Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/852

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

referred to, well repay perusal and reperusal. It may truly be said that we do not as yet know in the full sense what liberty is, and it may be added that, if the military spirit resumes possession of the world, as it is threatening to do, we are not likely to know. In a well-written article on this subject by Mr. A. B. Ronne, in a preceding number (June, 1895) of this magazine, it was pointed out that, since the close of the war of secession, there have been many manifestations of a more arbitrary spirit in the Government of this country than the people had previously been accustomed to, and that the idea of "regulation" was altogether too much in the air. There is one thing to be said on this point, and that is, that the misuse of liberty leads to regulation. Were there only one nation in the world, that nation might fall under a tyranny if its citizens could not use their liberties aright. If peace helps liberty, liberty should take counsel of justice and moderation, so that Peace be not ashamed of her work. We must learn to curb in peace those lusts that lead to war. A nation whose own internal condition was wholly satisfactory could by no possibility be dragged into a war of aggression, and would run extremely little risk of having to wage a war of defense. In such a nation the feelings that prompt to war would be wholly lacking.

We began this article by referring to the fact that very serious impediments, which we were glad to believe were largely of a moral kind, seemed to stand in the way of war between civilized nations in the present day; and, even as we have been writing, news comes that the principle of arbitration is more and more commending itself to the common sense and common humanity of mankind. There seems at the present moment every probability that, as between England and the United States, that principle will ere long be adopted as a fixed and, as it were, constitutional mode of settling international differences; and if once this step is taken the effect on the world at large will be very marked. Governments that have not advanced to the same point will seem to occupy altogether an inferior position; and it will not be long before their subjects begin to inquire with no little urgency why they can not enter into similar treaties and, by so doing, put an end to the terrible tension and hideous waste of human labor which the present situation involves. An article in the February number of the new international magazine Cosmopolis—a happy omen, we take it, of the better times to come—reviews in a very interesting and encouraging manner the progress which the principle of arbitration has made in the world. Since 1872, we learn—that is, since the Alabama arbitration—"nearly forty cases have been settled by arbitration; the large majority of these refer to differences between American republics, or of European states with American republics. The United States referred ten dis-