be carried must be determined by experience. Disarmament will be accomplished effectively in great measure by the economic pressure that will be felt intensely by all nations after this war, by such mutual covenants and general supervision of an international council as experience may dictate, and ultimately by a sense of security in the successful operation of this League to Enforce Peace.

For the time being the people who are afraid that the United States will make itself helpless to defend its rights against unjust aggression are unduly exercised. Any practical League of Nations will require the United States to maintain a potential military force sufficient to comply promptly with its obligations to contribute to an international army whenever called upon for League purposes. Such obligation may well be made the basis and reason for universal training of youth, in accord with the Australian or the Swiss system-a system that trains youths for a year physically and mentally and gives them a proper sense of duty and obligation to the state. There may be a difference of opinion as to whether we should have such a system; but there is nothing in the League to Enforce Peace and its principles which prevents its adoption; and either that or some other means of maintaining an adequate force to discharge our obligations under a League must be found. While we should lay broad the foundations for a League looking as far into the future as we may, we must trust to the future to work out the application of those principles, to amend the details of our machinery and to adapt it to the lessons of experience. We know that the real hope of reducing armament and keeping it down is the maintenance of a League which shall insure justice and apply in its aid the major force of the world. As the operation of that League

is more and more acquiesced in, the possibility of the safe reduction of armaments in all countries will become apparent to all and will be realized.

Another question that has agitated a good many people is whether we should admit Germany to the League. That depends upon whether Germany makes herself fit for membership in the League. If she gets rid of the Hohenzollerns, if she establishes a real popular government, if she shows by her national policies that she has acted on the lessons which the war should teach her, in short if she brings forth works meet for repentance, then of course we ought to admit her and encourage her by putting her on an equality with other nations and use her influence and power to make the League more effective. The long-drawn-out payment of indemnities will keep her in a chastened mood and will keep alive in her mind the evils of militarism.

I shall not now discuss the difference in the obligations of the members of such a League as between the Great Powers and the lesser Powers. All should have a voice in the general policy of the League; but it is well worthy of consideration whether, with the burden of enforcing the obligations of the League by military force which the greater Powers must carry, they should not have the larger voice in executive control. As they are the only ones likely to be able to create the major force of the world, they may reasonably claim a right to more administrative power. The rights of the smaller nations will be protected in the Congress, in which they have a full voice, and by the impartial judgments of the judicial tribunals and the recommendations of the Commission of Conciliation. There is not the slightest likelihood that the mere executive control by the larger Powers would lead to oppression of the smaller Powers be

cause, should selfishness disclose itself in one of the Great Powers, we could be confident of the wish of the other Great Powers to repress it.

One of the difficulties in the maintenance of a League of all nations will be the instability of the governments of its members if the League embraces all nations. On the whole, the Greater Powers are the more stable and the more responsible. It is well therefore that upon them shall fall the chief executive responsibility. While the principles of the League would prevent interference with the internal governments as a general rule, the utter instability of a government might authorize an attempt to stabilize it. That this can be done better by a disinterested League than by a single nation goes without saying.

The possibilities of many-sided world benefit from a League after it is well established and is working smoothly, it is hard to overestimate. For the present, as the result of this Congress of Nations to meet and settle the terms of peace, we may well be content to have a League established on broad lines, with principles firmly and clearly stated, and with constructive provisions for amendment as experience shall indicate their necessity.

I verily believe we are in sight of the Promised Land. I hope we may not be denied its enjoyment.

WORKINGMEN AND THE LEAGUE 1

The pressing imminence of the issue of a League is not as fully understood in this country as it is in Great Britain,

1 Extract from article in Public Ledger Nov. 13, 1918.

in France and in Italy. The movement was initiated in the United States in 1915 by the formation of the American League to Enforce Peace; but the question then had more or less of an academic aspect because of the remoteness of peace, and, indeed, at that time, for us, the remoteness of the war. Associations were subsequently formed in Great Britain and in France. As the peoples of these countries became war-weary, as the working population felt the suffering and dreadful pinch of starvation and want, their souls were gripped with a determination to have no more war. The subject was given world-wide attention through the addresses of President Wilson. The Socialists had always included the abolition of war as a fundamental plank in their platform. While the great majority of the Socialists and the workingmen in the allied countries admitted the necessity of fighting this war through, they made a peremptory demand for a League of Nations to Enforce Peace after this war was over and after the unconditional surrender of militarism.

The League of Nations, therefore, in England, France and Italy has become the slogan of workingmen and Socialists and they will brook no hesitation on this subject by the representatives of their countries in the Peace Congress.

A LEAGUE OF NATIONS OUR NATIONAL
POLICY1

Speeches are made from time to time in the Senate on the plan of a League of Nations to Enforce Peace. Sena

1 Article in Public Ledger Dec. 1, 1918.

tors Poindexter and Reed have pronounced judgment upon the plan as dangerous to the Republic and contrary to the established traditions of the nation. With deference, this judgment is not up to date. It fails to note that the war, our participation and avowed purpose in it and the treaty which is to end it have so changed our relation to Europe and the world that such traditions have ceased to be applicable. These traditions were shown to be outworn by the fact that we could not keep out of the war. We were driven into it because of our relations as close neighbors to the European belligerents. Having been thus driven into war, are we to make a separate peace with Germany, merely securing a guaranty from her that in the future we shall be immune, as a neutral, from submarine attack upon our commerce? This would be the logical outcome of the attitude of the opposing Senators. Are we not rather to take part in framing the articles of a general treaty as to Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, the Trentino, the Czecho-Slavs, the Jugo-Slavs, Russia, Armenia and in respect to the numerous other questions that must be constructively answered in the treaty?

Certainly the American people have no doubt that we are to have a full share in the settlement of all these issues. No other inference can be drawn from the messages of the President, acquiesced in by all. If we sit at the international council table and make this general treaty, it is idle to talk of our taking no further part in European world politics. If we enter into this treaty rearranging the map of Europe and the world in the interest of the rule of, by and for the various peoples of the world, and to secure them the blessings of permanent peace, we have got to see it through. We can't make such a treaty and run away from it as our