It has helped to make history.
The great success of this conference, which meets in October of each year, led my Quaker friend, Smiley, eight years ago, to inaugurate an "Arbitration conference" for the promotion of international peace.

It was a happy thought and has yielded a rich fruitage.

About the first of every June this conference brings together such men and women of "light and leading" from all parts of our country as ex-Senator George F.
Edmunds of Vermont, the Rev.Edward Everett Hale of Boston, the Hon.
William J.Coombs, the Hon.

Robert Treat Paine, Dr.B.F.Trueblood, John B.Garrett and Joshua L.Bailey, Colonel George E.Waring, Hon.

John W.
Foster, Chief Justice Nott, Warner Van Norden, and a great number of well known clergymen and editors have read able papers or delivered instructive addresses on that ever burning problem of how to turn swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.
I especially sympathize with the spirit of this Arbitration conference, not only because I abominate war _per se_, but because I firmly believe that among the grievous perils that confront our nation is the mania for enormous and costly military and naval armament--and also the policy of extending our territory by foreign conquests.