Review of Reviews, 1/10/13. 



783 



MY FATHER: W. T. STEAD.— V. 



BY HENRY STEAD. 



The unveiling of a bust of my father 

 in the great Palace of Peace at the 

 Hague calls vividly to my mind the 

 great work he did for peace and inter- 

 national arbitration. He was always a 

 great pacifist, although ever a strong 

 supporter of a pre-eminently powerful 

 fleet. His friends in the cause of peace 

 found it difficult to reconcile his advo- 

 cacy of great naval strength with his 

 peace propaganda, but he himself never 

 had the slightest trouble in so doing. 

 He wrote the " Truth About the Navy " 

 in 1884, which forced a reluctant Gov- 

 ernment to greatly increase the estimates 

 and lay the foundation of our present 

 paramount position on the water. Pie 

 organised and largely financed a peace 

 crusade in England in 1899. He 

 coined the phrase " two keels to one " 

 as the policy for Great Britain's Navy, 

 and went on pilgrimage through 

 Europe in the cause of peace. He 

 strenuously advocated reforms in the 

 Transvaal, but strongly opposed the 

 war, which he considered unjustly 

 forced upon the Boers, whose appeal 

 for arbitration were disregarded. 



ARBITRATE BEFORE YOU FIGHT. 

 All his life long he was a passionate 

 advocate for arbitration, not as the 

 ultimate solution of the difficulties, but 

 as an ideal the advocacy of which would 

 -strengthen the sentiment in favour of 

 the creation of a United States of 

 Europe. He always wished to exor- 

 cise the soldier by the policeman. He 

 urged unceasingly the doctrine, " Al- 

 ways arbitrate before you fight." It is 

 usually assumed that when a question is 

 sent to arbitration both sides must 

 bind themselves in advance to accept 

 the award, whatever it is. The result 

 is that questions of vita] interest are 

 never sent to arbitration. Reserve the 

 right of appealing to arms, after the 

 award is given, and in ninety-nine cases 

 out of a hundred no fight will take 

 place at all. " Always arbitrate before 



you fight " is a far more practical for- 

 mula than " always arbitrate instead of 

 fighting." 



THE PEACE CRUSADE. . 

 My first close insight into father's 

 methods of interviewing the great ones 

 of the earth was in 1898, when he made 

 his first peace tour round Europe, 

 sounding every country upon the 

 Tsar's Peace Rescript. The result of 

 his enquiries convinced him that the 

 Tsar required international support, so 

 he proceeded to see that he was well 

 backed up. ITe organised a Peace 

 Crusade in England, addressing hun- 

 dreds of meetings throughout the coun- 

 try ; wearing himself almost to death 

 with travel, speaking and writing. 

 During that frantic three months' rush 

 he contrived to get through an enormous 

 amount of correspondence, dictating to 

 his secretaries in the train waiting at 

 1 unctions, and late into the night after 

 the meetings. He nearly killed himself, 

 but he worked up public feeling until 

 from apathy it became strongly in 

 favour of the Tsar's proposal. He 

 largely galvanised European Peace 

 Societies into action also. He published 

 and contrived to edit a weekly paper 

 called "War Against War" during the 

 three months' Crusade. Copy used to 

 reach us from him by post, by rail, and 

 by wire from all parts of England 

 during the week, and the paper was 

 rushed off with special letters to those 

 who would be likely to help on the 

 cause. Not only did he give his time and 

 pay his expenses, but he contributed to 

 the fund raised to educate public opinion 

 in the matter, and bore the cost of the 

 paper. It is usually the case that the 

 man who provides the driving force in 

 any campaign of social betterment has 

 also to provide the sinews of war. 



" NURSING THE BABY." 

 As a speaker, father had not any 

 great gift of eloquence ; he had much 

 lity of expression, and always had 



