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Show H B OUR COUNTRY AND THE EFFORT FOR PEACE. , 9. It was, of course, expected that the president IB i;ii9l would receive and welcome the treaty commis- Wm 1 1 9 sioners; it was proper that some war ships should B Jf Wm , bear and escort them to the place of meeting. But B ? gi I it was beautiful that the men of New Hampshire Hi 1 wi should receive them with open arms. They repre- sented the whole republic; their acts were an earnest effort of the great republic's desire for peace among the nations. More, it gave those plenipotentiaries an idea of the republic's yo-manry; yo-manry; of the character of men who, in a little more than a hundred years, have reduced a wilderness wilder-ness well-nigh as great in area as all Europe outside out-side of Russia, to a land of homes, where the temple tem-ple of war is almost always closed; where peace rules and justice has a throne. It is a pity that both delegations could not, before beginning negotiations, ne-gotiations, have made a tour of our country, to m? what it really means when a mighty people are given the duty to govern themselves ;to see what absolute freedom of thought accomplishes for a nation; how much more the full majesty of a great people counts than all the majesty of kings. We are glad that the consideration of a treaty was to be on our soil. The general impression which our country and its institutions will make upon the Russians will be worth much, while we suspect that the Japanese plenipotentiaries will load themselves down with the details of what they will see, for each one came with an idea that if they discovered anything in the United States superior to what they have at home, they would hold it for use on their return. Their coming will give new prestige to our country in far-away lands, for it will be explained to the humble men of the outside world that the American people so much love peace that they petitioned their president to use his good offices as president to try to stop the sorrows of the great war; that he responded, and for the first time in history those far-off powers selected our shores as a place for negotiations. And following up their inquiries they will learn that in the United States are nearly 100,000,000 people; that they fill the space between the seas, and that all are free, free to write, free to .eak, free to vote, free to grasp any honest opportunity that the great country presents, will have its effect upon the Russians, and especially upon the master spirit that leads Russia's delegation. He has within himself a dual nature. He believes in an absolute government, at the same time he believes be-lieves in justice. He made the Czar's brother make amends for snubbing him, but when he was chief of railways in Russia and was suddenly wanted by the Czar, he was found some miles up the road from St. Petersburg, where an accident had happened, in a locomotive cab, talking on equal terms with the engineer and sharing his lunch of brown bread, vodka and salt herding. It is worth getting a soul like his enlightened. |