From noon on Wednesday, May 12th, until late Friday evening, the Congress was constantly in session and many memorable addresses were made by men notable in the world of affairs. The various addresses delivered put peace before the world as a business proposition. They discussed the economic side of war and demonstrated that peace is necessary to business stability and prosperity, that war directs and masters men, money, and measures, diverts them from the legitimate channels of industry and concentrates effort upon destruction instead of the constructive processes which are essential to public and private welfare. The horrible slaughter and devastation of war are brought to the consciousness of the people of all countries by the gigantic contest now raging, more vividly than ever before, and the emotions engendered lead many good men and women to the suggestion of all kinds of idealistic and impracticable schemes for bringing the war to an end and ushering in universal peace. But when we look at the character of the nations engaged in the struggle and of the men who direct the policies of these nations, and at the deep underlying causes which precipitated the conflict, we perceive that peace cannot be restored by mere sentiment, nor can the permanence of peace if it is once secured, be guaranteed by mere paper treaties. The problem of peace is a problem which requires law as the basis of its solution. It is a problem which cannot be solved by sentimentalists and dreamers, but must be grappled by strong and clear visioned men. The failure of many merely sentimental peace movements in the past has tended to bring the cause of peace into ill repute. Those who called the World Court Congress at Cleveland felt that the time had come when strong hands were needed to launch an effective movement, and they accordingly summoned an array of men which has never been surpassed in any gathering, for collective wisdom, knowledge of the world, experience, and practical business sense. The discussion conducted by these men was in no wise historical or sciolistic, but based upon the solid foundation of reason, law, justice, and feasibility. The speakers were informed by knowledge and experience; many were adepts in the science of business and finance and government and practical politics. Some were experts in international law, and diplomacy. The plan they proposed must commend itself to practical business men for its workability, no less than to idealists for its justice and essential benevolence.
One great, rhymic, world-bettering ideal was the motif, the soul inspiring theme of all those addresses and invocations for a World Court—a World Court where men may carry their grievances like men, not beasts of the field, and have their differences adjudged on the basic principles of equity and the fundamentals of justice; a World Court which might be a tribunal in prototype of the greatest court of the greatest peoples in the universe; a World Court which by its rulings would make not possible the mobocracy which menaces to-day; a court which by its laws unto itself will preclude beyond possibility such wars of extermination as are existent to-day!
The Congress proceeded from the very first with the machinery of a great National Convention. It had been said that no such gathering of peace advocates and their factional followers could be assembled without petty bickerings, harsh argument, and debate. Nothing could be further from the resultant fact. Not a note of discord marred the proceedings and the preliminary work looking to the establishment of the international peace tribunal was accomplished with dispatch and fine promise. The speakers of honor and the delegates to a man seemed to be inspired with the work ahead and the vital import of final achievement.
The titanic struggle between the great powers abroad was not touched upon. Nothing was said or done that could possibly embarrass President Wilson or his advisors and all thought and effort was for future prevention rather than momentary cure. Former President Taft’s address, delivered on the opening day of the Congress, had largely to do with the question of arbitration. He dwelt upon its grave importance and did not think it necessary in the constitution of an effective league of peace to embody all the nations. An agreement of eight or nine of the great powers of Europe, Asia, and America would furnish a useful restraint upon possible wars and its successful establishment draw into it eventually the less powerful nations. The Hon. Alton B. Parker set his seal of approval upon such an international court and called attention to the fact that it already had had the careful consideration of the forty-four states comprising the Second Hague Conference; by the Institute of International Law; by the approving leading powers since 1907 and by the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes at no less than four annual conferences. A World Court patterned after our own Supreme Court—the greatest court in the history of the world—he thought entirely possible and practicable.
Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio inferred that the projected World Court would give a new stamp on the sacredness of international contracts and that he said was a guarantee of peace itself.
The World Court was just as feasible as a family court, declared Hon. John Hays Hammond, although it did involve more elements as a tribal court. The time was ripe, he declared, for the higher règime of pacific reason and moral adjudication and America should voice the world groping and moral inquiry of the race and cause them to crystallize into a new world state “where men shall learn war no more.”
After setting forth the limitations of the World’s Court which perforce of necessity turns to the future rather than the past the Hon. Henry Lane Wilson asked “How vast would be the gain to humanity and civilization, how greatly would the number of wars be reduced, and how enormously would the horrors of conflict be diminished, if such a court were now in existence?”
The purpose of the Congress, said Bainbridge Colby, was to bear aloft the standards of justice and of law; of justice as the mightiest concern of mankind—of law as its indispensable instrument. Mr. Colby positively denied that force had dethroned reason and declared that “The purpose of this Congress is to assert the undaunted and unshaken belief of the freest people in the world, that God still reigns, and that justice is mightiest in the mighty.”
Rabbi Joseph Silverman made an appeal for the awakening of a new spirit of patriotism which would point the way to a great World Court for peace. “We are worse off to-day,” he asserted, “than men were in the days of savagery. The savage went forth with his bow and his arrow and his tomahawk, and one savage could, at best, with one shot kill one human being. But the modern civilized man goes forth with Krupp guns and cannons and bombs and shells and submarines and automobile and airship, and one human being to-day, with these arts and sciences of civilization, one human being, pressing one button, with one shot can kill ten thousand human beings, and destroy hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property. One savage can kill one man—one civilized man can destroy a whole city.”
Mr. Henry Clews in an address entitled “An Epochal Event,” called attention to the fact that the World Court Congress was an event of supreme importance and attracted world wide attention and interest that could not fail to help the cause of permanent peace. The movement, he avowed, for the creation of a great International Court of Justice “brings us a step nearer to that sublime idea of the inspired writer when men ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,’ and they shall hear no more of war upon the surface of this fair earth.”