Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/25

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PEACE MOVEMENT IN EUROPE
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the representatives of all the great religions united in repudiating war and demanding arbitration. Neither have I mentioned the Centennial of the Institute of France which M. Jules Simon has publicly called in the Sorbonne itself, the real Peace Congress, and which M. Sully Prudhomme in his poem recited at the Theatre Français by Monnet Sully, saluted in the name of Peace.

Nor have I mentioned the Brussels meeting of the International Association for the Codification and Reform of International Law; nor, indeed, of an assembly of quite a different character, that which gathered at the Kiel Canal. A ceremony ostensibly military and well calculated to call forth a groan of astonishment, if one did not consider that the frightful power of the marine monsters assembled there, really tends to the maintenance of peace, and that it is a strange spectacle indeed to see hundreds of ships of war, brought together like tamed lions, and ready, to use the words of Admiral Réveillère, to disavow war and lower their flags in unison at the feet of industry and commerce.

In spite of all the different interests which seek to put obstacles in its way, the movement is irresistible. It betrays itself everywhere, even if it does not proclaim itself openly. The Journal des Débats, referring to the meetings of the Anglo-French Association, invoked the aid of women, as Jules Simon had done long ago, and remarked their influence in the peace societies. The Times, on occasion of an Academy Reception, imputes to Napoleon, as his greatest crime, that of having turned the intellects of the age from the path upon which they had entered, and of having thus retarded by a century at least, that thing most desirable above all others, peace by arbitration. Newspapers of the most different shades of political opinion, L'Elair, le Figaro, le Matin, contain articles on this subject, different in aim sometimes and under different signatures, but all showing the great interest which is being taken in international arbitration and in those who are laboring to promote it. The international character of the undertaking becomes more evident from day to day in examining the contents of numerous important periodicals. Besides those published in France, the