Encouraged by Pennsylvania's approval, adorned with this our popular aureola, he set about his work for that rational and permanent peace that comes from individual, national, and international justice, and a square deal. In this association we will gladly contribute our influence toward the formation of the necessary general public opinion that shall sound the truce of God to the whole world forever. It will then be impossible for any nation or combination of nations to range the earth with bullying armies or swaggering battleships. The only armed force permitted will be the adequately-equipped police of the United States of the earth. The writ of the World's Supreme Court of Arbitrament will run from pole to pole, and everywhere between; and its judgments be reverenced by all nations and all the inhabitants thereof. The Golden Rule will be voluntarily obeyed by most; and those who disregard it, individuals, emperors, or presidents, will be coerced into obedience or punished for contempt by the posse comitatus of the federation of the world. 'The common-sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, Then will the race share in the ample inheritance of Pennsylvania. ORGANIZED STATE WORK FOR ARBITRATION AND PEACE. BENJAMIN F. TRUEBLOOD, LL.D. I have been asked to say a word at the opening meeting of this Pennsylvania Peace Conference in regard to organized State work for the cause which has called us together, what reasons there are in favor of such work, what has been done, and what lines can be usefully followed. There are two important reasons for vigorous State work at the present time. The first of these is that the international peace movement has grown to be so commanding, and has attained of late such remarkable successes, that all possible forces should be at once organized to support and strengthen it as it enters upon its final stages. Many otherwise well-informed people still hold aloof from the movement because they are almost totally ignorant of what has already been done, and feel that the cause is still a very doubtful one. But any one who has acquainted himself with the remarkable progress of the movement during the last twelve years, to go no further back, cannot help having the assurance that the consummation of the movement is fast coming upon us. The holding of two great governmental peace conferences within that time, the second one with representatives from practically all the nations of the world; the setting up of a permanent International Court of Arbitration, to which all the nations are now parties; the existence of more than fifty treaties of obligatory arbitration between the nations in pairs, to which new ones are being added almost weekly; the extension of obligatory arbitration to the whole class of questions involving money indemnities; the adoption at The Hague last year of the principle of a permanent world court of justice, destined soon to be organized; the laying of the foundations by the same conference of a regular periodic congress of the nations; the recognition of the principle of obligatory arbitration by all the governments represented at The Hague, even if no formal treaty was reached; the establishment of the inviolability of the international mail service, of the territory of neutrals, of unfortified coast cities, towns, and ports; the great restriction and limitation of war in various directions,-all these accomplishments make it clear that the movement for international good-will, fellowship and peace is not at its beginning, as some ignorantly suppose, but nearing its completion. The rapidity with which the end will be reached will depend very largely upon the combination and co-operation for its attainment of all the forces which utilize and direct public opinion. Whatever in this direction the States of our great Union can do, as organized units in the national life, they ought to do at once. The second reason for organized State work in behalf of the international peace cause is that the States play a most important part in determining the international policies of the Government, and enforcing their execution. This is done especially through the State Legislatures, through whom the United States Senators are chosen; through the influence of Congressional districts, through their representatives in Congress; through the great philanthropic, educational, social, and religious organizations of the States, etc. Turning to what has been done through the States, there is not very much to record. Very few of the States have anything like an efficient organization, covering the entire State, for the promotion of arbitration and peace. The State societies which exist, the Connecticut Peace Society, the Rhode Island Peace Society, the Delaware Peace Society, the Pennsylvania Peace Society, the Kansas State Peace Society, the Texas State Peace Society, and the Utah Peace Society, are all as yet very limited in the scope of their operations and their membership. They consist for the most part of small groups of earnest and devoted peace workers, who have made the attempt to enlist the citizens of their States in the war against war. They have been like the voice of one crying in the wilderness of the prevailing indifference. What the newer of these societies, of Connecticut, Kansas, Texas and Utah, will do, remains as yet very problematical. I do not mean to say that the small service rendered by these societies covers all that has been done within the limits of the States. Large influence has been exerted by individual workers, and by the members of our national American Peace Society in various States. It is not easy to determine how strong and efficient State organizations, of the kind of which I have hinted, can be formed and maintained. What is needed in each of the forty-six States is an association affiliated, if possible, with the national American Peace Society, with a membership and financial resources large enough to push its influence into every Congressional district and every county. It ought to be strong enough in the personnel of its directors and in the reach of its membership to exercise a commanding influence through the State executive and the State Legislature on the relations of the national Government to other countries, and to bring to the support of its ideals and practical proposals the educational institutions, the religious organizations, the commercial and industrial bodies, the philanthropic associations, etc., of the State. What may be accomplished through State channels is well illustrated by what took place in Massachusetts five years ago. The Legislature of the State was memorialized by the American Peace Society and a group of influential individuals at the same time, and asked to petition the Congress of the United States to authorize the President to invite the other nations to join with ours in the establishment of a permanent advisory Congress of the nations. This proposal was adopted by the State Legislature without a dissenting vote. Because of this action the subject was taken up by an influential group of workers here in Philadelphia, and afterwards by the powerful Interparliamentary Union, the International Peace Congress, and several National Peace Congresses and other influential organizations. The result has been that in less than five years the foundations of such a periodic Congress of the Nations were well laid at the recent Hague Conference, whose meetings are hereafter to be without doubt as regular as the meetings of our own National Congress. If one State through its legislature can accomplish so important a result as that, what might not a combination of the forty-six States do? The principal advantage at the present time of securing the co-operation of all the States of the Union in behalf of the great cause of world peace is not so much to influence our State Department, which is already quite abreast, if not considerable in advance, of the general public, but to bring the whole weight of the nation to bear to make our Government as powerful and directive as possible in its negotiations with the other Powers, and in the international Conferences in which it participates. It was the power of the people behind our delegations in the two Hague Conferences which, though expressed in an imperfect and fragmentary way, did more than any other one thing to make the two Conferences as successful as they were. If on the eve of these two Conferences every State Legislature and every great organization of the people of the State had uttered its voice at Washington in favor of the most advanced steps at The Hague, it can scarcely be doubted that the influence of this united voice of the nation, expressed in these various ways, would have induced the Governments which prevented the adoption of some of the most important proposals made, to go much farther than they did. The organization of the work in this manner in the States will be no easy one to carry out. We may still have to proceed as we have done in the past in a more imperfect and fragmentary way. But if one great State like Pennsylvania, the Keystone State of the Union, as the result of a great Congress like that now being held, should succeed in creating in even moderate perfection such an organization as I have hinted at, and bring the whole moral and political power of the State to bear in behalf of the most advanced international measures, the Third Hague Conference, to be held some seven years hence, would probably give us the completion of the organization of the world, to such a degree, at any rate, as would make universal and perpetual peace an assured reality for the future generations of the world. One thing, at any rate, can be accomplished. A State Arbitration and Peace Congress like this can be held between now and 1915 in every State of the Union. At the close of the great National Peace Congress held in New York last spring, a single gentleman, who had attended the Congress from Texas, went home determined that his State should be brought into the movement. The result was the holding at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, in November last, of the Texas State Peace Congress, which was participated in by a number of prominent men from leading cities, and which for the first time in any large way brought the movement to the knowledge of the people of that great Southwestern State. Out of that Congress has come a Texas State Peace Society, connected with which are a number of the most prominent public men of the State. There ought to be at least one man in every State of the Union who can do for his State in this direction what Dr. S. P. Brooks, president of Baylor University, did for Texas, and what a group of tried and true friends of the cause here in the city of William Penn have done so splendidly for Pennsylvania. Dr. Nathan C. Schaeffer, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Pennsylvania, who was to address the Conference on the subject," Why Educators Are Interested in Peace," was detained in a distant part of the State by a railway accident, and President Joseph Swain, of Swarthmore College, read by request a paper prepared for the coming conference at Lake Mohonk on |