in a position to know from records what was the actual course of negotiation. In the absence of this, unless the President wishes personally to submit to interrogation, there is room for a wide scope of inference regarding the bargains made to secure the League.

There are those who will wonder why the alleged American plan of a League has never been published; who will infer that it was rejected or withdrawn because it was needful to adopt a more flexible trading programme; and who will think that the Smuts plan was adopted because without concessions to Great Britain there could have been no League, and without a league of some kind the Great Mission would have been a failure.

One might imagine the British Premier as saying: "There is already a League of Nations. The British Empire is such a league. If you will model the League on that, as General Smuts suggests, we might regard it favorably. Of course we must retain our sea-power. Unless you will pledge the large navy you are developing in the

United States to the defense of the Empire, we must defend ourselves. Of course under the League, the rights of neutrality, to which you have held so closely in the past, would no longer exist. If you will help us out with mandataries and defend our imperial possessions from future attack, perhaps we can arrange for a League."

"But by this plan, what advantage does the United States get?"

"Why, Mr. President, you get the League!"

With France negotiations were, perhaps, less complicated, for without some special provision, even after peace was signed, France would be unprotected. One can imagine a question to Monsieur Clemenceau: "Where will France look for protection, if not to the League?"—"To the honor of her co-belligerents."-"But would not the mutual guarantees of the League be sufficient?" "With Germany a League is impossible.""What then do you expect?" "We expect a separate defensive alliance; for the League does not afford security for France. If you

have the League, we must have the separate alliance."

And so, even without documents, the logic of the situation renders it not difficult to understand what has happened at Paris; why the League was always, except in America, regarded and spoken of as "l'idée Américaine;" and also why the League had to be intertwined inextricably with the long deferred and much desired treaty of peace, in order to force the hand of the Senate.

Acting by itself, the Senate of the United States would probably regard the prestige of reorganizing the world on paper as bought at too high a price by the acceptance of the responsibilities of Article X and American participation in the international political trust that is to issue "Acts and Charters" for the sovereign rule of countries and colonies in Europe, Asia, and Africa with which the United States, as a constitutional selfgoverning nation, has no right of interfer

ence.

However the Senate may regard the President's challenge, it cannot escape re

sponsibility for its decision. There is one aspect of the subject of the highest importance to the future of the American Republic that has been left in obscurity by nearly all who have commented on the proposed League, namely, the joint imperialism which it establishes. This, though overlooked in America, is well understood in Great Britain, and preparations are making to render it effective. General Smuts, who is a practical officer, recognizes that it is necessary for the League "to train big staffs to look at things from a large human, instead of national point of view." The Grand Secretariat now being organized in London, under the direction of Sir James Eric Drummond, of the British Foreign Office, will be the school in which the international bureaucracy will be formed and tempered to its task. Viscount Grey sees a great future for this super-national rule of the world under benevolent experts. "I don't see,” he said, "why the League of Nations, once formed, should be necessarily idle." Nor would he leave it without means of action. "I don't

see why," he continued, "it should not be arranged for an authoritative and an international force to be at its disposal, which should act as police in individual countries."

It is this that makes the acceptance of a place in the League by the United States so imperative for its success. This policing of the world requires men and money. America has both. Europe's answer to America's great idea of a League is: "We accept it with pleasure. Now stop the fighting that has not ceased from Finland to the Crimea, while the Peace Conference has been in session. We have our own idea of these things based on a long experience. We will try your plan, but in the meantime you must make the Turk spare the Armenian, a mutilated Poland be satisfied with its lot, keep the Hungarians and the Roumanians quiet on the Theiss, settle the disputes of the Italians and the Jugo-Slavs in the Adriatic, make Persia a safe place to live in, and keep Germany within bounds. Unless your League can do these things, ft has not helped us much, but if it does them it will be chiefly at