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Dr. Eliot's Position on ArbitrationSource: The Advocate of Peace (1894-1920), Vol. 73, No. 3 (MARCH, 1911), pp. 51-52Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20666133 .

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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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52 THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE. March,

composing differences than a regular court of justice. The establishment of a final high court of justice or

supreme tribunal of the world for the settlement of

all disputes between nations is and always has been the

aim of all peace workers. But there is substantial

ground for believing that, while the times are ripening for such a court, the arbitration tribunal may yet in many instances, and for a considerable number of the nations, be a better means for adjusting differences, allaying irritation and friction, and thus for securing the ends of

justice, than the best planned court of justice could pos

sibly be at the present imperfect stage of international

development.

International Spirit in German Univer sity Circles.

The most encouraging thing at this hour in connection with the peace movement in Germany is the pronounced new interest which is being manifested in the universities. The excessive national sentiment which has prevailed everywhere in Germany since the consolidation of the

empire in 1871 as a result of the Franco-German War has made itself felt in few places more strongly than in the universities. This feeling has been in many places a veritable chauvinism, and even the professors of inter national law have not felt the force of the great peace movement of our time as it has been felt in France, Great Britain and the United States. At the present time, however, a distinctly new and hopeful international spirit is finding expression in many university circles. The recent impressive pamphlet upon

" The Organization of the World," by Prof. Walther Schuecking of Marburg, is

representative of many expressions of this better ten

dency ; and a striking new evidence of it is an energetic and very successful movement to secure the regular placing of Friedens- Warte, the principal peace journal of Germany, in the reading rooms of all the universities and other higher educational institutions of Germany and Austria.

The movement started with Dr. Hans Wehberg of Dueseeldorf, one of the prominent German writers on in ternational law, who issued a call for contributions for this purpose, signed by a dozen important scholars and men of affairs besides himself. Among the signers were various university professors, members of the German

Reichstag and members of the Institute of International Law, including Prof. Karl Lamprecht, the historian, so well known in America, at the present time the rector of the University of Leipzig. These men declared in their call that the idea of the fraternity and cooperation of different nations had not attained the influence in Ger many that it had attained in the United States and other countries. Various attempts had been made in behalf of

progress in this direction, and recently a League for In ternational Good Understanding had been founded, which had achieved a distinct influence with the general public. The daily press was too seldom well disposed, and pub lished many articles calculated to stir up bitter feelings against other peoples. A special daily newspaper de voted to the peace movement might, they said, be a good thing ; but the expense was prohibitive* and the best

thing seemed to be the wide circulation of the monthly Friedens- Warte, so ably edited by Alfred H. Fried.

They therefore invited contributions from friends of the

peace movement sufficient to provide for the placing of this journal for five years in the reading rooms of all the

universities, where it would be seen by the students.

They stated that 750 marks would meet the need. A statement of the result of this effort is just published,

and the happy outcome is that they have received a sum

nearly double what they asked for. It is interesting to note that the Nobel committee of the Norwegian Storth

ing contributes 444 marks, helping materially to swell the sum total. It is certainly pleasing to find that an

appeal of this kind has made so much of an impression outside of Germany itself, among the contributors, aside from the Nobel committee, being several friends of the cause at The Hague and elsewhere.

In Germany, therefore, as well as in other countries, the educational side of the peace work seems likely from now on to be supported with greater generosity. We learn at the same time of a successful effort to organize among the students of the University at Berlin an inter national club, corresponding to the Cosmopolitan Clubs which now exist in some thirty of our American colleges and universities. Interchanges of students are also being arranged between Germany and England. A large body of German students went to London last summer to spend a month with English students there, interesting them selves in various scientific activities ; and next summer a similar body of English students is to pay a similar visit to Germany. This all makes strongly for the

Voelkerverstaendigung, which the group of progressive German scholars have so deeply at heart, and which they rightly see to constitute the true basis of international peace and progress. If the universities of the world could act together in the earnest international spirit of which great university leaders, like our own Andrew D. White and Daniel C. Gilman, have been prophets, the results in a decade might be almost revolutionizing.

Editorial Notes. On the first of February the biggest of

Launching of au the English battleships (thirty per cent. the Thunderer.

more powerful than the present Dread

naughts, and twenty per cent, more powerful than the

greatest battleships of Germany and France) was launched in the Thames, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury (who was also present) performing the ceremony of giv ing the name. The Archbishop said that he and his wife took part because they felt that the building of such

ships as these was a guarantee, not of strife, but of peace.

Commenting on the launching of the vessel and the Arch

bishop's connection with it, the Nation (London) uttered the following very just sentiments :

"We think that even the ordinary carnal-minded

Englishman experienced a certain feeling of incongruity on learning that the Archbishop of Canterbury attended at Canning Town to bestow a sort of episcopal blessing upon the greatest instrument of physical destruction ever

forged by the perverted ingenuity of man. With a

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