The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1904-10-08
BELLIGERENTS
URGED TO QUIT.


for the institution of peace by the ma
tions of the world, was the keynote of
the first deliberative session of the
thirteenth International Peace con-
gress. Delegates from the great coun-
tries of the globe, all prominent in
their home lands, engaged in the pro-
ceedings, giving to the occasion the
dignity and Importance of a momen-
tOus international assembly.
A feature of the opening session was
the receipt of an elaborate report from
the International Peace bureau for
1904 in which the suggestion was made
that some collective move might be
made to induce the Russians and Jap
anese belligerents to return to peace.
Edwin D. Mead, the chairman of the
| organization committee of congress,
delivered the opening address of the
meeting, speaking an earnest word in
favor of the reduction of great navies
and general disarmament among ma
lions.
General commentator of President
Roosevelt's call for another Hague
conferencne marked the meeting.
Report of Peace Bureau.
The report of the International Peace
bureau for 1904 is in part as follows:
'The outbreak since January last of
the war between Japan and Russia for
commercial, military and political
preponderance in the far East has fur
MI hoI III ~ 10
those who pretend that there will al
ways be to the very end of time some
part of the globe where men will kill
one another.
''We say a semblance of argument
because the Russo-Japanese war has
taken place in a region remote from
the center of influence of the peace
propaganda.
"The friends of peace have since the
outbreak of the Russo-J Japanese war
made numerous honest efforts to try to
induce both the Russians and japanese
governments to have recourse to
friendly solution of the conflict, and
Hague convention to try to secure the
settlement of the difficulty between the
belllgerents by arbitration or media
ton. They have done their duty and
will find no occasion to reproach them
selves when the response bilities for the
war have been finally determined by
public opinion.
'Since the opening of hostilities we
have several times renewed our efforts
to bring about conicliation and espe-
cially after the meetings of the call of
the bureau last week addressed to all
governments pressing invitation to
/ effect mediation.
Cup to the present moment the gov
ernments not involved in the conflict
have limited their efforts to the local
ization of the war and the strict main
tenance of collective neutrality.
"But the momnet is perhaps not far
off when they will be able in a col
lective way to induce the belligerents
to listen to the voice of reason, of JUS
tice and humanity by insisting upon
the fact that the present will be all the
more fruitless because neither of the
belligerent parties on account of the
pacific ideas now prevailing, can ex-
pect effective support toward the real
ization of it's ambitious purpose.
"Would the powers, if an offer of
mediation by them be rejected, find
themselves necessitated thereby to have
recourse to the use of military force to
impose peace? Such is not our opin-
ion. For, before having recourse to
such extreme measures the powers
would still have at their disposal other
means of coercion. The most effica-
cious of these might possibly be that of
vigorously closing their exchequer to
the further appeals of Russia and Jap
an for new loans