Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace AssociationIntercollegiate Peace Association
History
Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association
Intercollegiate Peace Association
Peace; War
On the last day of the conference the delegates from the different
colleges met and perfected a permanent organization, which it was
agreed should be called the Intercollegiate Peace Association. Thus,
after a year of preliminary work, the Intercollegiate Peace
Association came into definite and permanent existence on April 14,
1906. At this meeting Dean William P. Rogers of the Cincinnati Law
School was elected president, and Professor Elbert Russell, secretary
and treasurer. The president and the secretary, President Noah E.
Byers of Goshen College, and Professor Stephen F. Weston of Antioch
College constituted the executive committee. The writer has remained
on the executive committee from the beginning, as either an elected or
an ex-officio member.
Two methods of propaganda were adopted: intercollegiate oratorical
contests, and public addresses on peace questions before the student
body and faculties of colleges and universities. It was also agreed
that the work should begin with Ohio and Indiana and gradually extend
to other states. Although no definite plan was formulated until a year
later, at the meeting at Cincinnati, it was understood from the outset
that it should be the aim gradually to extend the field of work, so
that ultimately most of the institutions of higher learning in
practically all of the states should be embraced within the
organization and participate in the contests.
_Purpose._ The purpose of the association has been quite definitely
set forth in my "Historical Sketch"[1] and in my report for 1912.
From these the following statement is very largely borrowed. The
fundamental purpose of the Intercollegiate Peace Association is to
instill into the minds and hearts of the young men of our colleges
and universities the principle that the highest ideals of justice
and righteousness should govern the conduct of men in all their
international affairs quite as much as in purely individual and social
matters, and that, therefore, the true aim of all international
dealings should be to settle differences, of whatever nature, by
peaceful methods through an appeal to the noblest human instincts
and the highest ideals of life, rather than by the arbitrament of
the sword through an appeal to the lower passions; and, further,
both on humanitarian and economic grounds, to arouse in the youth of
to-day an appreciation of the importance of a peaceful settlement of
international disputes, and to inculcate a spirit antagonistic to the
inhuman waste of life and the reckless waste of wealth in needless
warfare.
[1] Printed in _Antioch College Bulletin_, Vol. VII, No. 1,
December, 1910.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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