NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

Business Men and International Arbitration.

Why business men should promote international arbitration.— 1. Because the industrial, financial, and commercial interests of all nations, and of all sellers, buyers, and producers, are now so closely interwoven, and the prosperity of each is so dependent on the prosperity and on the producing or purchasing power of others, that the loss or injury of one must necessarily become to some extent the loss or injury of all.

2. Because peace and good-will between the nations are essential for the prosperity of all, and war is as certain to result in disturbance and disaster for business interests as it is in suffering and death for the soldiers who face the horrors of the battlefield. Even the fear of war is sometimes sufficient to check the wheels of industry and commerce, to turn confidence into panic, and to increase greatly the risks and losses, as well as the taxes and expenses of business men.

3. Because there are times when international arbitration is the only means by which war can be avoided without submission to injustice or dishonor.

4. Because international arbitration is a proved success, and not a mere theory or experiment. As one of the many evidences of this it may be stated that in the last century nearly two hundred cases submitted by thirty-seven nations were settled by arbitration or joint high commissions, and sixty-three of these cases were submitted during the last decade. Since 1898 twenty-six nations, representing more than five-sixths of the territory and population of the globe, have united in establishing at The Hague a permanent court for the pacific settlement of all international disputes that may be submitted to it.

5. Because experience has shown that arbitration is not only a practically infallible means for preventing a war, but that it is also so effective in removing the desire for war and promoting friendship that there is no need for any form of coercion to enforce the decision. This is the natural result of a full presentation of both sides of the case, the carefully considered opinion of disinterested arbitrators, the modifying effect of time on human passions, and the knowledge that there can be no suspicion of weakness or timidity in accepting an adverse decision.

6. Because business men can do more than any others to convince the people that war should be classed with the duel and the old "trial by battel" as something too absurd, too wicked, and too horrible to be tolerated; and that arbitration should be regarded by all men and all governments as a matter of course in every dispute that cannot be settled by friendly negotiations.

7. Because if it should ever be possible to lighten the burdens of industry and commerce by checking the increase or securing a reduction in the great armies and navies of the world, it will only be when there shall have been such a general development of public opinion in favor of international arbitration as a substitute for war that it will have become the settled policy of all the leading nations.

How business men can promote international arbitration.—1. By making use of favorable opportunities to discuss its advantages with others, and especially with editors, officials, and men of influence in public affairs.

2. By having copies of this circular sent to all the members of their business associations with, if practicable, an official note or indorsement recommending its careful consideration.

3. By having in each business association a standing committee authorized to indorse and advocate international arbitration on all suitable occasions, and to urge a reference to The Hague court of every dispute that cannot be settled by diplomatic methods.

4. By providing that the addresses of such committees shall be sent to the secretary of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, Mohonk Lake, N. Y., so that he can from time to time submit for their consideration such cases as may seem to call for special action.— Circular issued by the Mohonk Conference.

Thirteenth International Peace Congress. - The Thirteenth International Peace Congress is to meet in Boston during the first week of October, the opening session to be on Monday evening, October 3, followed by morning and evening sessions during the succeeding four days. There has been but one meeting of the congress in America before, that in connection with the Exposition at Chicago in 1893. It is hoped that the coming Congress will be the largest and most important since the revival of the congresses in 1889.

The place of the United States in the history of international arbitration and the peace movement is a proud one. No delegation was more influential at The Hague conference than our own; and Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, one of the French members of The Hague court and the leader of the arbitration movement in France, has recently declared that the action of our government, in promptly sending to The Hague the Pious Fund case, and still more in insisting upon the reference there of the Venezuela cases, has done more than anything else to hasten the regular use of the tribunal and to advance its prestige among the nations.

To promote popular education as to the duty of supplanting the war system by rational and legal methods, of the speedy reduction of armaments and the application of the vast sums spent upon them to constructive ends, and of the better general organization of the nations in their mutual relations, is the object of the International Peace Congresses. The American Committee of the congress to meet here in October asks the co-operation of the American press in making known to our people the purposes and plans of the congress by such reprints or notices as may be possible of the circulars of information which will be issued from time to time during the ensuing months, as the arrangements for the congress develop, and by generous editorial support.- Circular of the American Committee.

Boston's Place in the Peace Movement. The International Peace Congress of 1904 is, by vote of the congress at Rouen last year, to meet in the United States; and the meeting has been fixed for the first week of October, in Boston. The choice of Boston as the place for the congress gives special interest at this time to Boston's history in connection with the peace movement.

To Boston belongs the honor of having founded the first influential Peace Society in the world, and of having made herself, from the hour of its founding to the present, the most influential seat of education in this cause, which men are today coming to see to be the world's most commanding cause.

In June last the city dedicated on her Public Garden, on the centennial of the beginning of his great ministry in Boston, a statue of William Ellery Channing. It was in Channing's study, on the day after Christmas in 1815, that the Massachusetts Peace Society was born; and among the many things for which America and the world hold Channing in high honor, he has no greater glory than that earned by his lifelong service in the cause of peace.

The one Fourth of July oration in Boston which is historic and ever memorable was that by Charles Sumner, in 1845, on "The True Grandeur of Nations;" and among the many things for which the world honors Charles Sumner, it honors him for nothing more than that he was true throughout his public life to the "declaration of war against war " with which he thus began it, putting into his speeches in the Senate the gospel which Channing preached in the pulpit, the gospel of the Declaration of Independence and the Sermon on the Mount. It was in the Old South Meeting House, on Christmas day, 1820, when he was nine years old, stirred by the eloquence of Josiah Quincy, the great mayor, addressing the Peace Society, that the boy Charles Sumner received those deep and lasting impressions which, confirmed as he closed his college life by the solemn words of William Ladd, in

the old courthouse at Cambridge, moved him to consecrate himself to the gospel of peace; and the life of the man, down to the last hour, when he bequeathed a fund to Harvard College for an annual prize for the best essay on the methods by which war may be permanently superseded, showed how well that vow was kept. Boston rejoices that the spires of the Old South Meeting House and Park Street Church still stand, pointing to heaven, in her busy streets. Among the many things which command our reverence for those sacred structures, few are more appealing than the fact that within their walls at Christmas time for many years, first for a long period in the one, and then for a long period in the other, were held the annual meetings of the Peace Society. It was at the first meeting held in Park Street Church, in 1849, four years after his Fourth of July oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations,” that Sumner gave his still greater oration on The War System of Nations "the most powerful impeachment of war, and the war spirit, I confidently declare, ever framed in a single address by the hand of man.

Channing has paid the fitting tribute to Noah Worcester, the great-minded founder of the Massachusetts Peace Society, and I do not need to do it; but we may never forget that his "Solemn Review of the Custom of War," published in Boston in 1814, was long the chief document of the peace cause, and that his able and noble organ, The Friend of Peace, was the pioneer peace journal in the world. Sumner has told what he owed and what the world owed to William Ladd, the founder of the American Peace Society, in which the early Massachusetts one was merged, and which has its headquarters in Boston, and I do not need to do it; but let Boston and America forget not that heroic life. I do not need to tell, for it has been well done by the eminent secretary of the Peace Society, the story of the long campaign of education, by book and pamphlet and lecture and convention, and what is today the ablest international journal in the world, by which the great cause of the world's peace and order has been promoted in Boston. From that Christmas time in 1815 to this hour, devotion and zeal have never flagged, and the leadership taken at the beginning has never been lost. Among the twenty-two members of the original society, formed in Channing's study, were the governor of Massachusetts and the president of Harvard University. Within four years the membership rose to a thousand; and among those in the ranks from 1815 to the present have been the noblest spirits of the city and the state. Out of the society's midst came the impulse to the great international Peace Congresses in Europe in the middle of the last century. The London Congress of 1843 sprang from its action; and this was the precursor of the memorable series a few years afterwards. Those congresses, the first at Brussels in 1848, the second at Paris, under the presidency of Victor Hugo, and with an attendance of two thousand persons, in 1849, and others at Frankfort and London, registered the high-water mark of the peace movement - a mark which now, as the new century opens, it is our duty-let it be our high resolve—to leave far behind. Of the twenty delegates from the United States at the great Paris Congress, thirteen were from Massachusetts; of the sixty at London in 1851, one-fourth were from Massachusetts. Much more significant, it was, I repeat, from Massachusetts that the impulse to those historic international congresses came. Elihu Burritt venerable name was the original and the chief organizing force; and his word at Brussels, at Paris, at Frankfort, at London, was the strong constructive word. "A High Court of Nations!"- that was always his one definite demand, in the same old speech," as Dr. Hale used to denominate his own speech at Mohonk year after year, demanding the " Permanent International Tribunal" (Elihu Burritt's own term also), which the scoffers told him he would not live

to see.

The "American" proposition — that was what the congresses called Burritt's plea for the world court; and American, not Russian, it is not the conception of the Czar, but of Worcester and Channing and Sumner and Burritt, one Massachusetts citizen after another speaking it out. Channing had spoken it out with distinctness and detail in a memorial from the Peace Society to the president as far back as 1816; and Samuel Adams had broached it, in a memorial from the Massachusetts legislature to Congress, thirty years even before that.

Son of Connecticut, it was as a citizen of Massachusetts, his home at the heart of the commonwealth, that Elihu Burritt did so much of his momentous work - how momentous few adequately realize for the peace and better organization of the world. It was in England that he organized the "League of Universal Brotherhood; but it was in Boston, years before, that he gave his first prophetic address on Universal Peace;" in Massachusetts that he issued year ofter year his Christian Citizen, his Peace Papers to the People, and his Olive Leaves. The effort, the successful effort, to secure cheap ocean postage, whose results in bringing people close together and helping scatter the fogs of ignorance, in which fears and jealousies and strifes are born, are incalculable, was the effort of Elihu Burritt. Each bursting mail bag on the "Cedric" and the "Oceanic" is his memorial; The Hague Tribunal is his memorial. But where is Connecticut's monument, where that of Massachusetts, to this great servant? When the last brigadier has had his bronze, and the last commodore, may we not hope for it?

The labors of men associated with our Peace Society have done more than any other to create the spirit which has made America's record in international arbitration the proudest in the world. The now great and influential International Law Association grew from its initiative. It has worked steadily for two generations for the tribunal finally created at The Hague; and at its initiative the Massachusetts legislature at its last session unanimously passed a resolution asking our government to co-operate with the governments of Europe in establishing a stated international congress, from which in the fulness of time it is hoped will develop the organization which will perform in some manner for the world legislatively the functions performed judicially by The Hague Tribunal.

At The Hague Conference itself no delegation achieved more than that of the United States. Its members have borne witness that their strength and influence were due largely to the strong support and earnestness of public opinion at home. No meetings in behalf of the cause in those critical days were so important as those held in Boston; and no individual American did so much as Boston's grand old man, Edward Everett Hale, who, going up and down the country, working with voice and pen, speaking often three times a day, made younger men blush by his untiring energy and devotion.

Such, briefly, is the record of the constructive services of Boston for a century in behalf of the world's peace and order. Surely there is not in all her proud history any prouder chapter; and surely now, when the International Peace Congress is to honor the United States by making it the place of its session, no other city has so high claim and title to its special choice as the city of Samuel Adams and Worcester and Channing and Sumner. The meeting within her borders of this great convention, which bids fair to prove the most impressive demonstration in behalf of the peace and better organization of the family of nations which the world has yet seen, will be a worthy crown to a long history of pioneering and heroic service.- EDWIN D. MEAD.

Baron d'Estournelles de Constant.-The American Committee of the International Peace Congress, which is to meet in Boston in October, has received a communication from Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, who is one of the French members of The Hague court and the leader of the arbitration movement in France, stating that he will be present at the Congress; and he will probably lead a strong French delegation. He will be one of the speakers at the great meeting which is planned in connection with the Congress, devoted entirely to the work and influence of The Hague Tribunal, with addresses by members of the tribunal from different nations.

Baron d'Estournelles, grand-nephew of Benjamin Constant, is one of the most interesting personalities of the French Chamber of Deputies. He is a man of large ideas, and strives to act and to lead France always to act upon the highest human principles. He represents in the chamber the district of Fléche in the department of Maine; but he had traveled as a diplomat before his election to the Chamber of Deputies, and his horizon reaches beyond that of officialdom, with its crises provoked by the quarrels of the lower factions in Parliament. He is not

bound to the narrow creed of a petty party catechism, and he strives to advance the solution of various political and social problems. Moreover, he has received the good education derived from contact with men and practical affairs. He has traveled much, has studied civil government extensively, both abroad and at home. A scholar graduated from the School of Oriental Languages, at the opening of his career he wrote several interesting books — Country Life in Greece, Galatea, a translation in modern Greek, and The Organization of Mohammedan Religious Sects. Admitted, after competitive examination, to the Office of Foreign Affairs, he was employed at first in the management of consulates, and then in the office of the minister. The day after the ratification of the Treaty of Berlin he went abroad as secretary of the commission in charge of fixing the frontier of Montenegro. He took the occasion to make a thorough study of Albania, then in a state of fanatical excitement. Chosen agent for Montenegro, he was almost immediately sent to London as second secretary of the French embassy; then to Tunis as first secretary under M. Paul Cambon. During the frequent absences of M. Cambon he had temporary charge of the embassy, and he brought home from his stay there an important work, French Government, written in the language of Tunis, and honored by the French Academy with the Therouanne prize.

After having completed, at the legation in Holland, his studies on colonial questions, he was, from 1887 to 1889, sub-assistant director in the Office of Foreign Affairs, in charge of Indo-Chinese and African affairs. Finally, he was counselor of the embassy, then minister plenipotentiary at London until his entrance into Parliament, in 1895.

The election of M. d'Estournelles in Sarthe was a very personal affair, for he presented himself apart from the local political organizations. His course in Parliament has also been very independent and very personal. Whether discussing the military conditions under which the conquest of Madagascar was made, or recommending the suppression of colonial senators and deputies, citing the example of England and Holland, he has not been afraid to break a lance over theories most firmly established in the prejudice of parliamentarians, when such theories appeared to him contrary to the rules of common-sense. From the first he refused to flatter the illusions of a vulgar, fanatical patriotism; and he exhorted his country to consider seriously and dispassionately the dangers from the competition of other peoples as a reality in a manner to arouse her, by the use of scientific means corresponding to her resources, courageously to break away from the sleepwalking and the routine of self-conceit which still delude so many Frenchmen. He undertook, in the large cities of the various departments of France, a thorough campaign of education in the matter of universal suffrage. He discussed the yellow peril, peace and international arbitration, and accustomed republicans to debate fearlessly the most acute questions of foreign policy.

Recently he has devoted himself especially to establishing the tribunal proposed by the conference at The Hague, where he was present, in company with M. Léon Bourgeois, to represent France. The two men are now associated as French members of the permanent tribunal. At the closing session of The Hague Conference Baron d'Estournelles made an impressive address, which was chiefly a prophetic look to the future. "Our work may be discussed and judged too modestly," he said, "but it will never be doubted that we have worked conscientiously for two months and a half. We came to The Hague from all parts of the globe, without knowing one another, with more of prejudice and of uncertainty than of hope. Today many prejudices have disappeared, and confidence and sympathy have arisen among us. It is owing to this concord, born of the devotion of all of us to the common work we have done, that we have been enabled to reach the first stage of progress. Little by little it will be universally recognized that the results obtained cannot be neglected, but that they constitute a fruitful germ. This germ, however, in order that it may develop, must be the object of constant solicitude; and this is the reason why we should all wish and hope that our conference is not separating forever. It should be the beginning; it ought not to be the end. Let us unite in the hope, gentlemen, that our countries, in calling other conferences such as this, may continue to assist in advancing the cause of civilization and of peace."