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years ago it would have been an easy task to give an account of the peace movement in Europe, at least so far as its outward manifestations were concerned. Although there had been peace congresses held at more or less frequent intervals in Brussels, London, Frankfort, Paris, or Geneva, and some of them, notably that of Paris, held in 1849, witn Victor Hugo as president, awakened an echo throughout the civilized world. Nevertheless, these enemies of war and bloodshed seemed to have little influence. Outside of the "Peace Society," so nobly directed by Henry Richards, and the Societé Française des amis de la Paix, now known as the Societé Française pour l'arbitrage entre nations, of which I had the honor to be one of the founders, in April, 1867, and which was then called Ligue International et Permanent de la Paix, and the Ligue de la Paix et de la Liberté, founded shortly afterward by Lemonnier, with headquarters in Switzerland, there seemed to be no openly expressed manifestations of a desire for peace except on the part of a few isolated individuals. Moreover, philosophers, statesmen, and men of affairs, even if they sometimes paid homage to the noble intentions of those people who dared to talk of peace and good will among nations as among individuals, and a public as well as a private code of morals, scarcely concealed their pity for these visionary reformers, as they were regarded, and never ceased to remind them upon every possible occasion that war always has