Our period witnessed also the rise and progress of the peace movement. A movement whose chief purpose is to substitute peaceful arbitration as a method of settling international differences for the dreadful arbitrament of war. The first peace society was formed in America early in the century--1815--and while not attracting much attention at first, the movement gradually increased in importance until at last it arose from a merely national movement to an international one, as is evidenced from the fact that at its great conference at the Hague in 1899 there were accredited representatives from the following nations: United States, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, China, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Persia, Portugal, Roumania, Servia, Siam, Switzerland, and Turkey. It was this conference of 1899 that finally established the world's permanent court of arbitration at the Hague, to which several important international questions have already been referred and settled. And while the peace movement and arbitration has not yet relieved the world from recurrence of dreadful wars, still the establishment of the permanent court for international arbitration is a mighty stride in the interest of the world's peace. It gives more than hope. It establishes confidence that the time will come when there will be a disarmament of the nations, and the old prophet's dream figured forth in his vision of the nations beating their spears into pruning hooks and their swords into plow shares will be realized, and the nations shall learn war no more.