colleagues who represented the workingmen of England. We do not need to
be told that war is always cruel, barbarous, and brutal; whether used by
professed Christians with ball and bayonet, or by heathen with club and
boomerang. We cannot be blind to its waste of life and treasure and the
demoralization which follows in its train; nor cease to wonder at the
spectacle of Christian nations exhausting all their resources in
preparing to slaughter each other, with only here and there a voice, like
Count Tolstoi's in the Russian wilderness, crying in heedless ears that
the gospel of Christ is peace, not war, and love, not hatred.

The overture which comes to us from English advocates of arbitration is a
cheering assurance that the tide of sentiment is turning in favor of
peace among English speaking peoples. I cannot doubt that whatever stump
orators and newspapers may say for party purposes, the heart of America
will respond to the generous proposal of our kinsfolk across the water.
No two nations could be more favorably conditioned than England and the
United States for making the "holy experiment of arbitration."

In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common
claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are
essentially one people. Whatever other nations may do, we at least
should be friends. God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall
not be in vain! May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us
shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of
good.

"When closer strand shall lean to strand,
Till meet beneath saluting flags,
The eagle of our mountain crags,
The lion of our mother land!"