goes by a seven to two vote will not go to war against the other nation in whose favor the Council has decided, that other nation having, of course, accepted the decree made in its favor. Don't be misled. It is very cleverly drafted. It is not phrased as if it was an exercise of the power of the Council. It is phrased in the form of the covenant of the party. The Council makes the decision. "Well," asks the Senator, "what do you want councils for but to make decisions? Could there be anything more delightful and peacemaking than that the Council should sit and make a decision and then adjourn? No harm in that, surely." What about the position of the nation. against whom they have decided? It has covenanted that under no circumstances will it resort to force as against the nation in whose favor the decision has gone. The unsuccessful disputant must acquiesce or break its covenant.

Now, my friends, right in the center of the discussion of these questions growing out of the league, there is a great, big moral question which some of our friends seem to overlook. As good a man and as wise a man as Mr. Taft has declared time and again (if he is correctly reported) that we must not take these covenant obligations too seriously. After we have covenanted and after the inexorable logic of the situation requires that we shall live up to the obligations of the covenant, it must, in the last analysis, (he tells us), be open to the Congress of the United States to repudiate the commitment of our representative and refuse to do the thing which logic and fairness call upon us to do.

Now, I do not deal as much in adjectives as some do. I think nouns are more effective. But that is the contention. You will pass upon it and decide whether or not it is the kind of contention which is likely to meet the acceptance of the American public when they understand what it means. It is equally true, under our own system of government, that after the Supreme Court has made a decree, it is up to the executive to see that that decree is carried into effect. Once in history, a President-I will not mention his political party-a President said in anger (referring to the great Chief Justice) -"John Marshall has issued the writ: let him enforce it if he can." Such an utterance brings about a collision between the departments of government, which is not creditable to the

organization. Think of such a situation in the case of the League. The covenant is that we will not resort to force. The decision has gone against us. We must either stand bound by the decision to which we have subjected ourselves in a vital matter or we must say "We cannot stand it-we cannot stand it! This was not the kind of a case that this document was ever intended to deal with. We shall accordingly break our covenant!" If we do this, against us there will be turned not merely the moral scorn of the world, but the material force of the League.

It is perfectly true, as the Senator says, that no power on earth but ourselves can make us send our sons to fight abroad. But the point is that we won't let them stay at home if we assume this obligation and take it seriously; and there can be no manner of doubt that the thing which we are required to do by the Covenant is, in certain contingencies, to send them abroad to take part in a fight without an opportunity to decide on which side they will range themselves.

The Senator refers to Article X-all Senators know everything that is in the Senate files—and, therefore, he must know the history of that article. Some years ago, President Wilson made a speech at Atlanta, in which he explained what a great thing it would be if all the nations of the Western Hemisphere should reciprocally guarantee one another's political independence and territorial integrity. The idea seemed so good to him that a treaty was drafted and sent informally to the Senate and passed around to see what impression it made upon the international lawyers in that body. It was unanimously repudiated as an impossible proposition. It was pointed out that there were situations in South America, notably as between Chile and Peru, which would be affected by any such provision in such a way that you would be repressing the national craving for independence, or for the reunion of a South American Alsace to a mother France, that you would be repressing that craving,-that you would be putting a straight-jacket on some of the weaker nations of the southern hemisphere in the interest of the stronger. The thing was never pressed. It was withdrawn. It reappears as Article X of the League of Nations, and is now made applicable to the whole world.

Next you are seriously told that Article X and

Article XXI are nothing more than the extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the whole world. Article XXI first misdescribes the Monroe Doctrine. The Senator is quite right in saying that if you want to call a thing that is not a regional understanding, a regional understanding for the purposes of the document, that goes. And so it does. That is a mere matter of description; and it does not make much difference whether it is accurate or not. But the point is that Article XXI provides that regional understandings "like the Monroe Doctrine" shall not have their validity impaired if they tend to maintain the peace of the world. Who decides? The Council. The Monroe Doctrine was not intended to promote the peace of the world. It was an announcement by the United States that certain words spoken to us would be fighting words. It was an announcement that under certain circumstances the best interests of the country may require that there should be a fight; and that all the world should take notice of the fact. The Monroe Doctrine is no more preserved by Article XXI than it is by any other article in the Treaty. A case under the Monroe Doctrine goes to the Council for decision just the way the immigration question goes, just the way the tariff question goes, just the way the coastwise trade question goes, just the way the Panama Canal question goes, just the way that every question goes which has two ends to it and is regarded by one party as being a matter of domestic concern, and by the other as a matter of international concern; and the Council may decide the merits of the question by a vote of seven to two; and the nation against which it decides is bound. My friends, let us not be deceived by words. If you want this thing, take it; but take it with your eyes open. This thing is not an international council of conciliation. It is just as shrewd a corporate voting trust, perpetual in its character, as a Philadelphia lawyer ever put into the middle of a reorganization agreement. It is an offensive and defensive political alliance, contrived to place forever in the hands of a dominant group of great powers the control of international affairs.

I am pointing out to you that we are talking about a principle. The gentleman may say that if we are wrong, we

ought to be willing to take our medicine. If seven nations can be found to say we are wrong, we ought to be ready to admit our wrongness. That is not wise constitution making. When the issue arises people do not see rights and wrongs the same way. Where your adjudicating body is not a judicial body but an executive body, it is bound to decide the question on the expediency of the moment, and according to the political considerations that affect the nations which the councillors represent. Don't forget that. We have here an international voting trust of nine nations, dominated by five. It has power to decide by a seven to two vote any question affecting the peace of the world which may be referred to it, and the party against whom it decides is bound by the decision. If the Council itself refers it to the Assembly of Nations, or if either of the disputants refers the case in the first instance to the Assembly of Nations, you are likewise bound if, in addition to the seven votes in Council, a majority of the remaining thirty-six nations,—that is, nineteen, vote with the Council. That is very interesting. Did you notice that in the original Covenant, unanimity in the body of delegates was required, saving for the parties in controversy? When they produced the last amended draft, the inevitable tendency toward centralization had already begun to work even while the Peace Conference was in session, and they accordingly substituted, in this second draft, majority action in the Assembly of Nations. It is, therefore, no longer a question of thirty-six nations voting outside the Council; it is nineteen out of the thirty-six; and of those nineteen, Great Britain (in addition to her imperial vote in Council) has five votes. Fourteen votes is precisely equal to those which the South American Republics would be likely to cast with Great Britain on any question affecting trade relationships and some of the other questions that I have referred to.

This is a league of the second type, which operates by delegating to a central organization the power to decide great international questions in great emergencies and to bind member-states by the decision. Now if you are of opinion that we should have a league of that type, let me give my reason for declaring this to be a very poor specimen of its type. In the last analysis, every nation must place its reliance

either upon a legislature or upon a court or upon the executive. England trusts Parliament. They have worked out a system of individual and constitutional liberty, the equal of anything the world has ever seen. We have pinned our faith upon a court. The secret of the success of our constitutional experiment is that sentence in the Constitution which vests the judicial power of the United States in the Supreme Court. When our friends take as an analogy the success of the Constitution of the United States, I ask you to consider what would have been the success of our experiment if, instead of vesting the judicial power in the Supreme Court, the Constitution had vested it in the President and his Cabinet? The nation which trusts the executive rather than the legislature or the judiciary always ends in tyranny. Kaiserism is nothing but the executive raised to the nth power. The Kaiser had a little legislature, the Reichstag, and he had a little court. This covenant contains a provision that the international voting trust, when it gets ready, may create a court but only with jurisdiction to decide those questions which both disputants choose to submit.

The point I wish to make in closing is this: That if you are going to build the United States into the structure of a larger governmental concern, for God's sake, take account of our American constitutional experience, and do not subject the world to executive control, or subordinate to the executive not only the legislative but the judicial function. It is an awful thing to contemplate nine people sitting over yondereight unknown Europeans and perhaps one unknown American deciding not merely questions that are properly executive, but questions that are properly legislative, and questions that are properly judicial. It is perpetuating for all time, the kind of governmental control over international affairs which we tolerated for the period of the war when we said to the President and his Cabinet, Take over the railroads and the telegraphs and cables and food control, and fuel control, and price fixing, and all the rest of it." It is in war-time that the executive shows itself to be the strong arm of government in an emergency. But do not, under the influence of the war spirit and the impassioned eloquence of the adherents of this covenant, allow yourselves to be betrayed into confiding to execu