he
kept steadily on until the nation came to his point of view. Always
for peace he would have avoided the Crimean War, in which Britain
backed the wrong horse, as Lord Salisbury afterwards acknowledged. It
was a great privilege that the Bright family accorded me, as a friend,
to place a replica of the Manchester Bright statue in Parliament, in
the stead of a poor one removed.

I became interested in the Peace Society of Great Britain upon one of
my early visits and attended many of its meetings, and in later days I
was especially drawn to the Parliamentary Union established by Mr.
Cremer, the famous working-man's representative in Parliament. Few men
living can be compared to Mr. Cremer. When he received the Nobel Prize
of L8000 as the one who had done the most that year for peace, he
promptly gave all but L1000, needed for pressing wants, to the
Arbitration Committee. It was a noble sacrifice. What is money but
dross to the true hero! Mr. Cremer is paid a few dollars a week by his
trade to enable him to exist in London as their member of Parliament,
and here was fortune thrown in his lap only to be devoted by him to
the cause of peace. This is the heroic in its finest form.

I had the great pleasure of presenting the Committee to President
Cleveland at Washington in 1887, who received the members cordially
and assured them of his hearty cooeperation. From that day the
abolition of war grew in importance with me until it finally
overshadowed all other issues. The surprising action of the first
Hague Conference gave me intense joy. Called primarily to consider
disarmament (which proved a dream), it created the commanding reality
of a permanent tribunal to settle international disputes. I saw in
this the greatest step toward peace that humanity had ever taken, and
taken as if by inspiration, without much previous discussion. No
wonder the sublime idea captivated the conference.

If Mr. Holls, whose death I so deeply deplored, were alive to-day and
a delegate to the forthcoming second Conference with his chief, Andrew
D. White, I feel that these two might possibly bring about the
creation of the needed International Court for the abolition of war.
He it was who started from The Hague at night for Germany, upon
request of his chief, and saw the German Minister of Foreign Affairs,
and the Emperor and finally prevailed upon them to approve of the High
Court, and not to withdraw their delegates as threatened--a service
f