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been denounced by the press as an impossible man. We find that in the French Republic an international association to secure peace is considered one of the most vital things for which the French people are fighting. To France the organization of a world association which shall assure permanent peace, is a matter of life and death. As you read the proceedings of the French Chamber of Deputies you find that nothing touches them to the quick so much as the suggestion that this war may end without the permanent association for a league to secure peace. And the English, too, are demanding it. The English Labor Party insists that when peace is made there shall forthwith be established a supernational authority or league of nations. The Socialists of Russia demand an international league. The Socialists of Germany demand an international league. The socialists of the world have always demanded it. And they look to us to initiate it. If we do not, who will? There is too much bitterness, too much hatred, there has been too much suffering on the other side of the Atlantic. We should do it, and we should do it now.

If gentlemen ask me what guaranty we have that such an organization as I propose would have support among other nations, this is my answer. It will receive the support of the masses in every war-ridden country. Governments may oppose, but the people will approve, and the people will win. And the people have begun to speak boldly everywhere. The French are speaking through their Deputies. British labor is speaking frankly and openly. The Russians have already spoken and autocracy fled. Our President has spoken again and again, and we should speak. We should adopt this

resolution. We should convoke an international congress to consist for the present, of representatives of the parliaments of the allied countries-those associated in the war. With the President of the United States as the presiding officer, the conference would undertake the task of eliminating selfish national designs, and of presenting the basic principles, the acceptance of which would entitle a nation to membership in a league of democratic nations. If the central powers have the courage to refuse to join, let them do so, and they will have the whole world fighting until the government of Germany is destroyed. But they cannot refuse. Oh, if we but knew how much they suffer. If we but knew how the food has been taken from the civil population and given to the soldiers; if we but knew that the children under five years of age have almost disappeared in Germany, and that older children are brought daily to the hospitals with stomachs swollen from starvation; if we but knew that the Imperial Government has been compelled to change chancellor after chancellor at the demand of the social democrats; if we but knew they are compelled to permit peace meetings, and that all the cities of Germany are having their peace demonstrations, we would know that the enemy has reached the limit of his power, is about to yield, and will be compelled to yield.

Mr. President, I am almost through. I must not detain you longer. All I want is to urge the necessity of the immediate organization of a league to take up the discussion of the basic principles upon which a permanent peace can be established for the world and by the world. I am an opponent of anarchy. I hate disorder.

I detest with every fiber of my being the abuse of physical force and the taking advantage of the weak by the strong. I detest it in industry when it takes little children and exploits their helplessness for profit. I detest oppression. I stand for order and for peaceful methods. I love America, not because it is the best that can be given to mankind, but because of the opportunity it affords to fight for better things, and so long as that opportunity exists we will have better things.

Democracy does not guarantee to be wise; democracy does not guarantee to be always just; but it is always wiser and always more just than the little groups who speak in the name of the peoples. I stand for order in the relation of each man to his nation, and of each citizen to the government to which he owes loyalty, and of each nation to the rest of the world. That is why I advocate the necessity of international order instead of international chaos, international development instead of international destruction, and international democracy instead of international anarchy. Gentlemen, I thank you.

IRELAND'S HOLY DEAD

BY

SEUMAS MacMANUS

(Author of "The Story of the Irish Race" and many volumes of Irish life and Irish Folklore. The following is from an Editorial in The Independent.)

God rest our holy dead! For them, Irishmen, dispersed the world round, mourn and rejoice.

Mourn for a moment, rejoice forever.

Our Masters' lead, seeking to give them miserable death, has given them glorious life. They shall live as long as Ireland lives; as long as Freedom lives.

Through the endless ages of Ireland's bloody travail, England has unceasingly taken toll of our noblest. Always our noblest.

But never at one sweep did she gather to herself a nobler three.

Tom Clarke, the undaunted, whose frame had grown frail in English prisons, but the fire of whose eye dungeons could not dim and the fiber of whose soul shackles could not soften.

Thomas MacDonough, the eager, the ardent, the boy, bubbling with enthusiasm the playful teacher, the merry piper, the joyous Gael.

Search America, which fosters a multitude of noble

men and you might find many as noble, but few more noble than these.

And in your great America you would find a few as noble as, but no single soul more noble than the third who fell to the English executioner's bullet-he the gentle and the earnest, Padraic Pearse! he with the heart of a child at its most child-like, and the spirit of a man at its most man-like! he, with the vision of a poet, the brain of a thinker, the hand of a doer, the soul of a patriot!

With such a man as Padraic Pearse it is rarely God blesses a nation. For him, the rare educationalist, the sublime idealist, the wonderful achiever, not Ireland alone, but the world, may well mourn. For the lofty ideals to which he had been giving concrete form in the land of his soul's love would have uplifted mankind.

In other lands the vanquished soldier, reverenced and respected, but forfeits his liberty for a little while. Through seven hundred years of unceasing war in Ireland, the Irish soldier who has fought the unequal brave fight for his country's freeing, has ever been branded "criminal," and for his crime paid forfeit with his life, or his lifetime's liberty; till the English prison cell has, to us, become holy as a saint's cloister and the gibbet, hallowed by the last steps of our bravest, an emblem only less sacred than the cross.

No Irishman should idly sorrow. No Irishman should raise complaint. They whose bodies were shot through by the Tyrant's bullets would rather die a thousand deaths than live by the unctuous grace of their country's

conqueror.

And sorrow is not now for Ireland-but work. The

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