That practical results have been secured is certain; that better ones are in store, if we act wisely, is no less certain. Mankind longs for less troubled days, and moves toward this not inaccessible goal. Such is the truth; and we may feel confident that, according to the oft-quoted word of dying Wyclif, "Truth shall conquer."
A POSTSCRIPT
A few years after this address had been delivered threatening clouds began to gather. Germany, who had prevented, at the first conference of The Hague, anything being done toward a limitation of armaments as proposed by Russia,[261] suddenly, in full peace, when other nations were inclined to think that they were rather too much armed than not enough, passed a law increasing, in a prodigious degree, her military forces.
On this move of hers, on what peace-loving democracies ought to do in the presence of such an unexpected event, on the future of the peace and arbitration ideas, after such a blow, the former president of the French delegation at The Hague, Mr. Léon Bourgeois, wrote in May, 1913, little more than a year before the present war, a noteworthy letter,[262] in which we read:
"One fact strikes us most painfully and might at first disturb our minds. The bills presently submitted to the Reichstag are going to increase in a formidable manner the armaments of Germany, and to necessitate on the part of France an extraordinary effort, and sacrifices to which we must manfully and promptly consent....
"No one more than myself deplores that folly of armaments to which Europe is yielding, and I do not forget that it was I who, in 1899, at the first Hague Conference, drew up and defended the resolution in favor of a limitation of the military load weighing on the world. But I do not forget either what I said before the Senate, in 1907, after the second conference: 'As for us, confirmed partisans of arbitration and peace, disarmament is a consequence, not a preparation. For disarmament to be possible, one must first feel that one's right is secure. The security of right is what must be organized first of all. Behind that rampart alone, nations will be able to lay down their arms....
"Let us be pacific, but let us be strong. And let us know how to wait. The very excess of the load weighing on Europe will originate, sooner than is sometimes believed, that irresistible movement of opinion which will cause a policy of wisdom, mutual respect, and real security, to become an unavoidable necessity."
The chief factor will be public opinion. Present events will, one may hope, have served to educate public opinion throughout the world.
FOOTNOTES
[252] The text of this address is reproduced exactly as it was delivered, December 17, 1910, only a few notes and references being added.