JX 1908 06 M3 1918 COPYRIGHT, 1917 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1917. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This work aims not at a comprehensive narrative of the origin and growth of opinion on that greatest of problems - adequate international organization - but is confined largely to developments with which the writer has been personally connected. Due largely to its endeavour to confine its program to the realizable in the present stage of world opinion and prejudice, the American movement appears to have been accepted abroad more freely than that of any other group. Progress beyond the hope of its originators is already recorded. But as we are still in the full tide of events in this field the author hopes to follow the present publication with a second volume. 233051 FOREWORD This little book is a history of the movement in the United States to secure action by the United States and other Nations, after this great world war, looking to the establishment of a League to Enforce Peace. Mr. Marburg, the author, is a student of international law, a publicist, and a diplomat of marked ability and learning. Under the last Republican Administration, he was United States Minister to Belgium. With great public spirit he has always been active in associations for the promotion of arbitration and judicial settlement of international controversies. Mr. Marburg, with Mr. Holt of the Independent, was the first to move for the formation of a League to Enforce Peace, and has been most diligent and effective in promoting the League ever since. The principles and project of the League to Enforce Peace, as projected by the American Section of its promoters, are few and simple. Shortly stated, they look to the peaceable procedure for the hearing and decision of all international controversies, to be enforced by the joint power of the nations of the world. The force is to be applied in securing the due process under the agreements of the League. It does not extend to the enforcement of the judgment or recommendation of compromise which shall be the result of the hearing. The essence of the plan is the delay and deliberation involved in orderly procedure for the hearing and decision of the controversy. It is thought that most wars can be avoided by such a procedure, and the force is to be applied against the premature hostilities of any nation which violates its plighted faith under the League by beginning war before the |