power but the vision of a world made safe for democracy and secured against outrage by the united will of enfranchised peoples? I do not know. But this I know, that the days of our cloistered virtue are well lost and that we cannot refuse the great adventure even though we gain the whole world and lose our own soul. And this, too, I know, that the greatest disaster that could befall mankind is not the sum of human misery which such a war as this brings in its train, nor yet the shameful legacy of hate and fear and mistrust that it leaves behind it, but the loss to humanity of those ideals of democracy, justice and peace which our Republic has represented in an evil world. And this, too, I know, that it rests wholly with us to keep our democracy true to the line marked out for it in Washington's farewell address:

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. . . . . It will be worthy of a free, enlightened and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

THE INTERNATIONAL RIGHT AMERICA MUST

CHAMPION

BY ROLAND G. USHER, PH.D.,

Professor of History, Washington University, St. Louis.

The question of America's obligation to defend international right raises no less significant an issue than the cause of the war between the United States and Germany and its justifiability. It is a question either of the utmost simplicity or one of almost insoluble complexity, a subject upon which a difference of opinion is hardly conceivable or one upon which agreement becomes almost improbable. While I do not labor under the delusion that many people believe this question to be simple, I know that many people do regard it as relatively easy to decide and that they reach a decision in the light of what I believe to be prejudgments, preconceptions, and even prejudices. Our chief obligation in the study of international right and of the measures necessary to be taken by the United States in its defense is to study it from the point of view of American interests.

Our conclusion, indeed, will be no better than our premises are valid. If the vital element in our supposed judgment be a profound dislike for Germany, an unspoken and unconscious attachment for France, horror over the invasion of Belgium or the sinking of the Lusitania, we shall project into the issue of international right the question of the right and wrong of the war itself, of the validity of Pan-Germanism, of Schrechlichkeit. Immediate and positive conclusions we shall produce but conclusions not to be confused with logic, evidence and history. With such impulses, the immense majority in this country seem to me to approach the question of America's obligation to defend international right, and upon such grounds they affirm or deny the justifiability of our entrance into the war. America's obligation to beat Germany, America's obligation to express horror for Belgium and the Lusitania, America's obligation to preserve a technical neutrality by exporting no more munitions, America's obligation to compel England as well as Germany to observe international law-none of these proceeds from

a real investigation of America's obligation as the defender of international right. Each and all assume the conclusion as the premise. They prejudge the issue on the basis of other circumstances than those of law, history and diplomacy. I trust that I shall escape the designation of pro-German as the result of these statements. I once wrote a book not too well liked in Germany and have advocated constantly coöperation between the United States and Great Britain, which I hope is already a reality, but I have sought always to advance definite reasons based upon a study of American history, American democracy and American economic interests. We must see the war in the light of American interests, not define American interests in terms of the European struggle, if we are to understand the true significance of our entry into the conflict.

From another point of view a large body of well-intentioned, but I am afraid zealously misdirected people, prejudge the issue. Theoretically the internationalist is a cosmopolite, a citizen of the world at large. In his vocabulary there is no such word as patriotism; for him nationality has no meaning; he is the true man without a country. I will yield to no man in the firmness of my conviction of the blessings of peace and of the horrors of war; I believe strongly that international organization is desirable and that international tribunals and courts can achieve at present valuable results, but I am not yet ready to place peace before patriotism, nor an international court before my devotion to the creed of Washington and of Lincoln, to those intangible impulses which beat within me at the sight of our flag on the docks at Liverpool in August, 1914. America's obligation must be couched for me in terms of patriotism or it has for me no meaning, no obligation. We must attain internationalism and peace through patriotism and nationality and not at their expense.

The question, indeed, of America's obligation as the defender of international right is to me less one of evidence than of logic, less one of immutable facts than of principles. What we mean by international right depends upon our conception of international law which itself must be the logical result of our conception of the international world. That in turn involves our notion of sovereignty and dependency, which can themselves be made concrete and practical only by discoverable tests whereby the reality of sovereignty may be ascertained in particular cases. Our notion of obligation

necessarily depends upon our conception of ethics, of morality, of crowd psychology, upon our opinions regarding the justifiability of war, the necessity of peace, and the character of international organization needed to achieve it. Nor shall we reach any understandable conclusion without delving deep into the relation between individualist ethics and the ethics of nations, without in some way defining ethics itself and its relation to history, diplomacy and law. This question is no hard and fast legal abstraction consisting merely of the application of admitted legal premises to a definite ascertainable set of facts, but an issue whose terms are as yet vehemently discussed and which is itself partly historical, partly diplomatic, partly juristic, partly ethical; an issue as broad as the field of human learning, as deep as the past of the race, as significant as its future.

The true difficulty of the question seems to lie in the disagreement of statesmen, diplomats, historians and lawyers in different nations, and in the same nation, upon the facts which underlie the situation and upon the meaning and validity of its most fundamental postulates. Diplomatists and statesmen on the one hand and international lawyers and textbook writers on the other disagree widely upon no less significant and basic conceptions than the character, nature and scope of international law. The former deny that in a proper sense of the words there is any such thing. The latter more vehemently affirm its existence. The definite precepts of such a law naturally emerge from the hands of the two schools in very different condition, while the interpretation and application of the few precepts apparently acceptable to both have caused wide divergence of opinion.

The great powers of Europe apparently admit the existence of a certain international code in theory, but seem to proceed in practice upon a widely different code. International rights are in controversy between the belligerents themselves, and neutrals are not entirely agreed as to what they are. Belligerents disagree with neutrals; some with all neutrals, others with most. Great Britain and France, our new Allies, to say nothing of Germany, dissent from basic propositions upheld by the United States and declare their version to be demonstrable by our own diplomatic practice and from the decision. of our own admiralty courts. The controversy, indeed, ranges over so wide a field and the points controverted are so exceedingly

fundamental and the controversy about them is so very general as to demonstrate beyond all peradventure the fact that, if there is any truth about this subject, men are not agreed as to what it is. The controversialists not unnaturally take widely different views of history and of diplomacy. The American interpretation of rights on the high seas which the President has championed rests quite obviously upon the assumption that the seas were free in time of peace and were free in time of war until the German submarine warfare closed them. The Germans retort that this is the English view, that the freedom of the seas is a fiction and neither exists nor has existed in time of peace nor at any other time. Merely because the British have seen fit to allow most nations to use the seas with considerable freedom does not in the least demonstrate that those nations possess privileges guaranteed by international law. They receive them from Great Britain and do not retain them longer than Great Britain is willing to concede them. The facts of the war prove to the Germans that the British themselves closed the seas, that their action was unwarrantable, and that the Germans are protesting against it as much in our interest as in their own. It will be obvious that the question of fact whether or not the seas were free at any time is vital to a decision as to their present condition and the responsibility of Germany in regard to it, and to the obligation of the United States as a defender of international right. The issue here is not one of law but one of history and comprehends not merely the history of the last three years but of the last three centuries.

But we shall be blind if we deny that what men believe to be facts is as potent as the truth itself in governing men's actions. The popular attitude and decision upon these great issues is one of vital consequence which must not be forgotten in an inquiry of this sort. Part of our task is to learn whether or not the popular decision proceeds from sentiment, prejudice, preconception, or self-interest. We must seek to understand it because it may not be within our power to control it. It seems to be true that the popular mind in the United States accepts practically without hesitation or reservation the international law espoused by the more radical theorists as a law of superior obligation which no nation may break without incurring a penalty which the nation injured has a right to exact and which is expressly sanctioned by the law itself. While sovereignty is in the popular mind a vague conception, there is no real hesitancy