as well as the bad. Then I think that the time has come when Christian nations ought to substitute Arbitration and Treaty in the place of wholesale massacre. A Turk in the city of Jerusalem said to a Christian missionary, "Why do you come here to Jerusalem?" "Why," said the missionary, "I am to preach peace!" "Peace indeed!" sneered the Turk. Then he took the missionary to a window, and pointed out to Mount Calvary and said: "There is the mountain on which your Lord died to purchase peace for the world, and yet we Mohammedans on that very mount have had to interfere to keep Christians from killing each other. Peace indeed !"

A glance at isolated facts will show the waste, the desolation, the suffering, the extermination of war. When Napoleon's army marched up towards Moscow they burned every house for one hundred and fifty miles. Our Revolutionary war cost the English Government six hundred and eighty millions of dollars. The wars growing out of the French Revolution cost England three thousand millions of dollars. Christendom, or, as I might mispronounce it, in order to make the fact more appalling, Christ-end-um, has paid, in twenty-two years, fifteen thousand million dollars for battle and killed two millions of men. The exorbitant and exhausting taxes of Great Britain and the United States are for the most part resultant from conflict. When we complain about our taxes, we charge the fault upon this administration or upon that administration, upon this line of policy or upon that line of policy; but it is a simple fact that to-day we are paying for the shot and the shell, and the ambulances, and the cavalry horses and the batteries, and the exploded fortresses, and the broken bones, and the digging of the grave trenches, and the pensions, for four years of mutual destruction.

Under Under

Edmund Burke estimated that the nations of this world had expended thirty-five thousand million dollars in war; but he did his ciphering before our great American and European wars occurred. He never dreamed that in this land, in the latter part of this century, in four years, we should spend in battle three thousand million dollars. But what is all the waste of treasure when compared with the waste of human life? The story is appalling beyond everything. In one battle under Julius Cæsar four hundred thousand fell. Xerxes in one campaign five millions were slain. Genghis Khan, at Herat, one million six hundred thousand were slain. At Nisbar, one million seven hundred and fortyseven thousand were slain: at the siege of Ostend, one hundred and twenty thousand; at Acre, three hundred thousand; at the siege of Troy, one million eight hundred and sixteen thousand fell. The Tartar and African wars cost one hundred and eighty million lives; the wars against the Turks and the Saracens cost one hundred and eighty millions. Added to all these, the million who fell in our own conflict. It might seem to some a small addition, but a vast addition it seems to us, because it comes so near our own hearts. Then take the fact that thirtyfive times the present population of the earth have fallen in battle. Looking on these things, am I not right in charging you, O Christian men and women, to pray, every day of your lives, that the Lord will hasten the day spoken of in my text, when the swords of battle shall become the ploughshares of agriculture. Enough the tears, enough the blood, enough the bereavement, enough the martyrdom.

AMERICAN COLLECTION OF NEWS.

FEW have any adequate conception of the comprepersons hensive yet simple agency by which the news which fills the daily newspapers is gathered and diffused. Information concerning the events that are occurring in all parts of the world is conveyed through the "wire service," under the directing control of the Associated Press. This association of newspapers has its principal office in New York, and its other home news-gathering and distributing offices at Chicago, Washington, Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Paul, Detroit, New Orleans, Galveston and San Francisco. At each of these news-centres the collection of news goes on daily and nightly by means of sub-agencies at all points in the surrounding territory. The despatches received are there edited, culled, condensed and retransmitted to other centres, or cast into the waste-paper basket

as of too little importance to use. Almost four-fifths of the news matter received over the wires and paid for by the Associated Press is destroyed or suppressed by its central agents Much of the transmitted matter is also "killed" by the most crowded newspapers. This fact must be borne in mind when complaint is made that the daily journal prints too much news matter that is trivial and unimportant. That this great Press Association is fully alive to the progressive movements of the day is shown by the fact that it has exclusive control of two leased wires to Chicago; its wire capacity under the duplex system is equivalent to four wires to Washington, and its des patches are all printed while being received in the principal cities by means of type-writing machinery. While there are news agencies of this Association in thirty-eight States and in all the Territories, they also cover the whole western continental field from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Patagonia. They connect with Cuba via cable to Key West; they communicate with Australia direct through submarine wire to and from London, and they have their own personal agents at Berlin, Liverpool and London. Specific contracts with the great news agencies of Reuter, Havas and Wolff, of Berlin and Vienna, afford the amplest supply of news from all Europe, Asia, Africa and the entire civilised world. While a small Board of Directors exercises a general control over the business operations of the Associated Press, the General Manager at New York is the responsible executive head. It is made his duty to provide intelligent and discreet agents at all points within his jurisdiction, and to select and keep on duty, day and night, at the chief points, a large force of careful operators and trained men. A constant care must be exercised by the manager and his aids to prevent this great news agency from being used to promote private interests, or to avenge, or inflict, personal wrongs. While impartial and colourless accounts of passing events are aimed at, the sympathies of eye witnesses of events unavoidably give a colouring to what is written.-Frank Leslie's Paper, N.Y.

THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN.

NOT always as the whirlwind's rush
On Horeb's mount of fear;
Not always as the burning bush

To Midian's shepherd seer;
Nor as the awful voice which came
To Israel's prophet bards;
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
Nor gift of fearful words,—

Not always thus, with outward sign
Of fire and voice from Heaven,
The message of a truth divine,
The call of God is given !
Awaking in the human heart

Love for the true and right,—
Zeal for the Christian's better part,
Strength for the Christian's fight.

Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light
Flash o'er thy waiting mind,
Unfolding to thy mental sight
The wants of human-kind;
If, brooding over human grief,
The earnest wish is known
To sooth and gladden with relief
An anguish not thine own;

Though heralded with naught of fear,
Or outward sign or show;
Though only to the inward ear
It whispers soft and low;
Though dropping, as the manna fell,
Unseen, yet from above,
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well-
Thy Father's call of love!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

AND

INTERNATIONAL

ARBITRATION.

LAMBETH PALACE AND PEACE.

T an important gathering of the Canterbury Diocesan Conference, held at Lambeth Palace, on July 11th, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was manifested, in a very encouraging manner, that the Peace question is taking increased hold upon the Churches. Several questions affecting social progress were brought forward for debate on that occasion, and amongst them an interesting discussion was introduced, by Canon Westcott, on the Church's duty to promote the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

The Primate said that "men who were not fanatics must look with alarm upon the great armaments of Europe; and although Churchmen could not hope to check Foreign Powers in their action, they might do something to reduce the appetite for fighting. It was admitted, on all hands, that seven million men in arms constituted a great calamity, and that nations waiting for Arbitration should be encouraged to persevere in their efforts to accomplish their desires." He further said-" There does want preaching, a principle which shall make wild tribes peaceful, which shall make military appetite a thing despised, which shall make us feel-for, I am sure, we want to feel it as much as any nation-that the good of other nations is our good, and that the evil of any nation is a good to no nation." And the Archbishop added, "It is the duty of the Church to promote on earth a real spirit of Peace, and to use every means at its disposal to spread that spirit, in order that the practice of it may also spring up."

These are remarkable and significant words in the mouth of an Archbishop of Canterbury, and it is to be hoped that they may be earnestly considered by Churchmen of all grades and opinions.

The Conference evinced much sympathy with the views expressed by the Primate and Canon Westcott, and others. One influential speaker, however, Viscount Cranbrook, Lord President of the Privy Council, took occasion to raise some

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objections to Arbitration, objections which have often been made before, in other quarters, and which have also often been answered. He said that "the idea that all nations should be one, and form a part of the City of God, might be looked forward to, but in heaven and not on earth." He thought there might be more demoralisation caused by a state of Peace than by actual warfare, and he asserted that there was more vice and wickedness in one of our large towns than occurred on a battle-field. He asked: "How can you arbitrate between savage, uncivilised nations and ourselves, or between the burglar, the assassin and the police? And yet the same thing will arise between nations as between individuals. England has shown her willingness to accept Arbitration, by accepting some of the most unjust awards ever made. It is known that false maps have been used for the purpose of infringing the rights of England, and yet she has submitted to the tribunal she has chosen." He hoped, however, that no one would conclude that he was in favour of war.

In making these remarks, Lord Cranbrook seems to have but faintly appreciated the truth of the Scriptural predictions of the ultimate triumphs of Peace, when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and the nations shall learn war no more. Surely these prophecies refer to earth rather than heaven. And as to his observations on Arbitration, he took an unduly contracted view. For out of the sixty, or more, instances in which, during the present century, this mode of settling differences has been resorted to, there were many cases in which other countries than England were concerned. And if England has not been so fortunate as she could herself desire, in the matter of the awards, other nations have been more successful. Even if things have been as bad as Lord Cranbrook alleges, it is nevertheless to be remembered that the results of the least acceptable awards have been incomparably better than any consequences of war could have been, whether with defeat or victory. For example, the three millions paid by Great Britain, under the award of the "Alabama" arbitration, were but a trifling sum, in comparison with the cost of a war, which might have resulted, sooner or later, in default of some pacific mode of compensating the United States for the injury sustained by their commerce, through the depredations of the privateer in question.

Yet it is right to learn from an intelligent critic; and Lord Cranbrook is only one out of many persons who have remarked that there has been manifest some appearance of unfairness, on the part of even Arbitrators, when British interests and honour have been at stake. Hence the objection has been repeatedly raised that it is difficult, if

not impossible, to find, at least in Europe, monarchs or statesmen who can resist the temptation to make an award against England, if they have the chance of doing so afforded them. The advocates of Arbitration have often to listen to this objection, which, whether true or not, may at any rate be useful to them, and to the cause, if it induces them to suggest, more in detail than heretofore, the manner in which Arbitrators, or Courts of Arbitration, may in future be constituted, or the quarters whence they may most suitably be selected. For it is of the first importance that perfect fairness, absolute impartiality, should be secured, in any reference of international disputes to this mode of disposal. The Alabama decision was not wholly free from circumstances tending to give some colour to Lord Cranbrook's objection. Future resorts to this principle, on the part of England or any other country, should, therefore, be most carefully guarded from any causes of criticism in this direction.

The Lambeth Conference arrived at a favourable conclusion in reference to Canon Westcott's proposal, and, on the motion of Canon Fremantle, seconded by Lord Cranbrook, adopted the following Resolution: "That the President be requested to consider whether it is desirable to provide that a day be appointed for special prayer that it may please God to give to all men peace and concord."

Considering the influential men who constituted the Conference, and the emphatic words used on the occasion by the Archbishop of Canterbury in support of Peace, it is evident that this gathering was the most important and encouraging step in this direction which has yet been taken by the Church of England, in what may be fairly deemed an official and representative capacity. It indicated that the efforts which for so many years past have been patiently and perseveringly put forth by the friends of Peace, in order to press home upon the leaders of religious bodies their special responsibility in this department, are at length beginning to produce results of a very cheering character. These, in their turn, may well stimulate to further con. tinuance in the same excellent course of action.

CANON WESTCOTT ON THE DUTY OF
CHURCHMEN.

CANON WESTCOTT said, at the recent meeting of the Canterbury Diocesan Conference, at Lambeth Palace, London :

"The question of International Relations has not hitherto been considered in the light of the Incarnation, and till this has been done, I do not see that we can look for the establishment of that peace which was heralded at the Nativity. I wish simply to claim that as Christians, and especially as English Churchmen, we should at length face the question with sincere and resolute hearts; that we should ask ourselves, without reserve and without pre-possessions, what the Faith teaches us upon it, at this point in the development of the life of men; that we should accept the responsibility of bringing the results of our inquiry, without fear and without impatience, into the field of public life. If we can ascertain what is the will of God, we shall assuredly not admit that it is impossible to fulfil it. Failure is no more than a lesson of experience when we are striving towards a Divine end. What, then, does the Christian faith teach us on international duties now?

"We all acknowledge, in theory at least, that we are 'members one of another;' that we cannot live alone; that by an inexorable necessity we suffer, as we rejoice, together; that we owe to our fellow-men the inexhaustible debt of love; that we exercise towards them the inalienable prerogative of service. And now wider thoughts are rising into prominence. The one conception which I have watched all my life, steadily gaining in clearness and force, is the reality of our social existence. When we confess the Incarnation, we place every element of humanity in connection with God. In that fact we see that every element

is contributory, according to its proper character, to the accom plishment of the purpose of creation. And we can understand that the end will be reached when the Kings of the earth, according to the language of the Apocalypse, bring the glory and honour of the nations all that they have gathered in thought and achievement -into the heavenly city. We have not to create the new orler, but to discern it; not to supply the strength which is required for its establishment, but to receive the strength which God offers. The State serves the race, just as the citizen serves the State. In the light of the Christian faith, the true interests of nations are identical, because they are the interests of humanity. The loss of one nation is the loss of all; the gain of one nation is the gain of all; the disproportionate preponderance of a single power is an impoverishment of the whole body. An unrighteous victory is, above all, a calamity to the conquerors. If the ex tremity of conflict must be endured, our prayers ought to be such that our adversaries could join in them. The nations have one common life, one common end. We advance a step further. If nations are, as history has proved them to be, factors in human progress, the Incarnation proclaims a brotherhood of nations, no less than a brotherhood of men. It follows that every duty which is recognised in our private dealing one with another, every virtue which ennobles the intercourse of man with man, every aim which gives dignity to personal effort, every aspiration which brings enthusiasm to personal sacrifice, all the treasures of tenderness and sympathy which sweeten and illuminate common life must find an analogous place in international relations. And, again, every vice which we indignantly condemn among ourselves - arrogance, deceit, overbearing violence, self-seeking-remains a vice, however imposing may be the scale on which it is displayed. As Christians, then, we oppose war not simply as wasteful of material wealth and fertile in suffering-for truth's sake we could bear greater sacrifices and greater pains-but because it hinders what has been made known to us as the Divine counsel, for the progress of man both in its methods and in its results. It tends to give sanction to modes of action universally condemned in private life; it connects great virtues with unworthy or, at least, questionable motives; it is the extreme form of self-assertion maintained by force; it leaves behind a sad heritage of discontent to the vanquished and of arrogance to the victor; it separates with a legacy of bitterness those through whose generous co-operation the end of creation must be reached. Such a judgment lies-I see no possibility of gainsaying the conclusion-in the simple acceptance of the Apostolic Gospel, the Word became flesh.

"For if we bear no witness to the Divine brotherhood of nations, which carries with it inexhaustible obligations of service and sacrifice, the teachers of the new democracy in Italy and France and America, in Germany and England, are not silent. They have stated the hope of the generations to come, which Christianity only can satisfy. But you will say, The evil of war has been since the world began, and God has brought good out of it; so He will work still. I reply that His will is unfolded to us in many parts, little by little, in order that it may be fulfilled by the loyal labours of successive generations; that now, for the first time, the function of nations in the development of mankind is made plain; that now, for the first time, that aspect of war is revealed through which it is seen in its full spiritual magnitude; that now, for the first time, the duty is laid on believers of applying the social power of the Gospel to hallow and fulfil the spontaneous aspirations of troubled hearts towards international concord.

"Still you ask, perhaps sadly, What can we do? We can at least, we to whom the office of teaching is committed, confess our faith before God and man; we can study the problems of international duty as problems to which we must find a Christian solution; we can in some degree temper the rude expression of overbearing pride which usurps the name of patriotism; we can strive ourselves to realise that foreign races have offices to fulfil in the providence of God which we cannot fulfil, though we may delay their fulfilment, and we can guide others to the same truth; we can reflect and ask others to reflect whether there have not been times when England has used and gained truer power by accepting failure, than when she has enforced her will by crushing might. We can recognise that there is in the hearts of meu, below the surges of passion and which trouble them, a zeal for righteousness, a de