A LEAGUE OF PEACE 423 



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 ad- 

 versary be refused. Eefusal 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 ap- 

 peal 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 arbitra- 

 tion 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. An- 

 drews — what shall they do? ISTot 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, sink- 

 ing 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 dis- 

 putes must be offered, or accepted by the government if offered by the 

 adversary, pledging themselves to vote in support of, or in opposition to, 



