Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

The tendency is to condemn the violation of these commandments, not in proportion to the injury done, but rather in inverse proportion. No one will dispute the validity of the injunction against covetousness as long as the object coveted is of little value or not greatly desired, but the last and all-inclusive specifications, viz., "or anything that is thy neighbor's," is sometimes interpreted by nations to except a neighbor's vineyard or a neighbor's territory. Covetousness turns to might as the principle to be invoked, and the greater the unlawful desire the firmer the faith in the false principle.

Conquest is the word used to describe the means employed for securing the thing desired, if the force is employed by a nation, and conquest violates the commandments Thou Shalt Not Steal and Thou Shalt Not Kill.

By what sophistry can rulers convince themselves that, while petit larceny is criminal, grand larceny is patriotic; that, while it is reprehensible for one man to kill another for his money, it is glorious for one nation to put to the sword the inhabitants of another nation in order to extend boundaries?

It is a mockery of moral distinctions to hang one man for taking the life of another, either for money or in revenge, and then make a hero of another man who wades "through slaughter to a throne, and shut the doors of mercy on mankind."

As in the case of the individual, the violation of the commandments Thou Shall Not Covet, Thou Shalt Not Steal, and Thou Shalt Not Kill, are usually traceable to the violation of the first great commandment--Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me--that is, to the putting of self before service of the Creator.

The violation of these commandments by nations is not always, but usually, due to selfishness--the putting of supposed material advantages before obedience to the Divine Law.

War is occasionally altruistic in purpose and the soldier always exhibits unselfishness of high order, but, as a rule, conflicts are waged for selfish ends.

The individual finds that Jehovah's justice cannot be evaded; for wrongdoing works its own punishment on the wrongdoer in the form of perverted character when he escapes the penalties of human law. The nation is as powerless to repeal or to ignore with impunity the laws of God--"Though hand join in hand they shall not be unpunished."

If I have made it clear that the doctrine that might makes right is the most common cause of war, we may pass to the consideration of a maxim quite sure to be applied in war, namely, that "like cures like"--the theory upon which retaliation rests.

The two are so closely allied that it is almost inevitable that those who indorse the former will resort to the latter--one representing the spirit of will, the other its most familiar manifestation. Rivalry for rivalry in wrongdoing--a neck-and-neck race to the bottomless pit. And yet there are many believers in the gospel of force, who have brought themselves to think that cruelty can be cured by greater cruelty--that the only way to win an antagonist away from inhuman acts is to surpass him in inhumanities. Absurdity of absurdities!

But might must find a pretext for arming itself; and what is the pretext? There was a time when men openly advocated war as a thing to be desired; commended it to each generation as a sort of tonic to tone up the moral system and prevent degeneracy, but we have passed that day.

Now all join in the chorus for peace. And how, according to the jingoes, shall peace be insured? "By preparedness," say these sons of Mars. Prepare, all prepare; equip yourselves with the most modern implements of destruction; arm, drill, get ready, and then stand with fingers on a barrel of a musket and preserve peace--you preserve it until some one, by accident or design, gives the signal--then all fall upon each other with cries for blood. Preparedness is the kindling; opportunity is the match.

We dare not trust the peace of the world to those who spend their time in getting ready for wars that should never come. Half the energy employed in preparing for war would effectually prevent war if used in propagating the principles which make for peace.

Instead of preventing war, preparedness provokes war, because it is impossible to coerce the people into bearing the burdens incident to continuous and increasing preparation without cultivating hatred as if it were a national virtue. There must be some one to fear; some other preparing nation that must be represented as plotting for war.

Hate sets up sham standards of honor and converts every wound into a festering sore; hate misunderstands; hate misinterprets; hate maligns its supposed adversary, while every contractor, battleship builder, and manufacturer of munitions of war applauds.

How can preparedness prevent war, if all prepared? Each step taken by one nation toward more complete preparedness excites the other nations to additional purchases and new levies, until all have exhausted their productive industries and menaced their moral progress.

The doctrine that preparedness will prevent war will not stand the test of logic, and the conflagration in Europe shows that it fails when tested by experience.

If any nation is without excuse for entering into a mad rivalry with the belligerent nations in preparation for war it is the United States. We are protected on either side by thousands of miles of ocean, and this protection is worth more to us than any number of battleships. We have an additional protection in the fact--known to every one--that we have the men with whom to form an army of defense if we are ever attacked, and it is known also that we have the money, too--more money than we would have if the surplus earnings of the people had been invested in armament. We not only do not need additional preparation, but we are fortunate in not having it, as now it seems impossible for a nation to have what is called preparedness on slight notification.

The leading participants in the present war are the nations that were best prepared, and I fear it would have been difficult for us to keep out of this war if we had been as well prepared as they.

Happily for our nation, we have in the White House at this time a President who believes in setting the Old World an example instead of following the bad example which it has set in this matter. What an unspeakable misfortune it would have been if in such an hour as this the nation had been under the leadership of a President inflamed by the false philosophy which has plunged Europe into the abyss of war.

W.J. BRYAN.

HOW TO END THE WAR.

_The concluding argument of ex-Secretary Bryan for permanent peace among the great powers was published on June 18, 1915. The statement follows:_

Washington, June 18, 1915.

Having considered the war as it is and the injury which it does neutrals, and then the origin of the war and the causes which led up to it, we are now ready to make inquiry as to the way out--that is, the means by which hostilities can be brought to an end and permanent peace restored. To state in a sentence the propositions which I shall proceed to elaborate: Mediation is the means, provided by international agreement, through which the belligerent nations can be brought into conference; time for the investigation of all disputes is the means by which future wars can be averted, and the cultivation of international friendship is the means by which the desire for war can be rooted out.

What are the nations fighting about? No one seems to know, or if any one does know, he has not taken the public into his confidence. We have been told, in a general way, that the Allies are fighting against "militarism" and in defense of "popular government," and that Germany is fighting in defense of "German culture" and for the nation's right to "a place in the sun." But these generalities are so differently interpreted as not to convey a definite idea. When the President offered mediation at the very beginning of the struggle the answers which he received from the various rulers were so much alike that one telegram might have served for all. The substance of each answer was, "I did not want war and I am not to blame for the war that now exists." But that was ten months ago; the question now is not whether those in authority in the belligerent nations did or did not want war then; we may accept their answers as given in good faith, but the important question is still unanswered. "I did not want war" may have been deemed sufficient at the time the answers were given, but the real question is, "Do you want war now? If not, why not say so?"

The months have dragged their bloody length along--each more terrible than the month before--and yet the crimson line of battle sways to and fro, each movement marked by dreadful loss of life. While warriors die and widows weep, the sovereign rulers of the warring powers withhold the word that would stop the war. No Chief of State has yet said, "I do not want war." No one in authority has yet publicly declared his willingness to state the terms upon which his nation is ready to negotiate peace. Are not these dying men and these sorrowing women entitled to know definitely for what their nation is fighting? Is it territory? Then how much territory, and where is it located? Is it the avenging of a wrong done? Then how much more blood must be spilled to make atonement for the blood already shed? Some day accumulated suffering will reach its limit; some day the pent-up anguish which this war is causing will find a voice. Then, if not before, the rulers in the war zone will pause to listen to the stern question, "Why do we die?"--the question which shakes thrones and marks the furthermost limits of arbitrary power.

And is not the outside world entitled to know the price of peace? Must the neutrals bear the penalties which war necessarily visits upon them, and yet remain in ignorance as to the issues at stake? Their trade is interrupted, their citizens are drowned, they are the victims of stray bullets--have they no right to know what it is that, being done, will draw down the curtain of this dark tragedy? Has any nation a purpose for continuing this war which it does not dare to state to the world, or even to its own people?

Surely neither side thinks it can annihilate the other. Great nations cannot be exterminated--population cannot be wiped out by the sword. The combatants, even though the war may have made them heartless, will shrink from the task of carrying this slaughter beyond the point necessary to win a victory. And it must be remembered that war plans often miscarry. Predictions made at the beginning of the war have not been fulfilled. The British did not destroy the German fleet in a month, and Germany did not take Paris in two months, and the Russian Army did not eat Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even if extermination were possible, it would be a crime against civilization which no nation or group of nations could afford to commit. If it is vandalism to destroy the finest specimens of man's workmanship, is it not sacrilege to engage in the wholesale destruction of human beings--the supreme example of God's handiwork? We may find cases of seeming total depravity among individuals, but not in a nation or in a race. The future has use for the peoples now at war; they have a necessary part in that destiny which mankind must work out together regardless of these ebullitions of anger. The Lord might have made all flowers of one kind, of one color and alike in fragrance--but He did not. And because He did not, the world is more beautiful. Variety, not uniformity, is the law among men as well as among the flowers. The nations which are actively participating in this war are what they are because of struggles that have lasted for centuries. They differ in language, in institutions, in race characteristics, and in national history, but together they constitute a great living bouquet that is of surpassing beauty.

We may put aside, therefore, as wholly impracticable, if not inconceivable, the thought that this war can continue until one side has annihilated the other. What, then, can be the purpose? The complete domination of Europe by one nation or group of nations? The absurdity of such a plan is only second to the absurdity of the thought that either side can annihilate the other. The world is not looking for a master; the day of the despot is gone. The future will be gloomy indeed if the smaller nations must pass under the yoke of any power or combination of powers. The question is not who shall dictate on land, or who shall dominate upon the sea. These questions are not practical ones. The real question is, not how a few can lay burdens upon the rest, but how all can work together as comrades and brothers.

Even if it were possible for one side to force the other side to its knees in supplication, even if it were possible for one side to write the terms of the treaty in blood and compel the other side to sign it, face downward and prostrate on the ground, it could not afford to do so; and unless the belligerents have read history to no purpose, they will not desire to do so. Time and again some nation, boastful of its strength, has thought itself invincible, but the ruins of these mistaken and misguided nations line the pathway along which the masses have marched to higher ground. Despotism has in it the seeds of death; the spirit that leads a nation to aspire to a supremacy based on force is the spirit that destroys its hope of immortality. Only those who are unacquainted with the larger influences can place their sole reliance on the weapons used in physical warfare. They see only the things that are transient and ephemeral; they do not comprehend the higher truth that "the things that are seen are temporal; the things that are unseen are eternal."

Christian nations need to read again Christ's prayer upon the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." All the participants in this war have sinned enough to make them anxious to exhibit that forgiving spirit which is the measure of the forgiveness which can be claimed.

When can peace be restored? Any time--now, if the participants are really weary of this war and ready for it to end. If any nation is not ready, let its ruler state in clear, distinct, and definite terms the conditions upon which it is willing to agree to peace; then if an agreement is not reached the blame for the continuance of the war will be upon those who make unreasonable demands.

What can be done by the advocates of peace? First, they can crystallize the sentiment in favor of peace into a coercive force, for public opinion at last controls the world. There is a work which the neutrals can do; they can offer mediation, jointly or severally. It is not an act of hostility, but an act of friendship. The Hague Convention, to which all the Governments are parties, expressly declares that the offer of mediation shall not be considered an unfriendly act. The duty of offering mediation may seem to rest primarily upon the United States, the largest of the neutral nations, and the one most intimately bound by ties of blood to all the belligerents. The United States did make an offer immediately after the war began. But why not again and again and again, until our offer or some other offer is accepted? Why not stand at the door and knock, as we would at the door of a friend if we felt that the friend was in need and that we could render a service?

But our action or failure to act need not deter any other neutral country from acting. This is not a time to stand on ceremony; if any other country, for any reason, no matter what that reason may be, is in a better position than we to tender its good offices, it should not delay for a moment. It is for the belligerents to decide which offer, if any, they will accept. I am sure they will not complain if, following the promptings of our hearts, we beseech them to let us help them back to the paths of peace.

Will they object on the ground that they will not consent to any peace until they have assurances that it will be a permanent peace? That suggestion has been made--I think both sides have expressed a desire that the peace, when secured, shall be permanent--but who can give a pledge as to the future? If fear that the peace may not be permanent is given as the reason for refusal it is not a sufficient reason. While no one can stand surety for what may come, it is not difficult to adopt measures which will give far greater assurance of permanent peace than the world has ever known before.

Second--The treaty in which they join should provide for investigation by a permanent international commission of every dispute that may arise, no matter what its character or nature. The United States has already made thirty treaties embodying this principle, and these thirty treaties link our country to nearly three-quarters of all the inhabitants of the world. We have such a treaty in force between the United States and four of the countries now at war--Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy. The principle of this treaty has been accepted by three other belligerents--Germany, Austria, and Belgium--although treaties with these nations have not yet been negotiated. These seven warring nations have indorsed the principle embodied in these treaties, namely, that there shall be no declaration of war or commencement of hostilities until the subject in dispute has been investigated by an international commission. Why cannot they apply the principle as between themselves? What cause of war is of such magnitude that nations can afford to commence shooting at each other before the cause is investigated? A treaty such as those which now protect the peace of the United States would give a year's time for investigation and report, and who doubts that a year's time would be sufficient to reach an amicable settlement of almost every difficulty?

Does any one suppose that the present war would have been begun if a year's time had been taken to investigate the dispute between Austria and Serbia? It will be remembered that Serbia had only twenty-four hours in which to reply, and it will also be remembered that during this brief time the rulers of the Old World endeavored to find a means of preventing war. If they had only had some machinery which they could have employed to avert war, how gladly would they have availed themselves of it! The machinery provided by treaty can be resorted to with honor--yes, with honor--no matter how high a sense of honor the nation has. The trouble has been that, while the nations were abundantly provided with machinery for conducting war, they possessed no machinery for the promotion of peace. A year's time allows passion to subside and reason to resume its sway. It allows man to act when he is calm instead of having to act when he is angry. When a man is angry he swaggers around and talks about what he can do, and he often overestimates his strength; when he is calm he considers what he ought to do. When he is angry he hears the rumbling of earthquakes and the sweep of the hurricane; when he is calm he listens to the still small voice of conscience.

Third--While the period of investigation provided for in our treaties will go far toward preventing war, still even a year's deliberation does not give complete protection. In order to secure the investigation of all questions without exception it was necessary to reserve to the contracting parties liberty of action at the conclusion of the investigation. War is thus reduced from a probability to a mere possibility, and this is an immeasurable advance; but the assurance of permanent peace cannot be given until the desire for war is eradicated from the human heart. Compulsory periods of investigation supply the machinery by which nations can maintain peace with honor if they so desire; but the final work of the advocates of peace is educational--it is the cultivation of the spirit of brotherhood condensed into the commandment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Is it impossible to imagine a civilization in which greatness will be measured by service and in which the rivalry will be a rivalry in doing good? No one doubts that the lot of each member of society would be infinitely better under such conditions; why not strive to bring about such conditions? Is it visionary to hope and labor for this end? "Where there is no vision the people perish." It is a "death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word." The old system has broken down; it can let loose the furies, but it cannot bind them; it is impotent to save. The question is not whether the Word will triumph--that is certain--but when? And after what sufferings?

Thomas Carlyle, his voice rising clear and strong above the babble of Mammon, asked, in the closing chapters of his French Revolution:

"Hast thou considered how Thought is stronger than Artillery Parks, and (were it fifty years after death and martyrdom, or were it two thousand years) writes and unwrites Acts of Parliament, removes mountains, models the World like soft clay? Also how the beginning of all Thought worth the name is Love."

The truth which he uttered is still truth, and no matter who uttered it, the thought is the thought of Him who spake as never man spake; who was described in prophecy as the Prince of Peace; whose coming was greeted with the song of "Peace on earth; good-will to men," and whose teachings, when applied, will usher in the enduring peace of a universal brotherhood.

W.J. BRYAN.

Bryan, Idealist and Average Man

By Charles Willis Thompson

The subjoined estimate of William J. Bryan's character and
public career, which appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES of June
9, 1915, is by the hand of one of its staff writers who has
specialized in American national politics.

The plain man of the prairie became Secretary of State when William J. Bryan did; the prairie then entered diplomacy, international controversy. The secret of all that has puzzled the land in his behavior lies in that fact. His hold on the West lies in the fact that he is in himself the average man of that country, with that man's ideals, aspirations, defects, and drawbacks. There seems nothing strange or funny in a Secretary of State who goes to New York and signs temperance pledges, or holds Billy Sunday's platform in Philadelphia, when you get a few miles away from the cities; and if it seems a little queer to New York to find the Secretary of State undertaking to demolish the Darwinian theory, there are plenty of regions where the Darwinian theory is regarded as a device of the devil to upset the Mosaic cosmogony. Chesterton says that Dickens never wrote down to the mob, because he was himself the mob; and Bryan never talked down to the men of the prairie for the same reason.

He is not a man of culture, nor of reading. He has been around the world, but when he came back the books and articles he wrote were such as might have been published as guide books or in encyclopedias; he could have written them without leaving home. Travel had no broadening or polishing effect upon his mind.

The vast influence he still has is due to the fact that the common man, with all his mistakes and gaucheries, speaks in him, and that when the common man hears his own thoughts spoken in Bryan's voice he knows that the accent is sincere. Bryan may have taken up this or that particular issue because it sounded like a vote-maker, but none of them represented the least divergence from his course as a whole, which has always been honestly bent in a certain plain direction. He never hesitated to be in a minority and never dodged a fight. He is an innocent theorist, who frequently goes wrong because of the simplicity of his mental processes; but he acts upon his theories, right or wrong, with an intrepidity and a whole-hearted courage in which the ordinary man sees the qualities he himself would like to have, and dreams he has. His mind is not broad, but it is strong; he is always sure he is right, and always ready to fight for his beliefs, and he keeps his hold upon his followers because he is not below them, and not much above them, and because they know he is honest and sincere.

In 1906, the Democratic Party, picking itself out of the wreckage of Parker's defeat, was yearning to reunite. "Big business," assaulted and bruised and banged about by President Roosevelt, was ready to come into line. Roosevelt or his candidate could be defeated in 1908 only by Democratic harmony. Bryan was abroad, traveling, and somehow his distant figure looked less appalling than the near-by figure in the White House. The East did not ask him to recant his radicalism, but only not to talk about it. He arrived in New York, and business went to hear him make a harmony speech. If he made it, business would support him for President. He made the speech; he declared for Government ownership of railroads. Business, roaring with pain, fell back into the Republican arms, and Bryan was defeated for President. No, Bryan is not an opportunist--not in things that really matter.

William Bayard Hale once accurately described him as "essentially a preacher, a high-class exhorter, a glorified circuit rider." There are vast spaces of our country still populated by men and women of the old-fashioned kind; Chesterton describes them as "full of stale culture and ancestral simplicity." They are the descendants of the Puritans--intellectually, at any rate--they look askance on cards, dancing, and the stage; they are the kind of folks who peopled the Mississippi Valley in Lincoln's day and Massachusetts in John Hancock's. Bryan does not talk down to that type for votes; he is that type. Colonel George Harvey, with sarcastic intent, alleged that Bryan became a white-ribboner after hearing a little girl recite "The Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine." There are regions which would accept that parable as Gospel truth, and much to Bryan's credit.

Salem, Ill., is a little town which fairly shrieks at you its pre-eminence as a picture of that type. As you pass through its orderly little streets, with its little frame houses, all of the same kind and all neat and unassuming, with its dirt roads and its typical Town Hall, set correctly back behind a correct little patch of grass in a neat square, you feel instinctively that the Darwinian theory must be avoided in your Salem conversation. You know at once that the same families have lived there for generations. So they have; one of them was Bryan's, and he was born there on March 19, 1860.

Of course, he was the valedictorian of his class--Illinois College, 1881. Of course, he became a lawyer; and, of course, in the Middle West, that involved politics. He lived now in Lincoln, Neb., in a Republican district, but he was a Democrat. There was a landslide in 1890. The whole country went Democratic, and many a forlorn hope leader in some hide-bound Republican district was swept into Congress, Bryan among them. He made a great speech on the tariff, which won him instantly a national reputation; but Lincoln had recovered its Republican poise, and he did not go back to Congress. He added to his reputation in his own State, however, as editor of its chief Democratic organ, The Omaha World-Herald, and went to Chicago as the head of its delegation to the National Convention of 1896.

At a moment when David B. Hill's masterly presentation of the gold-standard case and Tillman's failure in his effort at rejoinder had thrown a wet blanket over the silverites, Bryan came forward with his "Cross of Gold" speech. The cheering delegations carried him around the hall on their shoulders. None of the candidates before the convention was dominating or really of Presidential size; the convention was deadlocked for many ballots, and at last it turned to Bryan and nominated him.

His defeat by McKinley really marked the beginning of his career as a national leader. Despite the accident which had made him the Democracy's nominal leader, he demonstrated that he was the ablest of the radicals into whose hands it had fallen, and his nominal chieftainship became a real one. It was evident from the beginning that he would be renominated in 1900. When the Spanish war broke out he offered his services and became Colonel of the Third Nebraska Regiment. The Republican Administration was taking no chances on his getting any military glory, and it marooned him in Florida till after the war. He returned good for evil by going to Washington, uniform and all, and dragooning reluctant Democratic Senators into voting for the treaty with Spain whereby we acquired the Philippines. This was one of his incidental opportunisms; he believed it would give the Democrats a winning issue, that of imperialism. The cast of Bryan's mind is such that he always gets his winning issues on wrong end foremost; it gave the Republicans a winning issue, that of imperialism.

Bryan went down to defeat again in 1900, on this new issue, and as usual epitaphs were written over his political grave. It is a favorite parlor game; but Bryan never stays dead, because there is something enduring in him. What is it? That same spokesmanship for the average man of many regions, the man of the little parlor with the melodeon or parlor organ, the plush-bound photograph album and the "History of the San Francisco Earthquake" bought by subscription from a book agent, and the grandfather's clock in the corner of the hall.

But in 1904 the Democratic leaders, tired of defeat, turned desperately to the opposite wing of the party. The radical leaders, really opportunists, forswore or hid their convictions for the sake of victory, tried to teach their unskillful tongues the language of conservatism, and joined in with the conservatives in the nomination of Parker. But Bryan did not yield; he forswore nothing, hid nothing, and he fought a lonely fight, the bravest of his life.

His fight was of one man against a multitude. Alone, he had to be everywhere; he was in the Committee on Resolutions, in the Committee on Credentials, on the floor of the convention, speaking, fighting, working, twenty hours a day. He had no one to help him; all his fellows were on the other side, strangling their convictions and fighting against him. He was insulted on the platform, even by fellow-radicals; he was elbowed aside and snarled at by men who had been more radical than himself; attempts were made to deny him a hearing. Nothing could daunt him or perturb him; he fought on until Parker was nominated, went to his hotel at dawn as the convention adjourned, and fell into his bed in utter collapse. A doctor was summoned, who said that Bryan must instantly give up all work and undergo treatment.

That evening the news came that Parker had refused to run unless the word "gold" was written into the platform; the convention was thrown into panic; the sick man rose from his bed and entered the wild and turbulent hall, white-faced, breathing with difficulty, sweat pouring down his face, and there took up the work again, single-handed still. He fought on all night, was defeated again, and went under the doctor's hands. Those speeches in that convention were really the greatest of his life, though they may not read as well as others; each of them was a battle.

Parker's defeat by Roosevelt again erased that ever-recurring epitaph over Bryan's political grave. It was evident at once that nothing could prevent him from being again the candidate in 1908. Again he was defeated, and again the epitaph was jubilantly rewritten. He was extinguished, he would never again be an influence in the party; it was, to use the phrase of 1896, 1900, and 1904, "the end of Bryan."

Again the epitaph had to be erased. He was so far from being extinguished that he became the dominating force of the convention of 1912. There is no doubt in the mind of the writer, who was there, that Bryan had given up all hope of running for President, because, as he expressed it in a thrilling midnight speech at that convention, he recognized at last that he had too many enemies ever to expect to win. But he did determine to be a king-maker if he could not be a king, and king-maker he was.

Not even the convention of 1904 showed Bryan in better light as a fighter than that of 1912. He was determined that the reactionaries should not control the convention. At the beginning he was defeated, but defeat never affected Bryan in the least in all his life, and this time, as usual, he only went on fighting. When the convention rejected him for Temporary Chairman and elected Parker, the embodiment of all he opposed, he merely took a fresh hold and fought harder.

When he swung Nebraska from Champ Clark to Wilson he had won, and thereafter Wilson's nomination was only a question of time. He was the centre of violent scenes, as when maddened men swept down upon him and shook their standards in his face and seemed on the verge of assaulting him. When he tried to get a hearing and the opposition shouted him down, he simply climbed up on the platform beside the Chairman and forced them to hear. Once, while the whole convention seemed to be yelling at him, and he stood in the midst of a whirlwind of angry noise, ex-Governor McCorkle of West Virginia, jumping up and facing him, shrieked in a voice heard above the cyclone: "Are you a Democrat?"

"My Democracy has been certified to by six and a half million voters. But," pointing his palm-leaf fan at McCorkle, with magnificent contempt, "I will ask the secretary to record one vote in the negative if the gentleman will give me his name."

He won; Wilson was nominated. He brought his great following into line for an Eastern man, and Wilson was elected. The new President, following a precedent set by Taylor, Garfield, and Harrison, made him Secretary of State.

Then Bryan showed a new side of his character to the country. He effaced himself in Wilson's interest; he became a loyal subordinate, accepting a minor place cheerfully and laboring with might and main to make the Administration a success. It is chiefly due to his efforts that it was one for its first two years. The new President was unknown to most of his party, and the legislation he recommended would have met with internal opposition but for Bryan. The Secretary whipped his followers into line even for legislation so repugnant to them as the Currency bill, and the Presidential program went through. In two years Mr. Wilson had become a definite personality to the country, and had a following of his own; but his initial success was due to Bryan, and but for Bryan Mr. Wilson might have had to face a party as divided as did Cleveland, and might have seen his Administration wrecked as Cleveland's was.

Mr. Bryan hoped to make an enduring name for himself as Secretary of State. In the years that had elapsed since he was Colonel of the Third Nebraska he had become an ardent pacifist, and he dreamed of going into history with a title greater than that of any other statesman who ever lived--for such, surely, would have been the meed of the man who abolished war. That mind of his, honest as the day, but far from great; strong but not broad, sees everything as simple, not as complex. Is there a wrong? Why, then, abolish it; it is as simple as A B C. War is wrong; therefore let us stop it. How? Why, get everybody to agree not to fight without taking a year to look into the thing. And he busied himself drafting and negotiating treaties with all the world to get it to agree to this simple but certain remedy. The "glorified circuit rider" was at the head of the Department of State of the United States. If anybody had suggested to him that there were nations which no treaty could bind, he would have answered, in the style of the prayer-meeting exhorter, "Ah! I have a higher faith in human nature." So he worked busily, building himself his niche in the temple of fame, and meanwhile the greatest war in history broke out.

With such a mind as has been described, it is evident that this event could not shake Mr. Bryan's confidence in himself or his remedies. To him it was obvious that the war came because the nations involved had not signed his treaty; if they had, Germany would have abided by it; would not have dreamed of treating it as a scrap of paper; would have waited the prescribed year, and Austria would have given Serbia the same time to reply to her ultimatum. The mischief was done, but he set about heroically to repair it; he sought to have the United States intervene as a peacemaker; he sought to prevent the United States from protecting its citizens on the high seas, since that seemed likely to lead to war; and at last, finding his efforts of no avail, he resigned.

No one who had seen him in his unequal fights for his principles on less momentous occasions could doubt that he would fight for them to the end on this greatest one. There is no parallel to his action in American history. So far as its political aspects are concerned, the nearest thing to it is Blaine's resignation from Harrison's Cabinet in 1892; but that only faintly resembles it. Blaine did not resign because of any difference in principles, but because he wanted to fight the Administration; and the superficial resemblance lies only in the similarity of the relations of the two Presidents to their Secretaries of State.

Bryan leaves the Cabinet saddened, but not disillusioned. When he had been Secretary of State two months he said that he would not have taken office "if I thought there was to be a war during my tenure." "I believe," he added, "there will be no war while I am Secretary of State, and I believe there will be no war so long as I live." It has not come out that way; it might have so easily come out that way if only Germany had signed that treaty of his! But he is not disillusioned; nothing can disillusion him; his ideal is still only a day or two ahead of him, and he resigns to fight for it, since fight for it in the Cabinet he cannot any longer.

In the Name of Peace.

By LAVINIA V. WHITNEY.

(After Kipling.)

When the last of the soldiers has fallen, and the cannons lie twisted
aside,
When the last of all homes has been ruined, and the heart of the
youngest girl bride,
We shall wake from our terrible madness, and pause for an eon or two,
Till the Master of all the good soldiers shall call us to battle anew.

Then those that were brave shall be braver--they shall love with a
love more fair;
They shall hear, o'er a worldwide battlefield, the Voice of their God
in the air;
They shall have the real saints for their comrades--Magdalene, Peter,
and Paul;
They shall fight unembittered, and never again shall be weary at all.

And only the Master shall praise us, for only the Master shall lead;
And no one shall fight for his country, and none for his honor or
creed;
But each for the Master Who loves him, and Teuton and Briton and all
Shall fight, each the cause of the other, for the God of the Love of
us All!

A World League to Enforce Peace

By William Howard Taft, ex-President of the United States.

President Wilson on June 15 denied the statement, cabled
from Europe, that the United States was the only great
neutral Government that had not encouraged the movement
among neutral nations looking to a conference of neutrals to
end the European conflict. To this Government, said the
President, answering a direct inquiry, had been given no
more opportunity than everybody knew in furthering a neutral
movement for peace. He stated that this Government had
supported everything of the sort as far as it could
legitimately. It had done everything that was for peace and
accommodation, he added. But the great drawback has been
that none of the warring Governments has directly, that is
officially, indicated that it would respond sympathetically
to any suggestion that it become a party to a movement to
end the war. The idea of a league of neutral nations, having
for its object a concerted effort to bring about peace, is
reported to be in the back of the President's mind, and
members of the Cabinet have given some thought to the
suggestion, which might contemplate the firm maintenance of
neutral rights if peace could not be obtained, but the
situation has not developed to a point where the American
Government is ready to make a definite move.

Meanwhile, as the outgrowth of a series of meetings held in
the Century Club, New York, terminating in a call for a
conference signed by a National Provisional Committee of 109
members headed by ex-President Taft, an organization known
as the League to Enforce Peace, American Branch, was formed
on June 17, 1915, in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. The
purpose of the conference was explained by Mr. Taft in his
address as President, which appears in full below.

My fellow-seekers after peace, we thank you for your cordial greeting. In calling this meeting my associates and I have not been unaware that we might be likened to the tailors of Tooley Street, who mistook themselves for the people of England. We wish first to say that we do not represent anybody but ourselves. We are not national legislators, nor do we control the foreign policy of this Government. A number of us were invited to dinner at the Century Club (New York) by four generous hosts, who were deeply interested in devising a plan for an international agreement by which, when this present war shall cease, a recurrence of such a war will be made less probable.

We are not here to suggest a means of bringing this war to an end; much as that is to be desired and much as we would be willing to do to obtain peace, that is not within the project of the present meeting.

We hope and pray for peace, and our hope of its coming in the near future is sufficient to make us think that the present is a good time to discuss and formulate a series of proposals to which the assent of a number of the great powers could be secured. _We think a League of Peace could be formed that would enable nations to avoid war by furnishing a practical means of settling international quarrels, or suspending them until the blinding heat of passion had cooled._

When the World Conference is held our country will have its official representatives to speak for us. "We, Tailors of Tooley Street," will not be there, but if, in our sartorial leisure, we shall have discussed and framed a practical plan for a league of peace, our official representatives will be aided and may in their discretion accept it and present it to the conference as their own.

There are Tooley Streets in every nation today and the minds of earnest men are being stirred with the same thought and the same purpose. We have heard from them through various channels. The denizens of those Tooley Streets will have their influence upon their respective official representatives. No man can measure the effect upon the peoples of the belligerent countries and upon the peoples of the neutral countries--the horrors and exhaustion that this unprecedented war is going to have. It is certain they all will look with much more favorable eye to leagues for the preservation of peace than ever before.

_In no war has the direct interest that neutrals have in preventing a war between neighbors been so closely made known._

This interest of neutrals has been so forced upon them that it would require only a slight development and growth in the law of international relations to develop that interest into a right to be consulted before such a war among neighbors can be begun. This step we hope to have taken by the formation of a Peace League of the Great Powers, whose primary and fundamental principle shall be that no war can take place between any two members of the league until they have resorted to the machinery that the league proposes to furnish to settle the controversy likely to lead to war.

If any member refuses to use this machinery and attacks another member of the league in breach of his league obligation, all members of the league agree to defend the members attacked by force.

We do not think the ultimate resort to force can be safely omitted from an effective League of Peace. We sincerely hope that it may never become necessary, and that the deterrent effect of its inevitable use in case of a breach of the league obligation will help materially to give sanction to the laws of the league and to render a resort to force avoidable.

We are not peace-at-any-price men, because we do not think we have reached the time when a plan based on the complete abolition of war is impracticable. So long as nations partake of the frailties of men who compose them, war is a possibility, and that possibility should not be ignored in any League of Peace that is to be useful. We do not think it necessary to call peace-at-any-price men cowards or apply other epithets to them. We have known in history the most noble characters who adhered to such a view and yet whose physical and moral courage is a heritage of mankind.

To those who differ with us in our view of the necessity for this feature of possible force in our plan, we say we respect your attitude. We admit your claim to sincere patriotism to be as just as ours. We do not ascribe your desire to avoid war to be a fear of death to yourselves or your sons; but rather to your sense of the horrors, injustice, and ineffectiveness of settling any international issue by such a brutal arbitrament. Nevertheless, we differ with you in judgment that, in the world of nations as they are, war can be completely avoided.

_We believe it is still necessary to use a threat of overwhelming force of a great league with a willingness to make the threat good in order to frighten nations into a use of rational and peaceful means to settle their issues with their associates of the league._ Nor are we militarists or jingoes. We are trying to follow a middle path.

Now what is the machinery, a resort to which we wish to force an intending belligerent of the league--it consists of two tribunals, to one of which every issue must be submitted. Issues between nations are of two classes:

First--Issues that can be decided on principles of international law and equity, called justiciable.

Second--Issues that cannot be decided on such principles of law and equity, but which might be quite as irritating and provocative of war, called non-justiciable.

The questions of the Alaskan boundary, of the Bering Sea seal fishing, and of the Alabama Claims were justiciable issues that could be settled by a court, exactly as the Supreme Court would settle claims between States. The questions whether the Japanese should be naturalized, whether all American citizens should be admitted to Russia as merchants without regard to religious faith, are capable of causing great irritation against the nation denying the privilege, and yet such nations, in the absence of a treaty on the subject, are completely within their international right, and the real essence of the trouble cannot be aided by a resort to a court. The trouble is non-justiciable.

_We propose that for justiciable questions we shall have an impartial court to which all questions arising between members of the league shall be submitted._ If the court finds the question justiciable, it shall decide it. If it does not, it shall refer it to a Commission of Conciliation to investigate, confer, hear argument, and recommend a compromise.

We do not propose to enforce compliance either with the court's judgment or the Conciliation Commission's recommendations. We feel that we ought not to attempt too much--we believe that the forced submission and the truce taken to investigate the judicial decision or the conciliatory compromise recommended will form a material inducement to peace. It will cool the heat of passion, and will give the men of peace in each nation time to still the jingoes.

The League of Peace will furnish a great opportunity for more definite formulation of the principles of international law. The arbitral court will amplify it and enrich it in their application of its general principles to particular cases. They will create a body of Judge-made law of the highest value. Then the existence of the league will lead to ever-recurring congresses of the league, which, acting in a quasi-legislative capacity, may widen the scope of international law in a way that a court may not feel able or competent to do.

This is our plan. It is not so complicated--at least, in statement. In its practical application difficulties now unforeseen may arise, but we believe it offers a working hypothesis upon which a successful arrangement can be made.

We are greeted first by the objection that no treaties can prevent war. We are not called upon to deny this in order to justify or vindicate our proposals as useful. We realize that nations sometimes are utterly immoral in breaking treaties and shamelessly bold in avowing their right to do so on the ground of necessity; but this is not always the case. We cannot give up treaties because sometimes they are broken any more than we can give up commercial contracts because men sometimes dishonor themselves in breaking them. We decline to assume that all nations always are dishonorable, or that a solemn treaty obligation will not have some deterrent effect upon a nation that has plighted its faith to prevent its breach. _When we add to this the sanction of an agreement by a number of powerful nations to enforce the obligation of the recalcitrant and faithless member, we think we have a treaty that is much more than a "scrap of paper"--and we base our faith in this on a common-sense view of human nature._

It is objected that we propose only to include the more powerful nations. We'll gladly include them all. But we don't propose to have the constitution of our court complicated by a demand for equal representation of the many smaller nations. We believe that when we have a league of larger powers the smaller powers will be glad to come in and enjoy the protection that the league will afford against the unjust aggression of the strong against the weak.

It is suggested that we invite a conference of neutral nations to bring about measures for present peace and to formulate demands as to the protection of neutral rights. This may be a good plan, but, as Kipling says, that is another story.

The League to Enforce Peace

Personnel and Text of the Resolutions Adopted

RESOLUTIONS.

[Adopted in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, June 17, 1915.]

Throughout 5,000 years of recorded history, peace, here and
there established, has been kept, and its area has been
widened, in one way only. Individuals have combined their
efforts to suppress violence in the local community.
Communities have co-operated to maintain the authoritative
state and to preserve peace within its borders. States have
formed leagues or confederations or have otherwise
co-operated to establish peace among themselves. Always
peace has been made and kept, when made and kept at all, by
the superior power of superior numbers acting in unity for
the common good.