Already the world has made material progress toward the consummation of this great ideal, though the skeptics are many in spite of a profusion of facts. World-peace may be much nearer than the hopeless and the doubters suppose. Humanity is even now becoming organized into one whole. The proposition for a world-legislative body, with regular sessions for such business as may come before it (though the point of reference to the home governments for ratification of its acts is conceded), has already been heard by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs of our national Congress, and the representatives of the American Peace Society who presented the case were accorded such a favorable reception that they believe that their movement will find approval. The idea of world-unity is stronger to-day than it ever was before. Expectation of the realization of the inspiring ideal is spreading among those who watch the signs of the times. Familiarity with the facts only strengthens this confidence. The example of the United States is in itself such a proof that it will do much to convince the political leaders of our country, and to persuade the statesmen of Europe, Asia, South America, and other lands that the truth is applicable to all mankind, and that in the realization of this ideal will come permanent peace and prosperity, with practical enjoyment of the brotherhood of man.

Absolute sovereignty having been waived by the agreement of the nations to enter into a regular international congress, there would follow participation in regulations tending to establish similar conditions around the world among all nations represented in the Congress. In the United States over thirty states and territories have joined the effort for larger unity in state procedure by the appointment of Commissioners on the Uniformity of Legislation. Effort in a similar direction would be one of the earliest necessities felt by a world-legislature. Indeed,

fields, abundance of material for worldlegislation for several sessions.

One of the conditions which promotes peace between the states of the United States is that, wherever any citizen may be, he is free to enjoy whatever form of religion he prefers. He may be a Christian, Mohammedan, or pagan, as he pleases, only he must preserve the peace and live a decent life. World-peace will be unspeakably promoted if there prevails such a system of world-law that when a man goes into any part of the world, he will be free to worship God after any form he prefers. Other liberties, now not known in all countries, may be expected in the growing toleration and homogeneity of the world.

But world-law which secures personal rights and liberty having been established, there will arise a far greater freedom of movement among the peoples of the world. Mutual concessions will be made for the sake of securing to each the advantages given to the citizens of the most favored nation. Thus trade and profit would become increasingly possible. National belief that it was necessary to expand by conquest in order to find security for religion, for trade, or for property rights, would dissipate in the presence of universal toleration and universal opportunity. Japan could expand into Korea without feeling that she must dominate it politically. Russia would find her ice-free seaport without becoming a menace to Japan. England could trade in India without holding hundreds of millions of people her political subjects. The United States could sell cotton cloth and machinery in China without incidentally holding against their will a nation of 7,600,000 Filipinos. The Boers could govern themselves, meeting the outlander issue under local conditions, without being forced into the British Empire. So much, and much more like it, would be accomplished under a system of world-law.

But the world-court would carry the

probability of peace to a certainty. As our national courts have jurisdiction over issues involving parties other than the residents of one state, so the world-court would be a tribunal before which national differences could be tried and settled by the highest judicial ability the human race could produce. Nations would be in their organic relation to one another as parts of the common whole. Occasion for differences would be reduced to such minor matters that not only would the honor of each contestant be satisfied by the court procedure, but the material interests of each would be promoted far more than by any possible resort to force. For it must be remembered, in connection with the truth that only minor matters, compared with present issues, would come before that court, that, in the relations of the nations, there could arise no question of the destruction of one nation by another. World-law would remove, by its free opportunities for race expansion into territories of other races on the part of all who desired to trade or travel or live elsewhere, all pretext for resort to force. More than that, as has actually occurred under the Concert of Powers in Europe, there would be such jealousy to maintain the status quo territorially that the public opinion of the entire world would be against any one Power which should undertake to destroy the existence of any other, however small. And the Concert itself illustrates the growing and tremendous strength of world-opinion, especially when backed by the moral law.

Other questions than existence or integrity of territory would be settled by the world-court, and the public opinion of the world would be powerful to influence the losing side to accept the verdict without resort to force. In any event, acceptance would not involve dishonor in the eyes of others, because it would be a verdict by the world-court, and acceptance would certainly entail less loss of prestige or property, to say nothing of life, than a resort to arms.

The details of the development of the

world-executive are not essential to the taking of the first steps for world-organization for the sake of world-peace. Present arrangements, such as exist in the case of the special world-congresses which have acted upon particular subjects, suffice for present needs. The main elements needed first are the legislative and the judicial departments, and these are already so near realization that recognition of the situation by the nations will promote the disposition of the people everywhere to hasten what is so surely approaching.

With world-organization secure there would disappear some of the present problems which destroy the financial health of Europe and put a burden upon the United States. With the danger removed that national existence might be destroyed, with the preservation of territorial integrity assured, with substantial justice (even with the risk of occasional errors) promised by a world-court, the problem of disarmament would be solved. This, of itself, would be of incalculable worth. The revival of industry, the decline of militarism, the decay of national jealousies, the promotion of international intercourse, the exchange of national products on better terms, and other widespread consequences, would follow the recognition by the nations of the Nature of Things.

The Universal Peace Congress can help much to hasten the solution of the problem of how to end war. Every forward step which it can take to promote knowledge of this American movement in the home nations of the members respectively will be so much direct help toward the unity of the world as one political body. To this consummation there is no doubt so believe those who are active in this movement - that the world will ultimately come. They are not prophesying whether that consummation is near or remote. That it is coming and that it will be of incalculable benefit when it does come are sufficient premises upon which to build the most diligent work

possible for its speedy coming. While there must be a ripening of events for this end, and while time must elapse for the operation of forces beyond our control, yet it is no less true that much depends upon direct human agency. The law of opportunity improved holds as fully in this field as in others, as in the establishment of The Hague arbitration court, for instance. The curse of opportunity neglected hangs over those who counsel neglect as truly as over any others who fail to rise to the full height of their opportunity and responsibility. Subjects are waiting in abundance for the action of the regular congress of nations, or the world-legislature. Obstacles are no more insurmountable than they were for The Hague court. Indeed, the success of that effort guarantees and prophesies success in this. The cause itself is momentous enough, magnificent enough, and inspiring enough to call out patient, untiring, and self-sacrificing effort.

Fitting it is that Boston should be the place of the gathering of the Congress which promises to be the largest and most influential in the history of the peace movement, for Boston has been in the fore-front of the agitation for world

peace from the beginning. It was at a meeting of the American Peace Society, at its Boston home, on July 26, 1841, that the proposition was first made, by Joseph Sturge, an Englishman, which resulted in the entire series of international peace congresses. Charles Sumner's famous oration, "The True Grandeur of Nations," a convincing plea for peace which still has living force, was the public Fourth of July oration in Boston in 1845. In Park Street Church, in 1849, Sumner delivered his powerful indictment against war, "The War System of Nations." Almost all the anti-slavery leaders were pronounced peace men, especially Channing, Garrison, and Sumner, and the Massachusetts Peace Society was organized in Channing's study on December 26, 1815. Boston, for many years, has been the home of the American Peace Society. Among the first twentytwo members of the Massachusetts Society were the governor of the state and the president of Harvard College. Boston has always been so conspicuous in the peace crusade that her friends look to her now to see a new and great advance made in consequence of the meeting within her gates.

66

In the dear, naughty Memoirs of Madame de Brillaye, not inaptly named by the author the Journal of a Wicked Old Woman, you remember that scene in the pleasaunce at Château Vernot, where the turf was like fairy velvet and the trees were tortured into all manner of shapes unarboreal, she liked to have her trees dressed, she said, "There is something indecent in great naked branches sprawling the good God knows where." The little old lady is sitting with her great, old-ivory cane across her knees; she rolls it back and forth with her little old-ivory hands, while she scolds Aimée, as always. Aimée has just come through that brisk little encounter of hers with de Brontignac, and seems to have allowed her raiment to look a little battle-worn. "Go dress yourself, baby," cries Madame Great - Aunt. Will you let your very laces whimper? Into your rose velvet brocade, and your chin will be jerked up as if by a string. Gowns have healed more hearts than they've ever broken: the second, men's; the first, women's. Now you think you have a soul; when you are my age, you will know that women are not souls, but dresses. I look back; my history is the history of my gowns; undressed, I do not exist; my clothes are myself.” (A few lines above I used the word "remember," but merely for the sake of an effective start-off. Madame and her Memoirs do not exist outside of this paragraph. I am not the first to perpetrate a spurious quotation; I am merely the first to confess it. To proceed.) It is not the first time that the little old de Brillaye has set me thinking. Is she true in this passage, or merely epigrammatic? If my history is the history of my clothes, let me so study it out, formulate, as it were, the meditations of the pupa upon its successive integumenta. Yet the

figure is infelicitous. In fact, the chrysalis image is not over pretty as regards this side of eternity: pupa suggests the pulpy tenantry of the chestnut; this worminess may be liturgical, but it is unpleasant, is opposed to that sociability with one's self which makes life entertaining; there is nothing chat-worthy in a worm. Be it granted me to regard these accidental rags of lawn or wool or silk I find adherent, these hardly less transitory hands and feet, this hardly more durable incasing occipital, not as a worm incarcerate, but with the detachment and uplift of the incipient butterfly.

Why not my philosophy of my clothes, -the pronoun italicized, meaning not Teufelsdrockh's, but my own, both the clothes and the philosophy? Let me here and now make some effort toward system and definition, toward order out of chaos, in that long chapter in a woman's story, my lady's wardrobe. How far have these successive wrappings around and prankings out of diverse colors and tissues that are to my fellow passengers labels of my lone pilgrim soul, stating of what age, sex, nation, education, and caste I may be, how far have these clothes of mine served for triumph or undoing in my spiritual history, the life-history of this "celestial amphibian," myself?

The clothes of babyhood first. It is a strong-minded adult who does not grow sentimental in regarding the garments of his infancy, those caps and bibs and socks reminding us of the wabbling heads, the aching gums, the simian feet, of the days when we, for all our present arrogance of maturity, were the sport of colic and nutritive experiment.

How explain the repugnance of the newly-born to clothing, the birth-wail that pleads for the sincerity of the nude, protests against the cloakings of con

vention? Strange paradox that the first emotion of the baby soul should be bitterness against all those contrivances of decency, those hemstitched linens and embroidered flannels, through which the mother heart eased its brooding love. The little pink, squirming creature, fresh out of eternity, cannot be too quickly incased in the wrappings of finite human care. That is why we are so long in seeing ourselves as we really are; all the clothes and the conventions were ready for us; before we had a glimpse at ourselves we were popped into them; it is a merciful long while before we are old enough to undress sufficiently to discover, away inside, the little shy soul-thing, the naked ego, with its eerie eyes.

Thus it is that when I first find myself in those early, misty recesses I see myself all dressed, dressed for company inspection; I am a little girl wearing a crispness of brown curl and a crispness of white muslin; I wear white stockings and Burt's shoes. I recognize, also, quite in the same way, as enveloping facts, without which I may not present myself unclothed to my fellows, that I have a peppery, passionate temper, and an imagination, — that is what seeing people in void air and talking to them is called. Thus clad and ticketed, I go pattering along the pilgrimage.

How little clothes mattered then! All spun about with fairy films and the witchery of talking trees and singing winds, I did not remember my clothes. But at times clothes broke in abruptly on my unconsciousness. I well remember a certain mitten. It was a brown mitten on

my left hand. My mother and I were walking down a flight of stone steps. I slipped; my mother caught my hand, retained, not it, but the mitten, and I bumped unimpeded to the bottom. My baby resentment against that mitten endured long. It was a surprise, a disappointment, this treachery of the accepted; so my clothes were not to be trusted; it was well to keep half an eye on them. The mitten episode marks a step in my

spiritual adjustment; my clothes might at any moment go back on me. It is a lesson I have not yet found it safe to unlearn.

In those days there was a pleasant interest attached to the Burt's shoes, - not when new and shiny, but later, when they had become well worn. Some unexpected morning I would espy a peering bit of white stocking looking out from the blackness of the leather toe. The hole being not yet so large or so alarming as the cobbler's charges, a piece of black silk was adjusted over the stocking, the foot deftly slipped into the shoe, a dash of blacking applied to the whole, and behold, only mother and I knew the differ

ence.

Penury as such was not yet known to me. The consciousness of shabbiness had not yet frayed the elbows of my soul. The device was merely interesting, beguiling the tedium of the sanctuary, and affording meditation on the ingenuity of mothers.

Here succeeded several years of tranquillity in my relations to my garments, until, at the age of six, I found myself infelix! removed to a town possessing a bleak climate and many woolen manufactories. It was the custom of the house mothers to buy flannel by the piece direct from the factory, red flannel, hot, thick, felled like a Laplander, and the invention of Lucifer. Out of this flannel was cut a garment, a continuous, allembracing garment, of neuter gender, in which every child in that town might have been observed flaming Mephistophelian-like after the morning bath. A pattern was given to our mother. The hair shirt I laugh when I read! By definition the hair shirt must have possessed geographical limits of attack, but my flannels left no pore untickled, untortured; they heated the flesh until scarlet fever paled into a mere pleasantry; and they soured the milk of amiability within me forever. The rotation of the seasons reduced itself to terms of red flannel. In the autumn, when the happy