n every country
to a common interest and sympathy. The International Congress of Trade
Unions, representing twenty countries and over ten million men, has
declared for universal disarmament. Just last month eighty-five
thousand coal miners in Illinois resolved that if the United States
declared war on a foreign power, they would call a general strike.

And why not? Why should the workingmen of one country offer themselves
as targets for those of another? Why should the workers of Germany be
taxed to support a war against England, Germany's best market? Can the
rice growers of Japan profit by killing Americans to whom they sell
their produce? War means suffering and want, and the laborer has come
to know it. He is cold to the sight of its flaunting flags and the
sound of its grand, wild music, for he sees the larder bare, funds
exhausted, and hunger at the door. He refuses to sacrifice his body
and the welfare of his family upon the altar of Mars. No longer can
kings and emperors satisfy their grasping ambitions. Armed by the
ballot, the masses are to-day supreme. Never again will the cruel hand
of tyranny press to their lips the poisoned cup of death. Their sway
is absolute. The destinies of nations are in their keeping. The decree
has gone forth that war must cease.

Born of these greater movements, a host of influences bring nearer the
dawn of peace. The express and the wireless have supplanted the oxcart
and the courier. Chicago and Boston are closer to-day than New York
and Albany a century ago. Within the hour of their occurrence events
that happen in Paris are published in Chicago and St. Louis. Political
boundaries are fading before larger interests. Every railroad train
crossing the frontier, every ship plying the seas, every article of
commerce, every exchange of business, every cable conveying news from
distant lands--all these are potent factors in the cause of
international peace. Add to these the conciliating influence of
foreign investments, the telephone and telegraph, travel, education,
democracy, religion, and you have marshaled a host for peace whose
clarion trumpets shall never sound retreat. Casting aside the
prejudice of ages, modern industrialism flings around the world the
economic bonds against which the forces of militarism are powerless.

Here, then, in the world-wide operations of commerce and industry is
the _assurance of peace_. The skeptic may scoff and the cynic point to
Mexico and the