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A Great Opportunity NeglectedSource: The Advocate of Peace (1894-1920), Vol. 72, No. 10 (NOVEMBER, 1910), pp. 229-230Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20666046 .

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h of VOL. LXXII. BOSTON, NOVEMBER, J9?0. No. 10

THE AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, Publishers,

31 beacon street, boston, mass.

Cable Address, " Peace, Boston."

MONTHLY, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR. TEN CENTS PER COPY Entered at the Boston Poet Office as Second Class Matter.

Make all checks payable to the American Peace Society. To personal checks on Western and Southern banks add ten cents for collecting.

CONTENTS. page Editorials. 229-232

The Orinoco Claims Award ?A Great Opportunity Neglected ?

Julia Ward Howe ?The Boy Scout Movement.

Editorial Notes. 232-234

Japan's Forty Millions for Naval Increase ? Hundred-Years' Peace Society ? Centenary of Alpheus Crosby? Niels Poulson Foundation ? Appalachian Exposition Peace Day

? Berlin Free Religious Congress? Pacific Coast Work.

News from the Field. 234-235

Brevities. 235

General Articles: The Field Secretary's Report for October. Charles E. Beats? 235-236 Missions and International Peace. Rev. Charles E. Jefferson... 236-240 Women and International Peace. Baroness von Sutiner. 240-242 Militarism as a Cause of the High Cost of Living. From

Report of the Massachusetts Commission. 243-245 Labor, Armaments and Peace. . 246 Text of the Treaty of Annexation between Korea and Japan_ 246-247 Clark University Conference on the Near East. Special Corre

spondence . 247 Peace Day in the Churches. 247-248

New Books. 248-249

International Arbitration and Peace Lecture Bureau. 249

The Orinoco Claims Award.

The Orinoco Claims Case, which was taken up by the Hague Court on the 20th of September, has been

quickly disposed of. The case is in some respects, because involving the principle of appeal and review, much more important than appears on the surface.

The Orinoco Steamship Company, a company do

ing business under a New Jersey charter, brought an action for damages against the Venezuela government for the repudiation by President Castro of an agree

ment giving the company certain exclusive privileges in that country. Damages to the extent of $1,400, 000 were claimed. The case was finally submitted to Dr. Charles Barge as umpire. On the 22d of

February, 1904, he awarded the company $28,700. The company appealed to the United States gov

ernment, which rejected the Barge decision on the

ground that it was in violation of the principles of international law. After prolonged negotiations Ven ezuela was finally induced by the late William I.

Buchanan, who was sent as a special envoy to Caracas, to allow the whole matter to go to the Hague Court.

The contention of our government, presented by William C. Dennis, Assistant Solicitor of the Depart ment of State, was that the Barge award was in a number of ways erroneous and unjust, that it ought therefore to be declared null and void, and that the

original claims should be settled on their merits. On four points the Barge award has been declared

null. The Orinoco Steamship Company is awarded

$46,867, with three per cent, interest since June 16, 1903, and $7,000 costs. This amount is to be paid by Venezuela in two months.

The United States representatives consider the decision a vindication of our government's position in the matter, though the damages assessed against

Venezuela are comparatively small, and not all the

points made by our counsel were sustained. This case is particularly interesting from the fact

that it practically establishes the Hague Tribunal as a court of appeal, although appeal to it in this instance was by agreement of the parties. But it is possible that in the years to come the development of the court may be such that either of the parties to a set tlement made by an arbitrator or board of arbitrators not drawn from the Hague Tribunal may be able to secure a review of the case by direct appeal to it. The court ought certainly, so long as no more com

plete international high tribunal of justice exists, to have the power, either by convention or through nat ural development, to prevent substantial injustice in cases where arbitrators have clearly failed to get at the real merits of the controversy. While we are glad, of course, as "good patriots"

that our government has won in this case, we are

equally rejoiced that the decision gives no encourage ment to foreign companies doing business in a coun

try to believe that they can bring suits for exorbitant

damages against that country's government and ex

pect to go to The Hague and find support for their

rapacity.

A Great Opportunity Neglected. In his Nobel Prize address at Christiania last May

ex-President Roosevelt, as is well known, made the

following utterance : " Granted sincerity of purpose, the

great powers of the world should find no insurmountable

difficulty in reaching an agreement which would put an

end to the present costly and growing extravagance of

expenditure on naval armaments." He went so far as

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230 THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE. November,

to speak of the need of checking " a cruel and unhealthy

militarism in international relationships." "Something should be done," he said, "as soon as possible to check

the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments,

by international agreement." He urged also the forma tion of a League of Peace and an international police among

" those great nations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing aggres sions."

The utterance of these views awakened an unusual amount of interest at the time among the pacifists in all

countries. Some went so far as to express the convic tion that Mr. Roosevelt, as the logical sequence of what he had said at the Nobel Institute, would soon thereafter

throw himself at the head of a movement to bring to

execution the program which he had outlined. With his prestige as former President of the United States, his tremendous energy, push and capacity of getting things done, it was believed by some that a new epoch in the history of peacemaking was about to be opened

by him, and with many of the friends of peace expecta tion was on tiptoe.

If Mr. Roosevelt, on his return to this country, had

at once taken up this matter in earnest, and through the

Outlook, of which he is an editor, and on the platform and in his interviews, had developed and urged it, in season and out of season, as he does some of his " policies," the whole civilized world, which is praying and longing for deliverance from the " cruel and unhealthy militarism

"

of our time, would almost certainly have followed and

supported him in such a passion of loyalty and enthu

siasm as he has never yet experienced. It was one of

the finest opportunities that ever came to a public man

to do a service of the highest order to the world, a

service, too, which he saw clearly ought to be done.

Six months have passed since the Christiania address was given, and, so far as we know, scarcely a reference has been made by Mr. Roosevelt to the subject of limi

tation of armaments, which he there gave such a promi nent place in his discourse. Instead of reiterating, elaborating and enforcing what he there set forth as a

pressing moral demand, he has in his political cam

paigning through the country lost no opportunity to

urge again his " big stick

" and big navy policy, as the

way of safety and peace for this country. In other

words, he has been doing his utmost to keep our country in a course of naval policy, the direct effect of which is, we feel sure, to stimulate other governments to suspi cion and distrust, to continuance of their rivalry, and thus

to aggravate the " cruel and unhealthy militarism " of the

day.

Not a few persons are beginning to ask whether Mr.

Roosevelt really meant anything serious by his Christiania

speech. What he has meant by his pleas, since his re turn home in several cities, in behalf of a "

big stick and big navy policy, everybody understands; for these have been nothing more than a repetition of what he was in the habit of saying when he was President. He has struck no new note in this regard. But what he said at Christiania was a new note. A repetition of this new note at home would have delighted the major portion of his fellow countrymen as nothing else which he could have uttered would have done. He might at least have talked about it, they think.

Perhaps he will yet take the matter up when he is

through with the present exigencies of politics. It is his

duty to do so. His Christiania speech has put him in bonds to make the effort to see what can be done. The

opportunity has not yet entirely passed ; it has only been so far neglected. Will he seize it while the day lasts?

Julia Ward Howe.

Julia Ward Howe, who died on the 17th of October

in the ninety-second year of her age, has not usually been

reckoned among the leading peacemakers of our country. In many respects she was considered to be, and was, the

foremost woman which the nation has produced, not

more than four or five other American women of the

past century being entitled to be enrolled in the same

rank with her. Of her varied and valuable labors jm the

anti-slavery movement, in the cause of freedom for Greece, Armenia and other countries, in the movement for woman

suffrage, and in the field of literature, it is not for us to

speak, except to say that in all these fields she showed

herself to be a woman of large ability, of rare insight, of

great force and courage, and that withal she always pre served in a striking way her womanly characteristics ?

and never became mannish.

As to the peace movement, it is not certain that Mrs.

Howe did not deserve after all to be ranked as one of

the most far-sighted and efficient of peace workers ? a

real peace pioneer, in fact. The story of the special contribution which she made to the cause, some forty

years ago, is a most interesting one, though not generally known to present-day workers, who are too often pr?ne to forget that the movement has any creditable past.

At the time of the Franco-Prussian War, in common

with a few women in two or three countries of Europe, she became awakened to the deeply rooted evil of war

and began to study it profoundly. She became con

vinced that, in order to meet effectively the evil and up root it, appeal must be made to women, to " the mothers

of men," through whose sufferings and tender cares men

are brought into the world and nourished and reared. " As long as selfish animal man had the upper hand, the

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