of government. The governing power is a committee of students and a committee of the faculty. The student committee has advisory powers only, but it is very seldom that their advice is not followed. The student committee is chosen from the members of the junior and senior classes. All student matters are discussed in mass meeting of the students, the president of the college presiding. We have very few rules and regulations. Everything is discussed at these meetings from fundamental principles of what is right and just. It is understood that the president of the college has no more say in these meetings than any one else. Each student has the right to give his opinions, whatever they may be. All moral questions arising out of matters of discipline or other subjects in which the students are interested are discussed from fundamental principles. It is not necessary to require attendance, and no record of attendance is kept, as the object of the meetings is of concern to all. I count the proceedings of these meetings as excellent preparation for citizenship and in the interest of the ideals of this Conference. This line of thought has suggested to me the desirability of a meeting of students at Swarthmore and elsewhere, where some such general statement might be made as I have made here, followed by ten-minute speeches from about a half dozen departments of the college. For example, a talk from the professor of history, illustrated by some historical events; the bearing of the study of history on the promotion of international peace. In a similar manner talks from the professor of biblical literature, the professor of political economy and the lecturer on law. Such a meeting would give the students a general notion of how the studies of the college have a bearing on the subject of our discussion here, and would furnish material for them to use for the same purposes. In all this it needs to be said that while the college may aid in a thousand ways in the movements for international peace, these results should be attained as an incidental thing in the great work of the teachings of truth and in the development of the character of the students. There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost by making the college an agent for the propaganda of any one good thing at the expense of all good things. We must train young men and young women for a life of service. Given a faculty that possesses high ideals and supplied with such material as has been suggested, the average student will go out into the world ready to aid in public life, in public meetings, through the press and in a thousand ways the great cause of international peace. Second Session THE WOMEN'S MEETING MONDAY MORNING, MAY 18TH The second session of the Conference, held in Horticultural Hall on Monday morning, was designated as the Women's Meeting, its object being "to consider how the great basic institutions of society, of which women are a vital part, stand related to the peace movement." Mrs. Sara Yorke Stevenson, of Philadelphia, was chairman. "It is with a deep appreciation of the honor conferred upon me that in the name of the important women's organizations of whom the women's committee is composed I greet you and welcome you here this morning. I also wish to extend our thanks to the executive of this conference for its recognition of women's vital interest in the questions of arbitration and peace. 66 While women are commonly given no voice in the matter of deciding whether or not war shall be declared, they have far more at stake than men have in war. It is little to risk one's life in a cause deemed worthy. Indeed, many risk their lives daily in travel, fun, or sport, without giving the matter any serious consideration. It is quite another thing, however, for a woman to see those whom she loves sent far away to be placed in jeopardy, or to have the bread-winner taken off, leaving her alone to face the unknown, full of dark anxieties, increased material burdens-in fact, virtually a wrecked home. "Women bore these things courageously in former times, because they were a part of the conditions under which they lived. Nations were isolated by distance and difficult intercourse; the struggle for existence among States bred competition. Each country was a microcosm, living and fighting for itself—and woe to the vanquished! "It is not so to-day, when time and distance have been annihilated. Financial and industrial interests are now united. The solidarity of nations is such that the financial stress of one affects all. "The most important milestone in the modern march of progress will ever remain the recent treaty of Berne, whereby fourteen nations agreed to protect their citizens by prohibiting the work of women in factories at night. This treaty, as you know, sprang from a prior agreement entered into by France and Italy to much the same effect, and granting the French and Italian laborers in both countries equal treatment in respect of payment of pensions and sick and accident benefits. 66 The world has traveled far since the time when treaties were entered into by nations to bind one another to mutual offensive and defensive assistance in war, and to other obligations of which war was the pivotal point. "Nothing could so clearly prove the wane of militarism, nothing could so plainly usher in the reign of industrialism. Well may Miss Jane Addams emphasize the latter's triumph over the former. 66 For in the palmy days of militarism, the chronicler Froissart will tell you that the lives of common foot soldiers were held in such light esteem, that placed as they were in the front ranks of the army they might, as at Crecy, be run down by the noble armored knights on their own side in a charge upon the enemy. War is an ugly thing at best. It may be true that, as Ruskin says, we admire the soldier not because he goes out to slay, but because he goes out to be slain. But even in its noblest aspect, war, in ultimate analysis, is made up of cruel selfishness. And if human egoism still remains entrenched in the world of affairs, at least we hope to see it relieved of its most brutal expression. "Women in the last twenty-five years have grown in mentality. They have studied economics, and realize what militarism costs the taxpayer. They also have found out the folly of bearing and raising sons for the purpose of furnishing military governments with what the French soldier, with sinister wit, calls himself, ' chair a canon,' that is, gunflesh. "And to-day, ladies and gentlemen, educated women are wielding an enormous influence. They have a greater share than, at first sight, would appear-not only in the forming of that ephemeral thing public opinion, but in the strengthening of what Felix Adler calls the public reason' because they are fully organized, and because they stand together with a loyalty which, it seems to me, is quite unprecedented in the history of the civilized world. It were a mistake to think, as some do, that women have pushed themselves to the front ranks of modern life. They have been pushed there by industrialism, just as formerly they were pushed backward by militarism. All that they have done has been, by education, to try and rise to the occasion. "It is my belief that what women to-day decide to be right will in the future be regarded as right. This is not said in mere boastful or flattering assertion, but because I think that each and all should feel a deep sense of responsibility. The fact of woman's influence has recently been officially recognized, as it were, by the Federal Government, when the Forestry Bureau at Washington engaged the services of an expert lecturer on forestry to speak to the women's clubs of the country; this being regarded as the most effective medium for reaching the people. Women's strength lies, not only in the fact that they stand shoulder to shoulder, and through close organization and friendliness in work they reach down to the mass of the people, but because the education of the children of the country is in their hands. As Emerson says, 'her organic office in the world is education.' This function, even President Charles Eliot has allowed her without contest. It is, therefore, to you—the mothers and teachers of the coming generation that we must chiefly look for the creation in every child's heart of the world-sentiment that will make for peace. "I wish to believe that with the twentieth century we have entered upon an era not only of industrialism but of peace, in the promotion of which women will have an increasing share, and in which her voice will be increasingly heard in the measure of her increasing sense of responsibility. We have assembled this morning to consider how the great basic institutions of society, of which women are a vital part, stand related to the peace movement, and it gives me much pleasure to introduce Mrs. May Wright Sewall, President of the International Council of Women and Chairman of its Committee on Peace and Arbitration." |