President that the natives have no respect for the American government, which has not kept a war-ship at Apia. The British and German governments both keep war-ships in Samoan waters.

Commerce and the Cornstalk as Peacemakers.

BY EDWARD ATKINSON.

The greatest achievement in manufacturing is the final acceptance of the service of the bacteria which dwell in nodules attached to leguminous plants, peas, beans and the like, between the stalk and the root. Living there they dissociate the nitrogen of the atmosphere, and, dying, convert it through the plant to the nutrition of the soil, the beast and the man, assuring the complete renovation of the slave-stricken soil of the southland.

The historic event of the year is the recognition of the transfer of the dominion of iron and steel from Europe to the United States, thus conveying to the people of this nation the paramount power in the development of commerce, which has given supremacy to great Britain for more than a century.

The most notably discovery of the year works in two directions. The word to conjure with is "cornstalk." The claims are made, and apparently sustained, for the conversion of dry cornstalks into two useful substances, cornstalk meal freed from cellulose or pith, and dry pith or cellulose freed from cornstalk meal. The first may add to the cattle food of this country a digestible, nutritious food equal to the best of hay and more than equal in quantity to the present hay crop of the United States. Nearly the whole of this product of cornstalks has been previously wasted.

If the claims which are made about the use of cellulose in naval construction are sustained, it is possible, even probable, that all the existing large battleships of the navies of the world are worthless for offense or defense. It is possible, even probable, that the next development will be a steel ram enveloped in cornstalk cellulose, unsinkable and impregnable, before which every existing type of battleship or cruiser must go down, ending naval war and the necessity of coast defence. Nothing more visionary or apparently absurd can be put before your readers, yet such is the promise of the cornstalk.

I submit these facts as the best Christmas greeting that can be presented. They contain the promise of peace, goodwill and plenty. They lead to the reunion of the English-speaking people who have become more and more interdependent, serving each other's needs in the pursuit of commerce, which lives and moves and has its being in the mutual benefit of men and nations.

The science of commerce rests on mutual benefit and requires for its conduct probity, integrity, character and capacity. Its end is constructive; its motto, progress and human welfare.

The science of war may call for the same qualities in the individual, but the conduct of war rests upon lying, cheating and misleading the enemy, spying, ambushing and slaughtering the incredulous, getting advantage by these methods so as to strike an enemy in the back or on the flank in place of meeting face to face.

As surely as the science of war is destruction and

rapine, the science of commerce, construction and progress, so surely will commerce prevail, while war shall cease, either because it has become so destructive on land that none can meet its demands, or so innocuous upon the sea, under the dominion of the cornstalk, as to make it a subject of national derision-The Boston Globe.

Peace Among The Nations.

BY REV. SCOTT F. HERSHEY, PH.D. Christmas Sermon at the First Presbyterian Church, Boston. "For unto us a child is born, and his name shall be called the Prince of Peace." Isa. Ix. 6:

He who came from heaven as the Prince of Peace, came as a prince to implant the principles of peace, which are truth and uprightness, integrity and confidence, righteousness and goodwill, justice and love. He came to teach these principles, not as ethical theories, but as practical working rules in the common philosophy of the life of man, of the life of the community, and of the life of the nation. This kingdom of peace, beginning in personal life, widens to affect all the vital interests of the community, and to righteously direct the higher course of the nation; and even then it must remain a kingdom under limitations never designed of God, unless it passes into the vast field where operate the Christian nations, and there preserve the integrity alike of justice and love; that the commercial, educational and religious progress of the race may go on, undisturbed by the hand of strife.

This Prince of Peace came, as told in prophecy, to dwell among men, to open up in the widening horizon of their moral life a vision of humanity as a unit, a brotherhood, and to open out towards that coming unity of the race, held in the bonds of peace, he laid, as highways for men and nations to travel, the paths of good-will and love.

Christ came to call men to repentance; no less, he came to call nations to repentance. He came as a teacher to men, and invites them to learn of him the ways of moral and spiritual prosperity; he came, also, to teach nations, and he invites them to learn of him the ways of national rectitude and international happiness. He found men offending God and sinning against truth and righteousness, and he told them of their inevitable doom. He has the same gospel for nations. Conformity to righteousness invigorates national life and makes it stalwart in all those heroic virtues which extend and elevate national character; while the conspiracy of selfish ambition, or of malice and hatred, will eventually and unalterably sweep nations on to the doom which fell upon Babylon and Rome, which is unmistakably closing about Spain.

The American Republic, the most remarkable product ever brought forth by the union of government and law with liberty and equality, may fairly be called a Christian nation. It was colonized by a devout Christian people from many lands. The voice of prayer has never been dismissed from the councils of the nation. The national conscience is sensitive to the idea of the sovereignity of the Ruler of the Universe, who is Lord over all, and the national heart, which sometimes becomes somewhat asphyxiated by depraving political selfishness, is very responsive to the national faith that the providence of

God works through the affairs of the nation. The Christian thought of the nation, when united wields an influence which directs the policy of the nation in home affairs and foreign relations.

Our Republic, because of its geographical location on the globe, its advanced experiments in representative government, its enduring institutions, its rapid and vast progress, and its benevolent and missionary operations abroad, holds a commanding position in the attention and esteem of the leading nations. We, ourselves, should continue to cherish this position, and pay respect to the honorable relation which we sustain to the Christian world.

Aye, more; commanding as is this position in the great community of Christian nations, so imperative is our duty to maintain it and extend it, by cultivating towards these nations a course of action strictly just, honorably right, and broadly philanthropic. America, itself so highly favored in the philanthrophy of providence, can afford to make the effort to lead in showing goodwill to all nations.

Great Britain is the only nation whose position and influence, and consequently whose responsibility in conserving the interests of peace and just relations between nations, is commensurate with our own. The extent of her commercial operations and the great power of her diplomacy insure the way, while the dignity and persistence of her best Christian sentiment qualify her to take a lead in the vast work of establishing, upon unassailable grounds, the peace of the Christian world, a task to which the thought and energies of Christianity in the 20th century must be summoned.

A profound sense of duty, which is the greatest pressure which can bear upon the conscience of a Christian nation, we trust, will ere long both unify and energize American Christian sentiment to address itself with earnestness to cultivate among our own people and in our relations with other peoples the application of those just and righteous principles of national conduct which are sure to reduce the cause of international friction and the malice and hatred which so often aggravate such friction; and to proceed at the same time to secure such treaties of arbitration as will speedily lead to the establishment of a permanent tribunal to preserve international peace and encourage a higher walk of rectitude and honor among the Christian nations.

Two considerations of our national relation pre-eminently impose the duty upon American Christianity. I address myself to these considerations with the more interest because I have not seen them discussed together in this bearing upon our peace movement. The first pertains to America's diplomatic relations; the second to her peculiar relation to Great Britain.

America's international relations must of necessity become more complicated in the twentieth century than they have been in the nineteenth. In the coming century the political, commercial and industrial conditions of the world will act very largely independently of geography. The nations have come close up to us. In twenty-five years Tacoma will have a larger Asiatic trade than New York's present European trade. The diplomacy of the next century is to center about the Pacific rather than the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. While the Russian Bear throws one paw about the Black Sea and utters his sententious growl in the palace of the Sultan, he reaches with the other clear across Siberia to disturb the waters of the North Pacific. A master stroke in American statesmanship, and one which will yet make for the peace of the nations, was Mr.

Seward's purchase of Alaska. Japan is already feeling her way into international movements. China is in a fair way to become an international chess-board, wbich will produce an acute stage in American diplomacy. But six months ago Hon. John W. Foster, referring to the Russian advance on the North Asiatic coast, said: "We must reckon with another important element in the political and commercial concerns of the Pacific." Nineteen years ago General Grant, writing from Pekin, predicted that "in less than one-half a century Europe will be complaining of the too rapid advance of China. Many years ago Mr. Seward, the most far-seeing of our statesmen of the diplomatic class, uttered this prophecy: "The Pacific ocean, its shores, its islands and the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theatre of events in the world's great hereafter." The pending case of Hawaii is but an example of the American problems which are likely to rise up in the Pacific.

To steer the national course in safety and with honor to ourselves and to the name of Christ, who is our Prince, the nation will require wisdom and integrity of a high order. That we should make ready to meet these coming contingencies of international relations is but the exercise of common caution; and the best provision to meet these questions is to entrench, in the sentiment of the people, a policy for the settlement of international differences by judicial measures. They can not be met by preparations for war. A praiseworthy ambition for America, and one which would stimulate the better elements of our national life, would be to enter into rivalry with Great Britain to become the foremost leader of the Christian nations through the twentieth century. A study of the history and philosophy of national greatness and virtue prompts me to express the opinion that the nation which is most possessed with the wisdom and most infused with the Spirit of God, and best exemplifies in its moral conduct before all the world the life and light of the Prince of Peace, is most sure to take a commanding, permanent and wholesome leadership in the move for the unification of the Christian nations, for the good of the whole world.

The second consideration to which I allude bearing upon our relations with other Christian powers, is that of a tie with Great Britain so striking that it may be regarded as providential. The people of the American republic and of the British empire are no longer so nearly related in blood as they are identical in language.

Great fleets and armies are artificial institutions, wholly out of the realm of natural law, and not nearly so instructive to the student of providential movements as are, for instance, the migrations of races and the movements of languages. One of the most noticeable currents in the deep water movements of the nineteenth century is that of the geography of the English language. The natural significance of this, in its bearing on the future peace of the world, ought not to be disregarded.

The English language is now spoken in Great Britain and all her dependencies in Europe, while it is a regular branch of higher instruction in all the European universities, and is a growing tongue in the great commercial cities of the continent. In Egypt it has followed the belt of travel along the Nile, and in Asia the highways of trade until it spreads as a leaven over the vast empire of India. It spreads rapidly over Africa, and is being already used as the native tongue in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It is established in the Islands of the South Sea and will speedily replace the native dialects in Australia,

New South Wales, the New Hebrides, and the whole Polynesian group, and further north the Hawaiian group of islands.

English is the court language in Japan, and American publishers are sending a hundred thousand English school books annually to the schools of Japan. In the western continent it is the language in use throughout the British possessions, in the British West Indies and the Bermudas, and in our own mighty republic, in which the aboriginal dialects, and the Spanish, French, Dutch, Scandinavian and even German, are going down before the irresistible English tongue. "There was never a case," says a noted linguist, in which so nearly the same language was spoken throughout the whole mass of so vast a population as is the English now in America."

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The English is equally the language of the sea. than any other tongue it is spoken on the ships that sail the Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, the far way Asiatic seas, and even on the Suez Canal and in the fjords of Norway.

It has become a diplomatic language. Formerly the Latin, and then the French, was exclusively used in all conferences and treaties. But in the Berlin conference of 1889 between Great Britain, Germany and the United States for the first time the English was used in conference and treaty. This is a point of departure of considerable moment. The race of colonization, commerce and persistence in civilization will inevitably establish its own language as the universal tongue for international intercourse. It may fairly be assumed, without expectation of contradiction, that the English language will be the most universal tongue with the Christian nations by the middle of the twentieth century.

This fact has a most stupendous bearing upon the cause of peace. Unity of sentiment becomes doubly strong in the unity of language. The Hebrew was a language of cohesiveness, but not much practical flexibility. It was a language of religion, turning Godward; almost all its roots signifying divine forms of life or truth. The Greek was the tongue of the scholar, philosopher, artist and the poet, and is to be listed among the providential languages, but it lacked elements of popularity. The Latin became resonant in literature, and mostly through its adoption by the papal court, brought thrones and parliaments into subjection to it, but it was a language easily corrupted, and never fell to the favor of the great commercial nations. The French language had a smoothness and polish which made it seemly for the drawing room and court, but prevented that wider range of adaptability which must mark a universal tongue. The German, Dutch and Scandinavian languages, unfortunately for their interests, were developed by peoples of localized opportunities.

So it has remained for the English to fill the mission of a world language, such as must be used to convey the gospel of peace over the earth, and to become the vehicle for the conveyance, to all parts of the world, of those high and inspiring principles of Christian civilization which most certainly conserve the interests and happiness of humanity.

Our transcendent advantage of geographical location is fortified by the most solemn adjuncts ever qualifying a Christian nation for service, under the appointment of God, in the higher things of civilization. History and providence, geography and language, and above some of

these that peculiar sense of generosity and toleration which is one of the best fruits of our system of liberty and free institutions, give us exceptional qualifications and opportunity to become an advance guard among the Christian powers.

Thoughtful Christian men, both in the pulpit and the pew, should consider if we could afford as a Christian nation, under the measure of responsibility which rests upon us, longer to postpone, taking a very high ground against the evil of war and in favor of the blessedness of peace. It is now forty-eight years since Mr. Underwood, if I mistake not a senator from Kentucky, introduced in the United States Senate a memorial from Kentucky, "setting forth the evils of war and asking for a congress of nations which shall arbitrate disputed matters between different powers." Almost half a century ago, and the sentiment against war has grown so slowly that this same department of the government has but recently rejected a great treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which had the approval of every conservative and patriotic class of people in our country. No act so unseemly, un-Christian, and so offensive to the great bulk of our people has been committed by the Senate for many years.

If the controlling public sentiment stands for an agreement to submit all differences to the arbitrament of conscience and reason rather than to the sabre and gunpowder, no parliament or senate has the right to say nay.

That eminent peace man of England, John Bright, in deploring the war spirit manifest in a certain class of English hot-heads, says: "I ask, if there had been somebody sixty years ago to take this principle of non-intervention up, and to adopt it, and to carry it out in our government, should we not have escaped that long and odious war, with its expenditure of fifteen hundred millions of money-should we not have been free from the barbarism and degradation which now run riot over our populationand should we not have stood, not by force of arms, but by force of character and true greatness, infinitely more the arbiter of Europe, than we ever can be by the greatest fleets or the most powerful and enormous armies?" We may profit by the reflection of this English statesAmerica cannot prepare for her twentieth century greatness in the world by the building of fleets, the mobilization of armies and the fortification of coast cities. These things a great Christian nation, conscious of the uprightness of her motives and the rectitude of her course, no more needs than an upright Christian man, conducting his course in Christian manliness, needs to take lessons in pugilism or carry a revolver about his person.

man.

The Christ of God will not dispense the richest blessings of his kingdom until the nations of his name live together in peace. President Cleveland, in submitting the late treaty he had made with Victoria to the Senate, said, "The success of the experiment of substituting civilized methods for brute force as the means of settling international questions of right ought not to be doubtful." Victoria, in reporting the same treaty to her Parliament, said. "It is with much gratification that I have concluded a treaty for general arbitration with the President of the United States, by which I trust that all differences that may arise between us will be peacefully adjusted. hope that this arrangement may have further value in commending to other powers the consideration of the principle by which the danger of war may be notably abated."

I

My fervent prayer is that the anti-peace men, in the Senate and out of it, may soon become an extinct species in American citizenship. What we as Christian citizens should wish for our nation is that she should take up with a strong hand the cause of right, with a firm spirit pursue the course of honor, and with abiding purpose strive to obtain unto righteousness of national character, and set the star of her empire in the centre of her vision of an ultimate civilization called of God to seek peace, love and goodwill for all the race. In these last Christmastides of this century, as we look to God and pray "Thy kingdom come," we must not do it in mockery, but accompany our petition with a sincere effort to bring into the world His Kingdom which is of peace, no less than of love and grace.

The European Concert and Peace.

After enumerating a number of the events showing the general unrest of the nations and their disposition to act selfishly and alone, the London Spectator gives its judgment that the European Concert is powerless as an instrument of peace. Unfortunately the Spectator which is otherwise an able journal, has no great moral word to offer, to help the world find the way to peace. The excitement of war, and rumors of war, and of the checkmate movements of great, selfish armed powers, is too charming to the imagination of many great journals to allow conscience to sit often in the editorial chair. However, the Spectator pronounces the European Concert a failure. Here is its judgment:

"From these facts which are all patent and undeniable, what deductions? There are, we think, two, each of which is of some pressing importance. In the first place, the Concert neither is, nor can be, as Lord Salisbury hopes, "the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." That it is not is evident without discussion: each power, whenever irritated or excited by greed, obviously and avowedly seeks its own ends even at the risk of war; and we fail, we confess, to perceive, after much thought, how it can be. The only method would be to insist that any power, before it resorted either to violence or treats of violence, must lay its case before the great Tribunal; but would any one of the powers agree to that in any emergent or very serious case? Would Great Britain, for instance, agree that Europe should settle whether she should have any more foreign territory, or France submit to be told that she wanted too much in west Africa, or Russia agree to surrender her claims to the Turkish reversion, or even Austria bear to refrain from avenging her diplomatic honor, which appears to have been really insulted, at the bidding of any committee whatsoever? As to Germany submitting to Europe her claim to a naval station in China, she would suspect from the first that it would be rejected, all other powers being content, and would therefore never agree to plead. As for America, the states

no importance whatever? The suggestion is not reasonable, and the Concert therefore must as an instrument for compelling the continuance of peace be pronounced almost powerless. It may become powerful when the world is satisfactorily distributed, and it may be possible to decree that there shall be no territorial alteration; but until that happy stage in human progress has been reached it must, except as regards eastern Europe, be in the position of a court before which no one is compelled to plead, and which, if it does issue a decree, has no power with which, if any one resists, to compel obedience. It is, therefore, necessary that every power should be armed to the teeth, because it may be compelled to act alone; and in that necessity is, as it seems to us, the final condemnation of the Concert. It not only cannot ensure peace, but it cannot relieve that strain under which all the civilized nations are suffering more loss than they have ever suffered except from war. If the Concert really meant an approach of the nations towards mutual confidence it would render partial disarmament safe; but it does not mean this. On the contrary, during the whole time that it has existed every nation has been furnishing its arms, and spending millions more than usual in order to be ready against a catastrophe which can only occur if the jealousies of the nations, always smouldering, should be suddenly fanned to fever-heat. The Concert has given them no new sense of security, and no confidence that, as justice is sure to be done in the end, it is needless to be always prepared to defend yourself with your own weapons.

But then supposing all dreamy hopes are false, the Concert has at least preserved the European peace. Has it? That peace has, happily, been preserved; but whether the historian of the future will attribute the preservation to the Concert, or to the new alliances, or to the still newer dread which has sprung up among the kings and statesmen of the frightful consequences which a modern war might entail, remains a question to be settled. To our mind the second seems the stronger reason, not only because it involves the third, but because the alliances have destroyed a certain sense of hope which formerly inspirited the great governments. They were always looking for, and usually finding, allies, who in the nick of time either reversed the conclusions of battle, or protected the defeated from suffering too much. Now that Europe is distributed into two camps there are no allies to be hoped for, except, indeed, Great Britain, which, as the whole continent believes, will stand aside in magnificent selfishness taking no part, but when the combatants are exhausted, seizing all the possessions far away which she thinks would increase her profits or her prestige. The world expects the war, if it occurs, to be a war à outrance, and therefore avoids it, and expects it to be avoided. Duels are very rare when the duellists must fight across a handkerchief."

ment.

We take from a German paper the following summary of a lecture recently given at Heilbronn, Germany, by Pastor Otto Umfrid, of Stuttgart, one of the most vigorous, wise and untiring advocates of peace on the European continent.

The friends of peace find here and there that an

entirely false conception of them is held. They are often considered as fellows without a country, as senseless enthusiasts, etc. These prejudices, which often rise up like mountains, arise from the fact that people If we pass judgment upon us before they hear us. were as stupid as we are pictured to be, and should, for example, demand that Germany proceed singlehanded to disarm, people would be justified in casting us aside as they do pieces of old iron. But we are not so stupid. We do not look upon men as angels, nor do we think it necessary that they should become angels before the idea of peace can be realized. Conflict will not disappear from the world; but it is our opinion that conflict need not always be carried on in a brutal and bloody way, but can be carried through in an entirely different man

ner.

We do not overlook the dangers which manifest themselves in the historic development of nations. We are not as unpatriotic as we are slanderously reported to be. Our German empire is rooted in the affections of our hearts. Purely from patriotism do we wish it kept from war, the greatest national misfortune which can happen. But there are two kinds of patriotism. There is a hurrah-patriotism, which indulges in chauvinism, in the delusion that extent of territory constitutes national greatness, in the one-sided policy of self-interest, in the abominable self-exaltation of a people, in the childish deification of national heroes. With this we have nothing to do. We do not join in singing, "Deutschland über alles" (Germany above everything.) That is idolatry. It is unjust to set a part above the whole. of history is not the nation, but the weal of humanity, which can be reached only through the coöperation of the separate nations. It may appear patriotic to try to promote the national greatness irrespectively of other peoples. It is much more patriotic to seek the welfare of one's own nation in connection with that of other nations. It may appear patriotic to spend millions for cannon and muskets; in reality it is much more patriotic to satisfy the hunger of a people for improvement, to alleviate misery, to render a people contented and happy. this way one can better serve his native country than by promoting powerful armaments.

The purpose

In

We are not so confused in our ideas and utopian as to believe that peace can be established at a single stroke in all its fulness over the entire earth. We know perfectly that we are still very far away from this condition. In our movement the first and central question is, "Is We assert that war avoidable, or is it unavoidable?" it is avoidable, because we believe in the progress of The humanity, in the perfectibility of the human race. ground for this belief is found in the previous development of mankind, and in the history of peoples. There was a time when the German tribes stood over against one another armed to the teeth. These same tribes have since united into a great empire. We shall also live to see a time when the great nations, too, will unite in a confederation of peoples. We will not say United States of Europe, but Confederate States of Europe.

In this matter, we believe in the victory of right and of reason. The simple rational consideration that one is less than ten, and that a small slice of land is of less worth than the existence of the whole land, will bring peoples to union. When a high court over peoples shall be established, then will many acts of injustice be avoided.

We friends of peace are likewise not as unhistoric as we are reproached with being. Of course we do not regard as great, persons who are pointed out, in the ordinary teaching of history, as great. We do not believe that conquerors like Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, have been the greatest men of the world's history. We look for the great in another direction. Christ, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Buddha, Zoroaster, etc., philosophers like Kant have done a thousand times more for humanity. The unknown man who invented the wheelbarrow has done more for humanity than he who has thrown parts of the world into confusion.

We hold war as entirely irrational because it is the most inappropriate means possible of deciding that which it is set to decide. By war it is not decided who is right, but who is the stronger, who is the better armed, who has the most rifles and cannon. And war is irrational because it always bears within itself the germ of a new war. We are not proposing to do away with all army and means of defense. Some sort of a police force will always be necessary. But if an international agreement can be brought about, we shall no longer need the rapid increase of armaments which we have heretofore had. The constant increase of armaments does nobody any good except the makers of cannon. The cost of the present armies is something monstrous. The debts of the Empire have thereby rapidly increased. How much misery could be put out of the world by means of this money! How many of our worthy subordinate railway and post-office employees could be better cared for! In case of the destruction caused by hailstorms how the poor people might again be set upon their feet! And how many of the purposes of civilization might be advanced!

Neither reason nor right is on the side of war. War

is a wrong, a crime. We protest against war also in the name of Christianity and of humanity. Over the doorway of the New Testament stand the words, "Peace on Earth," "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you." Even in the Old Testament stand sayings

of wonderful wisdom. Are these simply empty words, and shall they remain so? Episodes of the recent wars (given by the speaker) show that war sets at nought everything human. Out of the history of art, out of the code of morality one may draw the right to protest against war. And not only against war, but also against the incitements to war which certain newspaper writers are guilty of.

This condition of things can be changed by the erection, over the nations, of a tribunal which shall be composed of representatives of the separate sovereigns.

The sovereign rights of the nations must of course not be interfered with. A policy of conquest must no longer be followed. Frederick the Great himself once declared that between a conquerer and a street robber there is only this difference, that the conqueror receives a crown of laurel while the street robber gets a balter, which the conqueror twice as much deserved. That even a union of the peoples of Europe into a single empire is conceivable, is shown by the example of the German emperor, setting the union of the peoples of Europe against the Asiatic danger.

The Russian emperor too has given expression to his desire for peace. A French counsellor of state just