Mr. WALSH. I have followed that, and in my slight study of metaphysics, it is too deep for me. I read it over and over again and tried to put it in the blunt way I have by saying that this is a document of liberty and power or it is an essential fraud; that if we admit there is such a thing as international law, under international law it must have all the force that any other agreement has between nations, or it has not any at all. That is my conception of it, and I give it for what it is worth.

Now as long as we are a powerful nation and as long as the signatories with us have work to do for their kind of an imperialistic character in the world, so long will they carry America along with them. If we furnish the men, if we furnish the treasurer, if we spill the blood-and it must be done at once, as I will try to show before I leave my remarks-then we go along with our fellow imperialists and we are full imperialist criminals with them. But if our one man on that league of nations decides that we will not go on, then it will be found that we did not need this large army, that we will drop under a pledge that we have made to allow the council to set the quantity of disarmament or armament that may be had. We will then drop down into a small armed country. Why? Because it is not necessary to police our country. Why? Because if we refuse as a matter of fact to join with them in their imperialistic aggressions, and they have the power under it to allow Germany-we conjure hatred with that name of old, and so I mention it-if we admit Germany afterwards into the league, then England could right away have a standing army or navy to conquer any country that they desired to keep under subjection or to place under subjection, while we would have a small army if they disarmed us on land and disarmed us on sea, and we might have a navy half as large as England's, and she could have a navy twice as large as she has at the present time. And so I might go through this document. I will be glad to do it. It can be done. But I know you gentlemen have done it. I would do it if I had the power, which I doubt.

If this is not a covenant for a league of nations, what is it? Can there be any dispute about it? It is a so-called covenant of a league of nations proclaimed to the world, and honestly by its advocate by its only advocate, who I believe has followed this thing through, because there is a propaganda going on in this country such as there never has been before. On Broadway, New York, I heard a Government official connected with the Educational Department in Washington. May I without offense to the gentleman say that he has never read this league of nations covenant. But he had a crowd around him and was speaking for it to the people of the United States. I saw another man speaking for it and asking his organization to indorse. I know this gentleman has not read it.

It is called a covenant of the league of nations. It is a catchword. It first caught my consciousness. It is a catch word, and that will bring behind it those who abhor war and those who believe that some start ought to be made with a league of nations. But the truth ought to be written that it is a league to effectuate and maintain permanently the divisions of territory, and the seizing of the lives of men and women as contained in secret treaties about which the President of the United States knew nothing when he

made these utterances, about which he knew nothing when he went to Paris, and about which we knew nothing, and for the upholding and maintaining of the principles of which 300,000 of our men were killed, gassed, and wounded in foreign lands, which can not be denied here. I have read the questions asked by Senators Borah and Johnson. It is in the minds of all of you that when that Big Three sat, there were three dominating thoughts. One was a man of ideals, of honest ideals. I say that I believe that if our President could have come back to this country with every one of them put in force, his heart's greatest desire would have been met. I believe that. But when he got there, as he expressed it, he had in mind all of the principles for which we had gone to war, an end of secret diplomacy, an end of back-door intrigue, an end of the power of one man to get into a squabble with another and call to arms millions of people, the young manhood of the country that he happens to represent, that there was to be an end to this thing of dividing territory regardless of the wishes of the people, that always and ever the rights of nationalities were to be considered, that always and ever no man hereafter should have a government imposed upon him that his conscience did not approve of, but he found that secret treaties had been made absolutely abrogating every one of his 14 points. What became of the freedom of the seas?

The recognition, if you give it, and I trust in God you will not, to England's protectorate over Egypt means that England takes Turkey's right to the Suez Canal; means, if I conjure the thought correctly, that it gives England a grip on every quart of salt water in the world; this country, attempting to enforce ideals, laying down what is contained in some parts of the present proposed league of peace, the present covenant. On the other hand, what do we have? I must state it plainly. I do not believe from my observation that the French people as a people have imperialistic aims. You can not get the thought or the reaction I believe that would convince you of that. At any rate, I believe that so intent were they particularly upon getting reparation for the devastation of their country, so anxious were they to have guaranties for their future. protection, and so insistent was this demand, that it became, as the President said, a state of mind, and nothing else so far as France was concerned could be considered; and so all the press of France sounded that one note; and so everything was censored that might have anything to do with the enforcement of our ideals as expressed in the messages to Congress, in the writings and speeches of the President.

On the other hand was the representative of the King of Great Britain, Mr. Lloyd-George. He held his eyes to high heaven and said that England had no imperialistic aim in the war; that they did not propose to gain 1 yard of territory. And when they were urging us into the war, you remember how he denounced-how Mr. Asquith denounced-what they called the lie of the enemy, that they had any desire for any territorial aggrandizement. But Mr. Lloyd-George was there, and there for that purpose alone. He emerged with his mandatories or with his protectorates or whatever you call them; and I point to them and I point to Egypt and I point

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to Ireland, and I say, whatever they call them, they are always the same and I say that at the very foundation.of it, it is the desire and the purpose to economically subject the people of those countries; to keep them in practical slavery-the producing masses of those countries. The people who produce the cotton in Egypt are not allowed to manufacture the goods into textiles in their own country, but are compelled to send the raw material to England. If England did not get that economic advantage, as they have in Ireland and as they have in every country into which they have gone, she would have no concern in going in there.

I have no hatred of England. I am proud of her achievements where they have been good. But I say in the very genesis of the imperialist idea is corruption, the very thought of holding their people for economic advantage is, governmentally and internationally, if you enter into it, dishonesty.

Now, then, she emerged with an added control over something like 33,000,000 people, with an area in land, and valuable land, gold mines, diamond mines, the richest agricultural land existing in the world, in her own bag. Did she do it honestly and fairly? Can any league be a good league that has this honestly as its genesis? Was it fair. I ask-was it fair, gentlemen of this committee, let me ask-to take the lives of our 300,000 men or to cripple them; was it right to accept our aid under the declaration we made; was it right to accept our aid after Lloyd-George and Asquith had declared that they wanted no more territory, when they absolutely had the obligation so far as it could be international to hold that territory, and when they had in their minds that they would do exactly what they did do with the representative of the United States-that instead of following out the principles for which we entered the war they would get an agreement including among its signatories our powerful country, with its great resources, to effectuate and to keep forever what they had already gotten, a territory five times larger than the thirteen original States of the United States? As I say, I do not care what they call it, a mandatory or what not; they have it, and by force of arms and by the help what they think we can give them, they are going to keep it.

I would like at this point to try to direct a few observations, that may again be an answer to what Senator Brandegee asked, as to the constitution, the constituent elements, of this league of nations, and the way it is being gotten up. Some place in the world there is a committee of seven men. I do not know whether there is a democrat upon it-I mean democrat in its wide sense. I do not know whether there is a man on it that believes in the representative form of government. Has this committee been given a name-a committee to organize a league of nations? Very well, some place there is a committee sitting in the world. It may consist

Senator JOHNSON. Did anybody on this committee know that that authority had been given?

Mr. WALSH. I think Senator Fall knew it.

Senator FALL. I knew it.

The CHAIRMAN. When I shook my head, I meant that I did not know the names. We know some of the people on it by reference to the newspapers.

Mr. WALSH. I have observed them. They all have been published. The CHAIRMAN. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. WALSH. Some place sitting in the world there is a committee whose personnel is unknown in toto to the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. That committee has this important duty, if you do not know

Senator FALL. Among its other duties, it has to control the agenda. Mr. WALSH. They not only put down the primary organization, but they named the agenda for the first meeting.

The CHAIRMAN: And they also arranged the personnel and the officers of the league.

You

Mr. WALSH. They have gone even further than that, anticipating that the Senate would not perform its duty under the Constitution and advise against this if they thought that it was wrong. will refuse to give your consent to it if you believe as I do about it. Anticipating that, Sir Eric Drummond was appointed first secretary general.

I want to say to you gentlemen who, I know, have had large experience in constituting boards and bodies, that a general secretary with the power that Sir Eric Drummond has, will have more influence upon the conduct of that board than will a majority of the members. I say that because he has the ability to and he will make the suggestions as to the agendum. He is the one who will receive the protests of people who claim they are being subjected or repressed. He is the one at first hand who passes primarily upon every act that that committee will be called upon to perform. So I say, knowing the little that I do about constituting boards, and in cases where they are brought from different parts of our own country, that a general secretary of a board composed of different-speaking people from all over the world is the man who will control that body, practically, if not absolutely.

At the present time there are peoples subject to restrictions in all of the countries of the world. As I heard detailed to you the other day, the officers of the Government of Egypt have the right, so far as I can see, to be diplomatically represented in this or any other nation on earth. They showed me their papers, and they came from their own State Department, and they did not need to be viséed by Great Britain. They came to Paris. They were shocked when they came there to find that two days before they arrived the President of the United States had given out an interview in which he recognized the protectorate of England over Egypt, and adjured the people of Egypt not to commit any violence or do anything that would cause pain and suffering to the inhabitants. And these men, precluded from any effort to get into the conference, spent the balance of their time attempting to see the President of the United States, and before he left he advised Saad Pasha Zagloul that it would be impossible on account of lack of time to see him. This covenant is set up under the direction of Sir Eric Drummond in the United States. How is Saad Pasha Zagloul to come in? How is he to get in the building when he could not get in the country?

A BYSTANDER. How did the Irish get in?

Mr. WALSH. Because the Irish people had the spirit, because those Irishmen knew the genius of our country, knew that no mere prohibitory law with reference to criminals could keep a man out of

there who was making a fight for liberty. That is how de Valera got in. That is the spirit that brought him in. The people of Ireland have representatives. They have sent their envoys, sent by the regular government of Ireland, to Paris. They have to go there on some specious plea or on disregard for some restrictive statute or ordinance or regulation. The Egyptians are a great people. There are many millions of people there crying out against the dominion which they despise, in order to come into the league of nations. How did they get into the building? The answer is how did they get into the country? I have said, and I say again, that there should be no pretense that we are going to hear anyone or that we are going to have any part in European affairs if the right of every decent man to come and go freely across the earth's surface is not accorded to him, holding him strictly amenable to the laws of every country in which he may be, whether those laws are to his liking, good or bad. But we can not talk about having an international body where we have restrictive laws that would keep the men that are trying to get a voice for their people from freely attending the place where the conference is to be held.

Mr. Chairman, and Senators, this question, of course, to my mind, is not an Irish question. I want to say to you that the people of Ireland are better acquainted with our laws and our customs and the interpretation of our constitution than any other people on earth, and I say that without boasting, and they are convinced that this league of nations would not only not furnish them any help, but would be absolutely destructive to their efforts for independence, and that they would not get their independence at all until the next war between half and half of the world was settled and democracy finally triumphs. That is the answer to the question.

What did we find there? We went through Ireland; we visited it. They have separated from England. They have set up a government of their own. There is an English censorship that does not allow news to get out. We got there, and what happened in Ireland? We have it in that blue book, Gov. Dunne and myself. It can be backed up by a wealth of evidence that will make every assertion so clear that even Mr. McPherson, the chief secretary for Ireland, could not deny it. We challenged them to appoint a committee of their own to investigate conditions in Ireland. Why? Not that we would embroil the United States in any contest that Ireland is having, but in order that you may do nothing that will make the chains stronger upon Ireland.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did you read the speech that Senator Walsh, of Montana, made in the Senate the other day, in which he claimed that the only hope for the Irish cause was in the league of nations.

Mr. WALSH. I did not have the pleasure of reading that. There is so much being published now that I can not read it all, but I say this: I respectfully differ from the conclusions arrived at by Senator Walsh. As I say, I just came from Ireland. Those are intelligent people over there. We have referred to the small nations, and I say that it warms my American heart to see the way those people clamored around our headquarters. It was a sort of headquarters for the oppressed people of the earth. They have an idea that the President's 14 points are absolutely in the hearts of our people. They