The morning Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Oregon) 1899-1930, 1904-03-05
ASTORIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.
THE HAGUE PEACE TRIBUNAL.

THE HAGUE PEACE TRIBUNAL
The Hague peace tribunal may sit in readiness
to compose international quarrels and the millions
of Carnegie may rear state temple Tor it, but the
world is still for war, says the Examiner.
1t is well that The Hague Tribunal should exist
continues our San Francisco contemporary, for il
represents an ideal which the conscience of mankind
tell it is right Yet no fact is obvious than that
the nations prefer to live at woefu depth below the
moral plane to which they must climb they will
be willing to carry their disputes into court in
stead of to battle field for settlement.
To make The Hague Tribunal useful actuality
rather than an aspiration for the future it needed
that the nations be civiized-that is to say honest
just, peace-loving, Christan-ev everything they are
not.
The individual man has given up carrying weapons
asserting his claims at the point of the sword, and
taking vengeance with his own hands. In the nation
al aggregation men retain the sword and the char
acterstie of the rufian To despoil weak neighbor
to cringe to powerful one to lie for advantage and
not be ashamed to profess high motives for base
deeds-all these things the nations do and habitu-
ally.
Regard Europe. There are more men under arms
there today than before in history. Each coun-
try has its standing army and its navy for protec-
tion against the Others The only motive that can
induce them to act in concert seemingly is the de-
termination to prevent any one of them from be-
coming strong enough to endanger the balance of
power strong enough to be menace to the armed
peace of brigands pledged to refrain from aggression
but ever under muta suspicion and perfdous inten-
tions.
That is the christian world for which The
Hague Tribunal has been set up, and set up at the
suggestion of the car Of Russia whose country is at
the fore front as a robber power. The praises of
peace coming from such quarter have all the reality
of poem in audation of the virtues Of poverty COM
posed by pre-revolutionary French noble, living in
luxury in Versailles on the wealth wrung from the
hungry and ragged peasants on his distant estates
all the genuineness and effectiveness of an appeal
by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to poor young men to
be Indifferent to the accumulation of this world 5
goods whie striving for spiritual wealth
No doubt the czar has sentimental preference
for millenniaI era Of peace with the lion and the
lamb lying down together at The Hague; but mean
time Manchuria is to be absorbed Japan to be fought
and Russia s full share of dismembered China as
sured, if fighting can do it. Nero, who was not
Greek, or any other kind of a Christian, but slew
all sorts impartally, had fine sensibility He was
easily moved to tears at the theater.
When the world tolls up to Christianity, real
Christianity, the nations will knock with unmaled
hands upon the door of the peace temple at The
Hague, asking for justice, and only justice but not
before
Nationally, mankind, despite all its advances,
moral, intellectual and material is yet barbarous
in its controlling desires and in its practice The
most popular form Of the cross is still the sword hit