I am glad that Lord Halifax, at the Penn tercentenary
celebration at Philadelphia on Tuesday, went out of his way to refer to Penn's essay on the peace of Europe. It was a singularly interesting coincidence that -the 3ooth anniversary of Penn's birth should fall in the week which saw the publication of the official proposals scheme for a new League of Nations. For the plan of the practical and sagacious Quaker for a European League of Nations—almost every- thing beyond Europe was merely outlying territory in those days_ mighthave come straight from Dumbarton Oaks. His aim was the promotion of peace by justice. "He suggested," wrote his best- known biographer, Clarkson, "the idea of a great Diet on the Continent for this purpose ; that is, that the Princes of Europe would, for the first reason which first occasioned them to enter into society, namely, love of Peace and Order, estalKish one sovereign Assembly, before which all differences between them should be brought which could not be terminated by embassies, and the judgement of which should be so binding that if any one Govern- ment offering its case for decision did not abide by it, the rest should compel it." Penn in 1693 was hopelessly in advance of his times ; that is why a plan singularly like his, for "all peace-loving nations," has still.to be worked out afresh in 1944.
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