The League instead of being an abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine will aid in its maintenance because violations of the Monroe Doctrine beginning with threatened hostilities by a European or Asiatic power against one of the American Republics would be halted by the League with an examination of the ground of quarrel by a court or commission.

Then it is said that the League is unconstitutional in that it will turn over to a council of representatives of all the world power to plunge us into war, whereas the Constitution vests Congress alone with power to declare. This is a misconception. We enter into the treaty through the treaty-making power of the President and the Senate. The treaty binds us in a certain event to contribute our share to a world police force and thus help to restrain or suppress the beginning of war in violation of the terms of the League. Our nation must perform this obligation in the way enjoined by the Constitution. That is, Congress must act by proper declaration, furnish the force and authorize the Executive to act. The course is exactly the same in a national promise to pay money to another nation. The treaty-making power makes the agreement, and when the time for performance arrives Congress must make the appropriation. In either case Congress may refuse to do so and thus break the obligation which honorably binds the Government, but the original agreement is not therefore unconstitutional.

If Congress recognizes the binding force of the obligations, Congress must still determine and is the only power which can determine whether the event has occurred which requires the United States to furnish its quota of police. Therefore, the League is neither unconstitutional nor does it put in the hands of a council of foreign nations power to plunge us into hostilities unless Congress decides that under the League the time has arrived for us to take action.

OPPOSITION TO FORCE FOR AN INTERNATIONAL PEACE LEAGUE1

All international associations or agreements for the promotion of the world's peace have hitherto been voluntary; that is, there has been no sanction behind the decisions of the international tribunals or behind the international agreements.

If any signatory of the agreements or treaties, or any party to arbitration, declined to be bound by a decision of the tribunal which had been created or by the provisions of an international convention, there was no means of compelling such signatory to abide by them, a fact which has been most dismally demonstrated since this war began.

The chief practical result of international associations for the promotion of peace has taken the form of arrangements for the arbitration of disputed questions. The subjects of these arbitrations have been limited and the submission of the nations to the international tribunals and their decisions has been purely voluntary. Much good has been obtained by voluntary arbitration. Many minor questions which a hundred years ago led to reprisals, and sometimes to war, have been removed from the region of armed hostilities and brought within the range of peaceable settlement. Voluntary arbitrations, which have gone on in steadily increasing number and in the promotion of which the United States has played a large, creditable, and influential part, have now reached, as they were certain to do, their natural limits; that is, they have been made to cover in practice all the questions which can at present be covered by voluntary arbitration. The efforts which have been made to carry voluntary arbitration beyond its proper sphere-like our recent treaties involving a year's delay and attempting to deal with the vital interests of nations-are useless but by no means harmless. They are distinctly mischievous, because in time of stress and peril no nation would regard them, and a treaty which can not or will not be scrupulously fulfilled, is infinitely worse than no treaty at all. No greater harm can be done to the cause of peace between the nations than to make treaties which

1 By Henry Cabot Lodge, Head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From a speech delivered in the Senate, February 1, 1917.

will not be under all conditions scrupulously observed. The disregard of treaties is a most prolific cause of war. Nothing has done more to envenom feeling in the present war or to prolong it than the disregard of the treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium and the further disregard of the Hague conventions, for this has implanted in the minds of men the belief that treaties bring no settlement and are not worth the paper upon which they are written; that the only security of peace is to be found in the destruction of the enemy and in placing an opponent in a physical condition where he is unable to renew war, because there is no assurance of safety in a duly ratified treaty.

If, then, voluntary arbitration and voluntary agreements, by convention or otherwise, without any sanction, have reached their limits, what is the next step? There is only one possible advance, and that is to put a sanction behind the decision of an international tribunal or behind an agreement of the nations; in other words, to create a power to enforce the decree of the international courts or the provisions of the international agreements. There is no other solution.

I have given a great deal of thought to this question and I admit that at first it seemed to me that it might be possible to put force behind the world peace. The peace and order of towns and cities, of states and nations, are all maintained by force. The force may not be displayed-usually there is no necessity for doing so-but order exists in our towns, in our cities, in our states, and in our Nation, and the decrees of our courts are enforced solely because of the existence of overwhelming force behind them. It is known that behind the decrees of the courts of the United States there is an irresistible force. If the peace of the world is to be maintained as the peace of a city or the internal peace of a nation is maintained, it must be maintained in the same way-by force. To make an agreement among the nations for the maintenance of peace and leave it to each nation to decide whether its force should be used in a given case to prevent war between two or more other nations of the world, does not advance us at all; we are still under the voluntary system. There is no escape from the conclusion that if we are to go beyond purely voluntary arbitration and purely voluntary agreements, actual international

force must be placed behind the decisions or the agreements. There is no halfway house to stop at. The system must be either voluntary or there must be force behind the agreement or the decision. It makes no difference whether that force is expressed by armies and navies, or by economic coercion, as suggested by Sir Frederick Pollock. It is always force, and it is of little consequence whether the recalcitrant nation is brought to obedience by armed men and all the circumstance of war, or by commercial ruin, popular suffering and, perhaps, starvation, inflicted by the major force of mankind under the direction of the League for Peace. It is ever and always force.

...

I know well the question which can be put to me, and probably will be put to me here and elsewhere: "Are you, then, unwilling to use the power and influence of the United States for the promotion of the permament peace of the world?" Not at all; there is nothing that I have so much at heart. But I do not, in my eagerness to promote the permanent peace of the world, desire to involve this country in a scheme which may create a situation worse than that which now exists. Sometimes it is better to "bear those ills which we have than fly to others that we know not of." There are measures which will promote peace and which are wholly practicable. The first and most important is the protection of our own peace against foreign attack. That can only be done by national defense, and we have no adequate national defense now. We have no means of repelling the invasion of a great power as it must be repelled, and such weakness, combined with great wealth, constitutes an invitation and a temptation to war. Against that danger we should insure ourselves by adequate national defenses, and by reducing the danger of war being forced upon us we to that extent promote the peace of mankind and we likewise put ourselves in a position where our influence and power in the world for the maintenance of general peace would be enormously increased.

The next thing to which we ought to address ourselves on the conclusion of this war should be the rehabilitation and reestablishment of international law. International law represents a great mass of customs and usages which have become law and which have been observed, cited, and referred to by the nations. International law has had an ever-increasing power

on the conduct of nations toward each other. The fact that it has been violated and disregarded in many instances during the present conflict is no reason for adopting the counsel of despair and saying that it is of no value and must be abandoned. It is of enormous value and should be restored and upbuilt on the conclusion of this war with all the energy and influence which we can bring to bear. We should try also, within the necessary and natural limits, to extend the use of voluntary arbitration, so far as possible, and create, as we can well do, a powerful public opinion behind the system. We can also do much in urging a general reduction of armaments by all nations.

GERMANY AND A LEAGUE OF NATIONS1

In view of the position taken later on in this article it is necessary to remind the reader that from the beginning of the great war the writer urged America's entry into it to defeat Prussianism. A single extract from a statement he was privileged to make to The New York Tribune a few weeks after the war began, namely, September 19, 1914, will serve to establish this:

The cruel way in which devoted little Belgium is being trampled to death simply because it lay in the path of a war-mad Government makes one's blood boil. The Germans, dominated by a ruthless military class, are moving back the practices of the world. I am not in favor of the United States embroiling itself unnecessarily in European controversies, but a state of affairs exists in Europe which, if the love of decency in international conduct and of fair play and of common justice is in our hearts, must_lead us openly to espouse the cause of England and her allies. Germany is not and has not for years been amenable to reason. Only force will avail. She must be beaten to her knees to stem the flow of barbarism, to free the German masses from the grip of the bureaucracy and ruthless military class, and to arrest militarism itself. The cause of militarism will continue to spread over the world until the bureaucracy and military class of Germany are overthrown.

Holding these views and endeavoring, in his feeble way, by pen and speech to advance them to the very end of the struggle, the writer feels the more at liberty to make an earnest plea now for the generous admission of the new Germany to full membership in the League of Nations. A principal reason for this position is that all the leading plans for

1 By Theodore Marburg, formerly United States Minister to Belgium. In New York Times, November 24, 1918.