I have already referred, points out that the Supreme Court, in passing on questions between the states, and in laying down the principles of international law that ought to govern in controversies between them, should not and cannot make itself a legislature. But in a League of Peace, there is no limit to the power of international conferences of the members, except the limit of the wise and the practical.

Fourth: The fourth suggestion is one that brings in the idea of force. In the League proposed, all members are to agree that if any one member violates its obligation and begins war against any other member, without submitting its cause for war to the arbitral court, if it is a justiciable question, or to the Commission of Conciliation, if it is otherwise, all the members of the League will unite to defend the member attacked against a war waged in breach of plighted faith. It is to be observed that this does not involve members of the League in an obligation to enforce the judgment of the court or the recommendation of the Commission of Conciliation. It only furnishes the instrumentality of force to prevent attack without submission. It is believed that is more practical than to attempt to enforce judgment after the hearing. One reason is that the failure to submit to one of the two tribunals the threatening cause of war for the consideration of one or the other is a fact easily ascertained, and concerning which there can be no dispute, and it is a palpable violation of the obligation of the members. It is wiser not to attempt too much. The required submission and the delay incident thereto, will in most cases lead to acquiescence in the judgment of the court or in the recommendation of the Commission of Conciliation. The threat of force against plainly unjust war, for that is what is involved in the provision, will have a most salutary deterrent

effect. I am aware that membership in this League would involve, on the part of the United States, an obligation to take part in European and Asiatic wars, it may be, and that in this respect it would be a departure from the traditional policy of the United States in avoiding entangling alliances with European or Asiatic countries. But I conceive that the interests of the United States, in view of its close business and social relations, with the other countries of the world, much closer now than ever before, would justify it, if such a League could be formed, in running the remote risk of such a war in order to make more probable the securing of the inestimable boon of peace to the world, an object of desire that now seems so far away.

PROPOSALS OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 1

In calling this meeting my associates and I have not been unaware that we might be likened to the Tailors of Tooley Street who mistook themselves for the people of England. We wish, first, to say that we do not represent anybody but ourselves. We are not national legislators, nor do we control the foreign policy of this Government. But we are deeply interested in devising a plan for an international agreement by which, when the present war shall cease, a recurrence of such a war will be made less possible.

We are not here to suggest a means of bringing this war to an end; much as that is to be desired and much as we

1 Address delivered at the Convention of the League to Enforce Peace which was held at Philadelphia, June 17, 1915.

would be willing to do to secure peace, that is not within the project of the present meeting.

We hope and pray for peace, and our hope of its coming is sufficient to make us think that the present is a good time to discuss and formulate a series of proposals to which the assent of a number of the Great Powers could be secured. We think a League of Peace could be formed which would enable nations to avoid war by furnishing a practical means of settling international quarrels or suspending them until the blinding heat of passion had cooled.

When the world conference is held, our country will have its official representatives to speak for us. We, Tailors of Tooley Street, shall not be there; but, if in our post-prandial leisure we shall have discussed and framed a practical plan for a League of Peace, our official representatives will be aided and may in their discretion accept it and present it to the Conference as their own.

There are Tooley Streets in every nation to-day and the minds of earnest men are being stirred with the same thought and the same purpose we have heard from them through various channels. The denizens of those Tooley Streets will have their influence upon their respective official representatives. No man can measure the effect upon the peoples of the belligerent countries and upon the peoples of the neutral countries which the horrors and exhaustion of this unprecedented war are going to have. It is certain that they all will look with much more favorable eye to leagues for the preservation of peace than ever before. In no war, moreover, has the direct interest that neutrals have in preventing a war between neighbors been so clearly made known. This interest of neutrals has been so forced upon them that it would require only a slight development and

growth in the law of international relations to develop that interest into a right to be consulted before such a war among neighbors can be begun. This step we hope to have taken by the formation of a Peace League of the Great Powers, whose primary and fundamental principle shall be that no war can take place between any two members of the League until they have resorted to the machinery that the League proposes to furnish to settle the controversy likely to lead

to war.

If any member of the League refuses to use this machinery, and attacks another member in breach of his League obligation, all members of the League agree to defend the member attacked by force.

We do not think the ultimate resort to force can be safely omitted from an effective League of Peace. We sincerely hope that it may never become necessary, and that the deterrent effect of its inevitable use in case of a breach of the League obligation will help materially to give sanction to the laws of the League and to render a resort to force avoidable

We are not peace-at-any-price men, because we do not think we have reached the time when a plan based on the complete abolition of war is practicable. As long as nations partake of the frailties of men who compose them, war is a possibility and that possibility should not be ignored in any League of Peace that is to be useful. We do not think it necessary to call peace-at-any-price men cowards, or apply other epithets to them. We have known in history the most noble characters who adhered to such a view and yet the example of their physical and moral courage is a heritage of mankind. To those who differ with us in our view of the necessity for this feature of possible force in our plan, we say

we respect your attitude. We admit your claim to sincere patriotism to be as just as ours. We do not ascribe your desire to avoid war to be a fear of death to yourselves or your sons; but rather to your sense of the horror, injustice and ineffectiveness of settling any international issue by such a brutal arbitrament. Nevertheless, we differ with you in judgment that, in the world of nations as they are, war can be completely avoided. We believe it is still necessary to use a threat of overwhelming force of a great League with a willingness to make the threat good in order to frighten nations into a use of rational and peaceful means to settle their issues with their associates of the League. Nor are we militarists or jingoes — we are trying to follow a middle and practical path.

Now what is the machinery, a resort to which we wish to force on an intending belligerent of the League? It consists of two tribunals, to one of which every issue must be submitted. Issues between nations are of two classes:

1st. Issues that can be decided on principles of international law and equity, called justiciable.

2nd. Issues that cannot be decided on such principles of law and equity, but which might be quite as irritating and provocative of war, called non-justiciable.

The questions of the Alaskan Boundary, of the Bering Sea Seal Fisheries, and of the Alabama Claims were justiciable issues that could be settled by a court, exactly as the Supreme Court would settle claims between States.

The questions whether the Japanese should be naturalized, whether all American citizens should be admitted to Russia as merchants without regard to religious faith, are capable of causing great irritation against the nation denying the privilege; and yet such nations, in the absence of a treaty on