evidence is all the other way." And he proceeds to show that, without the complication of Great Britain's interest by the invasion of Belgium and the menace to France's ports and colonies, Great Britain would not have been justified in pledging support to Russia in a war with Germany, and without a united nation could not have fulfilled the pledge if it had been made.

In fact, Great Britain has never interfered in the great wars, except when her vital interests have been affected, and there is no reason to believe that she would subject her people to the sacrifices of war for any other reason now. As Sir Edward Grey once declared, it is preposterous to suppose that British blood would ever flow merely to settle a Balkan quarrel.

While Great Britain, from clear-sighted policy, has abstained from the enforcement of peace by the menace of war where her interests were not involved, the United States, aside from the question of policy, is inhibited from the enforcement of peace by war by the constitutional limitations in the nature of its government, which has no authority to pledge the national resources of the people for participation with other nations in future wars for the enforcement of universal peace.

THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

Unfortunately, in framing the Treaty of Versailles, the theory upon which the reorganization of the world proceeded was precisely the enforcement of peace by a permanent preponderance of armed power as the background of its agreements. There was to be a preponderance of power so great that no nation would dare to challenge its opposition by resorting to war. Emanating, as this theory did, from a small group of ardent propagandists in the United States, it was assumed in Europe that this proposal involved not only the active participation of the American Government which propounded it, but also the chief responsibility for giving it effectiveness.

This proposal was a complete reversal of the traditional policy of the United States, not only in relation to Europe, but even in our own hemisphere. The whole American experi

ence has shown that peace is best promoted by not meddling in the affairs of other peoples. We have practiced this abstention in this hemisphere when our own peace and safety were not endangered, and through our leaving the American republics to regulate their own affairs it has become a vast area of almost complete international peace.

If we have sometimes been compelled to intervene, it has been chiefly to prevent meddling in the affairs of our neighbors by European powers anxious to employ their superior force for the accomplishment of their own ends.

It has been the habit of Europeans to complain of the American revolutions as signs of an unsettled state of things which might be improved by their intervention; but these republics have attained a far greater security and stability than they could have acquired if they had been subject to European interference. All their battles put together would not make the equivalent of the Balkan Wars.

It is the taxpayers who in the end will have to be called upon to approve any plan of cooperation with other nations to enforce the peace of the world by armies and navies. They are not likely to forget that their Government has not a dollar to give or to lend to any foreign government that is not taken from the pockets of the people, nor a soldier to use in the settlement of foreign quarrels who is not summoned from some peaceful home.

For the reasons above stated it is illusory to expect that any plan of cooperation can be finally adopted that does not eliminate the pledge to use the Army and Navy of the United States to guarantee the peace of the world.

II. THE RELATIONS OF THE United States TO THE EXISTING MACHINERY FOR MAINTAINING PEACE

It was not unnatural, perhaps, in 1918, to believe that a method that had brought a nominal peace to Europe by overwhelming the powers that had broken it could succeed, if perpetuated by a solemn compact, in preserving peace in the future.

Experience has shown, as a more careful analysis might at the time have disclosed, that when the common danger was ended it was chiefly the separate national interests that survived the victory.

After concluding the sanguinary period of the war by the Armistice, on November 11, 1918, the victors convoked at Paris a peace conference, the double object of which was: (1) to impose conditions of peace upon the vanquished enemy, and (2) to reorganize the world by a political compact in such a manner as to provide for the world's future peace. This second object was believed to have been accomplished by the Covenant of the League of Nations, an international constitution incorporated as an inseparable part of the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, and designed to mature and preserve their fruits.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

From the conditions in which the Conference of Paris was called it was impossible that this assembly, some of whose members were just emerging into statehood as a result of the war, and some of them awaiting with anxiety the will of the victors to decide their fate, should act in any democratic fashion, or upon the lines of the older diplomacy, by which all states were considered juridically equal.

From the point of view of terminating a victorious war, the principal allied and associated powers were entirely within their rights in imposing and executing a punitive peace. But from the point of view of a permanent reorganization of the world in the interest of peace, the form of organization required to be based upon a broader and firmer foundation than a compact of mutual armed protection. In order to establish an adequate organization for future peace it was necessary to provide a place which the vanquished as well as the victors could accept and occupy with honor.

So far as the Covenant of the League of Nations is an exclusive military alliance, explicitly laying down conditions in which a state of war would automatically be resumed or

initiated, and in which all the members of the League would be automatically involved [Article XVI of the Covenant], the League was, in principle, not an organization for strictly peaceful development, but an arrangement to prevent the occurrence of a local war by the menace of a general war to suppress it.

Without going more deeply into the nature of the Covenant, which obliged the members of the League either to engage in war without a specific declaration or to declare war in contingent circumstances, it is evident that the Government of the United States could not, in conformity with its constitutional obligations, accept unreserved membership in this alliance; the main purpose of which was to preserve and perpetuate the decisions of the Supreme Council, originally composed of ten, and at times of only three, representatives of the victors in the war. Articles X, XI and XVI, besides other obligations, explicit or implied, were seen to be insurmountable barriers to participation in the League on the part of the United States. Efforts to remove these barriers by means of reservations were found to be unavailing, and not only the decision of the Senate but the "solemn referendum" invoked in an appeal to the electorate definitely determined the abstention of the United States from acceptance of the Covenant.

REJECTION OF THE LEAGUE

So long as the question of the United States' entering the League of Nations continues to be pressed, so long will it be necessary to remind the people of the United States why that proposal can never receive the approval of a united nation unless the Covenant is profoundly altered. Majorities are incalculable, but there will always remain in the United States an opposition to the acceptance of obligations which the Constitution of the United States does not authorize the Government to lay upon the people and to bind upon posterity.

It has sometimes been assumed and asserted that if other nations can participate in such a compact the United States

can do so also. The primary error in this assumption is that it fails to distinguish between a government of delegated and limited powers, like that of the United States, and those governments in which the whole volume of sovereignty is inherent. The British Parliament may make any law it pleases, because, with the king, it is a sovereign body with unlimited authority. It was never intended by the founders of the American Union that such absolute authority should have any place in it. On the contrary, by delegating only certain limited powers and reserving all others to the states or to the people—in whom alone sovereignty is recognized as residing-it was designed to eliminate all absolutism from government. It is one of the chief blessings which the American Constitution assures to posterity, that there is in the Government of the United States no authority to contract away, in the interest of other nations, the lives and the property of American citizens in the attempt to settle their quarrels or to prevent them from fighting for what they consider their rights, if they choose to do so.

THE LEAGUE'S COURT

Though the United States by a long series of arbitration treaties, by the conventions of The Hague and by its efforts to establish an international court of justice, which it was the first nation in the world officially to propose, is fully committed to the principle of the judicial settlement of disputes, its relation to the so-called Permanent Court of International Justice established by the League of Nations cannot be properly considered without taking into account the connection of that Court with the League.

It is established beyond controversy:

(1) That the Court derives its authority primarily from the Covenant of the League and from legislation by the Council and Assembly of the League, by which its judges are chosen, paid and constituted a court;

(2) That the Statute of the Court does not embody the most important recommendations of the committee of jurists consulted by the League;