His suggestion was unanimously adopted and the Parliament successfully weathered its first storm by adjourning for six months.
Again the world rang with the shouts of the orators of peace. A beginning had actually been made in the new science of war prevention. The Appeal to Reason had triumphed.
Waldron remained a day to congratulate his friends among the crowned heads and hurried home to organize a great Jubilee to celebrate this meeting of the Pan-American Congress and hail its outcome as the first fruits of the reign of universal peace.
Virginia Holland returned to her home with a great fear slowly shaping itself in her heart.
CHAPTER XXI
THE outcome of the First Parliament of Man was hailed by the professional peace-makers as the sublimest achievement of the ages. A way had been found at last to banish war. The dream of the poet had been fulfilled. They called on all men to beat their guns into plowshares, their swords into pruning-hooks. They proclaimed the end of force, the dawn of the Age of Reason.
Our nation once more demonstrated its love for the orator who preaches smooth things. The Honorable Plato Barker praised the President for his brave stand for the rights and dignity of the Republic in his heroic defense of the Monroe Doctrine.
In the same breath he acclaimed the President of Chile who led the way to the court of reason as a new prophet of humanity. He would not yield one inch in the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine—no! But it had been demonstrated that such issues could be settled by moral suasion! The next session of the august Parliament of Man, he declared, would ratify the decision of the Pan-American Congress without a dissenting voice.
The long pent energies of our nation drove us forward now at lightning speed. During the last year of the great war our commerce had practically come to dominate the world. Anticipating conditions at its close, Congress passed a new high tariff which closed our ports to the flood of cheap goods Europe was ready to dump on our shores. Every wheel in America was turning, every man at work, wages leaped upward with profits mounting to unheard-of figures. The distress in Europe from the glut of an overstocked market sent us millions of laborers and still our industries clamored for more.
A hundred million Americans went mad with prosperity. Our wealth had already mounted steadily during the war. We were not only the richest nation on earth, there was no rival in sight.