Coincident with the establishment of the legal machinery for arbitration and the growth thereof, we would naturally have expected a cessation in the mad race for armament-supremacy. But the very reverse has happened, and to deal firmly with this contradictory situation is the third great duty of the next Hague Conference. Of what avail are our Courts of Arbitral Justice when this intolerable economic waste is permitted! To limit armaments was the avowed purpose of the First Hague Conference, but nothing was accomplished save the adoption of a neatly worded resolution that the limitation aforesaid is "highly desirable for the enlargement of the material and moral well-being of humanity." In 1907 the subject was again under discussion, the nations exhorted to a serious examination of the question--and there the matter rested. We have reached now an insufferable stage where effective action must be taken. Let us hear no more that deceptive catch phrase, "If you want peace prepare for war." When bad blood is likely to arise between individuals the very worst policy to pursue is to furnish them with weapons. And so it is with nations. Consider, if you will, the neck-and-neck race between Great Britain and the German Empire in the construction of battleships. What fool will call that preparation for war a guaranty of peace? We might be disposed to admit the sincerity of those who say we must arm and ever arm to maintain peace, except that they are too often men with professional and business interests at stake. In England there have been amazing revelations of this sinister condition--armament companies with peers, members of Parliament, newspaper owners, officers of the army and navy, as stockholders; enormous appropriations forced through Parliament by interested parties; periodic war scares in newspapers inspired by armament syndicates. Only recently we read how the great Krupp firm of Germany had been exposed in its practice of bribing officials to obtain valuable military information and furnishing French newspapers with war-scare articles calculated to induce Germany to increase her armament orders. In Russia and France they face a similar state of affairs. Here in the United States we are undoubtedly not free therefrom. And then there are the navy leagues in every country, playing upon the fears of the nations by startling tales of what the others are doing, and so on through an endless chain, manufacturing a demand for battleships in the name and under the guise of patriotism. We shrink from the contemplation of such greed and selfishness, and appeal for relief to the third Hague Conference.