MR. OSCAR S. STRAUS not long since received an appointment to membership in the Hague Arbitration Tribunal. This brings back to our mind the memory of the fact that a few years ago, May, 1899, there was held in the Belgian capital an International Peace Congress; that as the result of that peace congress a tribunal of arbitration was established, to which all great international questions that threatened the peace of the world were to be referred for arbitration.
“The Departure:” the Genius of War Summoning the Nations to Arms.
The question now arises, What has become of it? and what has come of it? We were instructed to believe that we were about to enter upon the millennium of universal peace; and with it all there was sounded in many parts of the world the unscriptural cry of “peace and safety.” The prediction was freely made that we were entering upon a time when the world would begin to make agricultural implements out of the weapons of war. But the Word of God was against it, and so what do we find?
The two wars which were in progress when that tribunal was established are still doing their deadly business; two have been fought out, and one of them has left in heathen hearts a hatred more bitter than ever before existed, thus planting the seeds of another and more extensive and terrible war; and two revolutions in existence then are in existence now, while international complications are becoming more intricate and more dangerous.
When the czar’s proposition was issued, a shout of exultation went up from many quarters of the earth; for here was a country bristling with bayonets, studded with cannon, and inmailed in Krupp steel, ostensibly turning toward peace herself and counseling other nations similarly equipped to follow her lead out of the blood-soaked arena and into the food-laden fields of industry. The other nations responded—they must do it or virtually accuse Russia of a lack of real sincerity; but they went into it with their war colors nailed to the mast, their cartridge-belt full, and their sword strapped to their hand; and they came out of the congress as they went in, and the business of legalized slaughter got a fresh impetus. Witness, Blagovestchensk with its river of dead; witness, rural China with its smoking homes and its blistering corpses strewing the toil-worn footpaths; witness, the unending and intertwining red-wet trail in South Africa and the Philippines; witness the unprecedented preparation for war in every quarter of the globe; and witness, the mocking fact that in all this history of blood not one international question has yet been submitted to the great arbitration tribunal of The Hague. Individual nations distrust it. They either do not believe in the sincerity of its creation, or fear a loss of prestige in submitting to its decisions. Human selfishness is not yet ready to abdicate its throne to make way for the advocate of a brother’s rights—and there never will come a time in the history of this present world when it will be ready to take such a step. The Word of God is perfectly plain on this one point, that wickedness will increase until it is cut short in its destruction at the hand of Christ Himself. Matt. 24: 30-31. There will be no gradual coming of Christ into His kingdom through a gradual superseding of the ways of sin by the ways of righteousness; no gradual cessation of war and incoming of peace through the instrumentality of an international court of arbitration. That idea is a plan of the deceiver to blind the eyes of men to the great consummation that is hasting on.
The arbitration tribunal has failed, has come to naught, as all who knew and believed God’s Word knew that it must do. The nations will not throw aside the sword for the scythe, the bayonet for the hay-fork, the loaded cannon for the loaded wain. It is not so written. The world continues to forge ahead toward that climax which God has said would come, and we need to listen to His voice in order that we be not overtaken in its overthrow. No ornamental peace tribunal can alter what God has said would be, and we must not trust in any such delusive hope. S.
