President Roosevelt invited the nations to call the conference, but has recently deferred to the Emperor of Russia as the proper party to call the nations together again.
Should the proposed periodic congress he established, we shall have the germ of the council of nations, which is coming to keep the peace of the world, judging between nations, as the Supreme Court of the United States judges to-day between states embracing an area larger than Europe. It will be no novelty, but merely an extension of an agency already proved upon a smaller scale. As we dwell upon the rapid strides towards peace which man is making, the thought arises that there may be those now present, who will live to see this world council established, through which is sure to come in the course of time the banishment of man-slaying among civilized nations.
I hope my hearers will follow closely the proceedings of the Hague conference, for upon its ever-extending sway largely depends the coming of the reign of peace. Its next meeting will be important, perhaps epoch-making. Its creation and speedy success prepare us for surprisingly rapid progress. Even the smallest further step taken in any peaceful direction would soon lead to successive steps thereafter. The tide has set in at last, and is flowing as never before for the principle of arbitration as against war.
So much for the temple of peace at The Hague. Permit me a few words upon arbitration in general.
The statesmen who first foresaw and proved the benefits of modern arbitration were Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay and Grenville.
As early as 1780 Franklin writes, "We make daily great improvements in Natural, there is one I wish to see in Moral, Philosophy—the discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting each other's throats." His wish was realized in the Jay Treaty of 1794, from which modern arbitration dates. It is noteworthy that this treaty was the child of our race and that the most important questions which arbitration has settled so far have been those between its two branches.
It may surprise you to learn that from the date of the Jay Treaty, one hundred and eleven years ago, no less than five hundred and seventy-one international disputes have been settled by arbitration. Not in any case has an award been questioned or disregarded, except, I believe, in one case, where the arbiters misunderstood their powers. If in every ten of these differences so quietly adjusted without a wound, there lurked one war, it follows that peaceful settlement has prevented fifty-seven wars—one every two years. More than this, had the fifty-seven wars, assumed as prevented by arbitration, developed, they would have sown the seeds of many future wars, for there is no such prolific mother of wars as war itself. Hate breeds hate, quarrel breeds quarrels,
