nents of the measure in both Houses. The new measure differed from the old in that it included a proviso against the permanent institution of Government control. A Shipping Board was to be established, which could create a corporation with a capital not exceeding $50,000,000 for the purchase, construction, and operation of merchant ships as might be deemed advisable. The Government was, in the first instance, to hold not less than 51 per cent. of the stock, but its ownership of the vessels built or purchased was limited to a term not exceeding five years from the end of the European War. In that form the Bill was passed by the House of Representatives in June, and after a few weeks in the Senate went to the President for signature at the end of August. The first members of the new Shipping Board were actually appointed in

December.

The final enactment of the fourth of the great preparedness measures-for the creation of the Federal Reserve Board with its district banks must be regarded as the first-marked the culmination of a notable constructive achievement. Within three years credit throughout the Union had been placed on a new basis; an efficient home defence Army had been organized; the provision of American ships for the transport of American goods had been assured; and the protection of a Navy second to only one in the world guaranteed. And it was to a President elected pre-eminently on a programme of domestic reform that Americans owed their new sense of the

stability of their country in the commonwealth of nations.

The sincerity of President Wilson's repeated declarations that the new strength with which his policy had invested the United States would never be used for purposes of aggression was questioned in neither hemisphere. But his purpose involved much more than mere abstention from aggression. Armaments, he was satisfied, were an essential safeguard through an indeterminate period of transition to more stable international relations, but he worked consistently and unremittingly for the creation of agreements, sanctions, and guarantees that should make the prospect of war progressively more remote. Towards that goal he moved along three lines. His endeavours for the elimination of the danger of war on the American continent have already been discussed.I They were supplemented on a larger scale by the treaties concluded with a number of European and American Powers, agreeing that all disputes of every nature whatsoever not covered by existing arbitration treaties should be referred, in the event of other methods of settlement failing, to an international commission." These agreements went far towards averting the danger of war so far as the United States itself was concerned, but President Wilson was not satisfied that their formulation constituted the maximum contribution of his country to the preservation of the peace of the world. early life had been concerned

' Chap. viii. p. 138.

The studies of his

with the constitu

Chap. viii. p. 152.

tions and relationships of nations, and he believed firmly in the possibility of an international court that should hold the scales-and if need be the sword-of justice between the nations, just as they were held by judicial systems between citizens of an individual State.

That belief was not peculiar to Mr. Wilson. Thought both in America and in Great Britain was moving steadily in the same direction, and actual schemes were being worked out by men of weight and discernment in either country. In America constructive thinkers had evolved the conception of a League to Enforce Peace, its advocates including jurists of the experience and distinction of ex-President Taft and Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State in Mr. Roosevelt's second Administration. The proposals of the League included four main articles, providing

1. That all justiciable questions on which no agreement was reached should be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judgment.

2. That all other questions should be submitted to a council of conciliation for hearing, consideration, and recommendation.

3. That the signatory Powers should jointly take economic and military action against any of their number committing hostile acts against a co-signatory before the question in dispute had been submitted as provided above.

4. That conferences should be held between the signatory Powers to formulate and codify rules of international law.

Any critical student of such a statement can

find some point where he would desire amendments of detail, and in giving his general assent to the scheme advanced by the League to Enforce Peace Mr. Wilson has never suggested that he commits himself to approval of every line of every clause. But he does find in the League's proposals a reasonable and practical basis for constructive work for the preservation of peace, and he associated himself publicly with those proposals in a notable speech delivered at a dinner of the League at Washington in May 1916.

In the course of a declaration that attracted world-wide attention, the President pointed the diplomatic and political moral of the war then at its height, and laid down the doctrine that in the future the principle of public right must take precedence over the individual interests of particular nations, and that the nations of the world must in some way band themselves together to see that right should prevail as against any sort of selfish aggression. “I am sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America," added Mr. Wilson, "when I say that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secure against violation." His hopes were more clearly defined in a later passage of the same speech, in which he pictured "a universal association of all nations to maintain the inviolate security of the seas for

The principle of the League to Enforce Peace is fully and ably discussed in Mr. H. N. Brailsford's recent book, A League of Nations (Headley Bros., 5s. net).

the commerce and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the world-a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence."

Those words were not spoken to America alone. Confirmed as they were four months later in the President's speech of acceptance on his nomination as Democratic candidate, they challenged, or at the least invited, response from the great nations of the world. The response was not lacking. In the course of the next few months the two recognized spokesmen of the opposing groups of belligerents, Viscount Grey and Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg, both made direct and public references to the American proposals. Viscount Grey, at a luncheon to representatives of the Foreign Press in London in October 1916, spoke of the activities of the League to Enforce Peace as a work in neutral countries to which we should all look with favour and with hope." On one of the League's proposals in particular the Foreign Secretary laid special stress, associating himself with the school of Mr. Wilson, rather than with that of Mr. Bryan, by his warning that "if the nations in the world after the war are to do something more effective than they have been able to do before to bind themselves together for the common object of peace, they must be prepared not to undertake more than they are prepared to uphold by force, and to see when the time of crisis comes that it is upheld by

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