CHAPTER VIII

A COURT OF REASON

THE idea of appealing to reason rather than to force — of settling vital disputes in court rooms instead of bloody angles is not novel. Nor is the working out of the idea in programmes and proposals similar to those advocated by the League to Enforce Peace. More than two hundred years ago (1713) the Abbé Castel de St. Pierre published a book entitled Projet de Traite pour rendre la Paix Perpetuelle. It will be recalled that this was directly after the Treaty of Utrecht had been signed concluding the wars waged on the Continent during the early years of the eighteenth century. As outlined in this Project, it was proposed to organise a League of Nations whose members would all bind themselves to uphold and maintain public law by agreeing to the following six proposals:

1. The Sovereigns are to contract a perpetual and irrevocable alliance, and to name plenipotentiaries to hold, in a determined spirit, a permanent diet or congress, in which all differences between

the contracting parties are to be settled by arbitration or judicial decision.

2. The number of the Sovereigns sending plenipotentiaries to the congress is to be specified, together with those who are to be invited to accede to the treaty. The presidency of the congress is to be exercised by the Sovereigns in turn at stated intervals, the order of rotation and term of office being carefully defined. In like manner the quota to be contributed by each to the common fund, and its method of collection, are to be carefully defined.

3. The Confederation thus formed is to guarantee to each of its members the sovereignty of the territories it actually possesses, as well as the succession, whether hereditary or elective, according to the fundamental laws of each Country. To avoid disputes, actual possession and the latest treaties are to be taken as the basis of the mutual rights of the contracting Powers, while all future disputes are to be settled by arbitration of the Diet.

4. The Congress is to define the cases which would involve offending States being put under the ban of Europe.

5. The Powers are to agree to arm and take the

offensive in common and at the common expense, against any State thus banned, until it shall have submitted to the common will.

6. The plenipotentiaries in congress, on instructions from their Sovereigns, shall have power to make such rules as they shall judge important with a view to securing for the European Republic and each of its members all possible advantages.

It will be noted that the fifth proposal does not differ in principle from the third proposal of the League to Enforce Peace—except that the League does not propose to enforce awards and decisions, nor compel submission of disputes so long as actual war is not begun. If the Abbé's plan was not accepted and made operative at once it was not because it was impractical but because it was not practicable then. "I have yet many things to say unto you," said Jesus to his impatient disciples, "but ye cannot bear them now," (John 16:12). Great ideas, like great men, are sometimes born into the world before the world is ready for them. In 1713 the "fulness of time" had not come. But the seed that fell on stony ground has not died. This time we shall plant it in more fertile soil.

Nor was St. Pierre's plan the only one evolved and elaborated. As early as 1623 M. Emeric

Crucé1 launched a similar project. And twenty years before St. Pierre's book was printed William Penn wrote and published his "holy experiment in civil government " 2 which also contained a proposal to use military force against any sovereign who refused to submit a dispute to an international body to be set up for the purpose of hearing and deciding international questions. Penn's plan, like St. Pierre's, included the enforcement of compliance with decisions. William Ladd's essay on a Congress of Nations was published in 1840. Kant, Bentham and the elder Rousseau also promulgated similar ideas in their generation.

Now, at last, it seems to be the consensus of opinion that the time is not premature for a definite movement in the direction of an international understanding and agreement that will make for international concord and the lessening of the likelihood of war. Beyond question it is the fact that the League does not essay the impossible which accounts for the enthusiasm with which it has been received and approved by practical statesmen, diplomats, and men of affairs all over the world.

The fact that the President of the United States

1 See his book, Le Nouveau Cynée.

2 Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of an European Dyet, Parliament, or Estates.

has enthusiastically endorsed not only the central idea of a league of nations but the proposals of the League to Enforce Peace for insuring the world against future wars is a matter of first importance to all Americans. In his address before the first national convention of the League held in Washington, D. C., May 27, 1916, he said: "The peace of the world must henceforth depend upon a new and more wholesome diplomacy. Only when the great nations of the world have reached some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be fundamental to their common interest, and as to some feasible method of acting in concert when any nation or group of nations seeks to disturb those fundamental things, can we feel that civilisation is at last in a way of justifying its existence and claiming to be finally established. . . . So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America when I say that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realise these objects and make them secure against violation. . . . If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate a movement for peace among the nations now at war, I am sure that the people of the United