the thieves outnumber him, in no way lessens his responsibility for the crime. To seek exculpation on the ground of previous disapproval is to use the reasoning of Jesuitism. And for those who, disbelieving in the war, enlisted because government decreed it, Lowell's Yankee truism holds good:

"Guv'ment aint to answer for it,
God'll send the bill to you."

If party and country were not made idols to be worshipped, such treason to humanity implied by the current war ethics would be impossible. What is more monstrous than the abnegation of conscience because superior numbers oppose one's conviction? To go with the multitude to do evil is to substitute darkness for light. If party demands the sacrifice, then party is to be deserted and denounced. If government enacts statutes controverting the higher law of justice, disobedience becomes a duty. The church which shelters iniquity, or the state which decrees injustice, must be denounced as false authorities in the name of true religion and righteous law. "If Church and State reply,

Give Church and State the lie."

War is incompatible with free government. It is the handmaid of despotism. It necessitates the stifling of free discussion. The respectable Boston daily, par excellence, hastened to declare that he who asserted that the country had entered upon "an unnecessary and unrighteous war is guilty of an infamous crime, which has all the guilt of treason," and Gen. Schofield, from the Presidio, uttered his martial note of warning against free speech. The Spaniards are less enemies of the United States than these slaves and tools. Rebellion against such tyrants is obedience to God. "One soul against the flesh of all mankind” is invulnerable.

It is true that law-breakers must risk the penalty. It is absurd to disobey and expect to evade the consequences. But what higher honor can be vouchsafed to man than to suffer unjustly for the truth? It is the gibbet and the dungeon that mark more truly the advance of civilization than the battles that usurp so much space in history. The victims and martyrs have always been men and women who rebelled against established order. I live in the hope of sometime seeing in Harvard College the portrait of Wendell Phillips, in its gallery of worthies, illuminated with this inscription he once desired for his epitaph: Infidel and traitor; infidel to a church that could be at peace in the presence of sin; a traitor to a government that was a magnificent conspiracy against justice." How much more valuable the lesson of independence it would convey than the ordinary incentives to subservience which lead to coveted degrees!

Independence of thought and action is the need of the

time. Parties have become masters instead of tools and must be put to their proper use. Governments whose sovereign powers are employed to curtail individual rights must be taught their true place and function. To accomplish this, eternal vigilance and unceasing protest at every despotic step is the duty of loyalty and patriotism alike. I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more," is the motto which every freeman, as well as lover, should wear.

The example of the hero, Van der Ver, of Holland, is of inestimable value. Tolstoï has preserved it for all time. When called to serve in the National Guard, the young man firmly refused to obey. Listen to his reasons: "I fully appreciate that I may have a heavy

account to settle, that you can punish me, and that you will not hesitate to use your full power. But that does not frighten me. The reasons that have led me to passive resistance offer me a sufficient conpensation for any suffering I may incur. . . . When I was younger, I suffered myself to be taught the art of killing; but now I refuse. Especially do I desire not to have to kill at another's command, for then it becomes a murder which the conscience condemns, and which has its motive neither in personal impulse nor in any other cause. Can you show me anything more degrading to a human being than the accomplishment of such murders or massacres?" To the argument that it is the chief duty of the National Guard to contribute to the maintenance of civil order, he replies: "I flatly refuse to coöperate in the maintenance of the existing order, which signifies the support accorded to the rich against laborers who begin to have knowledge of their rights.' And can you suppose for a moment that I would take part in the defence of persons who, I am convinced, keep alive the war between Capital and Labor; that I will fire on laborers who act entirely within the limit of their rights? You are not so blind as that. It is for these reasons," he concludes, "but especially because I hate recognized murder, that I refuse to serve in the National Guard, requesting that you send me neither uniform nor arms, since it is my firm determination not to bear them." It is this spirit that the hour demands. Now that the formal peace between this country and Spain has been practically consummated, it is broadly recognized that a far more difficult contest is pending. This four months' military debauch is to furnish occasion for years of repentance. Nature will cover with green the graves of the slain on land; the mangled and drowned bodies of those who perish on the water will speedily dissolve into the material elements of which they were composed; but the serious injury done to the principles which have guided the republic to greatness will long remain to trouble and perplex it.

With the acceptance of Hawaii from the hands of the conspirators who captured it by the naval connivance and aid of the United States, a new creed must be evolved to perpetuate the unjust conditions there existing. A justification has to be found for the diminutive oligarchy which controls, without the consent of the governed, a people as much entitled to self-government as President Dole. The denial of suffrage rights to the Hawaiians, treating truth as geographical, is a betrayal of democracy at home. What shall it profit a nation to conquer all the islands of the sea if thereby the surrender of its own vital principle is the price?

The advocates of the war truly say that we have come out of the conflict a different nation. Not, however, in the nobler sense which they would imply, but with that dangerous consciousness of brute strength, destructive to the spirit and tempting to emulation in paths leading to the abyss in which so many promising democracies have perished. To gain the Hawaiian islands by the loss of our belief in "a government of the people, for the people, and by the people," is a costly exchange. To obtain Cuba and Porto Rico at the expense of an increased standing army and navy is to pay a deadly price. To surrender the Monroe doctrine for the Philippines is to demonstrate that something more than the Spanish squadron went down under Dewey's guns at Manila. The old chart and compass which have served so well to keep the country clear of the rocks and shoals of international greed will

be of little use on this new voyage of imperialism. Lincoln's Gettysburg address and Lowell's classic defence of democracy must be suppressed at Honolulu because they are dangerous utterances under a despotic oligarchy. Every politician henceforth must keep two sets of principles, one for home, the other for colonial consumption, and speak with double tongue.

Hardly a single current reform movement has escaped injury from the war. The women who rebel against taxation without representation will have a difficult task to prove that they are entitled to suffrage more than the disfranchised masses of the Sandwich Islands. The advocates of the single tax will be met on every hand with worse conditions and multiplied taxes, the direct legacy of the late war, to which so many of them consented. Already the land-grabbers are organizing to possess the valuable lands in the new domains acquired by stealth and bloodshed. The civil service reformer will find increased obstacles to surmount. The spoilsmen are now scenting the offices to be established. The labor unions will have food for contemplation in heavier taxes and a fiercer struggle for employment. In their revolt against injustice, they must reckon with soldiers whose only duty is to obey unthinkingly the orders of the powers that be. They have helped enthrone a despotism by acquiescence and cannot wonder when militarism produces increased national poverty and degradation, as it has in Italy and Spain.

England has been held up as an example of success in the foreign extension of her empire. Instead, it has been a monumental mistake. It is true that in her many colonies she has thrown the protection of constitutional government over the white man, and wisely kept open ports for the commerce of the world, but for the races she holds in subjugation for selfish ends, liberty is a stranger. John Morely has pictured the truth in these graphic words addressed to his own countrymen :

"First you push on into territories where you have no business to be, and, in our case, where you had promised you would not go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment, and in these wild countries resentment means resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious, and that their act is rebellion; this in spite of your own assurance that you have no intention of setting up a permanent sovereignty over them; fourthly, you send a force to stamp out the rebellion; and fifthly, having spread bloodshed, confusion, and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this territory would be left in a condition which no civilized power could contemplate with equanimity or with composure. These are the five stages of the Forward Rake's Progress." I am a lover of the English people, and proud of their real progress in morals and philanthropy, but I distrust and fear every honeyed word now used to lure the United States from its right policy of non-interference with old-world quarrels. India has no love for its oppressor, and its volcanic condition is the nightmare which disturbs the sleep of English statesmen when Russia pushes its remorseless extension in the direction of British Indian domain. Behind the diplomatic duel with Russia is India, and in the threatening clash of arms, no wonder that the lion wants the eagle's help. It will be a foolish bird to lend itself as such an ally.

Anglo-Saxon civilization has a rhetorical sound, but fine words cannot hide its barbaric record. In this country it has sheltered negro slavery, robbed and murdered

Where is the flag of England?

Seek the lands where the natives rot;
Where decay and assured extinction
Must soon be the people's lot;
Go search for the once glad islands,
Where disease and death are rife,
And the greed of a callous commerce
Now battens on human life!"

Are we to repeat these infamies in the abused name of civilization? Our nobler part is self-purgation and freedom. Emerson voices it:

"Be just at home; then write your scroll

Of honor o'er the sea,

And bid the broad Atlantic roll,

A ferry of the free."

To be the land of refuge for all hunted and down-trodden peoples is a glory exceeding all conquest and extension of empire. To emancipate our great continent from land monopoly, recognizing the right of all mankind to the use of the earth, and to declare absolute free trade with all nations, would lay the basis of a civilization which no narrow prefix of Anglo-Saxon could describe. It would include the human race.

If my strain has seemed too sombre, it is not because I despair of the republic; but with the example of previous republics, wrecked on this rock of foreign empire, how can we be hopeful if the present course is shaped by the approval of the people?

I do not believe that the case is understood. Often in the recollection of the present generation, when dangers were imminent, and escape seemed impossible, the plain people, though liable to be mistaken, and slow to appreciate the situation, have at last averted the catastrophe. Our appeal therefore is to them. Instead of acquiescing in the suppression of vital principles as is now urged, we must assert and reiterate them with uncompromising distinctness.

The Declaration of Independence is not a glittering generality. Lincoln and Lowell, and not the politicians who usurp the public gaze, are the true prophets of democracy. The nation must be held to its solemn promise to give self-government to Cuba, and we must insist upon the same in Porto Rico and Hawaii. Regarding the Philippines, as long as the expression of opinion can have weight in determining the national policy, let us protest against their retention in any form. Considering our distinct failures with subject races within our own borders, to annex millions of half-civilized and savage Pacific Islanders indicates a madness inviting destruction. Republics are unfitted by their principles for holding colonies in practical slavery, no matter how benevolent the intention may be. Hands off the dangerous Philippines!

Spain might well celebrate with genuine gratitude her deliverance from these distant and accursed possessions wherein her vast treasure has been squandered, and thousands of her youth have found a graveyard. Hereafter the burden upon the backs of her poor will grow lighter,

and mothers will weep less when the man-child is born. In conclusion I wish again to emphasize the duty of peace men to make conscience paramount to law or party. We have too long been in fetters to the fetich of patriotism, not unnaturally, because in the Civil War patriotism was on the side of truth and liberty. But as an unreasoning sentiment nothing can be more pernicious or more calculated to enslave the mind. I think that Tolstoï does not exaggerate when he affirms that "patriotism produces only lies, violence and murder."

I thrill with enthusiastic reverence at Renan's noble declaration. After the destructive invasion of his country and the burning of his own house by the Prussian soldiers, his companions were hot with sentiments of revenge. "No vengeance !" cried the great writer, "Perish France, rather! Perish the idea of country! Higher still the kingdom of duty and reason!"

When men can bring themselves to that ideal position, even though they be few in number, the knell of armies and battles is sounded. The universal conscience to-day condemns war, and every individual revolt against it, like Van de Ver's, will be, as Tolstoï says, like the drop of water trickling through a dyke, the removal of one brick from an immense edifice or the undoing of a knot in the strongest net. The destruction of the dyke, the edifice and the net will have begun.

"The refusal (to serve as a soldier) will be followed by an increasing number of refusals," says the great Russian non-resistant. "And when there have been enough, suddenly the very men (and they are legion), the very men who yesterday still said that we cannot live without war, will declare that they have for a long time been proclaiming its stupidity and immorality, and that they advise everybody to follow the example of Van de Ver. And of war and armies, as they actually exist to-day, only the memory will remain. This time is at hand."

MOHONK CONFERENCE ADDRESSES.

Methods of Promoting Arbitration.

BY REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D.

Our text this morning is "How?" Carlyle somewhere says that the insight of genius consists in co-operating with the real tendency of the world. And this is true, because the real tendency of the world is given to it by the hand of its Creator and Governor. That Creator is committed to international arbitration, because he is pledged to ultimate peace. The real tendency of the world involves the full coming of democracy and the completion of the organization of industry. We are entered upon the final stage of industrial development, which is the organization of a world industry. This world-tendency involves also the complete development of a worldlife, a world-conscience. And all these involve ultimate international arbitration. Some one doubtingly savs, "Is international arbitration possible?" I reply, "No, it is not possible, it is inevitable. It is for us to hasten its coming, and that can best be done by intelligently co-operating with the real tendency of the world.

How? I think we should all agree in the general answer that it must be done by educating public opinion and the public conscience. Washington said, "In proportion as the structure of a government gives effect

to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion be enlightened." In a democracy the structure of government gives all effect to public opinion hence among us it is imperative that public opinion and the popular conscience be enligthened. How?

Arbitration, like every other reform, divides society into three classes; its friends, who are few; its enemies, who are few; the indifferent, who are many. If the reform succeeds, it must win its victory from the indifferent; hence the problem is how to reach the indifferent. The pulpit cannot reach them; it is the interested who come within its reach. Extended investigations show that more than one-half of the people of the United States never enter any church, Protestant or Catholic. The press will not reach the indifferent; the daily press has very little influence touching moral reforms, for it is partisan, and as such it is distrusted. The religious press does not reach the hands of those who never attend church. Conventions are good; they influence those who attend, but the indifferent stay away because they are indifferent. We print papers, we publish pamphlets, we write books, and it is the interested who buy them, the indifferent do not. We have reached those we did not need to reach, and we have failed to reach those who needed our message. The ordinary propaganda of reforms does not answer this question, "How shall we reach the indifferent?"

Public opinion can be educated only by the truth. If the indifferent do not care enough for the truth to come and get it, and will not buy it, we must care enough for it and for them to carry it to them. If it is essential to get Mahomet and the mountain together, and the mountain will not come to Mahomet, there is a perfectly simple and obvious solution, Mahomet must go to the mountain.

How shall it be done? If pastors were to undertake it, they would have to be miraculously multiplied like the loaves and fishes. But there is an agency at the hand of every pastor, entirely equal to so great a task. In every community we have our Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the Baptist Union, and similar bodies whose aggregate membership is now about five millions in the United States. It is entirely practicable to divide a community between its several churches assigning a district to each, and for each pastor to subdivide his district, assigning a dozen or fifteen families to each messenger. Enlist these young people and we have a machinery simple, effective. If even one in ten of these young people, pledged to Christ and to moral reforms, should distribute a dozen leaflets once a month, they would reach six million families, with seventy-two million leaflets, in a year.

This work has already begun. During the past year this plan has been presented to over six hundred clergymen, and without an exception they have accepted it. It has been presented to many of the most eminent men in the United States, including many hard-headed business men; and they say, without exception, that is the thing to do. Spencer Trask said to me, "It has possibilities that are simply illimitable." Robert Ogden, whom you know as a great business man identified with many lines of Christian work, said to me, "This appeals to me as nothing else that I know of." Richard Watson Gilder said, when the plan was explained to him, "I do not see how we can save the country without it." Already many of the best minds in the country are identi

fied with it, and the leaflets are being prepared. If leaflets on arbitration were written, they could by this method be brought to the attention of the million, and carried to the indifferent. Some of them, it is true, would go into the waste-basket, but a decreasing number as the people learned their value. The conscience of the million would be quickened, the public opinion of the million would be enlightened; and that means the consummation of the reform.

We can do it, because we must. Immanuel Kant said, "I ought, therefore I can." And Saint Paul's dictum was, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." This work must be done, therefore it can be done.

Natural Forces that Make for Peace.

BY PROFESSOR JOHN B. CLARK, LL.D.

and

The object we are desiring and working for is completely guaranteed, as I think, by certain forces of evolution which will bring the result, sooner or later, sooner rather than later, whether we work well or ill. I do not conceive of this particular work as a reform of that type in which the moral forces of society have to gather themselves together to resist and suppress the evil forces of society. Though that were the case, they would ultimately triumph, and would suppress war and all other evils; but long before such a triumph as that can possibly come, war will have been suppressed in any case. I do not believe that the purely moral forces will have the opportunity to suppress war unaided, though they will contribute greatly to that result.

The world-state was alluded to, very happily and impressively, this morning. The formation of such a state involves the suppression of warfare. The world-state, as a political entity, is yet in a rudimentary condition; but the world-society is now far more advanced in its evolution, and is rapidly approaching that condition in which it will carry with it large political results. It will advance the world-state to a far greater stage of perfection, and one in which warfare can hardly exist.

In a previous conference it was my pleasure to call the attention of those present to certain economic solidarities that are paying very little attention to national lines, and that tend very powerfully, even now, to make war impossible. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war there was a universal protest from the labor organizations of France, on the one hand, and of Germany, on the other, against the declaration of war by either of those states. When the Venezuela matter was pending, and a possibility of war between this country and England appeared, similar protests were made by the labor organizations of this country (by the Central Labor Union of Boston in particular) and a considerable number of the labor organizations in Canada. In 1896 a representative convention of laborers, delegates from all countries in the world, registered a declaration committing organized labor, the world over, to a policy of repressing warfare on any and every occasion. I talked with one of the American leaders in that movement, and learned from him what I had suspected was the case as to their motives in pursuing that policy. He said, "It is not because we are especially tender-hearted; it is because we have another war on hand." It was the feeling that the solidarity of labor, the world over, in its warfare

against the employers of labor, is so important that the break occasioned by an international war would be disastrous.

Exactly such a solidarity of capital the world over does not exist; capital is not universally organized for warfare against labor. It is organized, in its own way, however, and the break occasioned by war is most disastrous on the capitalistic side. It is bound to be almost equally disastrous on the side of enterprise, and that class of people whom we term technically entrepreneurs, employers of both labor and capital, will protest with more energy even than the laborers themselves against the disruptions and disturbances and destruction occasioned by war.

Here are three great interests that are growing into a world-wide solidarity; but they by no means exhaust that development which we call the formation of a worldsociety growing toward a world-state. Sociology has some terms that signify much; it speaks of the "social mind," the "social consciousness," the "social conscience." This means that in finer and subtler ways the world as a whole is organizing itself, as states are already organizing themselves, and as communities and societies are already organizing themselves, in such a way that a complete interdependence of individual upon individual, however remotely separated, will reveal itself. The action of the whole will become subjected to a general law; and when that comes war will be impossible. And that is coming, not in consequence of any strenuous and rather discouraging effort of moral forces to subdue economic forces, but in consequence of a hearty and cordial co-operation of the economic forces themselves with the moral forces that are struggling toward higher and remoter ideals. So I say that the moral forces alone will never have the opportunity to suppress war; for long before the great consummation when they shall have regenerated the human race and made impossible not only war but much smaller evils, war will have become a faint recollection of the past, hardly conceived of as a possibility.

This movement has very lately received marked acceleration, the world over. I consider that the world, economically, is going through a transition which will continue to promote that movement and make it more general, and which will particularly affect our own country. For when the time comes that all civilized nations depend less upon agriculture and more upou commerce and manufactures, when they cater to export trade, and are seeking, here, there and everywhere, for outlets to their products, there will come a great increase of interdependence and a closer relationship between men of different countries. There will be a multiplying of those ties, the breaking of which means disaster, and whenever it threatens to take place, encounters a worldwide and irresistible protest. Our own country is now passing, as I think, through such a transition as England passed through in the thirties, when agriculture was no longer the dominant occupation, and when there were developing the "industries of increasing returns." They are the industries, like manufactures and commerce, which pay better the larger the scale on which they are conducted; agriculture, on the contrary, pays less and less per unit of capital as you press more heavily on the capacities of the soil. Our country, I say, is passing through that transition from one type of

industry to the other; and this will compel it to cater more and more to foreign markets, and to tie itself more and more firmly, whether through annexation of territory or not, to every part of the world, civilized and uncivilized.

In the forties this country was a great carrier and a considerable trader; but the things which it carried away were crude products. That type of commerce is neces sarily limited in its operations and scope. It was facilitated by the fact that we were shipbuilders, having in our forests the proper material for making ships, and in our population the proper ingenuity to make ships that would sail rapidly and command high rates for freight. We lost that position in the carrying trade when ships came to be made of iron and steel, for we were then under some disadvantages in the building of iron and steel ships. But we are regaining it, or are about to do so; for the United States is the natural home of the steel industry and of the ship-building industry for the world as a whole. I ask you to wait, not one year nor five, but a little longer, and see whether you do not observe tendencies which verify that statement. We shall be a manufacturing and commercial people, binding ourselves more intimately to every country in the civilized world. We shall multiply these solidarities, we shall do much to develop a world-state, we shall make ten-fold more difficult the breaking of ties between nations and ten-fold more unpopular the proposition to go to war.

In the end moral forces will do greater things than that which I have said they cannot now do, by reason of a lack of opportunity. Picture to yourself a perfect citizen and put him in a perfect state, and you have what moral forces alone will produce ultimately. But out of much more imperfect material will be developed a state in which war at least will be suppressed, though lesser evils will continue.

The Outlook for Arbitration.

BY REV. GEORGE E. HORR, D.D.

Editor of The Watchman.

Mr. President, -The best tendencies of our time are altogether in line with the cause for which we have been thinking and planning. Professor Clark, in his admirably clear and just statement, has shown us that a sound sociology and a just industrial system work against war. Who doubts that the best political thought of our time also is moving in the same direction? What a significant testimony it was that the treaty for arbitration with England should have commanded an absolute majority in the United States Senate, and that it only failed by three or four votes of gaining the necessary two-thirds majority, and that, as Mr. Mead showed last year, those who represented the most cultivated and intelligent and progressive communities voted for that treaty. Who doubts to-day that the influence of Christianity is mightily in favor of this movement? For there is nothing that comes in a human heart or life that makes it so large and generous, so world-embracing in its interests, as Christian faith.

Contrast with that disposition the spirit of war. To my mind, the worst thing about war is not its waste of treasure, it is not its carnage, is not the fearful and bloody scenes that we associate with it. The most ter

rific effect of war is upon the hearts and consciences of the people who engage in it. Think of seventy millions of people inspired with a spirit of hate, of revenge, of desire of destruction! That is the fearful thing about war. We contrast it with the temper of the gospel and who of us can doubt that the spirit of love and fellowship and service is to triumph over that of revenge and hate? As much as we believe in Christianity itself, we believe that we are upon the verge of the time when wars shall

cease.

Not only is this the temper of our own people, but it is the temper of the leading men in foreign nations. I undertake to say that if President McKinley, if Lord Salisbury, if the chancellors of Russia and Germany, if M. Hanotaux, if Signor Crispi and Senor Sagasta, had been in this Conference during the last three days, they would have heard very little with which they would disagree. They would tell us that they believe that armies and navies must be maintained as an international police, but that they need not be maintained for the assertion of claims and rights against other nations, and certainly not for aggression. Look at what has happened in the last three great wars; the Russo-Turkish war resulted in a victory for Russia, but the powers stepped in and tore up the treaty of San Stefano and the result of that war was decided by the diplomatists of Europe and not by arms. It seemed that the China-Japan war was ended by the treaty of Shimonoseki; but France and Germany and Russia stepped in and the result of that conflict also was determined by negotiation and diplomacy. The war between Greece and Turkey has just closed, and within the last few days the powers have decided what shall be its result, and Thessaly is to be restored to Greece.

Some things have been said in this Conference against the Concert of Europe, with which one cannot entirely agree. The Concert of Europe did, indeed, fail to intervene in behalf of the Armenians; but we forget the immense benefits which have resulted from the concert of

the powers. For the last five years it has held the armies of Europe by the throat, preventing them from flying at one another. One of the best tokens of international peace, the best augury of international arbitration, is the fact that the powers of Europe could agree in that concert, uniting upon the basis not of their differences, but of their agreements.

The pessimist has the advantage of seeming to be profound; the optimist is usually characterized as superficial. There are a great many facts that can be adduced against such an optimistic view as has been presented; but the multiplicity of facts does not necessarily increase their significance. A single patch of blue sky may be more. significant than the uncounted cloud-banks; a single note of a robin may be more significant than the silences of the forest; a single twig of pussy-willow growing by the margin of a swamp may be more significant than the frozen earth. I believe that when we select the really significant facts in modern life they point toward a mighty onward advance of the movement for which we stand. It will come to its fruition as the spring comes. Did you not notice this year how we seemed in a single week to pass out of the chill and gloomy and forbidding features of winter into the warmth and sunlight and verdure of the spring. It may be that this movement which we represent is already trembling upon the verge of a mighty and blessed change like that.