The President of the United States has spoken in strong, sane words, in the message to Germany published this morning, and the country will be behind him and with him to a man. In the clear logic of a great mind the distinction is made that no agency of warfare should be employed that, by its own limitations, cannot respect the accepted rules of war. That argument I believe will be accepted by the neutral nations and ultimately by the world. In effect, it is a declaration that if there is to be war it must be conducted according to the rules of the game, according to the rules and limitations which Germany and the other nations of the world have set up through the centuries. TO ESTABLISH A WORLD COURT But, gentlemen, this Congress stands for a bigger thing than the rules of war—it stands for the rules of peace. It represents a serious endeavor to establish a World Court that shall ultimately bring about the end of war. The thing that has struck me in this Congress from the opening day is its upright downright seriousness. It is essentially a Congress of ways and means. The desirability of peace, the absolute necessity of peace in a world that claims to be civilized is taken for granted—no one discusses it. What everyone is discussing instead is a sane, wise plan of securing peace. Ex-President Taft in his unusually able state-paper has proposed a plan for a World Court; Judge Parker has endorsed it in his address; a great banker like Emerson McMillan has outlined a plan by which the members of such a Court can be chosen; William Dudley Foulke in his scholarly paper last night proposed a plan of orderly progress for a League of the Nations, following the analogy of our own Confederation and our own Constitution; and James Brown Scott, in the able address we have just heard this morning, has pointed out the present status of the Hague Tribunal and shown how we can go forward from the point of great accomplishment that the world has already reached. THE FORCE TO PUT BEHIND THE COURT In much of this discussion reference has been made to the power to put behind a World Court in order to make it effective. Now I wish to speak briefly of economic pressure as the most truly international force and as the most efficient possible force to put behind this proposed World Court. That great leader and teacher of Ohio and the country, Dr. Washington Gladden, said to me yesterday, “The world on the old basis is bankrupt. It must be reorganized on a new basis.” Appreciation of that fact, it seems to me, is the chief significance of this Congress. And the world can be reorganized on a new basis if it will avail itself of one of its greatest forces, the force of international commerce, which can be applied as economic pressure to establish justice and to serve civilization. GREAT POWER OF ECONOMIC PRESSURE