The Rev 



EDITED BY 



EVIEWS 



HENRY STEAD. 



MAY, 1913. 



THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD. 



Always Arbitrate Before You Fight. 



The outstanding e\ent of the month 

 of April was the proposal made by 

 William Jennings Br3'an, Secretary of 

 State in Dr. Wilson's administration, 

 for the creation of an International 

 Court that should deal with all ques- 

 tions in dispute between nations, in- 

 cluding those of national honour, but 

 would not arbitrate. Some t\vo years 

 before the hrst Hague Peace Confer- 

 ence m 1900, Mr. W. T. Stead wrote a 

 booklet, in which he urged the great 

 advantage of' always arljit rating before 

 _\'ou fight. The proposal, he said, is 

 that before fighting, before even talk- 

 ing of fighting, the nations must al- 

 ways arbitrate. If we must fight at 

 the end, let us at least arl)itrate at the 

 beginning. The time has surely come 

 when we can declare that war is so 

 terrible a thing we shall never resort to 

 it, never even talk of resorting to it 

 uiuil the " casus belli," whatever it ma_\' 

 be, has been duly sul)mitted and 

 solemnly adjudicated upon 1)\' an im- 

 partial arbitration court, which shall 

 .hear both sides fulh- and i>lace on re- 



cord its deliberate award. This is not 

 to propose that we should cast awav 

 the sword ; it is only to insist that we 

 shall not unsheath it until, before some 

 tribunal more judicial and less dia- 

 bolical than that of war, we have done 

 our utmost to prove our quarrel just. 

 Always arbitrate before you fight. We 

 can alwa\s fight afterwards if the 

 award was idiotic or the arbitrators 

 cannot agree, or if we choose to make 

 our own will our sole law. But in thar 

 case we must stand the brunt of the 

 odium justl) attaching in the eyes of 

 the world to the power that goes to 

 war in a cause upon the justice of 

 which a tribunal of its own choosing 

 has i)r(^nwunced an adverse verdict. 



Demented Nations. 



Mr. Bryan's scheme is not quite the 

 same, but it has exactly the same 

 object in \iew, namely, to secure think- 

 ing time before war was declared. The 

 pause to carefully consider the matter 

 ui dispute would ni nuie cases out of 

 ton |)re\ent the outbreak of hostilities. 

 .Mr. Brvan liojies to make treaties with 

 all the nations of the world which 



