culturally superior. _Elasticity_ is the only quality which ensures peaceful duration or painless and imperceptible transition from one form to another. The world should remember this, now that it has learned the law of evolution, and knows that all life and development is the work of adaptation. But to contemplate peace and war from a general standpoint is what philosophers and politicians have done from the earliest times. To work out plans and propositions, by which the ruling state of war may be replaced by the establishment of international justice, is a labor which has been carried on systematically for the last ten years by the various groups of the League of Peace, and the inter-parliamentary union. An entire literature already exists on this subject, and by consulting Dr. Evan Darby’s “International Tribunal”[2] and Dr. Benjamin Trueblood’s lately published work, “The Federation of the World,”[3] a complete knowledge of the ideal and practical aims may be gained, as also of the results already acquired. Footnote 2: London Peace Society, 47 New Broad Street. Footnote 3: Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899. But now, at the present moment, when the work of peace is placed in the hands of an inter-governmental conference at the Hague, furnished with powers to realize the resolutions passed, it is no longer fitting to draw up theories of the abstract idea of universal peace: now everyone sympathizing with the great cause, and especially such as are in immediate proximity to the conference, are compelled to concentrate all their interest upon it. And, therefore, I will close these lines with a few thoughts, which, quite apart from the “woman’s standpoint,” might bear the title: “Universal Peace and the Conference at the Hague.” It appears to me that in the criticism and discussion of this unique phenomenon, this unprecedented historical event, the importance of the fact that such a Conference is sitting is too much forgotten. One either loses oneself in the question: “What will be discussed?” and subjects every item of the programme to a minute technical criticism, or one enquires: “What will be the result?” and indulges in more or less hopeful, or more or less sceptical, conjectures and prophecies. One forgets to contemplate the overwhelming fact that such a Conference has been called together by an autocrat in our ultra-military times, and in which every State takes part. Apart from all that will be achieved by speeches, propositions and resolutions, the significance and the effect of the event itself must be of the greatest influence, and the first official Peace Conference appears like a miracle in the history of the world.