294 PROPOSALS FOR A LEAGUE OF PEACE. 



native peoples to consider, but those vast aggregations of un- 

 civilized natives in Central, West, and East Africa. I believe 

 that a League of Peace would have a very decided influence for 

 _good in this matter, for it would set itself, by means of special 

 commissions, to work out what I may call a code of Interna- 

 tional Law or justice which might be applied throughout the 

 length and breadth of European-controlled Africa. Every 

 student of native policy knows that neither the individual pioneer 

 nor the pioneer commercial Company is to be trusted to deal out 

 justice to aboriginal natives. The early history of America, of 

 Australia, of South .Vfrica, and recent revelations in Putamay**, 

 the Congo, and German South-West Africa, afford overwhelm- 

 ing evidence of this. Hence it is of vital importance to us that 

 we should have a uniform European or International code of 

 justice on which the natives of Africa might reh' and to which 

 they could appeal. It is essential that we should get the edu- 

 cated native throughout the whole of Euro-Africa on our side, 

 and we can only do this by making .the standard of justice uni- 

 form, by making it high, and by welcoming, as far as possible, 

 the educated native into Advisory Coimcils. From this it would 

 not be a long step to a Euro-African inter-State Council and 

 arbitral Court of Appeal. If South, East, West, and Central 

 Africa are not to follow the terrible example of Europe, it is 

 essential that we win the confidence of the native races, and 

 that the missionary, the teacher, and the magistrate should be the 

 advance guard, not of the bayonet, the bomb, and the whiskey 

 barrel, but of the spirit as well as of the precepts of the New 

 Testament and the Golden Rule. In this connection, I might 

 remind you that International Conferences have already done 

 much to remove the horrors of the African slave trade, and to 

 ameliorate the treatment of native races in the various parts of 

 Africa which are controlled by European Governments. 



We have seen, then, that the germ of the idea behind the 

 League of Peace is already in being. Not only that— it is at 

 work. Already, some 20 treaties, embodying the second article 

 of the proposed League, that is, that all disputed qitestions not 

 settled by negotiation shall be submitted to a Council of Inquiry 

 .and Conciliation for hearing, consideration, and recommendation, 

 are in force. They have been signed since the beginning of the 

 present war. The next step is a Permanent International Coun- 

 cil, with adequate sanctions for maintaining peace, and wath the 

 necessary deliberative bodies through which the public opinion 

 of the various nations of the world can find expression on moot 

 questions of national expansion and development as they affect 

 this or that section of mankind. I do not conceal from myself 

 the bafifling complexity and intricacy of the task which lies before 

 the statesmen of the world— of the national, racial, religious, 

 political, military, economic, and commercial problems which are 

 involved. To some people they will appear so baffling that they 

 will throw up their hands in despair. But I would remind you, not 

 -only of the frightful alternative, but of the responsibility which 



