a league in America and abroad provide for disciplining a recalcitrant nation. A fundamental provision of all of them is that they will make war in common on the nation which attacks a fellow signatory without previous reference of the dispute to inquiry.

To omit this provision is to fail to discourage war. Development of the various international institutions we have now -Court of Arbitration, Commission of Inquiry, and Hague Conference, will, it is true, make for peace. But only general agreement to use force against a nation which attempts to go to war without previous inquiry into the dispute will positively discourage war. And the world is quite disposed to adopt the positive measure in order to secure that great end.

Now, what will happen if a single one of the great powers is left out of a league which is based upon that principle? Is it not plain that the nation we attempt to discipline will at once fall back on the outsider for help, and that world catastrophe will again ensue? In other words, a sine qua non of the present league plans is that the circle of the league must embrace an overwhelming preponderance of military power, force so overpowering that no nation will be so foolish as to refuse the reasonable demand for an inquiry.

Cropping up here and there is a disposition to treat Germany as an outcast, to exclude her from the League until we ascertain whether the change of spirit be real, i.e., to put her on probation. What could be more conducive to a false start? We have made certain, by the terms of the armistice, that she cannot make another such wanton assault on the peace of the world for years to come. We are forcing her, most properly, by money loss and loss of territory, to expiate her crimes. And the German people themselves are making sure that the "Potsdam gang" shall not again ride their necks. Now let us, for our own sake, act as Christians.

A League of Nations is bound to be supposited on good faith and on the ultimate triumph of good sense and reason among the many. We begin with faith in Great Britain, France and the United States as our cornerstone, because of kinshipkinship either of ideals and political institutions or of historic background. We move forward to faith in Italy and Japan, as great nations which have a strong sense of right. We include

without question the progressive secondary powers, such as Switzerland, Holland and the Scandinavian countries. We can afford to, with these as a basis-in fact, we must-found the League also on faith in our former enemies, burned white by the fire of an awful experience.

Furthermore, it is union, not dismemberment, that makes for peace. Witness the bloody feuds for generations along the Scotch-English border until these two lands united. Witness the centuries of strife between city, states and principalities in Italy until Cavour came to still it all by creating a united Italy. Witness the early internal condition of all the European lands until strong central government appeared. If Germany and Austria are to be genuinely democratized—and what reason have we to doubt it?-why not encourage continued union, under a system of local self-government throughout the area of each of the former empires? To encourage dismemberment of these states with a view to weakening them is not in the interest of future peace.

Germany's practices in the war are unspeakable. Worse still is the great blood-guilt of bringing on the war. Some things are unforgivable. Frankly, her deeds fall in that category. There will be neither forgetting nor forgiving by the generation that witnessed them. They have all the elements of criminality. Intent was there and the attempt was not abandoned through repentance but only when a full accomplishment of the deed became impossible. But the spirit that informs the criminal law as practiced by the modern world is prevention, not revenge. And this is the spirit which has thus far motived the Allies.

In 1870-71 Germany was not invaded. Not a German building was destroyed. Yet she expected of prostrate France five thousand million francs indemnity and tore from her two fair provinces. Acting on that principle the Allies would have added to their present demand for reparation untold millions as indemnity for the actual money outlay of the war. But, moved by a high wisdom, they have done nothing of the kind. Not a penny of actual indemnity has been demanded. When some inferior soul cheats us we do not boil over in anger. We feel rather a great pity for the darkness in which it moves. If we feel impelled to bring the culprit before the bar of justice it is by reason of no other motive than public interest.

Just punishment makes for prevention, and this punishment the German people are getting. But the armistice is untouched by the soiling fingers of either revenge or greed. It holds before it the single aim of prevention, and the truly great men who are guiding the destinies of triumphant civilization today see that, in order to prevent a return of the awful experience we have just passed through, we must have international organization from which no great state can be left out.

FREEDOM OF THE SEAS1

To the Editor of The New York Times:

The troublesome question of the freedom of the seas will not be solved until the more important question of a League of Nations is attended to by the statesmen of the great powers. The freedom of the seas and what it means can be comprehended only in the light of the rights of neutrals on the high seas. Freedom of the seas means making the seas free for neutral commerce in time of war. This principle, when applied in a concrete way by American statesmen and writers, has resulted in their advocating the exemption from capture at sea of private property, contraband excepted.

But it is very easy to see that a League of Nations when using a sea power in the interests of the community of nations ought not to have any obstacles placed in the way of making sea power effective. When used for enforcing the principles of international government, no question of neutral rights can be raised, for there will not be any such status as neutrality which a nation will be allowed to assume. This, of course, does not mean that the sea power that may be used in the future by the League of Nations will be used in any such way as Germany has used her submarines. The old rules should be followed in respect to saving ocean passengers and crews, it is true. But the old rules of blockade, of contraband, of continuous voyage, will be displaced entirely by the new rule that sea power backed by the community of nations can do all that is necessary to check the warlike operations and the commerce of the nation that is breaking the world's peace.

1 New York Times, November 10, 1918.

The United States has constantly advocated the freedom of the seas, because its interests have been along the line of keeping out of war. Its interests have seemed to demand a policy of neutrality, and it has resented the acts of any nation which used its naval power in such a manner as to injure neutral commerce. President Roosevelt in his annual message to Congress of Dec. 7, 1903, recommended that that body authorize the Executive to correspond with the great powers with the view of securing general recognition of the freedom of the seas by the concrete method of exempting private property at sea from capture with the exception of contraband of war. No agreement has ever been reached on the proposition.

The experience of this war, however, has shown that it is impossible to remain neutral when a war is carried on on such a large scale. Our interest in the future would seem to be in cooperating with other nations to prevent as far as possible the outbreak of war. If this co-operation cannot be secured we must fall back on our former proposition and again champion with all our might the freedom of the seas as concretely put forward by President Roosevelt and by earlier leaders of the American people. We shall have to begin once more with the Declaration of Paris, the Declaration of London, and with the more recent Code of Neutral Rights, which has been prepared by the American Institute of International Law.

EARL WILLIS CRECRAFT.

FREEDOM OF THE SEAS1

The Allies have accepted all of the American terms with two exceptions. They have extended the demand for reparation to all damages inflicted upon civilians, and in this the President rightfully concurs. They have questioned the clause demanding the freedom of the seas, but this the President cannot withdraw without repudiating the historic policy of the United States from Washington to Wilson inclusive. The interference of England with our navigation was one of the chief causes of the Revolution, as the Declaration of Independence recites. We fought England again in 1812 in defense of the same right, but

1 Independent. p. 196. November 16, 1918.

failed to get it assured in the Treaty of Ghent. Nor during the century since have we been able to make our views prevail in the world at large and today there seems little chance of it. England and France have always opposed the American doctrine of the freedom of the seas and they still do. Prussia, which was the first of the foreign powers to accept it, has been in the Great War the most ruthless violator of it and we cannot trust her present profession of it. President Wilson's polite but plain spoken remonstrances at the beginning of the war against British interference with the freedom of trade and navigation without even the pretense of a blockade had no effect, and since our sympathy was wholly with the cause of the Allies we had no disposition to insist upon our technical rights. But when Germany began her barbaric warfare upon the high seas we promptly entered the conflict and brought Germany to her knees. It was our third war for the freedom of the seas, or our fourth if we count the war against the Barbary States to protect the shipping of the Mediterranean.

The question must be brought before the peace conference for discussion, but it is evident in advance that the opposition will be too great to carry the idea thru in its original form as enunciated by Franklin, Jefferson and Washington. President proposes a different solution:

But the

Second-Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

This asserts the freedom of the seas but not as an inalienable and irreducible natural right. It recognizes that it may be necessary to limit this freedom, but declares that the power to do it shall not as at present be in the hands of whatever nation happens to have at any time the most powerful navy but be exercised solely by international action for international aims. The League of Nations shall be mistress of the seas. In this form the doctrine ought to find acceptance even from those countries that have hitherto opposed it.