the associated qualities of virility, and there are numerically twice as many of them; SO that holding them in check against a weaker nation is a matter that calls for co-operation and helpfulness.

Clemenceau and the ruling class in France generally hope to encompass future security by extending French territory to the eastward, using the Rhine as a barrier, and so crippling Germany that it will be impossible for her, at any time within several generations at least, to attack France successfully. It was not only Wilson's method with Clemenceau, which was very happy, but the gradual growth of the French Premier's conviction that the use of direct force would be less effective than the League of Nations, that brought him around to the advocacy of the idea. So, a few weeks

after President Wilson's arrival, the League of Nations idea was accepted, and the debate turned on the question of the number and size of the teeth that should be put into it.

There was another thing that drove Clemenceau toward the Wilson proposals. He is a man without a party and with not too many friends in official circles, and the politicians are after his scalp. He was a very great man as a war Premier, but the vast rebuilding work that must be done in France is not a work that appeals to his temperament. Wilson's friendly approach and the efficacy of the plan presented by him therefore overcame Clemenceau's dislike of theories and his partiality for a victory expressed in terms of things-like territory, rivers and mountains, and good hard cash.

MMEDIATELY after the adjournment

IM

of Congress on March 4 President Wilson left Washington on his way back to Paris, and that evening he reached New York, where he addressed a large audience in the Metropolitan Opera House. On the same platform with him appeared former President William H. Taft, who had long been an active and ardent advocate of a League of Nations. The large auditorium was thronged. The Democratic President and the Republican ex-President came on the platform arm in arm amid vociferous applause. Mr. Taft's address preceded that of Mr. Wilson. Turning to the first important covenant of the League as proposed-limitation of armaments he explained how each nation could decide for itself whether to abide by the Executive Council's decision or not, and went on:

The importance of providing for a reduction of armament every one recognizes. It is affirmed in the newly proposed Senate resolution. Can we not trust our Congress to fix a limitation safe for the country and stick to it? If we can't, no country can. Yet all the rest are anxious to do this. They are far more exposed than we.

The character of this obligation is affected by the time during which the covenants of the League continue to bind.

There is no stipulation as to how long this is. In my judgment, there should be a period of ten years or a permission for any member of the League to withdraw from the covenant by giving a reasonable notice of one or two years of its intention to do so.

The functions of the Executive Council in arbitration and mediation were explained, Mr. Taft insisting that machinery for these purposes subjected the United States to no danger of being compelled to receive immigrants from Japan and China, since we could refuse to submit the question to arbitration, and, in his judgment, the council as a mediating body should not take jurisdiction.

Even if there were mediation we would run no risk of receiving from the large body of delegates of all the members of the League a unanimous report recommending a settlement by which Japanese immigrants shall be admitted to our shores or Japanese applicants be admitted to our citizenship contrary to our protest. But were it made we are under no covenant to obey such a recommendation. If it could be imagined that all the other nations of the world would then unite their military forces to compel us to receive Japanese immigrants under the covenant, why would they not do so without the covenant?

How much more are we exposed to such a danger with the covenant than without

it? I venture to think that the strained nature of this fear is an indication of the character of most of the warnings and objections that are made to the covenant. I have no objection to a clause excluding internal questions from mediation, but it is often hard to draw the line, and I think we might better rely on the common sense and justice of the combined action of all the nations of the world than to attempt a distinction which might exclude some subjects that would take on an international aspect and be a proper subject for mediation between nations.

RESISTANCE OF INVASION

Discussing briefly the covenant in restraint of war, the speaker said:

If a

It is said that this would prevent our resistance to a border raid of Mexico or self-defense against any invasion. This is a most extreme construction. nation refuses submission at all, as it does when it begins an attack, the nation attacked is released instanter from its obligation to submit and is restored to the complete power of self-defense. Had this objection not been raised in the Senate, one would not have deemed it necessary to answer so unwarranted a suggestion.

There followed an exposition of the effect of compliance and noncompliance and a discussion of the penalizing boycotting covenant, which was described as a penalty of "heavy, withering effect and as "likely to frighten any member of the League from a reckless violation of its covenant." Much stress was laid upon the difference between the obligatory boycotting covenant and the power recommendation" that any nation of contribute military and naval force to back up the decree of the Executive Council, Mr. Taft expressing the opinion that this distinction was insisted upon and reached by a compromise. pounding this point, he said:

Ex

The exercise of the military power of the League must depend upon the common and voluntary agreement of the nations in the face of the danger. The practical result of the looseness of such obligations is likely to be that the nations near the outlaw nation and near the seat of its outlawry would take up arms if the boycott failed in its full object, while those more remote would await the development of the difficulty and be content with the hostile measures short of war until the danger threatens to spread and make the matter a world war.

PROTECTING NATIONAL TERRITORY

Article X., involving the obligation to respect and preserve the territory and independence of League members, will usually not be applicable until a war has been fought to a point showing its specific purpose, the article affording protection in the conclusion of a treaty of peace, Mr. Taft said. He cited Secretary Seward's attitude when Spain attacked Chile and Chile appealed to this country and that of President Roosevelt in the Venezuelan matter as showing the Monroe Doctrine to mean that the United States would not interfere to prevent non-American nations from proceeding by force to collect their debts from American nations provided oppressive measures were not used to deprive the nation of its independence or territorial integrity.

This [said Mr. Taft] furnishes an analogy for the proper construction of Article I. The fact that the Executive Council is to advise what means shall be taken to fulfill the obligation shows that the means to be taken by each nation are means which it shall deem proper and fair under the circumstances, considering its remoteness from the country and the fact that the nearer presence of other nations should induce them to furnish the requisite military force. It thus seems to me clear that the question both under Article XVIII. and under Article X. as to whether the United States shall declare war, and what forces it shall furnish, is remitted to the voluntary action of the Congress of the United States under the Constitution, having regard to a fair division between all the nations of the burden to be borne under the League, and the proper means, whether by the enjoined and inevitable boycott alone, or by the advance of loans of money or by the declaration of war and by the use of military force.

This is as it should be. It fixes the obligation of action in such a way that American nations will attend to America, and European nations will attend to Europe, and Asiatic nations to Asia, unless all deem the situation so threatening to the world and to their own interests as that they should take a more active part.

It seems to me that appropriate words might be added to the pact which should show distinctly this distribution of obligation. It will relieve those anxious in respect to the Monroe Doctrine, it might exclude from forcible intervention any issues between American nations by European or Asiatic nations until requested by

the United States or an Executive Council of the American nations formed for the purpose. Will our country be forced by these covenants into a lot of little wars all over In the first the face of the world? No. place, the existence of the League and its covenants and the immediate self-acting boycotts will restrain most nations, especially small nations, from incurring the penalty of complete world ostracism. The background of possible limited force will be a further restraint. It will minimize

war everywhere. The risk of war for the members of the League under the covenant is, therefore, not to be compared with the danger of a recurrence of general war without the League and its covenants. Into such a war we are bound to be drawn.

ADMISSION OF BRITISH COLONIES

Mr. Taft argued that the function of the body of delegates was so unimportant that the admission of the British self-governing colonies into the body was a matter of small consequence. Moreover, its decrees were required to be unani

mous.

He contended that the League of Nations should be made part of the peace treaty, and predicted that the Senate would not risk delaying peace by refusing to ratify such a treaty. He argued that the League would stabilize conditions and prevent the spread of Bolshevism.

The address pictured a league of European nations without the United States as futile, and said a return to the old "balance of power" would mean a new and worse war, into which this country would be drawn and which would amount to world suicide. The speaker argued that no constructive criticism of the document had been offered by the United States Senate, and that the President was justified in proceeding with his purpose. He affirmed with reference to the objection to entangling European alliances that Washington's attack was on "offensive and defensive alliances with one nation against another," and "if Washington lived today he would be one of the most earnest and pressing sponsors for the covenant." This war has changed the face of the world," said Mr. Taft," and America can no longer be other than a close neighbor of the European powers." Going on to further

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discussion of the League and the Monroe Doctrine, he elaborated thus:

In some speeches in the Senate intimations have been made which enlarge this doctrine beyond what can be justified. Those who would seek to enforce a Monroe Doctrine which makes the Western Hemisphere our own preserve, in which we may impose our sovereign will on the will of other countries in their own interest because indeed we have done that in the past, should not be sustained. Our conquests of our Western territory of course have worked greatly for the civilization of the world and for our own usefulness and happiness of those who now occupy that territory; but we have reached a state in the world's history when its progress should be now determined and secured under just and peaceful conditions, and progress through conquest by powerful nations should be prevented.

The idea that the conditions in America and in Europe can be maintained absolutely separate, with the great trade relations between North America and Europe, South America and Europe, is looking backward, not forward. It does not face existing conditions. I would have no objection and I would favor a recognition of the Monroe Doctrine, as I have stated it, by specific words in the covenant, with a further provision that the settlement of purely American questions should be remitted primarily to the American nations with machinery like that of the present League, and that European nations should not intervene unless requested to do so by the request of the American nations.

EUROPE'S ATTITUDE

The speaker said Europe wanted us in the League for the sake of our aid in controlling Europe and not that they might control America, and he felt they would be "relieved if the primary duty of keeping peace and policing this Western Hemisphere was relegated to us and our western colleagues."

He strongly sustained the constitutionality of the covenant and insisted that in previous treaties declared to be constitutional by the Supreme Court the same principles were incorporated. The objection that we have no right to agree to arbitrate issues, since we might thus lose our territorial integrity or our political independence, was characterized as a stretch of imagination on the part of the distinguished Senator who made it at which we may marvel." The speaker argued at length that the agree

weary months that this agony of war has lasted of the sinister purpose of the Central Empires, and we have made maps of the course that they meant their conquests to take. Where did the lines of that map lie, of that central line that we used to call from Bremen to Bagdad? They lay through these very regions to which Mr. Taft has called your attention, but they lay then through a united empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose integrity Germany was bound to respect, as her ally lay in the path of that line of conquest; the Turkish Empire, whose interests she professed to make her own, lay in the direct path that she intended to tread.

RESPONSIBLE AS TRUSTEES

And now what has happened? The Austro-Hungarian Empire has gone to pieces and the Turkish Empire has disappeared, and the nations that effected that great result-for it was a result of liberation-are now responsible as the trustees of the assets of those great nations. You not only would have weak nations lying in this path, but you would have nations in which that old poisonous seed of intrigue could be planted with the certainty that the crop would be abundant; and one of the things that the League of Nations is intended to watch is the course of intrigue. Intrigue cannot stand publicity, and if the League of Nations were nothing but a great debating society it would kill intrigue.

It is one of the agreements of this covenant that it is the friendly right of every nation a member of the League to call attention to anything that it thinks will disturb the peace of the world, no matter where that thing is occurring. There is no subject that may touch the peace of the world which is exempt from inquiry and discussion, and I think everybody here present will agree with me that Germany would never have gone to war if she had permitted the world to discuss the aggression upon Serbia for a single week. The British Foreign Office suggested, it pleaded, that there might be a day or two delay so that the representatives of the nations of Europe could get together and discuss the possibilities of a settlement. Germany did not dare permit a day's discussion. You know what happened. So soon as the world realized that an outlaw was at large the nations began one by one to draw together against her.

We know for a certainty that if Germany had thought for a moment that Great Britain would go in with France and with Russia she never would have undertaken the enterprise, and the League of Nations is meant as a notice to all outlaw nations that not only Great Britain but the United States and the rest of the world will go in to stop enterprises of that sort. And so the League of Nations is nothing more nor less than

the covenant that the world will always maintain the standards which it has now vindicated by some of the most precious blood ever spilled.

The liberated peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and of the Turkish Empire call out to us for this thing. It has not arisen in the council of statesmen. Europe is a bit sick at heart at this very moment, because it sees that statesmen have had no vision, and that the only vision has been the vision of the people. Those who suffer see. Those against whom wrong is wrought know how desirable is the right and the righteous. The nations that have long been under the heel of the Austrian, that have long cowered before the German, that have long suffered the indescribable agonies of being governed by the Turk, have called out to the world, generation after generation, for justice, for liberation, for succor; and no Cabinet in the world has heard them. Private organizations, pitying hearts, philanthropic men and women have poured out their treasure in order to relieve these sufferings; but no nation has said to the nations responsible: You must stop; this thing is intolerable, and we will not permit it." And the vision has been with the people. My friends, I wish you would reflect upon this proposition: The vision as to what is necessary for great reforms has seldom come from the top in the nations of the world. It has come from the need and the aspiration and the self-assertion of great bodies of men who meant to be free. And I can explain some of the criticisms which have been leveled against this great enterprise only by the supposition that the men who utter the criticisms have never felt the great pulse of the heart of the world.

IGNORANCE OF OPPONENTS

And I am amazed-not alarmed, but amazed -that there should be in some quarters such a comprehensive ignorance of the state of the world. These gentlemen do not know what the mind of men is just now. Everybody else does. I do not know where they have been closeted, I do not know by what influences they have been blinded; but I do know that they have been separated from the general currents of the thought of mankind.

And I want to utter this solemn warning, not in the way of a threat; the forces of the world do not threaten, they operate. The great tides of the world do not give notice that they are going to rise and run; they rise in their majesty and overwhelming might, and those who stand in the way are overwhelmed. Now the heart of the world is awake, and the heart of the world must be satisfied. Do not let yourselves suppose for a moment that the uneasiness in the pepulations of Europe is due entirely to economic causes or economic motives; something very much deeper underlies it all than that. They see that their Governments have never been