An Interpretation of the American Peace Movement, 1898-1914

The American peace movement in the two decades before the First World War grew rapidly in terms of the proliferation of peace societies, active membership and financial backing.From a tiny nucleus consisting of the American Peace Society and Universal Peace Union, both of which began long before 1898, peace work became a popular avocation in the first years of the twentieth century.Annual meetings on international arbitration at Albert Smiley's hotel resort on Lake Mohonk, New York, begun in 1895, were consistently attended by almost all the leading friends of international peace after about 1900; and beginning in 1907 many peace leaders organized biennial peace conferences in various American cities.In the decade before the outbreak of the European war advocates of peace also created many new peace and internationalist societies, most notably the American Society of International Law, the New York Peace Society, the Now, my friends, in conclusion, the Peace Movement is no longer a little cult of cranks.Peace has at last become a practical political issue-soon the political issue before all the nations ....It seems destined that America should lead in this movement.The U.S. is the world in miniature.The U.S. is a demonstration that all the peoples of the world can live in peace under one form of government and its chief value to civilization is the disclosure of what this form of government is . . .and when that golden period is at hand-and it cannot be very far distant-we shall have in very truth Tennyson's dream of "The Parliament of Man, The Federation of the World, and for the first time since the Prince of Peace died on Calvary, we shall have Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men." Hamilton Holt, The Federation of the World, unpublished manuscript, [1907-1914] Hamilton Holt Papers, Mills Memorial Library, Rollins College It is the prophets and leaders who make the changes of the world.The talk of vox populi is often more of a delusion than a reality.Let us make enough of preachers, teachers, editors, and particularly statesmen to see the reasonableness and inevitableness of the new order, and it can be at once established and the great changes made.