“First and best service possible for Monarch, bringing home body Peabody."[56]

[Footnote 55:  “Let men say what they will, I say that as surely as the sun in the heavens once shone upon Britain and America united, so surely it is one morning to rise, shine upon, and greet again the Reunited States—­the British-American Union.” (Quoted in Alderson’s Andrew Carnegie, The Man and His Work, p. 108.  New York, 1909.)]

[Footnote 56:  George Peabody, the American merchant and philanthropist, who died in London in 1869.]

No signature was given.  Strange to say, this was done, and thus the Monarch became the messenger of peace, not of destruction.  Many years afterwards I met Mr. Bright at a small dinner party in Birmingham and told him I was his young anonymous correspondent.  He was surprised that no signature was attached and said his heart was in the act.  I am sure it was.  He is entitled to all credit.

He was the friend of the Republic when she needed friends during the Civil War.  He had always been my favorite living hero in public life as he had been my father’s.  Denounced as a wild radical at first, 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.