Your ShelfYour Projects

PEACE PROSPECTS

50%

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 15, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 35.

Read the full edition

PEACE PROSPECTS.

ONE of the least pretentious of the anniversary meetings of this year was that of the Universal Peace Association, held at the Rev. Dr. Bellows' Church, in this city. One of the principal speakers, M. Fezandie, from Geneva, Switzerland, expressed the opinion that the resource of deciding international differences by courts of arbitration was assuming a favorable aspect in Europe, and diplomatists, he thought, attached great weight to it. There is undoubtedly a stronger tendency to adjust disputes by negotiation and by arbitration; but the fact remains that the strongest power in Europe to-day is strong because it is a great military power, and has shown the world that it cannot with impunity be meddled with. Protracted wars are less likely to occur now than formerly, for various reasons. One of these is the possibility of rapidly transporting troops. The question still remains, however, whether there is less inclination to engage in hostilities upon moral grounds than formerly. Arbitration is more economical undoubtedly, but in any case in which arbitration should fail, would France, Prussia or England hesitate to engage in war because it is wicked and wasteful? The distinction is worth bearing in mind; because it is one thing for a nation to remain at peace when peace is the best policy, and quite another to decline to resort to arms because it would be wicked. The small wars which are continually occurring, would seem to show that there has been no absolute change of opinion upon the abstract question. Again it is not observable that there has been any falling off in preparations for war. Great sums are annually spent even by bankrupt nations like Austria, in the support of standing armies. No European power has abandoned its military or naval system. A general disarming would show that peoples had a lively faith in arbitration, but of such a pacific demonstration it is not easy to discover any sign. — N. Y. Tribune.