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Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y.
George T. Angell, 19 Milk Street, Boston, Mass.
Edward Atkinson, Brookline, Mass.

Joshua L. Baily, 1624 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Rev. Wm. E. Barton, D.D., Chicago, Ill.

Ida Whipple Benham, Mystic, Conn.

Mrs. George W. Bingham, Derry, N. H.

Hezekiah Butterworth, 28 Worcester St., Boston, Mass.
Rev. Geo. D. Boardman, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa.
Prof. Geo. N. Boardman, Pittsford, Vt.
Hon. Charles C. Bonney, Chicago, Ill.
Rev. Sidi H. Browne, Columbia, S. C.
Hon. Thomas B. Bryan, Chicago, Ill.
Hon. Wm. A. Butler, New York, N. Y.

Hon. Samuel B. Capen, 38 Greenough Ave., Boston, Mass.
Hon. Jonathan Chace, Providence, R. I.

Rev. Frank G. Clark, Plymouth, N. H.

Edward H. Clement, 434 Marlboro St., Boston, Mass.
Rev. Joseph S. Cogswell, Ashburnham, Mass.
Rev. D. S. Coles, Wakefield, Mass.

Joseph Cook, 28 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.

Geo. Cromwell, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Rev. G. L. Demarest, D.D., Manchester, N. H.

Mrs. Elizabeth Dow, Brookline, Mass.

Rev. Howard C. Dunham, Winthrop, Mass.
Hon. Dorman B. Eaton, New York, N. Y.-
Rev. S. Hopkins Emery, D.D., Taunton, Mass.
Everett O. Fisk, 4 Ashburton Place, Boston, Mass.
B. O. Flower, Brookline, Mass.

Hon. John B. Foster, Bangor, Me.

Thomas Gaffield, 54 Allen St., Boston, Mass.

Philip C. Garrett, Philadelphia, Pa.

Merrill E. Gates, LL.D., Washington, D. C.

Rev. Edw. Everett Hale, D.D., 39 Highland St., Roxbury, Mass.

Hon. Thomas N. Hart, Boston, Mass.

Hon. John W. Hoyt, Washington, D. C.

Rev. W. G. Hubbard, 133 Eureka Ave., Columbus, Ohio.
Rev. Charles E. Jefferson, New York City, N. Y.
Hon. Sumner I. Kimball, Washington, D. C.
Bishop William Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.
Mary A. Livermore, Melrose, Mass.

Rev. Philip S. Moxom, D.D., Springfield, Mass.

Hon. Nathan Matthews, Jr., 456 Beacon St., Boston, Mass. George Foster Peabody, 28 Monroe Place, Brooklyn, N. Y. Hon. Amos Perry, Providence, R. I.

L. H. Pillsbury, Derry, N. H.

Hon. Wm. L. Putnam, Portland, Me.

Thos. D. Robertson, Rockford, Ill.

Charles T. Russell, Jr., Cambridge, Mass.

Mrs. Mary Wright Sewall, Indianapolis, Ind.

Hon. John Sherman, Washington, D. C.

Mrs. Ruth H. Spray, Salida, Col.

Mrs. L. M. N. Stevens, Portland, Me.
David S. Taber, New York, N. Y.

Pres. C. F. Thwing, D.D., Cleveland, Ohio.

Bishop Henry W. Warren, Denver, Col.
Richard Wood, 1620 Locust St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Rev. John Worcester, Newtonville, Mass.

DIRECTORS:

Hon. Robert Treat Paine, ex-officio.
Benjamin F. Trueblood, LL. D., ex-officio.
Nathaniel T. Allen, West Newton, Mass.
Rev. Charles G. Ames, D.D., Boston, Mass.
Hannah J. Bailey, Winthrop Centre, Me.
Rev. S. C. Bushnell, Arlington, Mass.
Rev. David H. Ela, D.D., Hudson, Mass.

Rev. Scott F. Hershey, Ph.D., Munroe St., Boston, Mass.
Julia Ward Howe, 241 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
Augustine Jones, Providence, R. I.

Rev. B. F. Leavitt, Melrose Highlands, Mass.
Lucia Ames Mead, 30 Pinckney St., Boston, Mass.
Wm. A. Mowry, Ph.D., Hyde Park, Mass.

B. Schlesinger, Brookline, Mass.

Hon. Wm. E. Sheldon, A. M., West Newton, Mass.
Rev. Charles B. Smith, West Medford, Mass.
Rev. G. W. Stearns, Middleboro, Mass.

Rev. Reuen Thomas, D.D., Brookline, Mass.

Kate Gannett Wells, 45 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass. Rev. A. E. Winship, 3 Somerset St., Boston, Mass.

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THE

ADVOCATE PEACE

VOL. LXI.

OF OF

BOSTON, OCTOBER, 1899.

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The Hague Conference, much as it has accomplished, has only made more imperative the problems which it has not solved. The conventions made at The Hague will doubtless all be ratified by most of the powers represented in the Conference. But when this is done, it will be no time for any of the friends of peace to fold their hands and suppose that the cause will run itself hereafter of its own momentum. Nothing could be more fatal than such a course.

In the first place, the nations not represented at The Hague must be brought to adhere to the conventions adopted, and the powers whose representatives signed the conventions must be induced to make the way easy for them to do so. The non-signatory powers include all the South and Central American and West India states, eighteen in all, and the independent states in South Africa. The adher

No. 9.

ence of all these states is of the greatest importance to make the work of the Conference the most effective. Then again, the governments which agree in setting up the permanent court of arbitration must be prevailed upon to refer the largest possible number of their disputes to it. The use of the court, it must be remembered, is to be entirely voluntary. The governments which have established it will feel in honor bound to make use of it to some extent. The sense of honor and obligation must be so deepened that they will be ready to bring difficult as well as unimportant cases before it; and, furthermore, not to pass it by in periods of excitement when the sense of national honor is wounded and passion runs high. Here is the point at which the friends of the court will have to stand guard and do much earnest and patient work for many years to come.

Of more importance still will be the work for disarmament. Much of our effort must center here in the years to come. It is conceded that the Conference has done much to prepare the way for disarmament. In our protest against the "bloated armaments" which are ruining Europe, and the growing militarism which is fast involving the whole world, the result of the Hague Conference puts us on a vantage ground which we have never had before. We can now plead with great force that there is an open way, prepared by the nations themselves, for the pacific adjustment of their controversies, and that because of this there is no longer any excuse for the further development of armaments, or even for the retention of the enormous ones existing. We can insist also that disarmament must come in order to save the work of the Conference. If the rivalry of armaments goes on, the convention for the pacific. settlement of disputes will become a dead letter. No pacific agreement can live in the awful strain which will be put upon it by a further development of armies and navies. Our work for disarmament must henceforth therefore be more direct and intense than ever before. We must not dodge the issue. It must be met with outspoken and unwavering devotion.

But our supreme work will continue to be what it has always been, the arousing and educating of public opinion in favor of peace and in opposition to war. Without a strong, settled public sentiment of

this kind practical measures are nothing. So long So long as men are unenlightened as to the real nature of war, and love it more than they do peace, so long as the soldier is the top hero, we shall have war, arbitration court to the contrary notwithstanding. Recent Recent events in many parts of the world show that the love of war and of its pomp and circumstance is not dead or even asleep. There is an evident recrudescence of the love of fighting, of the ambition for martial glory; a powerful impulse to test the tremendous destructiveness of the new implements of death. Society is still at the mercy of waves of war excitement, before which none of the barriers of civilization hold. The loathsome immoralities of army life, demonstrated anew in recent campaigns, move the public conscience, or even the Christian conscience, very little. The most senseless and irrational military adventures find defenders in the most unexpected quarters. Not a few Christian pulpits are still scornful toward the principles of peace; others are weak and dumb. War education still goes on in state, in church, in family.

In view of all this, our peace movement has reached the critical stage, where the most serious, intelligent and heroic work must be done. Enough has been accomplished to nerve and encourage every friend of the cause; enough remains unaccomplished to tax the faith and the perseverance of the most tried and devoted.

Light for Russia.

A great and good deed always has a beneficent effect upon the doer. This is true of nations as well as of individuals. The effort put forth by one of them in a sincere spirit, to promote human good in a humane and rational way, may be expected to carry it farther along in both its moral purposes and its strength to do its duty.

In accordance with this law, woven into the moral structure of human society and making every step in voluntary advancement the pledge of others, we may reasonably anticipate that a great flood of light is to come from on high upon Russia in the near future. The step which she took in calling the International Peace Conference, and in inducing the civilized. world to heed the call and make sincere and successful effort to promote more harmonious relations among nations, was one of the greatest moral ventures ever made by a great power. The difficulties under which it was made, both from within and from without, make its moral value all the more conspicuous. It took genuine courage to risk such a step, when it was clear that there was an even chance that more than half the world might mock. The success which has attended the experiment, confessedly greater than the most hopeful had dared to expect, will brighten in Russia's soul the light kindled by

her heroic resolution, and fortify the nation in the purpose which dictated her action.

Not only will light and strength come to her in her relations to other countries, but also in her internal life, which the world has had reason to suspect of very great darkness. The leaders in her public affairs, as well as the Czar, must have felt deeply the criticisms called forth by the rescript against some of her internal policies, even more than those against her aggressive designs in the East. These criticisms. the chief of them, were well founded and justly made, as enlightened and progressive Russians themselves knew better than any one else.

It is already clear to well-read people that Russia has entered upon a new era of development much more in harmony with right and liberty, and true material prosperity likewise, than her past has been; much more in harmony also with the real underlying pacific and liberty-loving character of the Russian people, which has been misinterpreted to the world by her unfeeling bureaucratic proceedings of previous years. The new motives and forces will not put an end at once to the old policies. A nation which has started on the road of liberty and progress does not transform its wrong institutions and habits in a day. But there are clear grounds for believing, in spite of the repression still practiced, some of it new and very disappointing, that in a generation or two Russia will be one of the most advanced of the nations in liberty, justice and the peaceful development of her national life and great resources. This advancement ought to come without revolution, and will if her leaders are wise. Both on her internal and her external policies there are, since the Hague Conference, already evidences of the growing light. The prac tice of exiling to Siberia persons convicted of politi cal crimes, so-called, has been ordered discontinued. Siberia is to become, instead of a political prison, the home of industrious families, who along the line of the great railway are to assist in the industrial development of the land. It is scarcely possible that the government will ever use again, in any other way, a system of punishment for political prisoners so heartless as that which has made the name Siberia a synonym for oppression and cruelty.

On the external side, the government has recently made one of its new ports on the Pacific an open one. In the light of this fact, no contradiction was needed to the ridiculous story which a short time ago, for a single day, went the rounds of the press, that after a little time Russia was to close all her ports on the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic and Black Seas to all but her own ships. She is much more likely within ten years to open all her ports unreservedly to the commerce of the world.

If Russia would take one further step, which she might do with the greatest ease, the light of God would fall upon her with a fulness which no nation

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has yet known. One of the leading ambassadors at the Hague Conference told the writer that the Russian government ought at once to discharge three hundred thousand soldiers, and that, on account of Russia's position, this could be done with entire safety. He added that, after the Czar's action in calling the Conference, this was the logical thing to do, and that it would bring about disarmament as nothing else could do. If Russia could only see her duty in this regard and do it as bravely as she has already done a more difficult thing, not only upon her, but upon the whole civilized world, now groaning and trembling under the deepening darkness of militarism, would come a sun-burst of light which would irradiate with divine glory the century so soon to open upon us.

Source of the Dreyfus Infamy.

We had not believed it possible, until a few days before the end of the trial, that Dreyfus could be again condemned by any court in France. Then it became evident that, in spite of the action of the Court of Cassation, in spite of the total want of evidence of guilt, the military tribunal at Rennes had determined to throw to the winds all considerations of justice, honor and truthfulness, and recondemn him. It has been hinted that this outcome was merely stage-play, the government having secretly arranged with the court for the verdict, with the purpose of speedily giving a pardon. If this be true, which we do not in the least believe the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry capable of, it would indeed prove that France is almost hopelessly corrupt and weak.

The result has filled the whole civilized world with amazement and moral indignation; for nowadays justice is an affair of the world society, and no longer of any particular nation or small quarter of the world. Day after day all civilized humanity watched in the court-martial room at Rennes as if each particular individual had been present at the trial of a brother or friend. This was not because of any personal interest in Dreyfus; not, we are glad to believe, from mere contagion, curiosity and love of excitement, though some of this was certainly mixed in; not because of dislike of France and of French judicial methods,— but because this outraged Jew is a man, a member of the common brotherhood of men now consciously felt throughout the world, and entitled therefore to the fairness everywhere extended, or which it is so strongly felt should be extended, to every member of the social body. This splendid exhibition of universal public interest in right and justice is, amid the confusion, the injustices and the aggressions of power of which the world is so alarmingly full, a strong proof that the root of progress in right and liberty is growing ever deeper and stronger.

The verdict of this great outside court, having in its membership the ablest and purest minds of our time, has totally acquitted Dreyfus. It has, at the same time, condemned his prosecutors and the epauletted jury which rendered the verdict against him. It has found them guilty monstrously, intentionally guilty - not only of injustice, but also of the deepest and blackest corruption and cowardice.

men.

With scarcely the same fairness has the whole French nation been declared guilty and unworthy. The boulevards, music halls and corrupt army circles are not the whole of France. Multitudes of Frenchmen in every city and country district have felt as deeply grieved and outraged at this miscarriage of justice as any foreigners. Furthermore, the men who have sought out and exposed the corruption and set aflame the conscience of the world are FrenchNo people in the world has a deeper innate sense and appreciation of justice and right than the French people. If saved from the disease which has prostrated her, France will be saved from within, in large part, rather than from without. The nation as a whole will be rightly condemned only if it finally, either through weakness or corruption, submits to the verdict of the Rennes court-martial, as we do not believe it will do. The discouraging thing about the whole affair is that this same public opinion, superbly expressing itself on the side of justice, has shown no appreciation of the real cause of the corruption and the crime. In all the outburst of amazement and moral indignation there has been scarcely an allusion to anything back of the personalities connected with the case. Race hatred has been mentioned, but nobody believes that to have played more than a subordinate part in the drama. Nor is the cause to be found in French weakness, fickleness of character, or corruptibility, on which foreign critics have harped. France is not worse than many other countries in these respects, and but little below the very best.

What then is it that lies at the root of this extraordinary bit of injustice? It is nothing less than that which in Germany leaves a civilian no redress in a contest with a soldier; which in all the great nations of continental Europe is riding rough shod, with its conscienceless conscription and taxation, over the heads of the common citizens, regardless of their personal and family rights to food, raiment, health and comfort; which is, we fear, in these latter days seriously threatening the foundations of Anglo-Saxon justice and respect for personal and state rights. The very nations themselves which have been loudest in their condemnation of France and the gross miscarriage of justice at Rennes are, in so far as they uphold and support the evil system out of which it has sprung, guilty in a measure of the crime against Dreyfus.

France is in the clutches of the tyranny and corrupting influences of the gigantic militarism of the

day. It is with this that she is really struggling. It is her great peril that she has allowed the army to so exalt itself over the nation that great masses of her people shut their eyes, stifle their best convictions and cry Vive l'armée," utterly forgetful of the principles of freedom and justice on which the republic is built. The new ministry itself, desirous as it is to correct the injustice which has been done, is so paralyzed by the dominance of the army that it fears to pursue the open way of truth and justice.

It was this cowering submission of the nation to the army, and to the false ideas of safety and honor out of which the army has grown, that emboldened Esterhazy and Henry and their accomplices - some of them possibly among Dreyfus's judges to sell military secrets to German officials, equally base and corrupt in the buying. Otherwise they would not have dared to give loose reins in that direction to their low mercenary spirit—a spirit which always grows and thrives where militarism prevails. It is this military enslavement of the nation to the army which makes possible the pitiable spectacle of a naturally great and noble people stooping to such depths of iniquity as are found in the Dreyfus infamy the willingness, rather than displease their "idol," to see any number of guilty, dishonorable officers go free and the penalty of their accumulated crimes borne by one innocent man.

France may, and probably will, under the mighty moral pressure from without and the goading impulses of justice from within, right up the wrong done to Dreyfus. But she has a still graver and more difficult duty to perform. She owes it to herself and to the whole civilized world to deliver herself from the degrading slavery to which, out of pride, vengeance and false conceptions of national honor and glory, she has sold herself body and soul. If she does not do this, she will sink deeper and deeper into moral debasement and ruin. Rectification of the Rennes infamy may give temporary relief and strength, but it will give no permanent assurance against the recurrence of similar or equally shameful Occurrences. There is but one way of lasting hope for the future. The army must go or France will perish.

But the rest of the civilized world is involved here more or less in the same great guilt. If the tremendous cry of moral offence and indignation which has arisen over the Dreyfus infamy had uttered itself with the same clearness and emphasis over the everywhere overshadowing deadliness of the militarism out of which this frightful episode sprang, there would be less doubt of its utter sincerity, and more hope of its producing some result really worth the breath spent.

Since the above was written Dreyfus has been pardoned. This is for him better than nothing, but it is

not justice in any real sense. The stigma, however, will not rest upon him but upon the government, which ought to have insisted that the course of legal proceedings should continue until his acquittal was complete. The government seems to have adopted its course in order to hush up the strife between the army and the opposers of injustice. But the covering up of guilt and letting an innocent man remain under the reproach of treason is a poor basis for peace. The army is still master.

Wars and

War Rumors.

Editorial Notes.

As we go to press the situation in the Transvaal dispute has reached a tension that cannot last many days. The Boers have increased their defences and have everything in readiness for the struggle. The fighting spirit is high among them. Great Britain is rushing troops to South Africa, and making hasty and extensive preparations in every direction for war. There is still said to be a hope of peace, but if there is it comes from the dread which each side has of the awfulness of the pending conflict and the uncertainty of the results. The disposition to make concessions seems to have ceased. The Orange Free State is determined to throw in its lot with the South African Republic, and this complicates the situation. It seems monstrous that at the very end of the century and so soon after the Peace Conference such a gloomy and foreboding state of affairs should be possible in any quarter of the globe, and more disheartening still that enlightened Great Britain, under a noble peace Queen, should have allowed her ambition of empire, expressing itself through the grasping perverseness of one of her statesmen, to bring her into such an unworthy and degrading dilemma. Almost any way out would be infinitely more creditable to both sides than to plunge with headlong fierceness into the murderous, bloody abysm of war. But we fear that the iniquity has gone so far that the cup must now be filled up, with what result to the world only God knows.

Meanwhile our own iniquity towards the Philippine population still goes on and accumulates. Recruiting continues, new regiments of young men are being sent over the Pacific to be corrupted, to sicken and die, Filipinos are being shot down and their shores desolated, the lying and deception of the commander at Manila is little diminished, the government refuses to take a single step to withdraw from the dishonorable situation, lest, forsooth, its "honor" should suffer in the eyes of the world, and its "political capital" be diminished at home.

There is as little prospect as ever that the struggle will soon be over. But it is the duty of all friends of peace and of American political principles to keep up

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