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Show 7O 71 ml\"fittw ""l‘n Fifty years ago this spring there was published a book in which was written, I suppose, for all time the history of the animal world. It was proved from a wealth of knowledge drawn front litany fields that animal life was a series of struggles and of slaughter; struggle for life and survival of the cunningest and the strongest. And for my own part I have no doubt that we human being' in our biological history have walked the way of the animals, as we have in common with them our appetites and our instincts. lut if man he merely a higher animal. and human history, too. he merely a struggle for life and the survival of the strongest and the cunningest, human life is not worth living. Man has in him something which takes him beyond the life of the animals, and because he has in him that element of things nobler and diviner it is possible for men to say what llrother Hirsch and llrother lilurdette have said, that we need to change man radically. that we need to alter his habits and modes of look- ing: at history and of human life. lt is possible. because while man on the physical side does share his life with the animals and partakes of their history, on the moral and mental side he is infinitely above them and has kinship with the divine. All our life. whether as individuals or as nations. is an effort to emerge from animality and progress toward divinity; to "let the ape and tiger die and rise on steps of our dead selves to higher things." t.'\]l1)litll>('tl I therefore feel the utmost sympathy with the work of this l'eace Congress. l feel that its claims have been adequately pre- sented to this audience. their sympathies have been appealed to. their sense of reason challenged, but there is one aspect of the subject of which little has been said. and to that l shall confine my remarks. Since our life is this progress from these lower to these higher things, I asked myself what progress we are actually mak- int.r toward that state of things when war shall disappear and the nations he brothers all the world around. l think at the outset there are many things most discouraging to contemplate. You see how. in certain emergencies. whole nations lose their heads. become creatures of passion and rush unnecessarily into war. In modern times the press reflects these sentiments. and we have th‘ assurance of l'iismarck. who said in 1877 or 1878, that the three last great wars of Europe had been caused by the press. Reference has been made tonight to our war with Spain. Does any sane man doubt that if we, the American people, had kept our hearts cool and our consciences serene, and allowed Presnlent McKinley and his representative in Spain, General Woodford, and the Queen of Spain, those three, to have settled the trouble with Spain and Cuba, it could not have been settled to the satisfaction of the people of the United States and the entire civilized world? (Applause) And so when we talk of the glories of peace and the horrors of war, we may blame ourselves for our part in permitting or causing some wars. And so I turn to forces in the world which seem to me to be making,r for peace, sometimes in spite of the nations. Look, for instance, ladies and gentlemen, at the tremendous strain which preparations for war are today puttingy upon all the greatest nations of the world. Senator Hale recently said in the United States Senate that two-thirds of all the revenues of the United States were used to pay for past wars or to prepare for future wars. In England the case is still more striking. In the last four or five years a llritish Liberal Government has paid off about onc~tenth of the enormous national debt of three billion eight hundred million dollars: but within the last three days it has become necessary to change that healthful tinancierincr. Additional supplies for naval purposes are called for, and the llritish Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day in the [louse of Commons that not to vote these munitions for these supplies would be not liberalism but ruination. And how is the money raised? The taxes on incomes are to be enormously increased; inheritance taxes and death duties are to be so raised that the llritish treasury will hereafter take onet'ourth of the largest estates. lf this thing goes on one, two, three years, the richest nations in the world will reel and stagger underlthe financial loads. and I think of the text of Scripture, "(ind makes the wrath of man to praise Him." The cost of war is becoming so terrible, falling so heavily on the propertied classes. that these people who have been in the past [ire-eminently the jinqoes are likely to become champions of the gospel of l'eace. (Applause. l |