USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 38
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About 1873 efforts were made to bring the subject of arbitration before the legislative bodies of the different countries. Signor Mancini presented a similar resolution to the Italian Parliament the same year. From time to time petitions and memorials have been presented to the various governments of Europe and America.
More attractive to the practical observer is the record of actual cases of settle- ment by arbitration during the present century. Their number is surprising. I have carefully examined the records of seventy-five cases, and there are half a dozen more of which I have hitherto been unable to find more than a statement of the dates and
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participants. The questions which have proved susceptible of arbitration fall under five main heads: I. Boundary disputes. 2. Unlawful seizure of vessels or other property. 3. Claims for damage for the destruction of life or property. 4. Disputed possession of territory. 5. The interpretation of treaties.
The most noteworthy cases of arbitration are two or three of special character, which hardly come under the five heads named above. The first is the Luxembourg question, which was settled in 1867. The jealousy manifested by France toward Prussia during the peace negotiations which terminated the Austro-Prussian war, found expression in Napoleon's demand for territorial recompense to reconcile France to the changes in Europe effected by the peace of Prague. Prussia was now in pos- session of military strength equal to that of France herself, and her recent exploits and successes were looked upon by France as the precursor of efforts toward self- aggrandizement. Napoleon's eye fell upon the grand duchy of Luxembourg, which was under the sovereignty of the King of Holland, but a member of the German con- federation until the dissolution of the latter in 1866. The fortress of Luxembourg was still occupied by the Prussian troops. The negotiations begun by Napoleon with the King of Holland for the annexation of the duchy to France failed on account of the objection of Prussia, whereupon France demanded the evacuation of the fortress by Prussia. A warm dispute ensued, and, as the excitement spread through Europe, war seemed inevitable. The Queen of England, however, offered her services as arbitrator, in accordance with Article VII. of the Treaty of Paris, 1856. It was finally agreed that the question be settled by a conference of the great powers of Europe. This conference met at London May II, 1867, and decided that the fortress should be dismantled and its neutrality guaranteed by the signatories of the Treaty of Paris. The duchy became the property of the House of Orange. War was averted for three years only; the jealousy of France found its outlet in the Franco-Prussian war.
A rebellion of the Island of Crete (then under the rule of the Turks) occurring in . the same year, resulted in an uninterrupted struggle of two years. The great powers of Europe pursued, for the most part, the policy of non-intervention. But Greece manifested a friendly interest in her neighbor's welfare, and some sympathy with the cause of the oppressed Cretans. Incensed at what was deemed the instigation of Turkish subjects to revolt, the Porte launched at Greece an ultimatum charging her with aiding and abetting the rebellion. The Greek minister replied haughtily, and diplomatic relations were broken off. A threatened engagement between a Turkish and a Greek vessel was prevented by the French minister in Greece, but the incident brought matters to a crisis, and roused the attention of all Europe. The Prussian government proposed to France to call a conference of the powers at London. After much diplomatic correspondence the plan was adopted and the conference met Janu- ary 9, 1869, but it barely escaped disintegration at the outset. Turkey, as a signatory of the Treaty of Paris, was admitted, with deliberative powers. Greece claimed the same privilege, but was refused in spite of indignant remonstrance. After several sessions, a declaration was drawn up in favor of Turkey. This conference has been variously judged, some blaming its members for assuming the functions of judges when they had merely been invited to deliberate and advise; others praising with much warmth the work of the conference in averting a war which might have involved all the powers of Europe. Both criticisms are just in part. This much may be safely said: Although its results were important, the conference can hardly be held up as a type of a well-managed commission of arbitration.
The circumstances which led to the famous " Alabama " case are too familiar to need rehearsal here. The apathy of Great Britain toward the depredations of the Confederate cruiser gave great offense to the United States government, which pro- nounced England responsible for all these acts, and guilty of a breach of neutrality. Diplomatic correspondence became more and more bitter, complicating rather than clearing up the matter. After four years of weary, fruitless negotiation, settlement by joint commission was suggested by Mr. Reverdy Johnson. The proposition was
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accepted by the British minister, but failed to pass the United States Senate. The conditions of the protocol were pronounced insufficient to secure just reparation to the United States. It was probably only the strong aversion to war by both the liti- gants that prevented an outbreak. When, in 1871, it was finally agreed to submit the vexed question to arbitration, owing to the insufficiency and vagueness of international laws, much time was wasted in the discussion of legal points. That the temper of two nations so high-spirited as Great Britain and the United States stood the test of a long and irritating negotiation until the vexed question was finally settled, is worthy of high commendation. These three arbitrations, involving as they do questions of national honor, are instructive precedents.
It is difficult to analyze the present situation of the world as to peace and war. The history-making events of today will not be properly understood until they have been looked at in perspective. In spite of the progress of arbitration during the last half century, to venture an opinion one must carefully have studied the general trend of social revolution. The character of warfare and its causes have greatly changed. The brutal struggle for self-preservation is no more. Wars of conquest belong to the days of Cæsar and Alexander. Wars undertaken for the gratification of personal ambition have hardly been possible since the First Napoleon. With the change from unlimited to constitutional monarchy, the people have too strong a voice to allow a war to be undertaken merely for the aggrandizement of an ambitious monarch; the populace of today does not clamor for war unless under strong provocation. Broadly speaking, we may infer that wars arising from trivial disputes tend to become less and less frequent. On the other hand, the great underlying causes of strife tend to become fewer, but far more deep-seated, reaching to the very vitals of national life. Whether war will finally vanish from off the face of the earth, no man can tell. It seems probable that conflicts will become fewer and more intense; but not until the deep- lying causes of strife are removed will the evil be banished forever.
Fifteen years ago much was said about the establishment of an International tribunal or of a court of arbitration. According to recent reports of the Peace Asso- ciations, the present aim of the movement is to persuade the nations to sign arbitra- tion treaties.
The most serious obstacle to the introduction of international arbitration as a permanent institution has been the indecision of its advocates as to the method of conducting cases. The most popular and successful plan has been the appointment of a mixed commission, small enough to be easily managed, large enough to work rapidly and systematically, unhampered by diplomatic "red tape." Still, such a com- mission is temporary-unsuited to a scheme of permanent arbitration. A permanent mixed tribunal would insure impartiality. Such a scheme would imply the abolition of standing armies or a uniform reduction in their numbers. The question has been raised by doubters, how will such a tribunal be able to enforce its decisions if the army be banished? Some have suggested that cach nation furnish its quota of soldiers to form a kind of international police. Such an institution, however, would seem an inconsistency, if a tribunal, aiming to substitute reason and justice for the sword and bayonet, be obliged to use them in the execution of its decrees.
There is apparently some confusion in the public mind between an International Court and a Permanent Commission of Arbitration. The former should mean a Court of International Law, and to be effective, should be composed of the most eminent jurists and statesmen of whom the world can boast, men who know the laws of nations as they now exist, and who are capable of interpreting and codifying these laws. There is urgent need of a complete and precise code of International Law. A Court of International Law would find its authority in the majesty of the law, and the moral support of the nations ought to be a sufficient guarantee for the acceptance of its decrees. Any government which refused to abide by the decisions of so august a body would suffer eternal disgrace in the eyes of the world, to say nothing of the material loss of commercial good-will. The expense of such a court, shared by the participating nations, would be comparatively light.
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When a dispute arose the plaintiff would at once carry the case to this great Court of Appeals, which would investigate the said case on a purely legal basis. This would take the place of special arbitration, but should any question not susceptible of legal interpretation arise, a Commission of Arbitration could easily be formed from the panel of the international jury.
There might still remain a few great questions incapable of pacific solution until the moral consciousness of the nations becomes much more highly developed than it is today. Is there no solution but the standing army? The question is largely eco- nomic in character, and its discussion would occupy a much larger space than can be spared here.
The peace question is only one of the many tangled problems with which this generation has to deal. It may not be solved by the next generation or the next. Whatever is done, the world looks to America for leadership. "Nothing impressed the delegates sent from the United States to the late Peace Congress at Paris more seriously," says the secretary of the American Peace Society in his annual report, " than the sentiments of various European countries that it is the duty of the Great Republic of the West not only to keep abreast with the world's endeavor to abolish war, out to lead the nations in the better way of Universal Peace."
GEORGE ELIOT .* By MISS IDA M. STREET.
Thought flows over the world in waves. These thought-waves have different manifestations in government, society, religion and literature. Indeed, literature may be called their index, giving often a perfect reflection of their manifestations in society and religion. Jus- tin McCarty says that each reform or era of reform has its accompanying wave of writers as well as states- men. Whipple believes that every change in the habits, opinions, manners, governments, and religions of society calls for and creates a new epoch in litera- ture, and Bascom has made the presence of these literary waves the basis of his philosophical survey of English literature. Moreover, there have been borne on every new flood of thought that has swept over the world, some individuals who have personified the predominant idea of their era; men whose ante- cedents, education and temperament have made them typical of the mass of their cotemporaries; men whose actions or whose words have voiced the peculiar theo- ries of their times. They have not only been promi- nent for their intrinsic genius but types of their era- either in action, in philosophy, or in literature.
The present century has been what the Germans would call a Sturm und Drang period. It began in MISS IDA M. STREET. revolutions, and at times seems likely to end in the same turbulent fashion. The overpowering rush of new ideas has been made mani- fest by the excitable French in bloody revolutions and the establishment of futile republics, by the phlegmatic and dreamy Germans in new and startling philosophies, by the conservative and practical English in peaceful political reforms and fresh and highly imaginative literature.
At the close of the last century this dogmatic, arbitrary tenor of mind was repre- sented in religion by a lifeless set of mere forms; in statesmanship, by the despotism of the Bourbons in France, and the domination of the aristocracy in England; in lit- erature, by the servile imitation of Boileau and Popc.
The movement peculiar to this century is the exaltation of man and law. This movement might be more accurately compared to a tide than a flood, for it had its ebb and flow, its spring and neap tide, its law of action and reaction. Starting from con- ventionalism in the eighteenth century, there has not been one grand sweep on to a Utopia of perfect liberty in the close of the nineteenth. Although we have not yet
Miss Ida M. Street is a native of Oskaloosa, la. Her parents were William B. and Carolina M. Street. To her mother, who was a woman of wise judgment and untiring energy, is due her large intellectual attainments. She took an A. B. Degree at Vassar College in 1880, and won the Western Association of Collegiate Alumniæ Fellowship in 1888. This was the first fel- lowship given by the association and was placed at Michigan University. She took an A. M. Degree in this university in 1889. She has contributed essays and short poems to the New Englander and other periodicals. The more important of these are an Essay on Coriolanus, a Study of Browning's Dramas, and the Christian Spirit in United States History. She holds high rank as a professional teacher and is a young woman of rare culture and accomplishments. Her present postoffice address is Omaha High School, Omaha, Neb.
* The title of the address as delivered was: "George Eliot as a Representative of Her Time."
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seen the close of the century we can distinctly trace the ebb and flow of the great idea-liberty-and see that it has limitations and a law of control.
The first political wave appeared in the French revolution in 1792, when the Bourbon dynasty, representing the tyranny of the feudal system, was overthrown. The tide rose to a destructive height in the Reign of Terror. License was found to be a greater tyrant than an absolute monarch. Popular feeling, especially in England, revolted from the new movement. This high tide was followed by an ebb in the emperorship of Napoleon I., and the new movement seemed utterly defeated and con- servatism to be again in the ascendency after the battle of Waterloo. It was during this period of reaction when the old dogmatism was again dominant, and the new ideas were fermenting in secret, that George Eliot was born and attained maturity. The new movement broke forth again in the French revolution of 1848. With minor tides of success and defeat, political freedom has since steadily advanced in France, and by reflex action in England also.
The American Revolution of 1776 had shaken England out of some of her old ideas, when by the constitutional monarchy, inaugurated by William III. she had already placed herself one step in advance of other European countries. For this reason and because of the natural conservatism of English people, the danger of bloody political revolutions was not great in England, but her peaceful reforms indi- cated the growth of the liberating impulse. The labor trouble and plots that were brewing under the arbitrary policy of Castlereagh were counteracted by the liberal policy of Canning. In 1829, England emancipated the Catholics. In 1832 she passed the Reform Bill which gave the large towns representatives in Parliament, and two years later restored to them their right of self-government. This was the most import- ant step in her political reform. In 1833 she abolished slavery, and struck a blow at monopolies in commerce by opening the East-India trade to all merchants. In 1846 the protective corn laws were repealed and the principles of free-trade established. In 1867 the new reform bill and national education made the last steps to political freedom. All these changes were permeated by that spirit of democracy and charity toward one's fellowmen, that is the best element of the nineteenth-century movement.
Lecky says: "Men like Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, have probably done more than any others to set the current of their age. They have formed a certain cast and tone of mind. They have introduced peculiar habits of thought, new modes of rea- soning, new tendencies of inquiry. The impulse they have given to higher literature has been by that literature communicated to the more popular writers, and the impress of these master minds is clearly visible in the writings of multitudes who are totally unacquainted with their works."
The minds of men at any one era might be represented by a placid lake, into which the theory of some great thinker, thrown like a pebble, creates ripples, at first small, but gradually widening to the farthest shore. If several pebbles were thrown about the same time, the result would be more or less confusion of ripples upon the water. This was somewhat the condition of thought in the middle of the century.
This religion of humanity is the keynote to the most liberal thought of the cent- ury. The ideas expressed by Comte have been, in one form or another, either par- tially or wholly believed by almost every prominent man during the last fifty years, and published in every popular magazine. Even the conservative element-the mys- tics, as Hegel would call them-who still held to their belief in a Supreme Power outside humanity, dwelt more often than formerly on Christ's second commandment and preached more frequently from the text of " The Good Samaritan."
The bitter contest between science and religion has now settled down into an amiable compromise in which religion has adopted science; but we are principally interested in the Sturm und Drang period when this conflict was one of the straws of the popular current. The great age of the earth, as told by geology, was an agitating missile thrown by science, but probably the largest pebble from that source was Dar- win's theory of evolution. This may be considered both as a result and a cause. It
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was an outgrowth of the system of investigation and method of thought used by Dar- win and his scientific contempories. It has been also a great impetus to the growth of the materialistic, as opposed to the spiritualistic, theory of the origin of man. A belief in the law of evolution does not now necessarily imply a disbelief in a Divine Creator, but for a long time it did. The fallacy lay in the supposition that law was itself a creator, and not a method of action. The scientists of the century have done a missionary work in discovering and explaining laws of nature; but they have made the mistake of deifying law, as the positivists have man.
A third pebble was John Henry Newman, and the Oxford movement. The Tractarian gospel was a protest against the formalism of the Established Church. It wished to convince churchmen that they did not belong to a mere national institution, but to a living branch of that great Catholic Church which Christ had founded eight- een centuries ago. They wished to make the dry bones live, to turn formal devotions into joyous acts of faith and piety. Coleridge had partly paved the way for this movement in calling attention to the writings of the earlier Anglican divines and in his transcendental philosophy. Both Newman and Coleridge were as far as possi- ble from the materialists in most points; they only agreed in opposition to the old dogmatism, and belief in a divine element in man. They differed on the source of this divinity-Coleridge and Newman deriving it from God, the materialists from nature. Coleridge, being more of a philosopher, turned to Unitarianism; Newman, a devotionist, to Roman Catholicism. The apparent result of Tractarianism was the rise of Ritualism, and a great revival in the charities which had become a neglected fringe upon the garment of the church. The practical outcome of Positivism and Ritualism was the same-a greater devotion to the needs of humanity.
Another pebble in the pool of English thought was the iconoclast, Thomas Carlyle. He was not the founder of any philosophy, but as a fearless disciple of truth he demolished many idols of dogmatism. He might be called the grand Eng- lish skeptic. If, like a reckless pioneer, he sometimes blazed the wrong tree, yet he most effectively cleared out the underbrush, and gave those who came after him a chance to see his mistakes and avoid them. He carried with him a healthful mental breeze that has cleared the fogs from the brain of many a young student.
To this period, skeptical in religion, scientific in method, philosophical in thought, fond of prose, drama and the novel in literature, belongs George Eliot. We now wish to show that in antecedents, education, temperament, and in her writings, she repre- sents the mass of her contemporaries-is a type of her era.
Her birthplace was in the Midlands, where the good, old-fashioned agricultural and Tory element was just beginning to feel the encroachments of the manufacturing towns, but had not yet lost the rural characteristics. Mr. Gross says of her: "Her roots were down in the pre-railroad, pre-telegraphic period -- the fine old days of leisure -- but the fruit was found during an era of extraordinary activity in scientific and mechanical discovery."
Her father was a Tory of the best type-conscientious in his business, thorough in his work, and naturally conservative. She has represented him in Adam Bede and Caleb Garth. And what she says of Caleb Garth was no doubt true of her father: " Though he had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace, if the subject were proposed to him, I think his vir- tual divinities were good practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful comple- tion of undertakings; his prince of darkness was a slack workman." Her mother was a shrewd, practical woman of much natural force, and with a dash of Mrs. Poyser's wit.
This love of old and aversion to change, link her with her countrymen. The average Englishman of the middle of the century had his origin in such communities as those described in Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Felix Holt and Mill on the Floss. To fully understand the average man of the century, we must know not only the French influences that worked upon him, but the good English soil from which he sprung; not only the liberal thought of his later life, but the narrow conventionalism of his childhood.
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Her middle-class birth also makes her a representative of a numerous class of Englishmen. The well-to-do farmer, the intelligent artisan and tradesman, form the bulk of her characters. The very aristocratic or the very poor, enter upon her pages but as supernumeraries. In this she is in perfect sympathy with her age. The great struggles of the century have been to emancipate the middle class and place them, socially, mentally, and politically, on a level with the highest. They have become in reality the ruling power in England.
In looking at her life, we see, then, a child of middle-class parents, born and bred in Middle England among a rural old-fashioned people, and surrounded by conservative influences. Upon this foundation of conservatism is engrafted a capability of intense feeling. She says of herself: "I can never live long without enthusiasm in some form or another." This capability for feeling is the main element of a religious character, if, as Adam Bede says, " Religion's something else besides notions and doctrines. It isn't notions set people doing the right thing, it's feelings." With this emotion, there was in her mind, as in Dorothea's, "a current into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow-the reaching forward of the whole consciousness toward the fullest truth, the least partial good." "She yearned toward the perfect right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. The keystone of the intel- lectual faculties is the reason, and George Eliot had a thoroughly logical mind. In one of her letters she speaks of a book that is full of " wit" to her. " It gives me that exquisite kind of laughter that comes from the gratification of the reasoning facul- ties." This book --- Mr. Hennel's Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity-was the awakener of her skepticism. It expressed the reaction of reason against the arbi- trary or miraculous system of explaining the facts in the New Testament. He attempted to show that, leaving out of account miraculous agencies, Christ's life could be explained in a logical way. His proof in detail is not conclusive to us, but its significance lay in the fact that men were beginning to dare to apply reason to the fundamental facts of Christianity. George Eliot expressed this daring when she said: " To fear the exam- ination of any proposition appears to me an intellectual and moral palsy, that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever. For my part, I wish to be among the ranks of that glorious crusade that is seeking to set Truth's Holy Sepulchre free from a usurped domination." Carlyle was the leader in this crusade that fear- lessly said: "Two and two make four, in religion and society, as well as mathematics." Her logical faculty is as strong an element in her as her emotions, and her life from this on is a struggle between religious feelings and intellectual skepticism. Of other writers in this era, Tennyson mirrors the same struggle in "In Memoriam," and Mat- thew Arnold in his futile attempts to be an agnostic. It was truly the, " Strum und Drang" period, and these men and women of the time were tossed about between the buffets of dogmatism and skepticism till their poor weather-beaten boats were almost unseaworthy.
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