ons, leave the nations free
to act independently after the international commission has concluded
the investigation.

W.J. BRYAN.

STATEMENTS ON THE WAR IN EUROPE.

_Mr. Bryan on June 16 gave out the first of three statements about the
present war, and in it he predicts that a conference will be held at
the close of the conflict to revise the rules of international law.
The present rules, in Mr. Bryan's opinion, "seem to have been made for
the nations at war rather than for the nations at peace."_

_The statement contains a hint to President Wilson in the concluding
paragraph which says that "in all history no other peacemaker has ever
been in position to claim so rich a blessing as that which will be
pronounced on our President when the time for mediation comes--as come
it must." Its text follows:_

Washington, June 16, 1915.

I shall tomorrow discuss the origin of the war and the reasons which
led the nations of Europe to march, as if blindfolded, into the bloody
conflict which now rests like a pall over the fairest parts of the Old
World; today let us consider the war as it is and the injury it is
doing to the neutral nations.

The war is without a precedent in the populations represented, in the
number of combatants in the field, in daily expenditures, in the
effectiveness of the implements employed, in the lists of dead and
wounded, in the widespread suffering caused and in the intensity of
the hatreds aroused.

No class or condition is exempt from the burdens which this war
imposes. The rich bear excessive taxation and the poor are sorely
oppressed; the resources of today are devoured and the products of
tomorrow are mortgaged. No age is immune. The first draft was upon the
strong and vigorous, but the Governments are already calling for those
above and below the ordinary enlistment zone.

The war's afflictions are visited upon women as well as upon men--upon
wives who await in vain a husband's return, and upon mothers who must
surrender up the sons whose support is the natural reliance of
declining years. Even children are its victims--children innocent of
wrong and incapable of doing harm. By war's dread decree babes come
into the world fatherless at their birth, while the bodies of their
sires are burned like worthless stubble in the fields over which the
Grim Reaper has passed.

The most extreme illustrations collected from history to prove the
loathsomeness of war are overshadowed by new indic