Peace Treaty Signed

August 3, 1911: From the Washington Times, News of the Impeding Arbitration Treaty between the US, England and France

PEACE TREATY WILL BE SIGNED THIS AFTERNOON

Knox and Bryce Will Affix Signatures At White House.

By J. FRED ESSARY
When Secretary Knox (Philander C. Knox), Ambassador Viscount James Bryce And Ambassador Jules Jusserand sign the arbitration treaties at 3 o'clock this afternoon, binding the United States, Great Britain, and France to submit all differences of whatever nature to arbitration, the most advanced step for international peace in the history of the world will be taken.

   This ceremony will take place in the President's library at the Executive Mansion (former name of the White House, not known as the White House until 1901 as named by Theodore Roosevelt) and at the President's palace in Paris simultaneously. The French ambassador is abroad. Ambassador Bryce returned to Washington from Maine for the excahnge of the signatures.
   As soon as the treaty can be received from Paris the President will send both the French and the English instruments to the Senate for ratification. They may be acted on during the extra session or they may have to go over until December.

Party at Ceremony.

   President Taft, Secretary of State Knox, Ambassador Bryce, Chandler Anderson, solicitor of the State Department, and the great authority on international law, and the French Consul General will compose the immediate party at the White House Ceremony. The Secretary and the British Ambassador sign the heavy scroll in duplicate.

   The French treaty will be signed by Secretary with Viscounte Saint Phalle, vice consul at New York with witness. President Taft took no part in the preliminary exchange.

   Surrounding the immediate party will be the members of the President's Cabinet. Behind them will stand a number of newspaper men whom the President has invited to witness the impressive international event. There will be no other invited guests.

   The signing will take place in the most historic chamber of the White House. This is the private study of the President. It was here that the treaty of peace between this country and Spain was signed, and it was here that President Lincoln held many of the gravest conferences of civil war times.

Bound to Peace.

   By today's act the three countries involved bind themselves to submit to arbitration all issues of vital interest. An d these issues include questions of national honor and questions of territory. No such treaty has ever been negotiated between two great powers.

   In the past a question of national honor, an insult of one nation by another, was regarded as a matter beyond arbitration. Only a resort to arms was regarded as an honorable means of avenging such a blow at a nation's pride.

   And the same thing was true of questions involving territory. An invasion or an appropriation of one nation's territory by another was not a matter, according to the standards of the past. which may be submitted to an arbitration court for adjustment. If one people placed a hostile foot on the territory of another, the act meant war and nothing else.

ALL CHANGED.

 

   Today, however, the three greatest powers in the world agree among themselves that they will submit all such questions to arbitration.

   That other nations will fall into line and negotiate similar treaties is a foregone conclusion. The moral force of the three of the greatest peoples of the Earth in such a pact will be felt, and Germany, Japan, and Russia are expected soon to enter the brotherhood.

   From the standpoint of the world's peace and the world's happiness, therefore, today's simple ceremony in the White House is probably the most important move in a century. History was made when the signatures were exchanged between the representatives of these powerful nations.