ritories of the Russian Jewish pale. We shall be derelict in our duty if we do not require, as part of the fundamental law of these new republics, that the Jews shall have as great religious freedom as they have in the United States. But we must do more. We must have a league of nations to see to it that such fundamental law exacted by the treaty shall be enforced. We find full precedent for such a provision in the law in the treaty made by the Congress of Berlin, in which Bulgaria and Rumania were established as independent countries. Rumania, which had long been a heinous sinner against the Jews, was forced by the Berlin Congress to accept, as part of its constitution, a declaration that there should be complete religious freedom and that no citizen should be discriminated against on account of his religion in any respect. The Rumanian government had the audacity, after incorporating the guaranty in its fundamental law, to declare and hold that Jews who had lived in Rumania for two or three hundred years, father and son, were aliens. In this way the protection of the Jews provided for in the treaty of Berlin was denied, and this was after Rumania had secured recognition as a government on an additional promise of fair treatment of the Jews.

Let us have no farcical result in working out this treaty of Versailles. Could we find a stronger argument for the continuance of our league of nations than this ignominious failure of that congress of 1879, under the presidency of Bismarck, to carry out its declared purpose? If there be any people who should be earnestly in favor of a league of nations as the outgrowth and the condition of this treaty now being framed at Versailles the Jews are that people.

PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS1

President Wilson says that the statement of the Chicago Tribune that, before sailing, he approved the plan of the League to Enforce Peace is untrue and that he never directly or indirectly indorsed the plan. It is not believed that any one, for the American League, ever claimed that he did. From what he has said, however, he has given the world reason to believe that he favored action by a league of nations to achieve results only to be brought about along the lines of the American League to Enforce Peace. He has, because of his addresses and messages on the subject, come to be regarded as the foremost champion of a league of nations to maintain peace after this war. It is the confident belief of the people of France that he has attended the conference in order to secure such a league which prompts their enthusiastic and affectionate acclaim. He will do well to bear this in mind. He must not give the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope. He has spoken so much on the objects of this war, he has laid down in a didactic form so many principles in their application to all the peoples in the sphere of the war, he has pictured with such eloquence the idealistic results for the freedom, justice and peace of the large and small nations affected by the war, that if he now fails to propose and secure in the treaty practical machinery for a real league of nations, which shall enforce peace, he will properly be held responsible for a lame and impotent conclusion before the world and its expectant peoples.

Mr. Wilson is master of an inspiring style of promise, in 1 Article in Public Ledger Dec. 23, 1918.

which he encourages hopes and ideals and awakens the enthusiasm of popular expectancy without committing himself to constructive suggestions for a definite method of achievement. In dealing with the peoples of the world, who are looking to him as a savior from future war and a preserver of peace and democracy, this habit of mind and expression is now to be subjected to the severest test in his career. He has in his keeping not alone his own reputation for good faith, but that of the great people for whom he is the spokesman.

Let us see what this League of Nations, whose formation, he says, is absolutely indispensable to the maintenance of peace, is. Let us study it from his speeches.

On May 27, 1916, Mr. Wilson delivered a written address at the dinner of the League to Enforce Peace in Washington. He expressly declined to discuss the program of the League, whose guest he was, but he clearly specified certain objects and laid down principles of international action which accorded with the objects and principles of the league. He said the people of the United States would wish" a universal association of the nations to maintain an inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all nations of the world and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the world — a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence." He further said at this dinner that "the world was even then upon the eve of a great consummation, when some common force will be brought into existence which shall safeguard right as the first and most fundamental interest of all peoples and all governments, when coercion shall be summoned not to the service of political ambition

or selfish hostility, but to the service of a common order, a common justice and a common peace."

He delivered these words to a society whose plan included for its proposed league of nations a congress of Powers to improve international law, an international court and an international council of conciliation, to which all international differences were to be submitted, and, finally, a common and combined police force of the nations together with combined economic boycott to prevent the advent of war before there has been full submission of the dispute to such tribunals. It was impossible for those who heard the President against this background to escape the conviction that he was in general and almost specific accord not only with the purposes but with the method of the league. How could the just results which he sought be obtained without international tribunals? How could a league of nations act through a common force without obligation of its members to respond with contributors to such a common force when war was begun without submission?

Since that speech much has happened. But the President has continued to refer to a league of nations and to the major force of the world as a means of securing peace and justice.

In the fourteen points of the message of January 8, 1918, we find references to a League of Nations and its guarantee as follows:

In the second point it is said that the high seas may be closed only "by international action for the enforcement of international covenants."

In the third point establishment of equality of trade conditions is to be required "among all nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance."

In the fourth point adequate guarantees are to be given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety."

In the eleventh point it is provided that "international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into."

By the twelfth it is enjoined that "the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees."

In the thirteenth point it is required that Poland shall be secured" a free passage to the seas," and her "political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenants."

In the fourteenth point it is said that a “general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small States alike."

In his address of September 27, 1918, he said: “There can be no leagues or alliances or special covenants and understandings within the general and common family of the League of Nations."

"There can be no special, selfish economic combinations within the League and no employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion, except as the power of economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline and control."

He signaled the entry of the United States into the war by his message of April 2, 1917, in which he said we were to fight" for a universal dominion of right by such concert