Storm clouds do not disappear in an hour and leave clear skies. We may well hail the fact that a third of the sky has already cleared; that westward from the Vistula to the Pacific the nations have learned not to war with each other. It cannot be said that they have laid down their arms. Heavier and heavier has grown the burden of armament, till nations, like knights of old in chain and plate, stumble about or stand still from their weight of preparedness.

The fact remains, however, that more and more they keep the peace. When conflict has seemed inevitable, they have made treaties or joined in arbitration. "Peace with honor" has been cabled home, and the dogs of war have slept in their chains.

It is no part of my purpose to follow or extol the peace propaganda of the century, notable as it has been, but to ask your attention to the part that trade has played in pacification.

Shortly after the conclusion of the War of 1812 it seemed that the clouds were returning after the rain. No provision had been made in the Treaty of Ghent concerning the North Atlantic Fisheries, and England's enormous fleet, released from the fear of French invasion, was free to enforce what she deemed to be her rights. Shortly after the treaty was concluded H. M. S. Jaseur warned a vessel of the American fishing fleet to keep sixty miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. American vessels were pursued and seized and the peace seemed likely to be one of months rather than of a century.

Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, meeting the British Minister one day upon the street, in 1818, and discussing the fisheries situation with him, said that he believed that they "should have to fight about it, and that his opinion was that they ought to do so."

The British Minister reports the conversation to the Foreign Office and expresses doubt of Mr. Adams being able to carry the country into a war to enforce rights which his own section, New England, was chiefly, if not solely, interested in.

But there was to be no war. Another factor than that of reprisal was coming into the councils of nations. Trade was to be considered as well as glory.

Earlier, when Mr. Adams was Minister to the Court of St. James he had urged upon Lord Bathurst that "independent of the question of rigorous right, it would conduce to the substantial interests of Great Britain herself" to renew the fishing privileges.

And speaking of New England, that "to another and perhaps equally numerous class of her citizens they (the fisheries) afforded the means of remittance and payment for the productions of British industries and ingenuity imported from the manufactures" of England.

Lord Bathurst replied that though His Majesty's Government could not concede the other positions taken by Mr. Adams, which he enumerated, "yet they do feel that the enjoyment of the liberties formerly used by the inhabitants of the United States may be very conducive to their national and individual prosperity. *** And this feeling operates most forcibly in favor of concession."

Giving all possible force to the generous dispositions of His Majesty's Government toward the United States, it cannot be doubted that its subsequent agreement on the fisheries was influenced by the fact that a prosperous America would be a better customer than an impoverished one. At all events, the Treaty of London was the result.

It is to be noted that in those years, 1815 to 1818, the first Peace Societies were formed, so that suasion and trade marched together.

There is an old saw which is still resonant, that "trade follows the flag." In the old days it did. Conquest of territory was not merely for conquest. The conquering nation excluded others from trade with the acquired territory. One of the prime causes of the Revolution was the strict limitation of American commerce to the products and manufactures of the old country, and after the Revolution, down to 1830, the dependencies now constituting Canada were prohibited by the mother country from trading with us and we with them. Their ports were closed

and so were ours.

But a broader policy was seeking recognition Any country was a better customer if it was rich and it could become rich by general trade, more surely and more rapidly than by pent-up commerce, and so it was that by Orders in Council on the one hand and by presidential proclamation on the other, the barrier between Canada and the United States were thrown down and trade followed, not the flag, but its natural channels. Twice since then this freedom of trade has been endangered, once in 1870 when General Grant asked Congress to give him power "should such an extreme measure become necessary to suspend the opera

tions of any laws whereby the vessels of the Dominion of Canada are permitted to enter the waters of the United States."

Later, in 1887, the Congress made it the "duty" of President Cleveland in case in his judgment our fishing vessels were "unjustly vexed or harassed" in the enjoyment of their rights under the Treaty of 1818, "to deny vessels and crews of the British Dominions of North America any entrance into the waters or ports of the United States", and to deny entrance into this country of any fish or other products of said Dominions. It was not necessary that this authority should be exercised in either instance. The Treaty of 1871 and the proposed Treaty of 1888 solved the sit

uation.

Although the latter was only a proposal and was finally rejected, the modus therein determined upon and afterwards renewed was effective and a system of licenses to American fishing vessels dispelled a war cloud. The pen is mightier than the sword, and trade is mightier than war.

The fact is that trade itself had received a stupendous impulse. The life of nations as well as individuals was being revolutionized. The handmaiden of trade is transportation, and transportation was in process of change from the grub to the butterfly.

It is difficult for us now to realize the sluggard, snail-like pace of commerce a hundred years ago. It hugged the coast in little sloops and schooners. It was mired in roads which we today would deem impassable. Trade was in the village and with the nearby town. Commerce, as we know it, was non-existent. A brig or ship of a few hundred tons came occasionally across the seas. Fishing vessels of less than a hundred ton transported their catch to foreign markets. Land communication was

meagerer still.

Men on foot or horseback, or by stage, toiled over roads which were hardly more than tracks.

In 1798 the total number of vehicles in Boston, coaches, chairs, chaises and carriages, was one hundred and forty-five.

So late as 1826 Judge Story and Josiah Quincy, traveling to Washington, were so fortunate as to make the journey in eight days. Starting at five each morning and riding until well into the night, they made the trip from Boston to New York in four days, arriving in time for a late dinner, and Mr. Quincy writes in his diary,

"It need not be said that we congratulated ourselves upon living in the days of rapid communications and looked with commisera

tion upon the conditions of our fathers who are known to consume a whole week in traveling between the cities."

The ocean voyage to England or to the Continent was a matter of weeks instead of days. Washington Irving, writing of his visit to England, says, "To the American visiting Europe the long voyage is an excellent preparative."

In 1830 Boston had a fortnightly line of packets to Liverpool, and New York was scarcely better off with its clipper ships. Nations were isolated, provincial, suspicious, resentful, belligerent.

The magic wand has been waived and space seems to have been annihilated. A single ocean greyhound will transport in a few days merchandise that fleets could not have carried in weeks a century ago.

Mer

Commerce is fluid; international and not provincial. chandise finds its level the world over with a change of pence or farthings in its value.

Law has necessity for its basis. The community was forced to protect its peace. It could not permit men to fight out their differences. The economic waste of personal confiict was too disastrous and the community established courts to settle controversies without bloodshed.

The world is rapidly becoming a community.

Population

flows swiftly and easily between many parts of the globe. Acquaintance between people of different nationalities is as great today as that between those of adjoining counties in former time. Commerce embraces the world. London and New York and Paris and Berlin are great clearing houses. No disaster comes to one but it is instantaneously felt by the others and by the world. We are more and more interdependent. The same necessity which compelled the establishment of courts and tribunals in communities is irresistably forcing their establishment between nations. Such courts are no longer the dreams of philosophers and philanthropists. They are necessitated by the

ever increasing accord of nations.

It is a crude idea that such courts should exist merely to prevent war. Hundreds of international controversies would never lead to war, but it is nevertheless of vital importance that they should be determined and settled once for all. Diplomacy is constantly hampered by partisan and ill-informed popular opinion. Foreign Offices cannot always reach adjustments, not because

they cannot agree, but because politically it is not safe to agree. Nations taking untenable positions cannot easily retire from them without discredit. For the sake of good feeling and unimpeded and unhampered trade, adjustment must in some way be reached. In many controversies it is better that the controversy should be settled wrong, or partly wrong, rather than left as a standing menace, and so the nations have, with ever increasing frequency, resorted to arbitration Beginning with the year 1820 the recital is most impressive. Between that date and 1900 one hundred and seventy-two important arbitrations took place.

Eight arbitrations mark the period from 1820 to 1840; thirty arbitrations between 1840 and 1860; forty-four between 1860 and 1880; ninety arbitrations between 1880 and 1900. Many of these, notably the Geneva and Halifax arbitrations in the seventies, and that between Chile and Argentina, were most significant.

In 1853 the United States Senate voted to insert arbitration clauses in treaties thereafter to be made, providing that the arbitrators should be "eminent jurists having little or no connection with politics." In 1873 Parliament concurred in an address to the Queen that she instruct the Foreign Secretary to invite all nations to concur in a permanent system of arbitration. Similar acts were passed in other countries. It remained, however, for the Czar of all the Russias in 1898 to take the step which led to a general scheme of arbitration. Pursuant to his invitation the First Peace Conference met the following year and adopted the convention which established the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

It has been said that this is not a court, and is not permanent. In its actual structure it is only a clerk's office and a list of judges. The convention does not even bind nations to arbitrate, but provides a convenient means by which arbitration may be carried out. But the thing of vital import is that twenty-six of the great powers originally, and now forty-four, agree "to use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement of international differences" and that before an appeal to arms they will "have recourse, as far as circumstances allow, to the good offices or mediation of one or more friendly powers.' They "deem it expedient and desirable that one or more powers, strangers to the dispute, should, on their own initiative and as far as circumstances may allow, offer their good offices or mediation to the states at variance".