unforeseen by the keen judicial mind of President Cleveland, who characterized the defeat of the treaty as "the greatest grief" of his administration. But this is not all. The American representatives at both Hague Conferences were the first to place these same limitations on all arbitration proposals. Look at it from what point of view you will, our government's conduct must appear humiliating. Considering the fact that universal arbitration treaties have proved practical, it is well-nigh incredible. Behold our bellicose sister American republics. Argentina and Chile, Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, all have agreements for the arbitration of all questions whatsoever. All the Central American republics are bound by treaty to decide every difference of whatever nature in the Central American Court of Justice. Denmark's three treaties with Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands withhold no cause, however vital, from reason's peaceful sway. Norway and Sweden likewise have an agreement to abide by the decision of the Hague Court in whatever disputes may occur. The very existence of all these treaties is significant, yet even more significant is the fact that they have been triumphantly tested. Norway and Sweden at one extremity of the globe and Argentina and Chile at the other have thus quietly settled disputes in which their honor and interests were seriously involved. Do you ask further evidence of the hypocrisy with which our Senate parades our national honor and our vital interests to the undoing of a grand work? Search our history and you will find it in abundance. In the great case of the Alabama claims, Charles Francis Adams pronounced the construction of Confederate ships in English ports to be a violation of the international law of neutrality. This certainly was a question of national honor and vital interests, yet he pleaded for arbitration. In reply Lord John Russell said, "That is a question of honor which we will never arbitrate, for England's honor cannot be made the subject of arbitration." The case was debated for six years. Then came England's "Grand Old Man," the mighty Gladstone, with a different view. It is to the interest," he said, "not only of England and the United States, but of the world, peaceably to settle those claims." He submitted them to a joint high commission. England lost and paid. Thus the honor of both nations was successfully arbitrated. Likewise the Newfoundland fisheries case had been a bone of contention between Great Britain and America from the day our independence was recognized. As late as 1887 it threatened to become the cause of war. No question ever arose which more vitally affected the interests of America, yet the Senate recently accepted a settlement by arbitration. Similarly, the Alaska fur seal dispute, the Alaskan and the Venezuelan boundary disputes, and the northeast boundary controversy all involved both the vital interests and the national honor of England and America, yet all were satisfactorily and permanently arbitrated. So excited were we over our northwest boundary that the principal issue of a political campaign was "The whole of Oregon or none! Fifty-four forty or fight!" Yet we peaceably acquiesced in a treaty that gave us neither. Yes, our honor may be arbitrated. If we are illprepared for war, we arbitrate. If we are sure of a favorable award, we arbitrate. But we must have a loophole, an ever-ready escape from obligation. Posing as the most enlightened nation on the face of the globe, we refuse entirely to displace those medieval notions. according to which personal honor found its best protection in the dueling pistol, and national honor its only vindication in slaughter and devastation. To unlimited arbitration we refuse to submit. Fifteen years ago England, the mighty England, gave us her pledge that no cause should ever justify war. This pledge our Senate in the name of honor refused. Unlimited arbitration agreements were suggested at both Hague Conferences. Americans promptly placed restrictions upon them in the name of honor. Again has England with enthusiasm just offered us unrestricted arbitration. Again she is repulsed by our Senate in the name of honor. France, too, bears to our doors an unqualified pledge of arbitration. France, too, is repulsed by our Senate in the name of honor. Germany and Japan express a desire to settle every question at the bar of justice. Impelled by honor we pass their desire unheeded. Our Clevelands, our Olneys, our Edward Everett Hales, our Carl Schurzes, our John Hays, have all urged unlimited arbitration. Our Davises and Clarks and Platts and Quays in Senate seats have undone their work in the name of honor. Our Charles Eliots and Nicholas Butlers, our Albert Shaws and Hamilton Holts, now plead for universal peace through unlimited arbitration. Senators Bacon and Lodge and Heyburn and Hitchcock, apparently impelled by constitutional prerogative, party prejudice, or personal animosity, now cast their votes for limitations in the name of honor. From the platform of peace conferences, from the halls of colleges, from the pulpit and the bench, from the offices of bankers and merchants and manufacturers, from the press, with scarcely a column's exception, there arises a swelling plea for treaties of arbitration that know no exceptions. In the name of honor that plea is defied. Honor? No, an ocean of exception large enough to float any number of battleships for which pride and ambition may be willing to pay! Honor? No, a finical and foolish reservation that at any moment may become a maelstrom of suspicion and rage and hatred and destruction and death! Honor? No, a mountainous barrier to peace that must be leveled before there can be progress! Honor? No, the incarnation of selfishness, the cloak of shrewd politics, the mask of false patriotism! National honor? No, national dishonor! Before the nations of the world the United States stands to-day in an unenviable light. It is a false light. Since the days of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin our people have led in much of the march upward from the slough of weltering strife. Many a stumblingblock to progress we have removed from the rugged pathway, but for fifteen years our government has refused to touch the barrier of national honor and vital interests. England and France have now laid this duty squarely at our door. "It is a social obligation as imperative as the law of Moses, as full of hope as the Great Physician's healing touch." Let us here highly resolve that there shall be uttered a new official interpretation of national honor and vital interests, an interpretation synonymous with dignity and fidelity, sincerity, and integrity, and confidence in the vows both of men and of nations. "If we have faith in the right as God gives us to see the right,' we shall catch a vision of opportunity that shall fire the soul with a spirit of service which the darkness of night shall not arrest, which the course of the day shall not weary." e |