we must admit that there actually exist normal and subnormal nations.

No person in the United States, I suppose, has a more intimate knowledge of Latin-America than the President of this American Academy. If I were to ask him the question directly he would say: "Yes, with few exceptions the Latin-American states are not on the same footing of civilization and government as most of the modern nations." They may arrive at that high stage, but their ideas of government and their methods of government are different, and they will remain different for some time to come.

There is no use trying to say that we are on an equality with Paraguay and Venezuela and Eucador or for the matter of that with Mexico. We know in our own mind that that is not the way we feel. We know we do not treat them as we insist on being treated. If an American goes anywhere we must follow him and protect him-and that principle is gaining ground. If a Mexican comes over into Texas his neighbors lynch him. Do we protect him? Do we allow Mexico to come over and protect him? No. That is to say, as a matter of fact, all the large powers and most of the small powers in the world recognize the fact that the world is made up of units of different weight. Now, this identical fact was taken up, so to speak, in the League of NationsI mean to say the present incomplete League which looks like a Tower of Babel in process of simplification.

To me it is absolutely futile for us to try to connect the American government with the other governments under that system. Not because it was a bad system-I did not lose many hours of sleep even over Article X-I thought we could manage that. I thought that if a crisis arose the United States could take care of itself, that it was not likely to be squeezed by Article

X. Nevertheless, many people felt that it would be dangerous. Hence, nothing is going to be accomplished, there is no good to be reached, by the attempt of any body of persons in the United States to persuade the present Administration that the United States ought to accept the League of Nations about as it stands. I should have liked to see it adopted with or without amendments. I could live safely under it and I think my children and grandchildren could. Still, I must say that I see no hope of the League being adopted by a series of amendments, even amendments suggested by the United States government and then adopted abroad.

It is not worth while to go into a discussion of the League. What I want to say is simply that unless we recognize that there is a difficulty there, inherent in the minds of Americans, a part of our political adjustment at the present moment, we shall never advance toward a system of international community.

THE PLACE OF ASIA

Again, we must recognize that Asia stands on a different footing from England. Asia the wonder, the miracle of the world; Asia the seat of empires, the starting point of the human race; Asia which has produced the only three world religions-Buddhism, Mohammedanism and Christianity, every one founded by an Asiatic; Asia, land of infinite learning and science and philosophy. A few years ago I stood in the City of Kashing in China-I had never heard its name before-and there was a tablet to show that 3,000 years ago there was a city on that site. Where were our ancestors 3,000 years ago? They were not building cities; they were still struggling toward civilization.

We must accept China as a world condition. We must likewise take

India into international account. I learned when I was in India that there are only about 2,000 civil service Englishmen who are drawing large salaries and getting a good living out of the region. As a matter of fact, England has put more capital into India than she has ever taken out. Nevertheless how on earth can 46,000,000 people, a divided people at home, indefinitely manage a great community of 315,000,000? Anybody who has been out there must recognize that eventually Asia is going to rise up. We must admit it as a basic fact. Asia is bound to demand the admission of the civilized people of China and India into the family of nations.

NEW INTERNATIONAL LAW Another necessity of the time is to recognize the changes in international law; and that is a fundamental. We have an uncertain body of recorded principles of international law-and I was struck in the recent meeting in Washington by the way in which those principles were developed and turned over, and rolled like a sweet morsel under the tongue, leaving the real international law unregarded. For instance, what is the policy of the United States with regard to the freedom of the seas? We know what it has been for a hundred years previous to 1914. We know what it was in the first years of the war, but when we went into the war we absolutely turned our back upon that theory. Anybody can see that if there is to be a war in the future the United States is a nation that will always rely on the biggest war ships, because we shall have them. The United States will attack its enemies where they can be hurt, by attacking their commerce, as was done in this war; no kind of a shackle can you put on the United States or any other great maritime power to compel it to go back to

that doctrine of the freedom of the seas, which has been so dear to us and which we supposed was permanent.

Take the question of humanity in war. It depends upon the ground principle that it is not worth while to kill a non-combatant or destroy an undefended town, because that does not get you anywhere; you are no further along. It is not supposed to be good sport to kill a wounded enemy, because he is out of the fight anyway. But in the last war it was to military advantage to kill wounded enemies. That is why so many wounded were killed-killed by the English, by the French and by Americans-because if you left your wounded enemy he would wait until your back was turned, then he would shoot you, and you knew it.

What does "cleaning up the trenches" mean? We all know what it means. If you are to stop that kind of thing you can not do it by preliminary Red Cross agreements. Those agreements were worth nothing against Germany in 1914 when Europe was confronted by a powerful army and nation that was determined not to be bound by them.

NEW INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

That leads to a very brief outline of what, it seems to me, can be done in the way of new international relations. In the first place, you must create a new body of international law-but not by an international legislature. You can not make international law by a body of international delegates. You can not even make all the law of the United States by the two Houses of Congress as they are constituted today. Therefore, the way to bring international concord about is on the same lines on which it has been going for fifty years; namely, by a succession of international conventions upon one subject after another, such as may be made by direct treaty but which can better be made by

general treaties with a large number of subscriptions.

For international harmony we need an administrative body, and that is the great merit of the Covenant of the League of Nations, namely, that the final decisions are made by the great statesmen of the various countries gathered together. Here again we are down on the bed rock of facts. There is not one single community in the United States, not a state, not a city in the Union, that would ever dream of the United States being habitually outvoted by the other twenty American Republics with their population of 80,000,000, against our population of 105,000,000. We never will or can go into any international organization upon the principle of "one community, one vote." We will not accept it. No large power will accept it. No combination of small powers can put it over. Therefore, we must have some kind of organization corresponding to the Council of the present League now operating for European powers in Europe.

In the next place, that body must be able to make decisions within certain limits that have been prescribed for it, because otherwise it is nothing. An international body without authority to say anything is like a melon without a rind-it has no substance upon which you can operate.

Third, there ought to be an international court, principally because so many good people think that it is desirable, not because an international court can ever do what we want most. The thing that the world is crying and calling and screaming for is not a court which decides who is in the wrong after the wrong is committed; we want some influence, some power, that is anterior to the wrong. For that is the only way we can possibly stop war.

In conclusion, we need peace. We

must have peace. How are we going to achieve it unless we have some kind of an international organization that will get to work within the next five years and will include the United States. I care not what you call itLeague, Association, any name that means the nations of the world grouped together under the necessary superior power of those who have the superior power. It is not a question of giving eight, ten or twelve powers a decision in such matters. They have that decision now, whenever they choose to organize and assert it. A court which can decide justiciable matters will undoubtedly remove many controversies from diplomacy; only somehow or other it sticks in my mind that justiciable cases are self-defined as cases that could be settled without a court.

Thus we arrive at a conclusion. There is no world association, there is no world court, in the true sense of the name, without some power of "putting it over." No critical decisions can be made by unanimous consent, including the consent of the wrongdoer. Our danger is a danger at noonday, it is the bursting bomb, the flying airship, the submarine suddenly coming. The modern conditions of war are such that the world is no longer protected simply by agreements, nor by any process which means the submission of a dispute to somebody, in the expectation that nobody is to move until that dispute is decided. There is just one thing that will stop war, and that is some kind of moral and physical combination which, in the last resort, can confront, prevent, and, if necessary, crush the powers of evil. If a Gorgon state like Germany arises again, there is only one way to check it, and that is international accord.

For God's sake let us take some steps toward having that accord prepared before the contest.

IN venturing to present a brief con

sideration of the present situation in Europe in its relation to economic reconstruction across seas and the restoration of industrial activity in America I will not hazard certain final, and irrevocable opinions. Nevertheless, I am compelled to say that among the impressions which I carried home with me none was more enduring or indeed more painful than that the settlements attempted to be made by the several treaties of peace, and notably those of the Trianon, St. Germain and Versailles, are not just, wise or lasting settlements.

At this time, and in view of the negotiations pending and of the mission of conciliation and true peace which must be America's, I hesitate to set down specifically matters of bitter controversy in Europe, but I shall allude to some instances in which the treaties of peace are provocative of future differences if not of future wars. I speak of the political clauses, of frontiers set down, for example, to the east of Hungary which follow no principle of nationality, of economics, of strategy, or of geography. If you please, I speak of that which has transpired and which is yet to be done in Silesia. We can not doubt that, when the frontier is there delimited, it will disappoint both the Poles and the Germans. Inasmuch as that has been privately foreseen from the beginning we can not but regret that at the outset the frontier was not delimited by a commission instead of awaiting the conclusion of a long electoral campaign and a plebiscite, with the consequent turmoil and hatred by them engendered.

In considering the Europe which has been made by these treaties we must bear in mind that at this moment at least two great states have disappeared, Russia, by her own resolution and by the blockade established about her, and Austria-Hungary, which, although an ethnic mosaic, was an economic and administrative unit. administrative unit. We have today in Eastern and Central Europe-we have, that is, to the west of Russia, seven new states. There are other states which are new in form, enlarged or dwarfed by the terms of the treaty. In each there have been established by legislation or executive decree, arbitrarily, tariffs, restrictions upon travel, upon railway transit, upon commerce, which, combined, are almost tantamount to an economic blockade.

Wherever the traveler goes, if he be not traveling upon a diplomatic passport, his baggage is subjected to examination and reëxamination, and his passport to scrutiny and inspection as when during the war he crossed from the territory of one belligerent through that of a neutral into the territory of the first belligerent. A freight train—a rare and occasional freight train, carrying goods from the country of their originis halted at the frontier in order that everything may be unloaded by hand from that train and loaded into another belonging to the country for which the goods are destined. Indeed, such is the general suspicion, the universal illwill and distrust under "the charter of a new day," that no state in Central Europe will confide its railway cars even momentarily to the keeping of another lest they be stolen and never returned. You can very

readily understand, then, how it happens that, when in one state there has been a surplus of coal and a deficiency of wheat, and the reverse has been true in another a hundred miles away, it has been impossible to effect an exchange in order to relieve the shivering population of one and the starving population of the other.

The governments are not alone responsible. Many of the peoples are moved by a nationalism, a chauvinism greater than that which preceded the outbreak of the Great War. Today, two years after the signing of the Armistice, despite the disarmament of the defeated countries, there are under arms west of Russia more men than there were in Western and Central Europe before the outbreak of the great conflict.

I suggested above that the economic policy, and indeed the military policy, of the small states is determined not only by responsible statesmen but by public opinion. Public opinion, no doubt, in great part is responsible for the French policy as to reparations. France attempted, formally at least, to fix the sum of the reparation in advance of the determination of the sovereignty of Silesia, attempted to determine the ability of the German people to pay for the injury done under the direction of the German General Staff before it was decided whether or not the vast industrial area of Silesia should be included among the productive assets of Germany or of Poland.

Before I turn to the general policy which it seems to me ought to move the Government of the United States in the matter of the sums due it by the European powers, I wish to submit for consideration some tables which were prepared for me in the Statistical Division of the Library of Congress and at the Treasury. You will recall that under the terms pro

posed to the German Government Germany was to pay five hundred millions a year for the first two years, an average of a billion a year for the ensuing nine years, and a billion and a half annually for thirty-one years thereafter. In short, it was proposed to be required that Germany export, first half a billion, then an average of a billion, and then a billion and a half annually in excess of the sum of her imports. During the five years before the outbreak of the Great War the sum of German exports averaged a little less than two billion dollars annually, while her imports were a little in excess of two billions three hundred millions annually. In short, Germany imported three hundred and fifty millions more than she exported. If we may judge by the increase in imports and exports of other powers, ascribable to the inflation of money values, if we agree that German exports may be increased from two billion to four billion annually, and that her consumption of foreign products be so diminished that their monetary value shall not exceed three billions annually, she will be able to export the billion a year required of her. That seems difficult if not improbable. But it would be further required of her, under the terms proposed at London, that she pay in excess of the fixed annual charge 12 per cent of the value of the total volume of exports, or, in round numbers, six hundred millions more.

I do not know the extent of the readers of Professor Keynes, but I confess that as I have gone over these tables and those of the revenue of the German Empire and of the aggregate revenue of the German states, I doubt no less than he does the capacity of the German people to meet the terms of such an indemnity. It is essential that a settlement be had. It is essential that Europe turn to its economic recon