for the opinion that in this city the efforts of the Commissioner of Immigration were not at critical times marked by much vigor. While deportation ought to be an effective remedy, here again the Attorney General complains that Congress refused appropriations to his department and the Department of Labor for the enforcement of the law. The American people are thus made to suffer because of a lack of coördination between the executive and the legislative departments. Too much publicity cannot be given to this unfortunate situation. VI THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS1 THE AMERICAN VIEW THE belief undoubtedly pervades the mass of the people of the world that now is the time to find a way to prevent war in the future. The feeling is more or less inarticulate, but it is none the less widespread and insistent; and the statesmen in the Peace Council realize that a serious effort must be made to devise some practicable method to give it form and effect. The United States has been the foremost nation of the earth in promoting the settlement of international disputes by arbitration and the postponement of war during the process. It has seemed strange, therefore, that a definite project for the avoidance of war should have met at first with hesitation and criticism in this country. But this attitude has been much changed by open discussion and the burning out of the fires of partisanship; and the solicitude lest our implication in European affairs should result in an undue surrender of our independence has been largely removed. By long-established national habit, based on the warnings of Washington and Jefferson against entangling alliances, we have come to attach vital importance to the condition of political isolation which our geographical remoteness has enabled us to maintain. But the present discussion is making it increasingly clear that the wise policy of a century ago is not applicable to the conditions of to-day, first, because through cable communications and quick ocean transportation, 1 Reprinted from a series of articles published in the New York Times of March 24-25, and April 4, 1919. the United States has become geographically no more remote from the continent of Europe than some of the European nations are distant from each other, and, second, because there no longer exist concerts of powers, offensive and defensive alliances and secret dynastic intrigues, possible only among autocratic sovereigns and entered into, not to avoid war, but to secure supremacy through the use of force. WASHINGTON'S WARNING The Farewell Address of Washington was delivered in 1796; the Revolutionary War had ended less than fifteen years before; the French Revolution had overturned French civilization and produced chaos and the Napoleonic wars were beginning; and our own friendly relations with France, based on her generous and decisive assistance in the Revolution, had been seriously threatened. Our chief interest at that time was to create a self-sustaining nation, not dependent upon foreign nations for the continuance of its national existence. Such a thing as the formation of a league of nations to avoid war was far from the thoughts of the nations of the world, and even if it had been attempted there would have been little reason for the newly created American commonwealth to become a party to it. It was, therefore, obviously true, to use Washington's words, that Europe had "a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combina |