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On this day in 1785 the King of Prussia Frederick the Great signed the first post-independence treaty with the United States. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce promised peace but also addressed how the two nations were to relate if one or both were at war, or even if they fought each other, including proper treatment of prisoners and civilians — standards that would forbid most of what war consists of today. “And all women & children,” it reads, “scholars of every faculty, cultivators of the earth, artizans, manufacturers and fishermen unarmed and inhabiting unfortified towns, villages or places, & in general all others whose occupations are for the common subsistence & benefit of mankind, shall be allowed to continue their respective employments, & shall not be molested in their persons, nor shall their houses or goods be burnt, or otherwise destroyed, nor their fields wasted by the armed force of the enemy, into whose power, by the events of war, they may happen to fall; but if any thing is necessary to be taken from them for the use of such armed force, the same shall be paid for at a reasonable price.” The treaty was also the first U.S. free trade agreement, although 1,000 pages too short to resemble a modern free-trade agreement. It was not written by or for or about corporations. It included nothing to protect large companies against small ones. It established no corporate tribunals with the power to overturn national laws. It included no prohibitions on national restrictions on business activities.

His books include War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy saw a contradiction between opposing murder and accepting war. He framed his concern in terms of Christianity. In his book The Kingdom of God Is Within You, he wrote: "Everyone in our Christian society knows, either by tradition or by revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one of the most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel tells us, and that the sin of murder cannot be limited to certain persons, that is, murder cannot be a sin for some and not a sin for others. Everyone knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin, whoever are the victims murdered, just like the sin of adultery, theft, or any other. At the same time from their childhood up men see that murder is not only permitted, but even sanctioned by the blessing of those whom they are accustomed to regard as their divinely appointed spiritual guides, and see their secular leaders with calm assurance organizing murder, proud to wear murderous arms, and demanding of others in the name of the laws of the country, and even of God, that they should take part in murder. Men see that there is some inconsistency here, but not being able to analyze it, involuntarily assume that this apparent inconsistency is only the result of their ignorance. The very grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in this conviction."

He had followed the Irish campaign for home rule in the 1880s which included a rent strike. He had studied the Russian mass strike of 1905. He had drawn inspiration from numerous sources and created a Passive Resistance Association in India in 1906 to resist new discriminatory laws against Indians. Back in his native, British-occupied India in 1920, on this day, Gandhi won approval by the Indian National Congress for a campaign of nonviolent noncooperation with British rule. This meant boycotting schools and courts. It meant making clothes and boycotting foreign cloth. It meant resignations from office, refusal to support the occupation, and civil disobedience. The effort took many years and advanced by stages, with Gandhi calling it off when people used violence, and with Gandhi spending years in prison. The movement advanced new ways of thinking and living. It engaged in the constructive program of creating self-sufficiency. It engaged in the obstructive program of resisting British operations. It engaged in efforts to unite Muslims with Hindus. Resistance to a salt tax took the form of a march to the sea and the illegal manufacture of salt, as well as attempts to enter an existing salt works, which included brave protesters stepping forward to be violently beaten back. By 1930 civil resistance was everywhere in India. Prison became a mark of honor rather than shame. The people of India were transformed. In 1947 India won independence, but only at the cost of splitting Hindu India from Muslim Pakistan.

David Rothauser is a playwrite, filmmaker, teacher, and peace activist. We discuss his new film, Article 9 Comes to America.

That court, located in the Hague, resolved a long and bitter dispute between the United States and Great Britain. The example of two heavily militarized and war-prone nations submitting to the rule of an international body and peacefully settling their dispute was widely seen as an encouraging example for the world, and remains such to this day, despite the outbreak four years later of World War I. Within weeks of the settlement, a number of nations submitted cases for arbitration to the Permanent Court, including a dispute between the United States and Venezuela. The actual settlement of the Newfoundland Fisheries case gave both the United States and Britain some of what they had wanted. It allowed Britain to create reasonable regulations for fishing in the waters of Newfoundland, but gave the power to determine what was reasonable to an impartial authority. Would the United States and Great Britain have gone to war in the absence of this arbitration? Likely not, at least not right away, and not over the question of fishing. But had one or both nations desired war for other reasons, fishing rights might have served as a justification. Less than a century earlier, in 1812, somewhat similar disputes had served to justify a U.S. invasion of Canada in the War of 1812. Just over a century later, in 2015, disputes over trade agreements in Eastern Europe were leading to talk of war from the Russian and U.S. governments.

She would receive the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize as one of that minority of Nobel Peace Prize winners over the years who actually met the qualifications laid out in Alfred Nobel’s will. Addams worked in many fields toward the creation of a society capable of living without war. In 1898 Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose the U.S. war on the Philippines. When World War I began, she led international efforts to try to resolve it. She presided over the International Congress of Women in The Hague in 1915. And when the United States entered the war she spoke out publicly against the war in the face of vicious accusations of treason. She was the first leader of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919 and of its predecessor organization in 1915. Jane Addams was part of the movement in the 1920s that made war illegal through the Kellogg-Briand Pact. She helped found the ACLU and the NAACP, helped win women’s suffrage, helped reduce child labor, and created the profession of social worker, which she viewed as a means of learning from immigrants and building democracy, not as participation in charity. She created Hull House in Chicago, started a kindergarten, educated adults, supported labor organizing, and opened the first playground in Chicago. Jane Addams authored a dozen books and hundreds of articles. She opposed the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and predicted that it would lead to a German war of revenge.

Eve Spangler is a sociologist and a human and civil rights activist. For the last decade, her work has focused on the Israel/Palestine conflict. We discuss her new book, Understanding Israel/Palestine: Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict.

Why sail food from Maine to Boston, and what do salt and the British colonies in North America have in common with Gandhi's India?

Rivera Sun is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, Billionaire Buddha, and Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, the cohost of Occupy Radio, and the cofounder of the Love-In-Action Network. She tours nationally speaking and educating in nonviolent civil resistance. Her essays on social justice movements appear in Truthout and Popular Resistance. See http://riverasun.com

Marada Cook is a food entrepreneur who can be found at Crown O'Maine Organic Cooperative, Northern Girl, and Fiddler's Green Farm.

Read Rivera Sun's article "Maine Sail Freight Revives: A Salty History of Revolution, Independence."

Find the Maine Sail Freight at http://thegreenhorns.net

September 5. On this day in 1981, Greenham Peace Camp was established.

September 4. On this day in 1953 Garry Davis established a World Government.