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Show 300 301 and less to the end which the governments had in View. The economic crises due in a great measure to the regime of arma- ments and the continual danger which lies in this heaping up of war material trznisiorin the armed peace of our time into a crusl - in;V btn‘ttt‘n which peoples find it harder and harder to lear. It I/n‘i't‘furc (If/THIN trident t/n/t " this slit/u of things is fi'O/Ullgcfl it rift] inct'ittziiiy [rad to free. it t/ . rulnrlwnt rt'liit'li we seek to uric/"t. the thought of the horrors of rt/iir/i rut/rm the mind to shudder. To put an end to these incessant armaments, and to seek a means of averting the calan‘iitics which threaten the whole utirltl. l> the supreme ditty yhich today inIpOses itself on all states. W ii WNW" That was the "intolerable" situation of ten years ago. The l5irst llaque Conference met. Two years ago the Second Hague Conference met. 'ioth Conferences approached anxiously this Qt'elttt'~t of the problems before them, The First Conference dis- t‘tt~>(‘i'l it seriously. but without rt Ill :. The Second Conference hardly discussed it at all. but after longr agony passed pious reso- lutions upon the urgency of the problem. \\"hy did it not grapple with the problem? iecause of the conflicting policies and selfish ambitions of two great powers. so uncompromising and irrecon- cilable that to these the welfare of the world llfltl to be postponed. .‘tl<antime how has the world fared? \Vhat has the "intol- math" burden of ten years ago become today? Let us consider amply (ireat Britain. Germany and the L'nited States. It is unnece»ary to go further, because these three nations control the situation. and they are the chief sinners. if, these three nations began today to act. with reference to armaments. in accordance with the spirit and purpose of the Hague conventions, the peace and order of the world would be assured tomorrow. ln iSoRfihreat Britain spent on her navy 3124000900, Ger- many spent 529000900 and the L'nitcd States spent $50.ooo,ooo. Last year Great Britain spent 8170000000. Germany $83,000,000 and the l'nited States S104.r)oo,ooo. The increase in pre- cisely the ten years when there should have been decrease was enormous. Our own army expenses last year were as great as our navy expenses. Our navy expenses this year will be $30,000,- 000 greater than last year, We are today payng for expenses of past wars and preparations for possible wars sixty-five per cent, practically twwthirds of our total national revenue, leaving;r barely one~third available for all constructive purposes. What would \Nashington and Jetterson and Franklin say to this? We know what they did say about things of this sort. They would say today that the Republic was standing on its head. This is what has come about in ten years in these three nations because the Hague Conference in 1899 did nothing about the reduction or arrest of armaments. As we now look back, we see that it could not do much directly at that time. The war system of nations could be supplanted only by the gradual devel- opment of a system of international law and justice to take its place. \Vhen the First Hague Conference created the international Tribunal it did indirectly the most, probably. which it could do in behalf of the reduction of armaments, because it took a long step in furnishing the nations with such legal machin< cry for the settlement of their differences as makes recourse to war machinery more and more unnecessary and inexcusable. It has been in the line of this thought that the international lawyers have had their hopeful assurance. Develop the legal machinery, they said, and the armaments will perforce crumble of their own dead weight. The continued and rapid development during the decade of provision for the peaceful settlement of international disputes has been something unparalleled in history. The leaders of the movement for international justice are sometimes reproached with being dreamers. The only trouble with them in the last ten years has been that, so far as the development of the instruments of international justice are concerned, they have not been able to dream daringly enough or fast enough to keep up with the facts. If we had been told in 1899 that we should see in the world today an International Tribunal. with half a dozen cases already successfully settled by it, an international Prize Court with such a code as that just agreed upon in London. a Court of Arbitral Justice decreed and the appointment of its judges a thingr of the near future, and eighty arbitration treaties ratified between dif- ferent pairs of nations pledging reference to arbitration of all disputes not settled by regular diplomatic negotiation that are likely to arise between them--I say that if we had been told in May, 1899, when the First Hague Conference met, that we should mum MtM‘vl |