The whole subject is presented with admirable power in an address from the Workmen’s Peace Committee to the Working-Men of Great Britain and Ireland, duly signed by their officers. Here are some of its sentences:-- “Without us war must cease; for without us standing armies could not exist. It is out of our class chiefly that they are formed.” “We would call upon and implore the peoples of France and Germany, in order to enable their own rulers to realize these their peace-loving professions, _to insist upon the abolition of standing armies_, as both the source and means of war, nurseries of vice, and locust-consumers of the fruits of useful industry.” “What we claim and demand--what we would implore the peoples of Europe to do, without regard to Courts, Cabinets, or Dynasties--is _to insist upon Arbitration as a substitute for war_, with peace and its blessings for them, for us, for the whole civilized world.”[239] The working-men of England responded to this appeal, in a crowded meeting at St. James’s Hall, London, where all the speakers were working-men and representatives of the various handicrafts, except the Chairman, whose strong words found echo in the intense convictions of the large assemblage:-- “One object of this meeting is to make the horror universally inspired by the enormous and cruel carnage of this terrible war the groundwork for appealing to the working classes and the people of all other European countries to join in protesting against war altogether, [_prolonged cheers_,] as the shame of Christendom, and direst curse and scourge of the human race. Let the will of the people sweep away war, which cannot be waged without them. [‘_Hear!_’] Away with enormous standing armies, [‘_Hear!_’] the nurseries and instruments of war,--nurseries, too, of vice, and crushing burdens upon national wealth and prosperity! Let there go forth from the people of this and other lands one universal and all-overpowering cry and demand for the blessings of peace!”[240] At this meeting the Honorary Secretary of the Workmen’s Peace Committee, after announcing that the working-men of upwards of three hundred towns had given their adhesion to the platform of the Committee, thus showing a determination to abolish war altogether, moved the following resolution, which was adopted:-- “That war, especially with the present many fearful contrivances for wholesale carnage and destruction, is repugnant to every principle of reason, humanity, and religion; and this meeting earnestly invites all civilized and Christian peoples to insist upon the abolition of standing armies, and the settlement by arbitration of all international disputes.”[241]