A League of Peace

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 8, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 23.

A League of Peace

THEODORE MARBURG, formerly United States minister to Belgium, in the recent Lake Mohonk Peace Conference, presented the outline of a plan for “a great peace league which should not attempt to decide international disputes, but should insist that such controversies should not lead to war.” “Such a league,” so Mr. Marburg affirmed, “should unite to punish any power that started a war.”

Plans of this kind seem to be very captivating; but how could such a league have stopped the explosion of war in Europe the last part of July, 1914? That war broke out and spread so rapidly that there was absolutely no power outside of divine omnipotence that could have stayed it.

These splendid ideals would be all right if we only had the ideal men to carry them out. The trouble with this wicked old world is that it is possessed with a spirit of greed, of violence and war; and leagues, no matter how well meaning they may be, are powerless to confront it. But let a theory be adopted as the prevailing style of thought, and like the fashions in hats and dresses, it sweeps everything before it regardless of either sense or reason.