THE ASSURANCE OF PEACE The birth and rapid rise of the present movement for international peace are events of recent years. The nineteenth century found its welcome in the smoking cannon and crimsoned fields of Hohenlinden. At its close the first great peace conference of The Hague was in session. One hundred years ago Napoleon was sweeping across Europe in his terrible attempt to create an empire. To-day France, England, and America have agreed on treaties that declare for unbroken peace. Touched by the wand of progress, the Utopian ideal of yesterday has become the dominant political issue of to-day. It is pertinent, then, that we seek the true nature of this revolution. Is it borne on the crest of a popular impulse that will recede as rapidly as it has risen, or is it a permanent movement, the product of natural forces working through ordinary channels? The nineteenth century represents a break with the past. Swept into the mighty current of transition, the habits and customs of a thousand years have disappeared. With the development of natural resources, the establishment and growth of the factory system, the use of means of rapid communication, nations have entered upon a new era. Commerce and industry have come to dominate thought and action and are transforming the very life of the world. Defying the rigorous climate of both the poles, trade has penetrated the frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and made of the Falkland Islands a relay station in the progress of victorious industry. Nor is the equatorial heat more discouraging. The thick jungles of Africa have yielded their secrets, and the muddy waters of the Amazon are churned by propellers a thousand miles from the sea. International trade routes traverse the seas, connecting continent with continent. In forty years this commerce has increased from two billions to thirty billions. Giant corporations have ignored political boundaries, carried trade wherever profitable, and are supplying the varied demands of entire communities. Tariff walls, but lately effective barriers, are crumbling before the onslaught of trade. Nations are no longer independent. The wheat from Canada and the Dakotas feeds the mill workers of Sheffield and the nobility of Berlin. The failure of the Georgia cotton crop halts the looms of England and raises the cost of living throughout Europe. Nations can no longer exist as self-sufficient economic units. Never before were they so mutually interdependent. Never before has the welfare and security of one state depended upon the enterprise and diligence of another. And the movement for international peace is the chance offspring of these new social forces, at once a protest and a warning against the wrecking of modern economic structures by the ruthless hand of war.