The first rush of events were all with his enemies and critics. The war had been fought to an impassable deadlock.
Germany entrenched had proven invincible against the offensive assaults of the Allies. The Allies were equally impotent to achieve an aggressive victory. When the conviction grew into practical certainty that the struggle might last for ten years, the German Emperor gave the hint to the Pope. The Pope sounded the warring nations and an armistice was arranged.
Embodied in this agreement to suspend hostilities for thirty days was the startling announcement that the nations at war, desiring to provide against the recurrence of so terrible and costly an experiment as the struggle just ending, had further agreed to meet at The Hague in the first Parliament of Man and establish the Federation of the World!
Waldron proclaimed this achievement the greatest step in human progress since the dawn of history. He claimed also that his newspapers and his associates in their fight against armaments had won this victory. He announced the dawn of the new era of universal peace and good will among men.
John Vassar was the most thoroughly discredited statesman in the American Congress. His hobby was the butt of ridicule. Woman’s suffrage swept the northern section of the eastern seaboard in every state which held an election in November.
The Parliament of Man met at The Hague. The preliminary session was composed of the rulers of the leading states, nations and empires of the world.
Through the influence of Japan, the four hundred millions of China were excluded.
It was well known in the inner councils of the great powers of Europe that the real reason for her exclusion was the avowed purpose of the rulers of Europe and Japan to divide the vast domain of the Orient into crown dependencies and reserve them for future exploitation.
Their scholars had winked gravely at the charge of a lack of civilization. What they meant was a lack of the weapons of offense and defense. China was the center of art and learning when America was an untrodden wilderness and the fathers of the kings of Europe were cracking cocoanuts and hickory nuts in the woods with monkeys. China had lost the art of shooting straight—that was all. India had lost it too and her three hundred millions were not even permitted the courtesy of representation in the person of an alien viceroy. A handful of Englishmen had ruled her millions for a century. India had ceased to exist as a nation.
One-half the human race were thus excluded at the first session of the Committee.