leading manufacturing and commercial nations of the world.
The reason is not far to seek and the fact is an object lesson to
foreign nations. We are devoting all our wealth, all our energies,
and all our time to the development, of peaceful vocations, and
are not giving our first thoughts and the best years of our young
men to build up a great war machine lest our neighbors become
more powerful than we.
In a few short months the history of the nineteenth century
will be made. It is a history of which we may well be proud; a
history of the most wonderful discoveries and the most remark
able advances in every avenue of science and industry; of a
growth which almost equals the Tales of the Arabian Nights.
Inventions beyond- the wildest dreams of a century ago have
wrenched from nature a few of her most carefully. guarded
secrets, and man, instead of fighting her forces, now compels
them to do his bidding. As master wind he opens a valve and
hundreds of tons of mass go thundering over the face of the
earth at the speed of the winds. He touches a key and his
thoughts are flashed around the world. He speaks and his voice
is heard across a continent. Nature stands aghast at man's
audacity, and wonders what the next command will be.
But while we have learned to .build, we have also learned to
destroy. The old muzzle-loading musket has given place to the
magazine rifle and machine gun. The old smooth-bore cannon
stands aside for the breech-loading monster which delivers death
and destruction at a definite point ten miles away. In place of
the old wooden war ship we have the modern floating steel and
iron fort which, with all its intricate labor-saving machinery;
seems a living sentient being. Not content with these, man has
learned to travel in the air and under the waves and to deal to
his enemy, when least expected, a mortal blow. He touches a
button and a great ship floating peacefully at anchor on the quiet
waters miles away, with its hundreds of human souls sleeping in
fancied security, are blown to fragments.
It remains for the closing days of the nineteenth century to
record the crowning act of all. If only sufficient wisdom has
gathered at the House in the Woods to check the growth of
war preparations and to divert to avenues of peace at least a part
of the Wealth of brain and brawn now going to preserve the bal
ance of power, the year eighteen hundred ninety-nine will be the
LET OS HAVE PEACE