Friends Of Peace Rejoice For China.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 3, 1913:
Congress in St. Louis Cables Greetings on Recognition of the New Republic.
PANAMA QUESTION IS UP
John Wesley Hill Says If It Is Point of Honor It Should Go to Arbitration.
    ST. LOUIS, May 2.— The American Peace Congress congratulated China by cable to-day on its recognition as a republic by the United States. The message to the new Chinese Republic was framed by a committee and dispatched without formality.
    Among those who spoke to-day were Prof. William I. Hull of Swarthmore College, who discussed The Hague Tribunal, and Edwin Meade of Boston, who advocated cessation of armament by the powers.
    The principal address to-night was by John Wesley Hill of New York, President of the International Peace Forum. Discussing the outlook for peace Mr. Hill said:
    "As great as the achievements of arbitration have been, we have not quite reached the goal. True, we have agreed to submit to arbitration questions which diplomacy has hitherto considered arbitrable; but we must go a step further. We must continue the agitation until not only the United States and Great Britain, but the world powers are united in a compact to submit to an arbitration court every difference between them — even questions of honor and vital interest.
    "If the controversy over the Panama tolls is such a question it should be submitted to arbitration regardless of the consideration as to whether we should be winners or losers before the international court.
    "There may be greater questions arising involving points of the most vital interest, but the principle is the same. The nations of the earth must abandon the farcical idea that they are bound to fight over a point of honor."
    "Militarism is the burden of the nations," said Thomas Edward Green of Chicago. Of Japan he said:
    "Poor, bankrupt, broken, impoverished Japan! She is the logical end of the whole delusion. Fifty million industrious, economical, patriotic people, without National resource, figuring income and expense to the last penny; halving each pitiful coin in willingly borne taxation — 85 per cent. of Japan's income is derived from taxation — she has nothing else. It means that her people must give each year an average of 25 per cent, of all they have and earn to pay Japan's penalty for following her great ally in the race of mad militarism."
    Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead of Boston, Chairman of the Peace and Arbitration Committee of the National Council of Women, urged instead of enormous Congressional appropriations for army and navy, that the President in his message to Congress ask for "an expenditure of $10,000,000 in lessening the awful needless death rate that disgraces us among the nations, and $5,000,000 for a peace budget."
    In the course of his speech, Prof. Hull said:
    "For the sake of freedom from National opinions, prejudices, passions and interests, for the sake of international justice, there must be established a supreme tribunal which shall hold a master key for all the intricacies of international law.
    "This supreme court of the nations must owe allegiance not to any one power but to the same supreme international authority which has adopted the international conventions which the court is destined to expound and enforce. The Hague Tribunal can never be, of course, supreme of itself. Its right to existence, as well as its charter of liberties, arises from the international convention which has established it, while back of the international convention, lies the will of the nations.
    "The United States Supreme Court is the visible and audible conscience of the American people; the international tribunal must be the visible and audible conscience of the Family of Nations."