e even inside the pacifist movement, or will this war
teach those who are fighting against it the necessity of an energetic
organization and preparation?"

To this task the N.A.O.R. is devoting itself. Founded on October 8,
1914, it had succeeded by January 15th in securing the adhesion of 350
Dutch societies (official, political, of all parties, religious,
intellectual, labor), and its manifestoes brought together the
signatures of more than a hundred of the most illustrious names of the
Netherlands--statesmen, prelates, officers, writers, professors,
artists, business men, etc. It therefore represents a considerable moral
force.

Let it be said at once that the N.A.O.R. does not look for an immediate
end of the war by a peace at any price. On the one hand it declares
itself "it has formed no presumptuous idea of its strength; it has no
naive confidence in vague peace formulae, nor even in well-defined mutual
obligations. The universal war of today has, alas! taught it much in
this respect also." And, moreover, it is quite aware that a peace at
any price, under present conditions, would only be a consecration of
injustice. The great public meetings which it has organized on December
15th in the chief towns of the Netherlands have unanimously declared
that such a peace seemed neither possible nor even desirable. I will add
that certain of the articles of the N.A.O.R. suggest, with all the
reserve necessitated by its attitude of neutrality and its profound
desire for impartiality, the direction of its suppressed sympathies.
Especially the following:--

"To repair the harm done by this war to the prestige of law in
international relations. To bow before the law, whether customary or
codified in treaties is a duty, even where sanction is wanting. Reform
will be in vain: if there is not respect for law, and nations refuse to
keep their word, a durable peace is out of the question."

The object of the N.A.O.R. is especially to study the conditions in
which we can realize a just, humane, and durable peace, which will
secure for Europe a long future of fruitful tranquility and of common
work, and to interest the public opinion of all nations in securing such
a peace. I cannot analyze here, owing to lack of space, the various
public manifestoes, the _Appeal to the People of Holland_ (October,
1914), or the _Appeal for Co-operation and the Preparation of Peace_, a
kind of attempt to mobilize the pacifist armies (November). T