outlaw member and its nationals or citizens. The boycott is to include a complete severance of all trade, financial and personal relations between the citizens of the respective countries, and a sundering of all diplomatic and consular relations. The executive council is to recommend to the members of the League the effective military or naval forces which they should severally contribute to the armed forces of the League to be used to protect the covenants of the League. The members of the League are to divide the loss incident to the boycott falling on some members and not on others, and mutually to support one another in resisting any special measure of hostility brought by the outlaw state against any one or more of them. The League members are bound to afford passage through their territory for the force of any member or members who are coöperating to protect the covenants of the League. The participation in the boycott is obligatory upon all members of the League. The contribution of needed military force from the several members of the League, while fixed by the council, is not obligatory. The result is, however, to create a state of war between the recalcitrant member and all the members of the League at their option, much like that existing between certain South American countries and Germany during the late war.

The Paris Covenant does not immediately provide a permanent international court. It directs that the executive council shall formulate plans for its establishment, and that, when established, it shall be competent to determine any matter which the parties recognize as proper to submit to it. Its jurisdiction, therefore, even when created, will be dependent on the voluntary submission by the parties.

When a difference arises between a non-member and a

member or between two non-members, they are to be invited to accept temporary membership of the League for the purpose of settling the dispute, in accordance with the procedure just described. If the non-member refuses to accept the obligations of the League, it is to be treated as a member of the League would be treated which violated its covenant. This attitude toward non-members is in pursuance of a declaration of the constitution that the League is interested in the maintenance of universal peace and holds any threatened breach of it as a matter of its concern as to which it may take action.

Three classes of countries with peoples not ready for self-government are committed to the trusteeship of the League, which administers them through competent governments as mandatories of the League.

A permanent mandatory commission is established, which is to require annual reports of the mandatories and to see that the restrictions contained in the constitution or in the special charters which are issued by the executive council to mandatories have been observed.

Amendments to the covenant are to be made only upon a unanimous vote of the executive council and a two-thirds vote of the delegates.

This summary of the constitution of the League shows very clearly that the nations that agreed to it intended to give the League real power. This power rests on the covenants of the members of the League and on their agreed coöperation in the universal boycott and in their voluntary coöperation by the use of military force to punish any covenant-breaking member.

This Paris covenant has been made by the five nations who are to prescribe the terms of the treaty of peace. It

has been made in view of the necessities of that treaty and the machinery required for its execution. This is a very fortunate circumstance in the creation of the League and its growth into a League of all Nations. A convention of all the nations would never have agreed on anything as practical as this. Though the ultimate object of the League is the protection of the interest of weaker nations, such nations are most likely to be obstructive in their insistence upon excessive representation. This League is growing up as an institution forced by the necessities of the situation. It is a wholesome and natural process in the establishment of needed and permanent institutions. Out of a clear sky in normal times it would be a matter of the utmost difficulty to form such a League of Nations. Here the condition which confronts the world and those responsible for its welfare calls for immediate action. Out of that immediate action comes this League, adapted to present uses and admirably available as a foundation for a world league.

On the whole, the short program of the League to Enforce Peace, adopted in June, 1915, differs but little from the nub of this, except that military contribution is not expressly obligatory and that in this either party to a difference may avoid a court and an award and seek a council of conciliation in the executive body of the League where unanimity of recommendation is required. The proposal to use compulsion to secure submission rather than execution of judgment or recommendation came from the program of the League to Enforce Peace, and was adopted by General Smuts in a remarkable brochure submitted by him December 16, 1918. It is understood that the President was much impressed with the paper of General Smuts and with his plan as well. We may be certain the constitution as

now adopted was largely taken from his recommendation. He argued for the joint obligation of League members to use force, which was only partly adopted, as I have pointed out. He, too, recommended required submission of the justiciable questions to a court and of nonjusticiable questions to a conciliation council as the League to Enforce Peace had done. But the Smuts plan was much more comprehensive than that of the League to Enforce Peace. From that plan came the mandatory system of administering backward countries and internationalizing cities as wards of the League through competent and existing governments as agents answerable to the League. From that plan came the union of all present international bureaus under the League, as well as the permanent secretariat. He advocated international labor reforms through the League, and this function is left to be developed under the League. He, too, brought non-members of the League under its influence and action.

The giving to the Great Powers five votes in an executive council of nine is one of the most important features of the constitution and is indispensable to any practical working of it. They are the responsible members who are to do the work. The minor states of the League enjoy its protection, but will not be willing to expend money or effort in maintaining its authority. They should not be permitted to arrogate to themselves equal authority with the Great Powers and thus seriously interfere with the League's efficient operations. This is a sufficient safeguard against a too early admission of Germany.

The treaty of peace to be framed is to deal with Middle and Eastern Europe, the Near East and the German colonies. The plan is to create ten or a dozen new states, more than half of them independent republics and the remainder under

some sort of suzerainty of the League. These new states are to be founded not only in the interest of the peoples who form them, but also to constitute bulwarks against a revival of German power. Finland, the Baltic provinces, Poland, the Czecho-Slovak state, the Ukraine, the Jugo-Slav state are all to be republics to curb and make impossible a revival of Germany's dream of Middle Europe and of an empire reaching from Hamburg to the Persian gulf. They are to prevent the extension of Germany's influence in Russia, where her commercial schemes have had in the past a controlling influence. These new nations must be rendered stable and must be kept at peace with each other and at peace with the countries out of which they have been carved. They will cherish resentments against their former owners because of the oppression which they suffered at their hands and the latter will feel bitter toward them because their independent existence will remind them of their deserved humiliation and defeat. Moreover, their peoples have never been used to self-government and we must expect internal disorders, due to that lack of self-restraint that practice in selfgovernment gives. They are to be six or seven Cubas and must remain under the kindly assistance of the nations who dictate this peace until their stability is secured.

The League of Nations which existed during the war, and by which the war was won, continues in the conference at Paris and must be continued, after the signing of the treaty, with machinery to secure the peaceful settlement of the myriad questions and differences that will arise between the new countries and the old in the ultimate establishment of their relations. The fixing and the maintenance of the boundaries in the Balkans, always a most difficult question, and the determination of the rights of new neighbors will be