Eventually the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armament will be judged by what it contributes to this union of nations, exactly as all its predecessors will be judged. The Washington Conference is but one in a long chain of international undertakings looking to peace. It is built on the experience of many different men, of many different countries, running back literally for centuries. Its immediate predecessor was the Hague Conferences and tribunal and the Paris Conference with its resultant League of Nations. So far the League of Nations is at once the most idealistic and the most practical scheme men have yet framed, the broadest in its scope and the most democratic in its spirit. It may prove that humanity is as yet too backward to grasp and realize its intent and its possibilities. It may make too great a demand on their faith, their charity, their love; but nothing can destroy the great fact that it has been undertaken by fifty-one nations, that it is alive and at work. That fact will stand as a hope and a guide to the future. The present Conference has boldly and nobly attempted to do in a limited field something of what the Paris Conference attempted to do for the whole world. The limitation of armament it proposes rests, like world disarmament, on unionism, standing together. Unionism requires faith; have we enough of it? It requires, too, men of good will. Have we enough of them? In the final analysis, it is with them that “peace on earth” rests. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Changed ‘one or twice’ to ‘once or twice’ on p. 99. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors. 3. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Peacemakers--Blessed and Otherwise, by Ida M. Tarbell