BY
JOHN WESLEY HILL
This is a topsy-turvy world to-day. Thinking men—and women too, for
that matter, stand aghast at the harking backward to barbarism. In one
fell swoop, as it were, from a plane of ostensible civilization the
greater part of the civilized universe has been plunged into a veritable
maelstrom; an indescribable cataclysm of heinous warfare and matchless
bestiality. Danté in his wildest dreams painted no such Inferno and the
end blacker in perspective than the background of a Doré painting is not
yet!
Out of the chaos what may come is a matter of rife speculation for future
historians. But that there is a sovereign remedy for the avoidance
and future recurrence of such world racking evils of carnal pillage,
wholesale murder and strife, is a fact that cannot be gainsaid and the
keynote for that panacea was sounded at Cleveland on three gala days,
this last May, when the first great World Court Congress was held with an
enthusiasm and earnestness almost unprecedented in the history of such
assemblages in this country.
This whole land was just awakening from a commercial and industrial
somnolence, unrecorded except in days of panic and war at home, when
the Congress was convened on May 12th and the progenitors of the great
movement had many misgivings as to their ability to induce the staid
business man of this country to lay aside his duties even for the
movement and attend.
Marts and ’changes had been closed; industries idle and nearly the whole
business world at a standstill for months past when the call for the
Congress was sounded and it was thought by some of its warmest advocates
that so many difficulties beset the way that but a meagre gathering could
be assembled. To the astonishment and gratification of the big men back
of the movement just the reverse was true and it is doubtful if a more
representative body of Americans ever assembled under one roof. A one
time President, Senators of the State and Nation, members of Congress,
great Captains of Industry, Educationalists, Bankers, Brokers, Ministers
of the Gospel, diplomats and men of conspicuous prominence in nearly
every walk in life thronged the immense armory in which the Congress was
in session for three days, and the initial movement for a great World
Court begun.
Some idea of the intense interest in the all-important prospect may
be had from the statement that no less than twenty-eight governors of
various states of the Union signed the call for the Congress. More than
one thousand delegates answered the roll call, representing national and
civic life in all its different branches. Some of the more conspicuously
prominent men present were ex-President William Howard Taft, John Hays
Hammond, Judge Alton B. Parker, Henry Clews, Theodore Marburg, Rabbi
Joseph Silverman, James Brown Scott, of the Carnegie Peace Foundation,
Denys P. Myers, of the World Peace Foundation, Hon. Bainbridge Colby, of
New York, Dr. Francis E. Clark, Dr. Samuel T. Dutton, Hon. Henry Lane
Wilson, William Dudley Foulke, Senator Atlee Pomerene of Ohio, Harry
A. Garfield, son of the late President Garfield, Thomas Raeburn White,
Bascom Little, Herbert S. Houston, Vice-President of Doubleday, Page &
Co., Thomas B. Warren, Senator Warren G. Harding, Emerson McMillin, and
numerous others.
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.”
Emerson McMillin discussed the composition of “The World Court.” He would
not brook the thought that there was not patent and paramount need for
such an institutional tribunal. The necessity for an International Court
was so obvious that it was not a subject for discussion. The delegates of
forty-five states would not have supported it at the Hague Conference if
there had not been a great desire and a growing demand for it. He called
attention, in his warm advocacy for the establishment of the Court, to
the records of the two Hague Conferences. In 1899 it was but necessary
to suggest the creation of a World’s Court to have it promptly put aside
as impracticable. After a lapse of but eight years the 1907 Conference
adopted the following: “The Conference recommends to the signatory powers
the adoption of the project hereunto annexed of a convention for the
establishment of a Court of Arbitral Justice and its putting in effect,
as soon as an accord shall be reached upon the choice of the judges and
the constitution of the court.” This received the unanimous support of
all the conferees.
In a logical appeal for such a court, U. S. Senator Atlee Pomerene of
Ohio, presented some startling facts. “My friends,” he said, “the other
day the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_ said, editorially, that according to
the best estimates up to date there had been lost in this horrible war,
5,970,000 men. Think of it. In the great State of Ohio, which Senator
Harding and I have the honor to represent, according to the last Federal
census there were only 4,700,000 souls, men, women, and children. To-day
there are, perhaps about 5,000,000 souls in Ohio. In other words, in the
short space of about eight or nine months, nearly one million more men
have been lost than we have men, women, and children in Ohio, all because
the heads of governments are worshipping old Mars.”
Thomas Raeburn White presented to the Congress a series of technical
provisions for the appointment of judges to the International Court of
Arbitration. They could be easily surmounted, however, he thought, and
in an address on “The Method of Procedure,” the Hon. James Brown Scott
declared that great as these difficulties were in the selection of
judges, they were not insuperable.
President Harry A. Garfield, of Williams College, in a discussion on “The
Minimum Number of Nations Required to Successfully Inaugurate the Court,”
thought that four of the great powers would suffice for an inaugural.
He called attention to the fact that Mr. Thomas Raeburn White, speaking
at the third national conference of the American Society for Judicial
Settlement of International Disputes in December, 1912, analyzed the
articles of the convention providing for the establishment of the court
and showed that the question was clearly left to the Powers represented
at the conference, and could be adopted by any two or more of them
when they saw fit. There appears to be no serious dissent from this
proposition.
There were other numerous addresses by men of nation-wide importance.
There were utterances that will go down through the aeons of a new
history-making civilization.
Men who had come to the Congress with the air of dreamers went away
surcharged with the inspired atmosphere of accomplishment. As Bainbridge
Colby had said it was no new thought, no new ideal, this scheme of the
World Congress for a World Court. It had come down through the centuries.
But in the other ages, ay, even in the latter years there had been no
such dire necessity for this purposed International Tribunal. To-day
was a different day with a different need. Jew and Gentile, capitalist
and laborer touched shoulders and joined hands in the common weal and
the great cause at this World Congress for the World Court. The Rabbi
pointed out in one breath that the arrow of the savage killed one man and
the gun of civilization destroyed a whole city and all within! In the
next the figures of a grave Senator pointed to the horror that in a few
months of civilized warfare 1,000,000 more souls have been hurled into
eternity than there is population in the Buckeye State. Small wonder that
the cardinal, incontrovertible facts and figures so widely disseminated
through the press of this country have staggered the comprehension and
understanding of humanity the world over. For the wassail cries of
the royal rioters in warfare of all other ages are but miniature in
comparison with those in this era of infamy.
* * * * *
A word in conclusion to the Mayor Newton D. Baker, Bascom Little and
the people of Cleveland. Partly by chance and partly by design this
almost matchlessly beautiful lake city was selected for the initial
sessions of the World Congress. By municipal experts the world over,
Cleveland is counted one of the greatest accomplishments in latter-day
city building extant. Environment is everything and I shall always
believe that so much was accomplished at the Congress because of the
perfection of arrangements and the fitting surroundings to say nothing
of the incomparable hospitality of the city. Since my return to New York
and the offices of the International Peace Forum, I have been besieged
with inquiries in relation to these accomplishments. Beginning with the
month of July, a great magazine entitled THE WORLD COURT published under
the auspices of the International Peace Forum will make its appearance
on the book stalls. Many of these inquiries will then be answered. Its
main purpose will be to advocate the establishment of a World Court
which I am almost prone to prophesy is already assured. In addition the
magazine will carry departments of Art, Music, Literature, the Drama and
Information. Its editors and contributors will be eminent men of letters
and it will carry a department under the title of “World Comment” which
will hold and interest every thinking man in this and other lands. This
magazine will have many kind words for Cleveland. That city itself may
well feel proud of its achievements in behalf of the World Congress and a
World Court.
And for a surety it was an epoch and an honor in the brilliant history
of that great city. When the World Court is established the name of the
city of Cleveland will ever be associated with it. And the two names will
spell peace—International, national, commercial, and industrial peace—the
peace that passeth all understanding and the peace that a tired world is
crying for with that soul-racking wail that comes only from the soul of a
strong and helpless man.
* * * * *
I shall never forget the evening of the last session of the Congress.
As I wended my way out of the armory, the city arose before me in all
its multicolored splendor—the passing throngs of men whose martial
air proclaimed their success as plain as the gold lettering on the
haberdasher’s windows, the beautifully gowned and garmented women and the
streets and avenues in all their kaleidoscopic picturesqueness. And then
another picture of the cities of the old world laid bare in want and woe
and war.
God forfend such ill fortune to you, Cleveland, in the evil days for
assuredly you have contributed your share to the Cause of Peace.