Today's date, the eighteenth of May, should sometime become an occasion of great international celebration, for on this day ten years ago the first Peace Conference opened at The Hague.

Naturally, business and pleasure can be readily combined, but a certain balance should exist, and the latter should not predominate over the former.

Waging war we understand, but not waging peace, or at any rate less consciously so.

I would have thought it possible to choose delegates for these larger conferences who, even if they could not speak the principal languages, could at least understand them or could have friends seated beside them who could keep them informed on essential points.

Warfare has been marvelously developed. It will soon be impossible to raise it to further heights.

But I feel convinced, and I venture even to prophesy in this regard, that the time will come when there will also be a minister of peace in the cabinet, seated beside the ministers of war.

By a great man, however, we mean a man who, because of his spiritual gifts, his character, and other qualities, deserves to be called great and who as a result earns the power to influence others.