This would prevent the imposition of the burden of war, by the determination of the League members, upon any nation without its consent. Or the enforcement of such a compromise, if determined on by a majority of the executive council, might be left to that majority. Senator Knox seems to anticipate that the United States will be drawn into war against its will by a majority vote of a convention of heterogeneous nations. No such result could follow from the organization of a League as indicated above. The assumption that the votes of Haiti, or San Salvador, or Uruguay could create a majority forcing the United States into a war against its interest and will, under a practical League of Nations, is wholly unfounded. It would be left to the vote of an executive council of the Great Powers, and even then the United States, under the modifications above suggested, could not be drawn into war against its will. Objectors who rely on the Constitution seem to assume that the League plans contemplate a permanent international police force, constantly under command of a Marshal Foch, who may order the international army to enforce a judgment or a compromise without the preliminaries of declarations of war by the League members. This is wholly unwarranted and no plan justifies it. When force has to be used, war will be begun and carried on jointly in the usual way. LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND PRESIDENT The reports of correspondents to whom has been attrib1 Article in Public Ledger Jan. 20, 1919. uted the privilege of peeping into the presidential mind give. rise to some concern among the sincere advocates of a League of Nations to Enforce Peace. The failure of the President to indicate any definite structure for the League, as the champion of which he is now hailed by the world with such acclaim, creates an uneasy suspicion that he has not thought out any definite plan of his own. In his frequent references to the League, he has stated what it will not be rather than what it will be. His attitude is that of one seeking a plan which will encounter no objections either in the congress at Paris or in the congress at Washington. In the formulation of a new political institution the sincere and successful builder works by the affirmative method primarily. He has before him always the object to be achieved, and he frames the coöperating parts of his plan with that first in view. He should be trying to do something. He should not be trying merely to fulfill a promise to do something by coming as near to it as he can without meeting criticism. No reform worth having was ever put through without a fight. Faith not only in the value of the ideal but faith in a practical plan needed to realize the ideal is required to bring real results. The element of the plan of a present League of Nations, which must distinguish it from past efforts to secure peace by agreement of nations, is the organization of the forces of lawful nations to compel justice from lawless nations. The President loves to dwell on the moral sanction of justice which is to prevail after this war. Let us agree with him. that it will be stronger than before the war and that in and of itself it will help to make war less probable. But if that is the only sanction the League of Nations is going to furnish for the judgments of its court and for the suppression of lawless violence by recalcitrant nations, it will be a failure and a laughing stock — at least the influence of such moral force will be as great without the League as with it. It is unfortunate that the President, with his apparent lack of any definite plan for a league should not be able to find a single earnest supporter of a real league of nations to secure peace in the commission which he has taken with him. Secretary Lansing has heretofore always been opposed to a league of nations to enforce peace. His confidential adviser, James Brown Scott, has always opposed it and vigorously urged merely an international court, whose judgments are to be enforced by the obligations of honor and moral suasion. Mr. White has had the traditional attitude of the old diplomatic hand toward such an innovation. Few know, if any, what Mr. House's real attitude is or that of General Bliss. The commission is now engaged in examining forty different plans, we are told, with the hope, by the selective method, of hitting upon something as innocuous to Senate predilections as possible. A reported interview with Mr. White makes conformity to the Senate's views his objective. Has the cold attitude of the commission toward an effective league been changed by the eagerness of the common peoples of the Allies for it and by the enthusiasm with which the President's eloquent periods concerning the League have been greeted? Let us hope so. Lloyd George and Clémenceau are practical men. They have declared for a league. They will wish to create something which will be a real instrument to do the things that have to be done by the treaty. They have men about them, Lord Robert Cecil, M. Leon Bourgeois and others, who, as earnest advocates of a league, have been framing plans and THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS IS HERE 213 studying details under the official authority of their respective governments. May we not hope that in this way there. will be offered to the President by Great Britain and France the constitution of a league which will have vigor and clinching efficacy and which, after full consideration and needed qualification, he will accept? A mere reliance on moral force and good intentions to maintain peace among the new and old nations of Central and Eastern Europe and to resist and suppress the pacifistic ideals of the Bolsheviki, and the massacres and destruction wrought by them, will make the congress a dangerous and discouraging farce. It will be retreat and not advance. "THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS IS HERE" 1 The expression at the Peace Conference of President Poincaré and Premier Clémenceau in reference to the League of Nations and the published rules of the Congress are reassuring to those who look to the growth of an effective and real league out of the situation. The French leaders see clearly, and say with emphasis, that we have a league of nations now, and that it must be maintained in order to achieve the purpose of the war. The circumstances of the struggle forced the Allies into an interallied council and then into a common command of the armies under Foch. But for that the war might not have been won. The rules of the Congress recognize that the five great nations, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, are the ones which have an interest in all the 1 Article in Public Ledger, Jan. 23, 1919. questions coming before the Congress as guardians of the welfare of the world, made so by the logic of their winning the war. They are thus established as the initiating nucleus of a world union, as the charter members of a league of nations. It is to be noted that the League of Nations is the first subject to be considered by the Congress. This seems to be at variance with the views of James M. Beck and Senators Lodge and Knox. Mr. Beck argues that, as our fathers waited five years after winning independence before making a constitution, the nations ought to be equally deliberate in discussing and framing a constitution for the world. Most people agree, after reading the description by Hamilton and Madison of conditions existing in the interval between our independence and the convention of 1787, that it would have been much better if the convention could have been called earlier. Of course it may be said that the bad state of affairs during the interval was necessary to bring the people to see the necessity for a stronger government. But surely Mr. Beck would not wish a recurrence of the quarrels of nations and another war to convince the peoples of the world of the necessity and advantage of world unity to suppress war and maintain peace. It is now, just after this horrible war when its agonies, its sufferings, its lessons, its inhuman character, all are fresh in the minds of men, that they will be willing to go farther in making the needed and proper concessions involved in a useful and real league of nations. Delay will dull their eagerness to adopt the machinery essential to organized protection against war. But another fact which Mr. Beck and Mr. Knox seem to ignore is that a treaty of peace cannot be made at Paris, by which the peace of Europe can be secured and maintained |