made substantially permanent. But the present issue is like that in our Civil War, which was whether the Union was to be preserved and the cancer of slavery was to be cut out. Peace proposals to President Lincoln were quite as numerous as those of to-day, and were moved by quite as high motives. But there was no compromise possible. Either slavery and disunion lost or won. So to-day the great moral object of the war must be achieved or defeated.

An organization of citizens in the United States, known as the League to Enforce Peace, has been active for three years past in promoting its propaganda. There is a similar association in England. In that League are many persons who for years urged the settlement of all international controversies by arbitration or judicial decision. The vortex of death and destruction for the peoples of the world, which the breaking out of the war portended, roused these peace lovers and promoters to devise a plan for avoiding war after this should end. The English plan is more ambitious in providing that if the council of nations so decide they must enforce the judgment or settlement.

Whatever the detailed stipulations of such a league, its operation and success must depend on the obligations of the treaty stipulations. Unless their binding effect is recognized by the nations as a sacred principle, the stipulations of the

league will be "writ in water." The revelations and disclosures of this war will satisfy the members of the league that as long as the present military caste controls the German military and foreign policy, the league is impracticable, and would not be worth the parchment on which its obligations would be recorded. Why have they reached this conclusion? Why, as citizens of the United States, and as citizens of the world anxious to promote peace, do they feel that any proposal of peace in the present situation would defeat permanent world peace and should be opposed by them with all the energy they can command? The answer to this question must be found in the causes of this war and the revelations it has made of Germany's purpose, stripped of confusing pretence and naked for the whole world to see.

Germany was long divided into little states, kingdoms, duchies and other forms of one-man rule. She was the prey of political intrigue and manipulation of other powers. All her well-wishers hoped for and looked forward to her union. The Germans of yore had loved freedom. We Anglo-Saxons were Germans once and our representative system can be traced back to institutions found first in the forests of Germany. In the wars of the first Napoleon, Prussia and other German states were subjected to a great humiliation. But the German youth rebelled, organized themselves into military reserves, and finally contributed much to the defeat of the man whose lust for universal power finds its counterpart in the aim of the Hohenzollerns of to-day. Later, the Holy Alliance, retaining the principle of the divine right of kings, and supporting it in all of Germany, left no opportunity for the free exercise of political power by these liberty-loving German youths. In 1848 democratic revolutions occurred throughout Germany and