Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/427

Rh Drop all other public questions, concentrate your efforts upon the one question which carries in its bosom the issue of peace or of war. Lay aside your politics until this war issue is settled. This is the time to be effective. And what should the ministers of the churches be doing? Very different from what they have done in the past. They should cease to take shelter from the storm, hiding themselves in the recital of the usual formulas pertaining to a future life in which men in this life have no duties, when the nation is stirred upon one supreme moral issue, and its government, asserting the right to sit in judgment upon its own cause, is on the brink of committing the nation to unholy war—for unholy it must be if peaceful settlement offered by an adversary be refused. Refusal to arbitrate makes war, even for a good cause, unholy; an offer to arbitrate lends dignity and importance to a poor one. Should all efforts fail, and your country, rejecting the appeal to judicial arbitration, plunge into war, your duty does not end. Calmly resolute in adherence to your convictions, stating them when called upon, though never violently intruding them, you await the result, which can not fail to prove that those who stood for peaceful arbitration chose the right path and have been wise counsellors of their country. It is a melancholy fact that nations looking back have usually to confess that their wars have been blunders, which means they have been crimes.

And the women of the land, and the women students of St. Andrews—what shall they do? Not wait as usual until war has begun, and then, their sympathies aroused, organize innumerable societies for making and sending necessaries and even luxuries to the front, or join Red Cross societies and go themselves to the field, nursing the wounded that these may the sooner be able to return to the ranks to wound others or be again wounded, or to kill or be killed. The tender chords of sympathy for the injured, which grace women, and are so easily stirred, are always to be cherished; but it may be suggested that were their united voices raised in stern opposition to war before it was declared, urging the offer of arbitration, or in earnest remonstrance against refusing it, one day of effort would then prove more effective than months of it after war has begun.

It is certain that if the good people of all parties and creeds, sinking for the time other political questions whenever the issue of war arises, were to demand arbitration, no government dare refuse. They have it in their power in every emergency to save their country from war and ensure unbroken peace.

If in every constituency there were organized an arbitration league, consisting of members who agree that arbitration of international disputes must be offered, or accepted by the government if offered by the adversary, pledging themselves to vote in support of, or in opposition to,