Rock Island Argus

The New "Peace" League.

An appropriate motto, the New York Post says, for the peace league whose honorary presidency Mr. Roosevelt has accepted would be "ense petit placidam quietum," which, freely translated, runs: "We are going to have peace if we have to fight for it." The approaching congress of the league is to be held in October at Greensboro, N. C., and will be the first at which the growing burden of armament and international arbitration stand side by side. This would seem to realize Patrick Henry's vision where gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. To advocate arbitration on the one hand and on the other a continuance and enlargement of the growing burden which armaments entails, is to attempt an impossible task. If the peace league's program is self-destructive, the project of another organization called the league of peace must be regarded as somewhat visionary. The latter organization will launch the federation of the world at once. It proposes The Hague tribunal as the international analog of our supreme court; the interparliamentary union, as the world's legislature; and intends to create the electoral college of 100,000 of the world's intellectual leaders who will ballot by postal card for the world's peacemaker, the executive capstone of the world's united states of peace. The favorites for the last position are said to be Mr. Roosevelt, Emperor William, King Edward, and Mr. Carnegie. The death of the mahdi has left the field open to the first two eminent peacemakers. We fear this augmentation of quixotic peace societies. The kind that will be of real value will demand peace without compromise in season and out of season, and denounce those half-hearted advocates who are war's best friends.