a League of Nations which should secure permanent peace when this war ended. Thus he revived the morale of the war-weary soldiers and workers of our Allies. These promises were not repudiated by any American when they were made. They were echoed in all the appeals to the American people and they found ready response among them and no protest. The nation is thus pledged to the idea of a League of Nations to render peace permanent. Good faith requires that what other nations are willing to undergo to secure the peace of the world we should ourselves be willing to undergo.

Only now, after the reaction that the end of the war brings and after impatience at the delays in reaching peace conditions, do we hear on the floor of the Senate the criticisms of the President's promise of a league of nations. If uttered during the war they would have been out of tune with the overflowing spirit of the American people and their determination to win this war and end the possibility of any such war in the future. Now for the first time do we hear the claim that we did not go into this war for the benefit of the world, but for our own selfish purposes.

Senator Poindexter attacks the eighth article of the constitution of the League on disarmament as follows:

"The provision is unconstitutional and an impairment of the sovereignty and independence of this country."

Congress under the constitution determines what our armament shall be; and therefore, even if we made an agreement, Congress would retain the constitutional power of violating that agreement and increasing the armament beyond the limit set; but that does not prevent the treaty-making power from entering into the obligation. It is not a transfer of sovereignty it is only an agreement to limit

our fortifications and our means of attack in consideration of other nations doing the same thing. The most famous agreement that we have made on this point is the agreement we have with Great Britain, by which we bind ourselves not to fortify the water boundary between Canada and the United States, or to place war vessels on the lakes. That agreement is of one hundred years' standing, and has been praised by every statesman who has referred to it. It was first made by correspondence between two secretaries of state and afterwards was embodied in a treaty. Does Senator Poindexter claim that this was unconstitutional and destroyed the sovereignty of the United States? The Senator says we cannot agree with another nation to take over and govern the exclusive right of manufacturing munitions and instruments of war. Why not, if other nations agree to do the same thing and to limit their production in the same way? The trouble with Senator Poindexter's conception of this government is that it hasn't the powers of other great nations to help along the world by a joint agreement that shall prevent the dangerous increase of armament on the part of any nation. In assuming to exalt the sovereignty of the nation as above everything, he falls into the error of minimizing its power to do anything to help the preservation of peace.

Senator Poindexter objects to article XVIII, in which the League is to supervise the traffic of arms in countries where it is deemed necessary, for the public welfare, to restrict the traffic. No one who is not a searcher for objections could apply that article to the United States. It of course refers to countries of backward peoples who cannot be trusted with firearms, and whose use of them the world may well restrict to maintain its safety.

The most extreme position of Senator Poindexter is that the United States cannot consent to arbitration of issues between it and other countries because it might affect the vital interests of the nation. There have been scores of arbitrations between the United States and other countries, many of them of very great concern. The question of the payment of the Alabama claims related to a principle of international law and international safety that was of the highest importance. The arbitration of the Alaskan boundary was another. The arbitration of our rights in the Bering Sea and in the seal herd of the Pribilof islands was another. On this arbitration we submitted to the decision of an impartial tribunal the question whether we had the rights or not which we claimed. The assumption that either the court of arbitration or the executive council of the League by unanimous judgment would seek to take away the sovereignty or the liberty or the independence of the United States is utterly gratuitous. It is so extreme a view that it ought not to be given any weight as an objection to machinery for the peaceful adjustment of differences by decision of international courts.

TO BUSINESS MEN 1

We have been discussing the question for four years as to how the world could make anything out of this war that would be useful for its further progress. Four years ago we adopted a plan in the League to Enforce Peace which

1 Address before the Commonwealth Club of California, at San Francisco, Feb. 19, 1919.

provided for the coöperation of nations in attempting to stop the spread of war. We thought that if there was anything silly, anything cruel, it was war, and that the nations could not be said to be forward-looking or intelligent or businesslike, or even to have common sense, if they permitted the condition of affairs to continue which made possible such a war as we have just had. That was an academic question when we raised it — academic in the sense that people were thinking rather of how the war could be ended than what we should do after it ended.

Then we got into the war ourselves. We were a long time in getting in. As we look back upon it now, I think we regret that we did not get in earlier. I am offering no criticism that we did not, because our hindsight is always a great deal better than our foresight; but what I would like to say to you gentlemen, business men of San Francisco, is this: use your foresight now rather than your hindsight hereafter in respect to this particular question that we are bringing before you. I do not want you to be in the attitude of the man who rides with his back to the engine and does not see anything until he gets by it. And that is what you are likely to do unless you take this thing to heart and understand what the necessity of it is and what it means.

If, in ten or twenty years, we are called into another war, that war will be world suicide. The instrumentalities now capable of being used in war are far more destructive than they were when this war began; we have discovered explosives and poisonous gases which can destroy a whole community.

Are we going deliberately to allow that condition to continue which will make such a war possible? Are we going to sit down here in San Francisco and think that we are so

many thousand miles away from Paris that we are not concerned in that matter?

That is what we thought for three years of this war, and then we were drawn into it. And even when we were drawn into it we did not realize it: it was still remote. I know what I am talking about. I was going around the country. Those in Washington and those in responsible positions began to realize what it meant. But it was a long time before the real spirit of earnestness entered into the people of the United States; and it spread west with a good deal of slowness. Finally it became the solidest public opinion that America ever had.

Now comes the reaction from the efforts made to win the war and we are looking around to get on a peace basis. We feel that the war is over and that Germany, under this armistice, cannot again come to the front as it did. Therefore we will let the world wag as it will and we will not concern ourselves about finishing a task in such a way as to make another war impossible.

I want to stir you up, men of business! The labor men are getting stirred up; they are receiving communications from their brethren over there and they are beginning to understand it. Now, I want you to study this thing, and take it to your hearts and souls, and understand that no one has a deeper interest in getting this League of Nations than you have.

The American people are intelligent, but the difficulty is to challenge their attention. They have got their minds on something else. That something else is the question of domestic readjustment, and this deliberation at Paris and the telegrams concerning it, though they fill the front page of the newspapers, do not bring home to you the issues that