THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
essentially, the establishment of a regular advisory congress of the nations, to meet periodically. This is the greatest step yet taken toward the establishment of universal and permanent peace. They further voted unanimously for the establishment of a Permanent International High Court of Justice with judges always in service and holding regular sessions. They could not agree on the method of selecting the judges, but they recommended to the governments to take the matter up, and to find a way of doing this that would satisfy all the nations. The conference therefore virtually laid the foundation of a supreme court of the world in accordance with the great ideals of Ladd, Burritt, Sumner and Jay, of Cobden, Bright, Richard, and Victor Hugo. The problem of a general treaty of obligatory arbitration to be signed by all the powers, though the subject of one of the greatest debates in the conference, was not fully solved, but it was advanced a long way toward final solution. The same was the case with the question of the immunity of private property from capture at sea in time of war, or, in other words, the permanent neutralization of all unoffending private commerce. These important subjects will, without doubt, constitute the chief features of the program of the next Hague Conference. Thus through the Hague conferences the principles and the practical ideals which the peace workers have, for nearly a hundred years, advocated, have been in the main approved by the governments of the world, and their full realization in no distant future assured.
Since the close of the second Hague conference in October, 1907, the peace movement has shown in various ways signs of extraordinary life and energy. All the peace and arbitration societies
have been carrying on their propaganda
n. Recent with increased earnestness and an
Events, enlarged faith in the speedy triumph
of the cause. Beyond their limits among the people at large, the movement has called forth much greater interest and activity than ever before. This increased interest has manifested itself in important journals and magazines, in the great chambers of commerce and boards of trade, in associations of business men, and in clubs of every description. It has likewise shown itself in the churches and in the educational institutions, in the fuller observance of special peace days, in oratorical peace contests, and in the giving of prizes for essays on various phases of the peace problem. The year 1908 was marked by an unusual number of events indicative of the strength and momentum which the movement for world peace has attained. The negotiation of special treaties of arbitration between the governments in pairs, begun four years before the second Hague conference, went steadily on, in accordance with the wish expressed by the conference. More than eighty such treaties had in 1909 been concluded, under the provisions of which all questions of a judicial order and those arising in the interpretation of treaties are for a definite period to be referred to the Hague court. The earliest of this class of treaties, those concluded in 1903, are now being renewed for another similar period. In the spring of 1908 the British govern-
ment, through the chancellor of the exchequer, established an international hospitality fund for the entertainment of foreign guests and deputations. This was the first time in history that a great power officially undertook the promotion of international friendship and good-will in a regular systematic way. The London Peace Congress of 1908 was received by the British government in a manner entirely unique. A deputation of twenty-four members of the congress, representing all the nations which had sent delegates, was received by the king and queen in Buckingham Palace in a very cordial and entirely sincere way. Two months later the Interparliamentary Union was received at Berlin, in the Reichstag building, by the German government with equal cordiality and generosity. The agreement between France and Germany in the autumn of 1908 to refer their Casa-Blanca difference to the Hague court was also a striking evidence of advance in the acceptance of the principles and ideals advocated by the pacifists. Up to that time no such agreement between these two powers had been possible.
But the greatest of all the European events, in its bearing on the strength of the peace movement, was the pacific revolution in Turkey, where one would have naturally supposed that no such pacific transformation could take place. But the Young Turk Party had become imbued with a sense of the moral value and the conquering power of the pacific methods and policies advocated by the friends of peace. These they employed in their efforts to transform the public opinion of the Turkish Empire, and in this way they were able to carry through their revolution and transform Turkey into a constitutional government, without the shedding of blood. The remission to China of a considerable portion of the Boxer indemnity, and the agreement between the United States and Japan setting forth the pacific intentions of the two governments in regard to the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the open door in the Far East, are likewise remarkable evidences of the new spirit and order which have begun to prevail within the family of nations.
Taking a comprehensive view of these various lines which the peace movement has followed in its evolution during the past century, keeping in mind the substantial accomplishments of the two Hague conferences, and noting the wide-spread interest in the cause at the present time, manifested both by the people and by the governments of the different countries, one is compelled to believe that the permanent peace of the world is no longer merely an ideal and a dream. The conclusion is unescapable that the world has already entered upon the practical realization of this ideal, and that the final culmination of it in the abolition of war and the complete organization of the world on a basis of goodwill, friendly cooperation, and the peaceful arbitration of all controversies is to be expected in the near future. Benjamin F. Trueblood.
Bibliography: E. u. Mead, The Literature of the Peace Movement, Boston, 1910; Prize Essay on a Congress o) Nations, ib., 1840; M. Jaehns, Ueber Krieg, Frieden und Kultur, Berlin, 1893; J. de Triao, Guerre et christianitmc, Paris, 1896; B. F. Trueblood, The Federation of the World, Boston, 1899; G. F. W. Holls, The Peace Conference at m