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Show NOT YET THE REIGN OF PEACE. -An official organ of Germany says that Germany is unwilling to discuss disarmament and kindred subjects sub-jects at the coming Hague conference. It is said that other powers take the same view. So it seems that it is too early for a peace congress. More men are to be kept in barracks, more fighting ships are to be built half the world is to be kept at the highest state of efficiency to fight the other half. And still it is almost 2000 years since the Messiah came preaching peace. It is clear that wars and preparation prepara-tion for wars are to be kept up, lest a neighbor take advantage pf a neighbor to steal land and to loot cities. By and by the people will grow tired of this. They will get together and decide the trouble all comes from the thrones of the earth, and they will'be-gin will'be-gin to topple over the thrones, because it is hard to convince any reasoning being that the nations would not retain their relative strength were all to agree to disband half their armies and cease to build more and more fighting ships. But the prospect for such an agreement is further fur-ther off than it seemed to be five years ago. Russia in that time has lost her navy and the effectiveness ef-fectiveness of her army has practically been destroyed. de-stroyed. Of course, she is not ready. Then a great naval and military power has sprung up in Japan, sprung up as suddenly as was the fabled appearance of Minerva, springing fully armed from the brain of Jove, and in truth when Germany or France or the United States lays the keel of a new warship now she is thinking of Japan. So the old rule must prevail for a season yet. And maybe it is just as well because there are no guarantees against suffering and death. Five millions mil-lions of people are starving in Russia because they neglected to raise a crop last year. As many more are starving in China,because the'erops were destroyed last year and the people in those famine-stricken provinces are sq isolated that the arm of charity cannot can-not reach them. Steam and electricity are at work. After a while they will leave no outside regions inaccessible and then we may hope that the nations will be brought so near together that all boundary disputes will be settled set-tled and that then all alike will be willing to have drafted a code of peace and agree to obey it. . At present brotherly love does not rule nations ; indeed it does not yet rule States or communities. The lion and the lamb no more think of lying down together where societies are most Christianized than they do in the jungle. The reign of peace has not yet been ushered, in. |