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Show IW'W‘ "new 94 95 done to bring the nations to sane and rational relations to each other and to relieve them from the torturing nightmare of mili« tarism, with which they are. still obsessed. be much used again in disposing of differences between nations. The Hague Court has superseded them and made them unneces- sary. Within less than six years more than eighty treaties of obligatory arbitration, stipulating reference to The Hague Court of all 2. The position which the peace movement has reached is no less distinctly determined by the practical attainments of arbi- tration. We are this year celebrating what is really the one hun- dredth anniversary of the birth of our movement, for it was in 1809 that David L. Dodge, a Christian merchant of New York City, wrote the pamphlet which brought the movement into being, and led six years later to the organization in his parlor in New York of the first Peace Society in the world. There had then been no arbitrations between nations in our modern sense of the word "nations." In the hundred years since 1809 more than two hundred and fifty important controversies have been settled by this means. not to mention an even greater number of less impor- tant cases, the settlement of which involved the principle of arbi- tration. Within the past twenty years so rapid has been the triumph of arbitration that more than one hundred international differences have been disposed of by this means, or between five Hvltiu and six 3 year for the whole twenty years. Arbitration is no longer an experiment; it is the settled practice of the nations. A score of disputes today :0 naturally to arbitration where one gives rise even to talk of war. The First Hague Conference. ten years ago, gave us the Permanent International Court of Arbitration, which has now been in successful operation for about eight years, and disposed of several important controversies. This Court was strengthened and improved by the Second Hague Conference two years ago, and by the admission of the South and Central American states to it has become the arbitration court not of the twenty-six powers that gathered at The Hague in 1899 but of the entire world. This tribunal is now takingr practically all the international differ- ences not adjustable by diplomacy. \Vithin a year there have been referred to it the Casa-Blanca dispute between France and Germany. the fisheries controversy between this country and Great Britain. certain questions in controversy between our government and Venezuela, and a dispute between Norway and Sweden. it is not likely that temporary courts of arbitration. which have been so successful during the past century, will ever questions of a judicial order and those arising in the interpretation of treaties, have been concluded between nations in pairs, twentyfour of which were negotiated the past year by our distingu ished ex-Secretary of State Root and ratified by both the Presiden t and the Senate. These three~score treaties, with two or three excep- tions, are limited, it is true, both in scope and in time. But that they have been made at all, more than eighty of them within the brief period of a little over five years, is the wonder. Arbitration has won its case. No one can doubt this who takes the trouble to acquaint himself with the facts. There remains, in fact, but one further step in its development, and that is the conclusion of a general treaty of obligatory arbitration to be signed by all the nations together, stipulating the reference to the Hague Court of all international differences not capable of solution by diplomacy. A treaty of this order, limited somewhat in scope. came much nearer adoption at the Second Hague Conference than is usually known. Thirty-five 0f the forty-four delegations voted for it and only five against it, a vote of seven to one, or, by the populations of the nations represented, of more than seven to one, leaving out of account the four powers that abstained from voting and tacitly gave their consent to the proposed convention. This record made by arbitration is unsurpassed, probably unparalleled, by any other chapter of the history of the progress of civilization during the last hundred years, and before long the wise and learned historians, who have heretofore so largely esti- mated history by its feuds and battles and slaughters, will find it out. 3. In order to determine further the advanced position which the peace movement has attained on its practical side, the two Hague Conferences and what they have accomplished must be taken into account. it is still the habit of some persons to speak disparagingly of these great gatherings and their results. Some do it because tllev are satisfied with nothing short of immediate |