Outside of our country it is not a cheering prospect that, despite Hague Conferences and all efforts to promote peace between nations, the opening years of this Twentieth Century witness a disastrous and bloody war between great empires of the West and East, and upon questions that seem to involve little else than extensions of territory at the expense of other nations. However sympathies may be divided between the two contending parties, we must all hope that the war may not be of long duration, and that the awful waste, sacrifice, and slaughter may tend to discourage such barbarous methods and to spread the principles of peaceful arbitration. The military spirit prevailing everywhere, even in our own country, and the apotheosis of force, requiring such enormous military and naval appropriations, give food for thought, and in this connection we may well consider whether the alarming increase of crime, the lynchings at the South and West, and the disregard of law in many high quarters, are not the natural result of such a spirit. The Devil’s advocates are uncommonly busy, and if Christian preachers believe in the Gospel of Peace, they have a wide field for Christian work. He who talks of war as anything but a curse to a nation and a crime against humanity should remember these words of General Sherman, who knew what war was: “I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of the war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentation of distant families appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated (friend or foe), that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.” The Peace Conference, to be held in Boston in the Fall, is a hopeful sign; for this Republic above all others should stand for peace, and this Association and all patriotic societies which venerate the Founders of this Republic and believe that the principles they advocated lead to peace and amity between nations can contribute to the hastening of the time when armaments shall be reduced and the reign of peace in the world be brought nearer. To that end, in the short space of time allotted me to-day, I desire to call your attention to what our Fathers believed as illustrated by their own words, and I turn back by way of text to the interview I once before referred to, which our late member Judge Chamberlain narrated that he had with Captain Preston, who fought at Lexington, and who, when over ninety years of age, could recall no reason for going into the fight other than that America had always governed herself and always meant to.