flict has
proclaimed his desire for peace and denied responsibility for the war,
and it is only charitable that we should credit all of them with good
faith. They desired peace, but they sought it according to the rules
of the old system. They believed that firmness would give the best
assurance of the maintenance of peace, and, faithfully following
precedent, they went so near the fire that they were, one after
another, sucked into the contest.

Never before have the frightful follies of this fatal system been so
clearly revealed as now. The most civilized and enlightened--aye, the
most Christian--of the nations of Europe are grappling with each other
as if in a death struggle. They are sacrificing the best and bravest
of their sons on the battlefield; they are converting their gardens
into cemeteries and their homes into houses of mourning; they are
taxing the wealth of today and laying a burden of debt on the toil of
the future; they have filled the air with thunderbolts more deadly
than those of Jove, and they have multiplied the perils of the deep.

Adding fresh fuel to the flame of hate, they have daily devised new
horrors, until one side is endeavoring to drown noncombatant men,
women, and children at sea, while the other side seeks to starve
noncombatant men, women, and children on land. And they are so
absorbed in alternate retaliations and in competitive cruelties that
they seem, for the time being, blind to the rights of neutrals and
deaf to the appeals of humanity. A tree is known by its fruit. The war
in Europe is the ripened fruit of the old system.

This is what firmness, supported by force, has done in the Old World;
shall we invite it to cross the Atlantic? Already the jingoes of our
own country have caught the rabies from the dogs of war; shall the
opponents of organized slaughter be silent while the disease spreads?

As an humble follower of the Prince of Peace, as a devoted believer in
the prophecy that "they that take the sword shall perish with the
sword," I beg to be counted among those who earnestly urge the
adoption of a course in this matter which will leave no doubt of our
Government's willingness to continue negotiations with Germany until
an amicable understanding is reached, or at least until, the stress of
war over, we can appeal from Philip drunk with carnage to Philip
sobered by the memories of a historic friendship and by a recollection
of the innumerable ties of kinship that bind t