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Count Apponyi's Visit to the United StatesSource: The Advocate of Peace (1894-1920), Vol. 73, No. 3 (MARCH, 1911), pp. 50-51Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20666132 .

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50 THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE. March,

national standing and prestige which can be had in no other way. Situated at the Capital, the Society will almost certainly be able to extend its work in the West and South with greater rapidity and success than can be attained from its present location.

It is not an easy thing, of course, for the Society to remove its headquarters from Boston, from which ite work has been carried on since 1837, and where it has gathered around it a large and influential con

stituency who have steadily and loyally upheld its work. But it has been felt that, if it is to meet the

enlarged obligations devolving on it hereafter and

strengthen its influences in other parts of the country, the Society ought, at the present strategic moment in

the history of the peace movement, to take advantage of the opportunity for increased power throughout the nation, which the locating of its headquarters at the political centre of the national life will give it. With the cordial and loyal support of its member

ship in all the States, of its fifteen Branches in dif ferent parts of the nation and of the new ones about to be formed, it is believed that the great and suc cessful work which the Society has accomplished in the past may be very much enlarged and made much

more effective in hastening to its culmination the

increasingly strong and commanding movement for the peace of the world.

The exact time of the removal to Washington has not yet been decided upon. This will be determined

by the Executive Committee after thorough study of the situation.

Gain in the Opposition to Further Increase of the Navy.

Our friends in the National Congress who have been

for years steadily opposing further increase of the navy and gaining strength continually, made a remarkably good showing last month, considering the circumstances under

which they made their stand. The new Japan war scare, which had been started by

General Wood and Secretary-of-War Dickinson, was

worked by the navy promoters for all that could be

made of it ? for a good deal more, indeed, than it was

worth, for no thinner scare was ever manufactured.

Congressman Hobson, who seemed in unusual straits to

find some pretext with which to beat up interest in his

whip-all-creation navy, went so far as to assert, under

direct question, his belief that the war with Japan would burst upon us very shortly, within ten months at the

remotest. But in spite of all his eloquence and oracular

fervor, his motion to amend the naval committee's report

by substituting "three" battleships for "two" was de

feated by the overwhelming vote of one hundred and

sixty-one to nine. On the other hand, the motion of

Mr. Padgett of Tennessee to amend the bill by substitut

ing " one " for " two " battleships carried one hundred and

fourteen votes to one hundred and thirty-nine. A change of thirteen votes would have thrown out one of the ships.

These votes show a decided gain in the congressional opposition to further increase of the navy, and manifest the strength which the movement for arrest has acquired. If it had not been for the new war scare, gotten up as

usual just before the navy bill came on, and for the dis

turbing effect of the question of the fortification of the Panama Canal, it is almost certain that definite arrest of naval increase would have been voted this year.

Outside of Congress also the opposition to further naval increase has deepened and widened very much. The

Massachusetts clergymen's protest last year was signed by about seven hundred and fifty ministers of the State. This year the number of ministerial remonstrants in the State has risen to more than one thousand, and the number might easily have been much increased if there had been more time in which to secure signatures. Many ministers in other States also have sent in their protests. All over the nation, among nearly all classes, the con

viction is spreading and ripening rapidly that this naval

folly has gone about to the limit, and that it must not be allowed to proceed further. We shall see the culmina tion and end of it very soon, comparatively speaking. The burdens of it, the irrationality of it, the wickedness of it, are too great to be borne much longer by a nation

growing every day more intelligent, more conscientious, more sensitive to injustice and more humane.

Let the friends of justice, humanity and peace take

courage to renew their contest with redoubled energy the coming year.

Count ApponyFs Visit to the United States.

Among the most notable of recent international visits has been that of Count Albert Apponyi, the distinguished Hungarian statesman, to this country the past month. He was brought over by the Civic League and the Peace

Society of New York to give addresses especially on the

subject of international peace from the European point of view.

No one is abler to speak intelligently on this subject than the Count. He is reckoned one of the ablest of

European statesman, has had many years of practical ex

perience in European political affairs, and has been among the leaders of the Interparliamentary Union in its ad

mirable work for international friendship, arbitration and

justice. Though belonging to the nobility, he is a man

of thoroughly democratic sympathies, and is a sincere and

ardent supporter of the movement for the abolition of war and the establishment of permanent international concord and fellowship.

The Count's reception in the way of banquets, etc.,

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1911. THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE. 51

has everywhere been most cordial and enthusiastic, re

minding our older citizens of the welcome given to

Kossuth two generations ago. The only discord has

been furnished by Slovaks living in Chicago, some of

whom have bitterly opposed him on account of certain

alleged severities to their fellows at home when he was

in the Hungarian ministry. These charges the Count

has categorically denied and shown that he was in no

respect responsible for the severities charged. The nature of Count Apponyi's message may be

gathered from citations from his addresses. When he

was presented to the House of Representatives in Wash

ington he said : " I stand before you, gentlemen, not as a single in

dividual, but as a representative man, as a representative of the Old World before you representatives of the New

World, and when, apparently, you are only kind enough to listen to a foreigner who chances to be among you, and to whom you do high honor, I know you inwardly ask yourselves, What has the Old World got to say to the New World ? Well, gentlemen, I think it is about this : You come from the Old World, too. You were born under a happy star. That Old World has legacies of tradition which are its strength and its burden. When

your ancestors left the Old World they were privileged to take away with them the very best of those traditions, and to leave behind what is the burden of them. You took with you the very best thing, the very highest point of development which the Old World had attained in those days,? you took with you the sound, healthy, vigorous traditions of British liberty. " You developed them and you adapted them to the conditions found in the new hemisphere to which you had come. And you left behind you what was burden some in the traditions of the Old World. The oppres sions, the mutual animosities and distrusts, the call for

blood, all this you were enabled to leave behind you ; all this inheritance of hatred, of antagonism and animosities.

Gentlemen, you feel it more keenly than I can express that this fortunate situation lavs a great responsibility upon you, and if I am to speak here before you on behalf of the Old World, I say this : We of the Old World, de

siring to come out of the devouring waste of the ancient

spirit of animosity and distrust, appeal to you, who, if

perhaps not yet on the shore, feel already solid ground under your feet,? we appeal to you for assistance to do

away with the hateful legacy of hatred between men who

ought to be brethren. [Applause.] This is the object of my mission in America."

In his address in Carnegie Hall, New York, on Febru

ary 15, before a large audience, on "Practical Difficulties

of the Peace Problem in Europe," he pointed out the

obstacles to the development of the peace movement in

Europe arising from the mutual distrust and antagonisms left by the wars of the past. War, he declared, instead

of settling difficulties, perpetuates them. America is

much better off in regard to peace work than Europe, and must continue to take the lead in the movement, as

she has already done.

After visiting a number of our leading cities and giving addresses in a vein similar to that of his Carnegie Hall discourse before great public gatherings, university audi

ences, etc., the Count's most instructive and inspiring trip was brought to an end by a largely attended dinner given in his honor in the Hotel Astor, New York, on the even

ing of March 2, a luncheon at the University Club, Boston, a great meeting in Faneuil Hall on March 3, and a dinner

given him by President Taft in Washington. For further details of his visit, see the New York Peace

Society Notes on another page.

Dr. Eliot's Position on Arbitration. We are sorry to have misinterpreted in any way the

views of ex-President Eliot of Harvard University on

the subject of international arbitration, as he thinks we

have done.

In our January issue we quoted Dr. Eliot as saying in

December, at the Washington Conference q? the Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, that arbitration has been a practical failure. The press

reports of his speech, which we unfortunately did not

hear, were so explicit and so concurrent in their state ment of his utterance that we took it for granted, after

allowing for newspaper inaccuracies, that we were in

terpreting him correctly. We are glad to be able, through the courtesy of Dr.

James Brown Scott of Washington, to give Dr. Eliot's

paper in full in this issue. An examination of it shows that he was speaking particularly of arbitration in indus trial disputes when he declared that in certain respects it had failed. This nobody disputes, although even in

the industrial field it must be granted that arbitration has scored many triumphs, an.d that the use of it, or the

attempted use of it, has prepared the way for the com

pleter methods of dealing with strikes and threatened

strikes and lockouts now coming into vogue. In the matter of arbitration between nations, to which

less of Dr. Eliot's paper was devoted, he agrees substan

tially with this journal, that this method of adjusting disputes, as compared with the arbitrament of war, has

in the past been signally successful and beneficent, though he considers it essentially an imperfect method, which

ought to give way as soon as possible to settlement by a

regular international court of justice. Our only disagreement with this contention, if it is a

disagreement, is that, in view of the slowness with which

nations surrender any portion of their sovereignty, such as would be involved in the setting up of an authoritative

international high court of justice, an arbitration court

where compromise and the spirit of give-and-take is pos

sible, may for some time to come be in many cases a

more successful and therefore a better instrument of

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