one hand, any crystallization of the status quo that will defeat the forces of healthy growth and changes, and providing, on the other hand, a way by which progress can be secured and necessary change effected without recourse to war.

4. A representative Congress to formulate and codify rules of international law, to inspect the work of the administrative bodies and to consider any matter affecting the tranquility of the world or the progress or betterment of human relations. Its deliberations should be public.

5. An Executive Body, able to speak with authority in the name of the nations represented, and to act in case the peace of the world is endangered.

The representation of the different nations in the organs of the League should be in proportion to the responsibilities and obligations they assume. The rules of international law should not be defeated for lack of unanimity.

A resort to force by any nation should be prevented by a solemn agreement that any aggression will be met immediately by such an overwhelming economic and military force that it will not be attempted.

No member of the League should make any other offensive or defensive treaty or alliance, and all treaties of whatever nature made by any member of the League should at once be made public.

Such a League must be formed at the time of the definitive peace, or the opportunity may be lost forever.

This VICTORY PROGRAM is offered for the consideration and endorsement of all organizations and individuals interested in the problems of international reconstruction.

1

LEAGUE OF FREE NATIONS ASSOCIATION 1

The object of this society is to promote a more general realization and support by the public of the conditions indispensable to the success, at the Peace Conference and thereafter, of American aims and policy as outlined by President Wilson.

The particular aims, such as the liberation of Belgium, Serbia, Poland and Bohemia, and their future protection from aggression, and America's own future security on land and sea, are dependent upon the realization of the more general aim of a sounder future international order, the corner-stone of which must be a League of Nations.

The purposes of such a league are to achieve for all peoples, great and small:

(1) Security: the due protection of national existence. (2) Equality of economic opportunity.

The fundamental principle underlying the League of Nations is that the security and rights of each member shall rest upon the strength of the whole league, pledged to uphold by their combined power international arrangements ensuring fair treatment for all.

The first concern of a League of Nations is to find out what those arrangements should be, what rules of international life will ensure justice to all, how far the old international law or practice must be modified to secure that end. It is to the interest of the entire world that every nation should attain its maximum economic development, provided it does not prevent a similar development of other nations. The realization of this aim depends upon gradually increasing freedom of mutual exchange with its resulting economic interdependence. It is certain, for instance, that if anything approaching equality of eco

1 The League of Free Nations Association has recently been launched under the presidency of Norman Hapgood, with Richard S. Childs as chairman of the executive committee; Prof. Stephen P. Duggan, secretary, and Prof. Wendell Bush, treasurer. Lincoln Colcord is publicity director in a campaign to arouse American interest in the social issues at stake in the settlement, in the creation of a League of Nations and in its democratic constitution. This declaration of principles is reprinted from the Survey of November 30. p. 250.

nomic opportunity as between great and small, powerful and weak, is to be obtained, the following must be guaranteed for all on equal terms:

(a) No state shall accord to one neighbor privileges not accorded to others-this principle to apply to the purchase of raw material as well as to access to markets. Equality of economic opportunity does not mean the abolition of all tariffs or the abolition of the right of self-governing states to determine whether free trade or protection is to their best interests.

(b) States exercising authority in non-self-governing territories shall not exercise that power as a means of securing a privileged economic position for their own nationals; economic opportunity in such territories shall be open to all peoples on equal terms, the peoples of nations possessing no such territories being in the same position economically as those that possess great subject empires. Investments and concessions in backward countries should be placed under international control.

(c) Goods and persons of the citizens of all states should be transported on equal terms on international rivers, canals, straits, or railroads.

(d) Landlocked states must be guaranteed access to the sea on equal terms both by equality of treatment on communications running through other states, and by the use of seaports.

The administrative machinery of a workable internationalism already exists in rudimentary form. The international bodies that have already been established by the Allied belligerents— who now number over a score-to deal with their combined military resources, shipping and transport, food, raw materials, and finance, have been accorded immense powers. Many of these activities—particularly those relating to the international control of raw material shipping-will have to be continued during the very considerable period of demobilization and reconstruction which will follow the war. Problems of demobilization and civil reemployment particularly will demand the efficient representation of labor and liberal elements of the various states. With international commissions, and exercising the same control over the economic resources of the world, an international government with powerful sanction will in fact exist.

The international machinery will need democratization as

well as progressive differentiation of function. If the League of Nations is not to develop into an immense bureaucratic union of governments instead of a democratic union of peoples, the elements of (a) complete publicity and (b) effective popular representation must be insisted upon. The first of these is implicit in the principle, so emphasized by President Wilson, that in the future there must be an end to secret diplomacy. The second can only be met by some representation of the peoples in a body with legislative powers over international affairs-which must include minority elements—as distinct from the governments of the constituent states of the league. It is the principle which has found expression in the American Union as contrasted with the federated states of the German empire. If the government of the United States consisted merely of the representatives of forty-eight states, the Union could never have been maintained on a democratic basis. Happily it consists also of the representatives of a hundred million people. The new international government must make the same provision and deliberately aim to see that all the great parties and groups in the various states obtain representation.

The assurance of the political, civil, religious, and cultural rights of minorities within states is an even more difficult problem. But genuinely democratic parliamentary institutions in the league, ensuring some expression of minority opinion as well as complete publicity, will be a strong deterrent if not a complete assurance against tyrannical treatment of minorities within its constituent states.

Indispensable to the success of American policy are at least the following:

A universal association of nations based upon the principle that the security of each shall rest upon the strength of the whole, pledged to uphold international arrangements giving equality of political right and economic opportunity, the association to be based upon a constitution democratic in character, possessing a central council or parliament as truly representative as possible of all the political parties in the constituent nations, open to any nation, and only such nation, whose government is responsible to the people. The formation of such an association should be an integral part of the settlement itself and its territorial problems, and not distinct therefrom. It should prohibit

the formation of minor leagues or special covenants, or special economic combinations, boycotts, or exclusions. Differences between members should be submitted to its judicial bodies. Its administrative machinery should be built up from the inter-allied bodies differentiated in function and democratized in constitution. The effective sanction of the association should not be alone the combined military power of the whole used as an instrument of repression, but such use of the world-wide control of economic resources as would make it more advantageous for a state to become and remain a member of the association and to cooperate with it, than to challenge it.

All the principles above outlined are merely an extension of the principles that have been woven into the fabric of our own national life.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS SOCIETY1

The League of Nations Society (1 Central Buildings, Westminster), was founded March 10, 1915. The chairman is the Rt. Hon. W. H. Dickinson, M. P.

Program

I. That a treaty shall be made as soon as possible whereby as many states as are willing shall form a league binding themselves to use peaceful methods for dealing with all disputes arising among them.

2. That such methods shall be as follows:

(a) All disputes arising out of questions of international law or the interpretation of treaties shall be referred to The Hague Court of Arbitration, or some other judicial tribunal, whose decisions shall be final and shall be carried into effect by the parties concerned.

(b) All other disputes shall be referred to and investigated and reported upon by a Council of Inquiry and Conciliation, the Council to be representative of the states which form the league.

1 From "Approaches to the Great Settlement," by Emily Greene Balch. p. 251. Huebsch. 1918.