secure a peace that will release the spirits of the world from bondage. To such an appeal the delegates replied by action rather than words, taking practical measures to insure continuous war work without letting down necessary standards for the workers. It was reported that the American labor movement had secured the best agreements with the Government that had been obtained in any of the warring countries.

At the same time the labor men adopted these remarkable declarations as the basis upon which peace must be negotiated:

1. The combination of the free peoples of the world in a common covenant for genuine and practical cooperation to secure justice and therefore peace in relations between nations.

2. Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.

3. No political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and to cripple or embarrass others.

4. No indemnities or reprisals based upon vindictive purposes or deliberate desires to injure, but to right manifest wrongs.

5. Recognition of the rights of small nations and of the principle, "No people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live."

6. No territorial changes or adjustment of power except in furtherance of the welfare of the peoples affected and in furtherance of world peace.

In addition to these basic principles which are based upon declarations of our President

of these United States, there should be incorporated in the treaty that shall constitute the guide of nations in the new period and conditions into which we enter at the close of the war the following declarations, fundamental to the best interests of all nations and of vital importance to wage-earners:

1. No article or commodity shal be shipped or delivered in international commerce, in the production of which children under the age of 16 have been employed or permitted to work.

2. It shall be declared that the basic work-day in industry and commerce shall not exceed eight hours.

3. Involuntary servitude shall not exist, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. 4. Establishment of trial by jury.

ances.

We should like to know the name of the labor statesman who framed the first paragraph of this declaration and the other five points which summarize President Wilson's utterThese planks avoid the pitfalls of commitment to force propositions in international affairs, and reassert fundamental principles of durable in a form, it seems to us, peace not excelled by any statesman or platform of organized effort issued since the war began. For such principles Americans and all other free men the world around can stand together, and stand fast in war and peace.

"This war was made by the militaristic and capitalistic autocracy of Germany, and it was acquiesced in and even promoted by the German Socialistic party, which thereby proved itself traitorous to workingmen and farmers of the world."— Theodore Roosevelt.

"The Third Peace Conference is more needed, more desirable than ever. But we shall never get it until the military forces of Germany are broken, and the predatory Potsdam gang which rules them is brought low."-Henry Van Dyke, Ex-minister of the United States to Holland.

"No man should seek to increase his personal fortune for the period of the war. The duty of every American at this time is to devote his whole thought and effort to the needs of the Government and to the needs of those who have been made to suffer through the war. It is, in my opinion, distinctly unpatriotic for those who have what they require to seek at such a time as this to amass additional wealth when thousands of young men are offering their lives in sacrifice for the ideals of America and when other thousands, many old men, women, and little children, are dying of starvation."-Jacob H. Schiff.

NE purpose of this notable gathering is to attain the larger view of things-and to unify plans of action for the general good. It is the business of associations like yours to build on the higher levels. We have to realize this year, as never before, the broadening ranges of our responsibility. We must as always be concerned with the welfare of our own locality, each man building, as in days of old, over against his own habitation. We must bring our locality into its best relationships with all those that make up the commonwealth and the larger region. We must in turn feel our share of responsibility for the country in whose loyal service we are enlisted without stint or reserve. But further than that, we must lift our eyes to the vision of our new responsibility as citizens of the world.

Our Southern States in this year 1917 have risen to new heights of national and international service and greatness. With immense resources of courage and industry, the South has been working at its task and bearing its burden during the last five decades. It has set up a series of milestones to record its progress; but the year 1917 will be marked by a greater and perhaps more enduring monument than any of the preceding years. The South is passionately devoted to principles.

It longs for unbroken generations of peace and progress. The South knows the terrible devastations of war and the meaning of the long, hard processes of economic and social recuperation. Yet for the sake of right and justice on the great plane of an indivisible brotherhood of mankind, the South has joined the North and the West in full accord, to do its part in the greatest emergency of modern times.

The call to which the South has responded during the past six months has been many fold. It was told that it must give its young men in due proportion to bear arms at a distance from their homes. But it was also told that it must produce cotton for the world, and it was further told that it must on short notice profoundly change its agricultural programs and produce a thousand million dollars worth of foodstuffs in excess of the average of previous years. I am assured by the Agricultural Department that this miracle has been virtually accomplished.

In the herculean efforts that have marked the industrial and agricultural year in the South, as in other portions of the country, there has been much more than self-interest as an impelling motive. A large generosity has been the keynote of the year's endeavors. The surplus food

that Europe needs has actually been produced. The steel and other materials to build the ships necessary to carry aid and succor across the seas, are forthcoming through unwonted industrial effort.

What is the object of it all? What is to be the outcome of this prodigious display of America's energy? I do not believe that America has been actuated by fear. It has been argued that we should have had to face Germany alone if we had abstained from joining in the present war. And the argument is by no means fanciful. But the sense of right and justice, rather than the sense of danger, has dominated, if I mistake not, the course of America in 1917. The extent and meaning of the world war had changed, at least in our view of it, until it became the foremost business of the whole world to set its affairs in order.

President Wilson having expressed this view, it has been the business of America to live up to it, so that our national sincerity might be an object-lesson to all the world. We are perfectly aware that when it comes to the application of the principles of justice and right to particular matters, there must always be difficulties of many sorts. But just as we have worked out in the United States a system of harmonious union, even so we have faith to believe that the nations of Europe can be brought to the acceptance of the ideals of democracy and of peace. We believe that the outcome of this war must be a vast series of reforms

in the diplomatic and political life of the nations.

These reforms must be based on good will, complete frankness, and a shaping of particular governments into forms responsive to the real interests of the masses of common people.

Fortunately, we do not have to think of improved international life as something for the distant future. We see it growing rapidly and hopefully in this present year 1917. The cooperation of the great Englishspeaking democracies, for example, has already gone so far that we may count it as permanent and assured. The United States will never quarrel with Canada or Great Britain. There has grown up a spirit of cooperation between the United States. and France, which will not be transient but will remain as a permanent bond. Not only the Government of the United States, but also the people of this country, have been laying firm foundations for future association with the new republics of Russia and China, while endeavoring in conference with Japan to assure the peaceful future of the countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean. The policies of the United States, furthermore, have been reassuring to the members of the Pan-American Union, and the entire Western Hemisphere is showing itself ready for that honorable and constructive peace for which the United States is making sacrifices.

Thus in the very midst of the struggle there is emerging something like a world-citizenship that is destined to be permanent. That this

public opinion of mankind, as now represented by the United States and its co-belligerents, should prove irresistibly strong in the assertion of its principles, has become necessary, and it admits of no compromise. The German people will be welcomed into this kind of honorable association whenever they can see clearly enough to accept its righteous principles. Until that time, Germany is an outlaw among nations. To restrain and subdue Germany from without, while the leaven of rightmindedness is working within, is a costly undertaking, but it must be carried through. The faster the leaven works within, the better it will be for Germany and of course for everybody else.

But the end is not in doubt. The peoples of Europe will in due time refuse to worship at the false shrines of militarism and empire.

Even Germany has begun to think of peace and future relationships in terms of some kind of world federation though their conception is of a pro-Teuton harmony.

It becomes measurably certain that the common man will save out of the great war, first, his ever-enhancing status as master of himself and his own destinies; second, his equal place as a citizen of his own country; and, third, his new and insured place in the brotherhood of all peoples and races. And I am here to-day to beg of you to be broadvisioned and to assume clearly and deliberately some of the responsibilities of this new period. Let no cynic shake your faith in the better

time that is to be. Nothing worth doing has ever been done, except as constructive imagination projected itself into the future and faith supported patient endeavor.

We Americans must not, then, think of ourselves as engaged in war in any ordinary sense, even though we must now use all the mechanisms of war-the more daringly the better. We must not forget that our part is in a struggle to establish world principles. We are trying to bring the perverted agencies called Government into harmonious submission to those beneficent forces that we call Civilization. We shall have established more firmly everywhere those doctrines of justice and right that men in all nations have admitted in the ordering of their domestic institutions.

We are already cooperating with many nations in the colossal effort to bring about a new order for the world. And this cooperation must result in unifying the collective power of nations for justice and humane. progress as never before. Within themselves, also, the nations will be improved. The old England of caste, of privilege, will have been made over into a more consistent democracy. France will have risen permanently to levels of a higher moral energy; and Germany will have been democratized, and will have learned something of the nobler lesson of greatness through ministry and service. not wholly self-conscious and selfseeking.

As the war has progressed, the old dream of world federation has been