THE CENTENNIAL OF THE INSTITUTE OP FRANCE. 727 



The world for the past twenty -five years has been witnessing a curious 

 spectacle. On one hand the governments are multiplying with a sort 

 of rage preparations for war. They are building fortresses, they are 

 casting guns, they are filling their arsenals with projectiles. Military 

 service in the active army is required of all young men without excep- 

 tion to the extent of emptying the schools and of disorganizing public 

 and private service, of taking from agriculture and industry the arms 

 which they need. They retain all citizens in the bonds of military 

 service until their forty-fifth year. It looks as if the battle were to be 

 fought to-morrow. 



At the same time all philosophers and publicists, all statesmen and 

 the sovereigns themselves, protest in loud tones their horror of war. 

 They want peace. They must have it to give to labor security, to intelli- 

 gence its rights, and to the year its spring. Leagues for the maintenance 

 of peace are formed on all sides, congresses are convened to protest 

 against "armed peace," which is more ruinous and more murderous than 

 war. 



Alas ! These congresses bring nothing but good wishes ! That is a 

 great deal, and yet it is nothing. They bring good wishes, and I dare 

 not say that they bring hopes! What mankind needs is not words, 

 nor does it need sighs. It needs acts. What will revive true fraternity 

 between men is great works done in common, and great services done 

 to humanity. 



Here you have before your eyes the true Congress of Peace! This 

 is the congress where Truth is beloved for its own sake, no matter in 

 what country it comes to light, where poetry is worshiped in all lan- 

 guages, where great discoveries call forth the same enthusiasm, no mat- 

 ter what may be their origin, and where no other emulation is known 

 save that of doing well. The land of eternal truth and of eternal beauty 

 is also the land of peace. 



Associates and correspondents of the Institute of France, you will 

 carry away with you not only the remembrance of the warm sympathies 

 which welcomed you here, we shall all of us carry away from this fra- 

 ternal reunion an increased love of peace, of the sciences which make 

 it bear fruit, and of the arts which embellish it. And we shall labor, 

 each one of us in his chosen corner of the universal workshop, for the 

 prosperity of the house — that is to say, for the happiness of mankind. 



