PEACE MOVEMENTS.
History to the Seventeenth Century (§ 1).
William Penn; the Eighteenth Century (§ 2).
The First Peace Societies (§ 3).
The First Period, till 1867 (§ 4).
Recent Period, from 1867 (§ 5).
Peace Congresses (§6).
Interparliamentary Union (§ 7).
Arbitration (§ 8).
First Hague Conference, 1899 (§ 9).
Second Hague Conference, 1907 (§ 10).
Recent Events (§ 11).
The international peace movement had its origin in the intellect, conscience, and heart which had been developed by Christianity. The preaching for centuries of the great group of truths lying at the very heart of Christianity — the fatherhood i. History of God, the essential oneness and to the Sev- brotherhood of mankind, love, goodenteenth will, forgiveness of injuries, disinter- Century. ested service of others, self-sacrifice, patience, and the like — however imperfectly these were put into practise, finally had such an effect on the mind and heart and upon the hereditary character of society that men began to ask whether there were not some way of getting
Peace Movements
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
rid of the savageries and brutalities which had so evidently nothing in common with the spirit and the virtues insisted on and blessed by the founder of Christianity, and so faithfully observed by the early Christians in general for more than a hundred years. Private war was first to begin to go; it has finally disappeared (see Wager of Battle, Duel). The duel is no longer resorted to in most of the civilized countries. No sooner had the seventeenth century opened than public war began to be arraigned by a few advanced Christian thinkers as unworthy of Christian princes and of peoples who claimed to five under the control of Christian principles. Indeed, this arraignment had already been made by Erasmus a hundred years before and still earlier by Wyclif. The "Great Design" of Henry IV was worked out with a view of bringing about a federation of Christian Europe to prevent so much quarreling and fighting. Though defective in being directed against the house of Hapsburg and against Islam, and in basing its reliance chiefly on force in the form of a large international army, it nevertheless was valuable in introducing into practical political thought the idea of federation as a remedy for the untold ills and lawlessness of a regime of brute force. Emeric Cruce, in his Nouveau Cynce (1623; Eng. transl., The New Cyneas of Emeric Cruce, Philadelphia, 1909), followed closely the underlying thought of the " Design " of Henry IV., but was more radical in his condemnation of war as irrational and incompatible with the Christian professions of Europe. His scheme for doing away with war proposed the establishment of an international arbitration tribunal at Venice (the first ever suggested) for the settlement of disputes. Hugo Grotius made his great plea, in his De jure belli acpacis (Paris, 1625), for the amelioration of war and for the application of arbitration in the adjustment of controversies between states on the basis of the ideals which Christian teaching had so long emphasized. In the middle of the same century George Fox (q.v.) demanded in the name of the Christian profession that all war should cease throughout Christendom, and that the very spirit of war should disappear from the souls of men.
These interpretations of the Christian spirit and
teaching were carried still further by William Penn
(q.v.) toward the end of the seventeenth century.
He carried the doctrine of peace, which lay enfolded
in the Gospel, to its logical limit. He felt that
governments, if they were to deserve
2. William the right to be called Christian in any
Penn; the real sense, should in their organization
Eighteenth and policies recognize and definitely
Century, follow the principle of peace. His
attempt to carry out his conclusion in
practise, in the founding and management of the
colony of Pennsylvania on peace lines, is one of the
most instructive episodes in the whole history of
civilization. The Christian ideal of the proper
attitude and relation of the nations to each other
reached its final and complete expression in his
"holy experiment," which, after two generations
of extraordinary success, at last broke down, though
only because men were " faithless and unbelieving."
The eighteenth century did little, until the time of Kant, in the way of peace work, except to repeat and emphasize the ideals which the previous century had produced. The Abbe de St. Pierre, in his plan for perpetual peace, followed closely the thought of Penn's Essay toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe (1693-94, reissued, Boston, 1891). At the end of the eighteenth century Kant gave to the world in Zum ewigen Frieden (Konigsberg, 1795) his famous conception of a world state, through which the perpetual peace of the world was to be secured. At the opening of the nineteenth century the peace movement entered upon its practical stage. The idealism of peace, which had of necessity to precede any practical work, had reached its culmination in expression. The hour had struck for an organized effort to secure, if possible, the realization of the great dreams of the two preceding centuries, which had so far not affected perceptibly, in a practical way, the relations of the nations. War was as universal as ever as the only practicable way of settling serious disputes between states. With Napoleon running his ruthless course, it looked as if war were destined to be eternal. Arbitration between independent and sovereign nations was virtually unknown. The so-called settlements by arbitration preceding that time had usually been between different branches of a family or a dynasty, or between vassal states, with the suzerain lord acting as arbitrator.
In 1815, when Napoleon's career came to an end,
the first peace societies were organized. For half
a dozen years previously the subject of organized
peace work had been under consideration both in
the United States and England. David Low
Dodge, a New York Presbyterian
3. The First merchant, wrote The Mediator's King-
Peace dom not of this World (New York, 1809),
Societies, the first pamphlet on this subject except the various manifestoes of the Society of Friends. In 1812 he published a still more important work, War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ. On Christmas Day, 1814, Noah Worcester, a distinguished Congregationalist, issued his famous Solemn Review of the Custom of War, which aroused the Christian conscience in both the United States and England. The next year in August, in his parlor in New York, Dodge founded the first peace society. The Ohio Peace Society followed. The day after Christmas of that year, 1815, Worcester, with the support of William Ellery Channint; (q.v.) and a few others, organized in Channing's study in Boston the Massachusetts Peace Society, which at once took the lead in peace work in the United States. Dr. Worcester immediately commenced the publication of The Friend of Peace, a journal which continued for twelve years. Thus the peace movement was fairly launched by men who were all distinctively Christian. In Great Britain a similar movement ran parallel to the American, beginning about the same time under the leadership of William Allen, a prominent member of the Society of Friends. The Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace (now called simply the Peace Society) was organized in 1816 by Allen and a few associates, and soon began the publication