XV

ABROAD

The duty of securing foreign cooperation in the movement rested on a special committee.21 The writer, who was rashly entrusted with the chairmanship of this committee, was in England for two months in the winter of 1916. He prepared an article for The Nation,22 conferred with many individuals on the subject, and addressed several groups. Lord Bryce was most generous of his time and most helpful in this connection. Through his instrumentality the writer was given an interview at the Foreign Office on Mar. 17 with Viscount (then Sir Edward) Grey, who declared his hearty sympathy with the project of the League and expressed the view that if some such plan had been in operation when the present war threatened, Germany would have been forced to accept the offer of a conference and the war

would not have been. He added that he would even go further than our program: he would enforce the judgment or award if the people would stand for it. Like Mr. Taft he felt that, in the general interest, nations should face the possibility of an occasional adverse decision and be willing to submit all questions to arbitration or judicial decision.

But several attempts to draw from him an expression of opinion as to whether the Great Powers would in fact accept this additional feature of a common agreement brought no result. It was evident that he himself entertained doubts on this score. And here let it be said that, while enforcement of the judgment of the Court or award of the tribunal of inquiry and conciliation would undoubtedly make for justice and put a much more effective check on war, great practical difficulties stand in the way of getting such a program accepted. For example, the United States might have up the question of the Monroe Doctrine,

Japan the question of Korea or Manchuria or of her influence in China, Great Britain the question of Gibraltar or Egypt or India. Would the governments of these countries consent to enter into a league which compelled them not only to submit such questions for a hearing but also to abide by the award?

There is a general feeling among the advocates of the League, both in England and in the United States, that, in contradistinction to the awards of the Council of Conciliation, the judgments of the Court, supposed to deal with purely justiciable matters, should be enforceable. As already indicated, the difficulty is that some tribunal, preferably the Court itself, must pass upon the question of jurisdiction. So the query again immediately presents itself: Will the Great Powers consent to enter into an agreement which involves the risk of having questions which may not be purely justiciable, questions which may really arise out of conflicts of political policy,

interpreted as justiciable questions and so brought within the area of compulsory settlement? In a letter addressed to the writer on Jan. 11, 1916, Lord Bryce said: "To me your plan of compelling recourse to arbitration, rather than using compulsion at a later stage, seems the better plan.”

At this time Lord Bryce's group was still at work on its enlightening examination of the project. The Fabian Society, the League of Nations Society, and several individuals had published most helpful studies of the problem. G. Lowes Dickinson, who was a leading member of several English groups and who had presented some of the results of their studies in an American magazine, was on a special pilgrimage to the United States to confer with the leaders there. From the beginning there has been a desire on the part of both the American and English groups to have their programs harmonize, and in all essentials they really do harmonize.

Following the interview with Sir Edward Grey the writer made to him by letter (Mar. 25) the suggestion that "just as Lincoln, in the middle of our Civil War, won the sympathy of the world for the Northern cause by his Proclamation of Emancipation, so Great Britain and her allies would greatly advance their cause, already strong, in the neutral world, and would at the same time stiffen the purpose of their own peoples and armies, by declaring for some sort of joint guarantee of peace on the part of the great nations — President Wilson's phrase to be set up after the war." In his reply, dated Apr. 7, Sir Edward stated that he was entirely in sympathy with what had been urged, that the difficulty was in making public announcements at a time and in language which prevented them from being misunderstood, but that the matter would be kept in mind.

While Sir Edward's general attitude on European affairs pointed to him as a