ARBITRATION v. WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 168, 3 December 1912, Page 4

ARBITRATION v. WAR.

President Emeritus Eliot, of Harvard University, who last month returned to America after a round-the-world journey on behalf of the peace movement, financed by Mr. Carnegie, told the newspaper interviewers that he had come to the conclusion that international or national disarmament was not taken seriously by the leaders and' thinking men of the more important nations. He found, he said, a strong sentiment for peace everywhere, but such a sentiment was as old as the hills, and had been present more or less in all times and al! countries. Men individually all over .the world did less fighting to-day than at any other time in the history nf the world, and they had a greater and more abiding respect for the institutions of peace, the courts and legislative bodies, than ever they had. This, Dr. Eliot considered, was due perhaps more, to a natural growth toward a better civilisation and a higher Christianity than to any social peace propaganda. Some of the leaders in the various countries he visited were sincerely devoted to the splendid principle of arbitration, and were opposed to war on quite unselfish grounds. Notwithstanding all this, however, Dr. Eliot said he had .good reason to fear that the time had not yet arrived when the truly strong men, the men who were at present in power or who might be in power to-morrow, were unequivocally on the side of reason and humanity as. opposed to the sword and savagery. A long and slow educational process would have to precede the practically universal demand of the masses of all civilised peoples which alone could enforce the desire for disarmament.