And yet it must be conceded that, to give effect to this power the nation must at the time be strongly disposed to permit its exercise or the drafting power would not prove effective. To pledge in advance the military cooperation of the United States in unforeseen and merely imaginary circumstances would therefore be a hazardous and probably an utterly impracticable undertaking. Such a plan is, for this reason, to be excluded from any plan that is looking for general public approval.

For this there is still more solid ground than the mere momentary will of the people. Dismissing all refinements, and coming at once to the core of the subject, the Constitution, in conferring all these defensive powers upon Congress, nowhere contemplates wars of exploitation or the military pursuit of abstract ideas. Drawing potentially upon the resources of the people, the war power as delegated to Congress aims solely at protecting the rights of the people, and should protect them even against the vagaries of government itself. The Constitution presupposes for other nations the same privilege. The responsibilities of our Government are confined to its own people, and do not include the regulation of other governments.

THE POWERS OF GOVERNMENT NOT TRANSFERABLE

Responsibility for the proper exercise of the powers delegated to the Congress by the Constitution of the United States rests wholly and exclusively upon the public officers who are at the time charged with that exercise. That responsibility does not appear when a group of citizens attempts to intimidate the Congress by a threat to supersede it by a new election. It would be a violation of the oath of office for members of Congress, under this or any other form of duress, to transfer by legislation or otherwise the power to declare war, or to levy taxes, even to the President of the United States. A fortiori, it would be an unconstitutional act for the Congress to transfer that power, even temporarily or conditionally, to a council of state, or to a council of ambassadors,

or to any other individual or body of men, even though appointed by itself.

Here then is a distinct and insurmountable obstacle to the practicability of any plan of cooperation by the United States with other nations to achieve and preserve the peace of the world, if such a plan should involve an engagement to place in the hands of any central body, or any international council of whatever character, even in the slightest degree, the control of any of these non-transferable powers.

THE TREATY-MAKING POWER

In considering the powers of possible cooperation with other nations possessed by the Government of the United States, the treaty-making power must not be overlooked. The exercise of this power is primarily a prerogative of the Executive, in whose hands is placed the guidance of the United States in its foreign relations. The President "shall have power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur" (Article II, Section 2).

Has this power to make treaties any limits, or is it an unlimited prerogative?

Beyond question, the making of treaties is intended to serve, and in no case to destroy or impair, the form of government that was ordained and established. The powers confided to the Congress as a whole were clearly not intended to be abandoned, vacated, diminished or transferred by the mere agreement of the President and two-thirds of the senators.

There is then an obvious and indubitable limit to the extent of the treaty-making power. If we ask just where that limit is to be found, the plain answer is, in the declared purposes for which the Government was ordained and established, as enumerated in the Preamble of the Constitution.

Whatever latitude may be offered by the "general welfare" clause in the Preamble and in the provision of the taxing power, where the expression also occurs, it is the welfare of the people of the United States and their posterity alone with

which we are here concerned. There is no authority in the Constitution to merge by treaty that welfare in the common welfare of the world, and thus to dissipate that heritage of "the Blessings of Liberty" which it was the supreme end of this nation to secure.

No plan to cooperate with other nations that surrenders to international communism the resources of the American people can ever be made practicable in the United States. No plan that bestows upon a super-government any of the powers expressly delegated by the Constitution to the executive, legislative and judicial departments of this Government should expect to receive the approval of the American people. To make such a transfer would be a revolutionary measure. All the powers of ultimate international decision must remain where the Constitution places them.

MILITARY INTERVENTION A DETRIMENT TO PEACE

It is a lesson of the world's experience that it is in the interest of peace to localize as far as possible such armed conflicts as arise between nations. The right of intervention may, in certain circumstances, be conceded where a nation's own peace is menaced by a war upon its borders; but participation in distant wars, where no national interest is involved, would tend only toward the spread of war and unnecessary preparation for war, and is essentially inimical to peace.

The intervention of the United States in the affairs of Cuba stands out as a unique phenomenon in history.

The war with Spain was fought to terminate what promised to be an endless attempt on the part of a foreign nation to repress the liberty of an American people over which, according to the political conceptions on which the American governments are founded, it possessed no rightful control. It was a situation in which not only the peace but the responsibility of the United States to civilization was doubly involved; for the Monroe Doctrine, as a defensive policy of the United States, on the one hand justified intervention to protect Cuba from the continued oppression of a foreign power, and on the

other prohibited other foreign powers whose interests were involved from intervening on American territory. This double implication of our national policy created the duty of the United States to see that peace prevailed in Cuba; but, by the same logic, it set a limit to the duty and also to the right of non-American intervention. It declared to the world the principle of the geographic limitation of military responsibility.

The Boer War and the war of Austria upon Serbia throw from different angles some light upon this principle.

The war between Great Britain and the Boer republics furnishes a case which would have led to world-wide complications if the general sympathy of the civilized world with the Boers had resulted in a general military intervention.

As it is, the Boer governments have been superseded by a form of polity far more conducive to the prosperity and progress of South Africa, now almost an independent nation, than any military intervention of the powers would have been likely to produce.

The same truth is illustrated from the opposite point of view in the attack of Austria upon Serbia, the ward of Russia, which was seen as an obstacle to the imperial ambitions of Austria.

An incident that was far more appropriate for decision by the Court of Arbitration at The Hague, as Nicholas II ineffectually proposed, than for settlement by the sword, was destined by its tragic development, through the intervention of Germany, to plunge the whole world into war.

If Russia and Austria had been allowed by Germany to settle the issue by themselves, it is highly probable that a solution could soon have been found, if not at The Hague, through the peaceful good offices of the great powers, as proposed by Sir Edward Grey.

It is true that Germany demanded the localization of the war by confining it to Austria and Serbia, which would have resulted in the speedy subjugation of a small state by a great power. Russia, although averse to war and unprepared

for it, could not permit the total effacement of Serbia, and to avert it favored either an appeal to The Hague or a con- . ference of the powers; but Germany treated both proposals with silent contempt and appeared “in shining armor" with a declaration of war on Russia while negotiations were still in progress. Both at St. Petersburg and at Vienna there was a good prospect of a peaceful agreement when the action of Germany precipitated the war, into which France was drawn automatically through the Franco-Russian Alliance, England by the invasion of Belgium and the danger to the Channel ports, Japan by her interests in the Far East, and finally the United States by the inhuman conduct of Germany in the war and the menace of triumphant German imperialism throughout the world.

THE FALLACY OF MENACE

It has been lightly said that if the League of Nations had existed in 1914 there would have been no war; the combined forces of Europe, under the direction of the League, it is asserted, would have prevented it. Had Great Britain, it has also been declared, frankly announced that she would be on the side of Russia and France, in case of German intervention in the Austro-Serbian affair, war would never have occurred.

These assumptions are wholly gratuitous and misleading. After the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, M. Sazonoff urged upon the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, that Great Britain could block the German menace by proclaiming complete solidarity with Russia and France, which he believed would avert war.

Referring to this proposal, which Sir George with true diplomatic insight rejected, Mr. Asquith, the British Premier of that time, in his articles on The Genesis of the War, affirms that "no evidence of any value has been or can be adduced to prove that a threatening or even an uncompromising attitude on our part would have turned Germany and Austria from the path on which they had entered. On the contrary, the