committee as find it possible to do so consistent with their other engagements.

The same course will be followed to-morrow, and a subsequent opportunity will be afforded those who are not prepared to appear either to-day or to-morrow.

STATEMENT OF BISHOP CHARLES H. BRENT

It has been my privilege through nearly a quarter of a century of public life to plead many causes, but never have I approached a proposal with fuller confidence or deeper conviction than that which I am commissioned to present this morning before distinguished members of the honorable body to whose keeping are entrusted the foreign affairs of our Nation.

In urging speedy adherence to the protocol establishing the Permanent Court of International Justice in the form and under the conditions advocated by Presidents Harding and Coolidge and pleaded before the American people with acumen and power by Secretary of State Hughes, I speak not as merely expressing my own convictions as a citizen, but chiefly as an ambassador representing a multitude of citizens who are of one mind on the subject.

To-day there are represented the following organizations as advocating adherence to the court (See list, page 33):

The permanent court is a matter which by its inherent worth has been lifted above party politics. Senator Walsh of Montana stated last Sunday in the hearing of perhaps the most representative group of American women that could be gathered in one place, that every Democratic Senator in Congress except the inconsiderable few known as "irreconcilables" is prepared to support this measure, a measure proposed and advocated by the foremost leaders of the Republican Party, including two Presidents.

It is not my business at this time to argue the merits of the court. Others in behalf of two score or more organizations of national character, covering every department of life and every stratum of society, will do this more ably and comprehensively than I. It is for me to deal with the broad reasons why those whom I represent claim that the measure is of paramount impor

tance, that it has the unqualified support of the majority of our citizens, and that, without further ado, it should be reported favorably by the Foreign Relations Committee to the Senate for adoption.

I speak in terms of the average man, whose knowledge of governmental thought and action comes through the public press, when I say it is a puzzle why any measure with the origin and history of the one under consideration should be treated as it is. Essentially American in its conception, advocated in principle by American statesmen of more than one generation, it stands before the country as the embodiment of a distinctively American ideal. It was presented to the country by the party in power as a measure of major importance in response to a demand of the people for a definite and constructive foreign policy. It was endorsed by the opposition.

Yet a year has elapsed without official action and it is in peril of death from neglect on the part of its own parents. The distinguished chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Lodge, has contended that there has been no intentional slight to the proposal, that the committee has been very busy, and that the "delay has been caused entirely by the fact that there were other matters which seemed to the committee to require more immediate action, although the point has never been made in the committee."

In other words, a measure originally considered so important as to call for nation-wide advocacy and publicity by the leaders of the administration and which caught the attention of the ends of the earth, by tacit consent of the committee has been passed over for other proposals which, however important, are little known to the country at large. Indifference is frequently the worst form of depreciation. Senator Lodge in his apologia for inaction damns the court with faint praise. He argues as follows:

As to the Permanent Court of International Justice established by the League, it has seemed to the committee one of those that did not require immediate action, because we now have 50 individual arbitration treaties with other powers. They are the treaties that were made by Secretary Root or Secretary Bryan. The United States was also a signatory of The Hague convention, establishing a Permanent Court of Arbitration. This list does not include special treaties of arbitration for the settlement

of claims, of which very recently we have an example in the case of Norway, where certain claims against the United States were settled by a special court of arbitration.

I mention these facts merely to show that there was ample opportunity for the United States, if any controversy arose which demanded arbitration, to secure that arbitration either by the permanent court at The Hague or through the 50 special treaties, of which I have already spoken.

I beg to point out the fact that Senator Root, a co-author of the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice, was well aware of the existence of the treaties made by himself and of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, when he undertook to aid in bringing to birth the new court with which history will always associate his name. It is hardly possible that the most distinguished American statesman of his generation and one of its greatest jurists, national and international, would have been willing to use his vitality and time to help construct the Permanent Court of International Justice, had he thought that it was little more than a duplication of existing organizations and a matter of quite secondary importance. The individual treaties referred to and the Hague Court are not in the same category with the Permanent Court of International Justice. The individual treaties promote mutual understanding and peaceful relations between America and individual nations; the permanent court is an international treaty and makes for the peace of the world. Individual treaties are formed with regard to the well-being of America; the permanent court with regard to the commonweal of mankind. As for the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the promoters of the Permanent Court of International Justice from the beginning pointed out the fundamental distinction between the one and the other in scope and method.

I would parenthetically note that Senator Lodge refers to the court as a league court, which seems to me hardly fair. With the Hughes reservations it is not a League but a World Court. Surely no further argument is needed to prove that the permanent court is a measure of immediate importance and of first value.

That the friends of the court, irrespective of political affiliations, constitute the majority of the thinking citizens in the country I venture to assert. The single fact that the American Federation of Labor, the American Bar Association, the Federal Council of

the Churches, the National Association of Credit Men, the National League of Women Voters, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the American Association of University Women, are for the court and demand immediate action by the Senate, is indicative of the mind of every section of the country. There are still many of our citizens who are inarticulate, many who know nothing about the court or its significance, but were the case put to them as a measure tending to minimize war and bring a peaceful solution to disputes, a referendum would call forth from this group a unanimous vote.

During the past year I have been in a position favorable to gathering information as to the state of the public mind on the court. I have been with many and large groups of people, organized and unorganized, in various States east of the Mississippi. Wherever the court was discussed it met with favor and in some instances it was indorsed by spontaneous consent. The student body, according to some considerable experience among them in outstanding colleges and universities, are studying international affairs, and their desire for American adherence to the court is intelligent and discriminating.

The education of Americans to-day on the subject of war, beginning with the school children, is steadily in the direction of its hatred and outlawry. I asked a little child just before Good Friday why Jesus Christ was put to death. Her reply was, "Because the people did not like Him very well, for they wanted Him to be the King of War, but He was the King of Peace." This the child had been taught in the public schools.

While, however, education against war is moving with extraordinary swiftness, education in moral substitutes for war is not keeping pace. Further international agreements to limit armaments, unsupported by parallel measures to provide a peaceful method of settling international disputes, become a pale and spineless phase of pacifism. For what is pacifism, as popularly understood, but the condemnation of war without a definite substitute for war as the arbiter in international disputes. Mere limitation of armaments, whether of sea or land or air, is a timid pacific gesture, more dramatic than effective, unless it be linked up with a plan of construction quite as definite as the plan of destruction. It does not require more than elementary intelli

gence to see the truth of this. On the other hand, given the acceptance of World Courts for the settlement of international differences, and disarmament becomes a matter of necessity rather than a policy, and the demolition of the engines of war can proceed right merrily. It is not armaments which cause war; when you track the matter to its source, it is war which causes armaments. Fists and stones become armaments if other weapons fail.

Rightly or wrongly, the Government of this country is considered by a growing number of citizens to have lost perspective in international policy and is viewed by many as being in the position once attributed to Cromwell when he said: "I know what I would not, but I know not what I would." Even the codification of international law must largely fail of its aim unless there are duly constituted courts in which to make concrete application of the law when codified.

On the whole, I believe that the plain folk are trying to think both in terms of the destruction of war and also of the construction of peace. In this respect I am constrained to think they are ahead of their official representatives. The War Department appears to the observer to be far more definite in its preparedness for war than the rest of the Government in its preparedness for peace. A quotation from the editorial page of the last number of the American Legion Weekly, presumably giving the mind of the ex-service men, is significant:

The American Legion believes in the doctrine of preparedness-but not as the militarist believes in it. There is this difference: The militarist believes in preparing for war; we of the Legion believe in preparing for peace. We believe that in earth's unfolding drama America has come to the place of leadership among the nations in order that she may show the way to universal and permanent peace.

Let us prepare for peace by inculcating the right kind of peace ideals in the minds of the oncoming generation, by glorifying peace. Let us reveal the horror of war and teach the truth-that war is the blackest, least excusable, most damnable crime against man and God Almighty.

Again, the Christians and Jews in America compose the majority of the population. There is a multitude of them, rapidly increasing, who are putting themselves on record as advocating orderly processes as a reasonable and practicable substitute for