Chapter 2: The Worlds’s Armaments and Public Opinion

Opening Address as Chairman of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, May 19, 1909

Two years ago when I last had the honor of addressing this Conference as its presiding officer, we were all looking forward with confidence and high anticipation to the second Hague Conference, then soon to assemble. We were much concerned with the program of business to be laid before that Conference, and with the forms of agreement or declaration which we hoped would there be decided upon. In particular, emphasis was laid upon the desire, widely entertained by right thinking men, that the second Hague Conference should take the steps necessary to build up a truly judicial international tribunal, by the side of or in succession in the semi- diplomatic tribunal which had been the fruit of the first conference at the Hague; and that the Conference should itself, provide for its reassembling at stated intervals thereafter, without waiting for the specific call or invitation of any monarch or national executive. The history of the second Hague Conference is still fresh in our minds. Although not everything was done that we had hoped for, yet when the cloud of discussion lifted, we could plainly see that long steps in advance had been taken, and that there was coming to be a more fundamental far-reaching agreement among the nations as to what was wise and practicable in the steady substitution of the rule of justice for the rule of force among men.