Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/881

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 847

4. By providing that the addresses of such committees shall be sent to the secretary of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, Mohonk Lake, N. Y., so that he can from time to time submit for their consideration such cases as may seem to call for special action. Circular issued by the Mohonk Conference.

Thirteenth International Peace Congress. The Thirteenth International Peace Congress is to meet in Boston during the first week of October, the opening session to be on Monday evening, October 3, followed by morning and evening sessions during the succeeding four days. There has been but one meeting of the congress in America before, that in connection with the Exposition at Chicago in 1893. It is hoped that the coming Congress will be the largest and most important since the revival of the congresses in 1889.

The place of the United States in the history of international arbitration and the peace movement is a proud one. No delegation was more influential at The Hague conference than our own ; and Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, one of the French members of The Hague court and the leader of the arbitration move- ment in France, has recently declared that the action of our government, in promptly sending to The Hague the Pious Fund case, and still more in insisting upon the reference there of the Venezuela cases, has done more than anything else to hasten the regular use of the tribunal and to advance its prestige among the nations.

To promote popular education as to the duty of supplanting the war system by rational and legal methods, of the speedy reduction of armaments and the application of the vast sums spent upon them to constructive ends, and of the better general organization of the nations in their mutual relations, is the object of the International Peace Congresses. The American Committee of the congress to meet here in October asks the co-operation of the American press in making known to our people the purposes and plans of the congress by such reprints or notices as may be possible of the circulars of information which will be issued from time to time during the ensuing months, as the arrangements for the congress develop, and by generous editorial support. Circular of the American Committee.

Boston's Place in the Peace Movement. The International Peace Con- gress of 1904 is, by vote of the congress at Rouen last year, to meet in the United States ; and the meeting has been fixed for the first week of October, in Boston. The choice of Boston as the place for the congress gives special interest at this time to Boston's history in connection with the peace movement.

To Boston belongs the honor of having founded the first influential Peace Society in the world, and of having made herself, from the hour of its founding to the present, the most influential seat of education in this cause, which men are today coming to see to be the world's most commanding cause.

In June last the city dedicated on her Public Garden, on the centennial of the beginning of his great ministry in Boston, a statue of William Ellery Channing. It was in Channing's study, on the day after Christmas in 1815, that the Massa- chusetts Peace Society was born ; and among the many things for which America and the world hold Channing in high honor, he has no greater glory than that earned by his lifelong service in the cause of peace.

The one Fourth of July oration in Boston which is historic and ever memorable was that by Charles Sumner, in 1845, on " The True Grandeur of Nations ; " and among the many things for which the world honors Charles Sumner, it honors him for nothing more than that he was true throughout his public life to the " declara- tion of war against war " with which he thus began it, putting into his speeches in the Senate the gospel which Channing preached in the pulpit, the gospel of the Declaration of Independence and the Sermon on the Mount. It was in the Old South Meeting House, on Christmas day, 1820, when he was nine years old, stirred by the eloquence of Josiah Quincy, the great mayor, addressing the Peace Society, that the boy Charles Sumner received those deep and lasting impressions which, confirmed as he closed his college life by the solemn words of William Ladd, in