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the country. This is only another way of saying that Congress refused to build a big navy or adopt a policy of subsidies. Much as I personally regret the passing of an era with which my whole life has been bound up, I havè never been able to agree with the traditional argument on neither count. A merchant marine in sound standing easily recovers from fortuitous blows; for causes of its actual decay we must look deeper, to economic forces. The indifference of Congress to our maritime affairs during the last half century has itself been the result of an overwhelming economic pressure. When Commodore Vanderbilt, in the early days of the steamship era, suddenly sold out his growing steamship lines and turned his energies into railroad development, the action was significant of the whole tendency of the nation. From a strip of States fronting the sea and backed by virgin forests, we had rapidly changed into a continental nation with enormous inland forces to be organized. The maritime impulse of our early days lasted over into the suceeding era, and, as frequently happens in such a situation, reached its maximum when the economic forces that supported it were already on the wane. The break had to come. There was not in the nation sufficient manhood energy and financial power for both internal and external development. To this set of factors must be added still another, the growth of industrialism throughout the western world. Thus for two generations virtually the whole energy of the United States was to be spent upon internal development. The choice, however disastrous it may have been to our former shipping interests, from this distance seems healthy and inevitable.

REVIVAL OF INTERESTS.

But now we have undergone another economic change. A revival of maritime interest is taking place with us today. Our tonnage is advancing by leaps and bounds. In a few years we will possess a more than respectable merchant marine. Shipyards are springing up everywhere along our coast; they probably will be able to compete on equal terms with European yards for a period of five years after the war. There is plenty of capital for the enterprise. Above all, the country is now fairly well developed internally. The farmers and merchants, the men of the interior, are awakening to the significance of maritime affairs. It looks like a real national maritime expansion this time. What international policy shall we pursue?

The conservatives, in the temper of those British conservatives who built the Alabama and set her loose upon our shipping, claim that we should look singly to our own interests, and that it is nothing to us what any other nation thinks or does. Their strong views are apt to emanate from an inaccurate belief in our past naval achievements and to disregard the total change that has come upon the relations between commercial and naval sea power with the development of modern armaments and models of propulsion. By closing their minds to the interests and activities of other nations, they lose sight of several very important considerations.

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The liberals also believe that it is not for us to be subservient in the matter. Trade and commerce are for all, and no nation must be permitted to hold a monopoly of the ocean routes. The American liberal is quite willing to enter into a discussion of subsidies or preferential tariffs and port charges, at any time when we are actually unable to compete with foreign commerce. But he . . . believes that, regardless of Civil War incidents, the American merchant marine would have gone on developing side by side with the British merchant marine, and without hindrance from British sea power, if it had not been for a shifting of economic forces within our own country. (New Republic, IX, 240-242; Dec. 30, 1916.)

G. [§287] WORKING IN UNION WITH OUR ALLIES.

1. Specific References on the Section.

Bullard, A. "Our Relations With France," in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 118, pp. 634-640 (Nov., 1916).

2. Working with the Commissions sent over here.

3. An Understanding as to our common Objects.

4. Recognition that at present they are holding back our Enemies from any immediate Power to reach us.

5. If we do not help them hold.

(a) We shall have the Germans on our necks.

6. German Invasion.

(a) Would mean the same kind of military government and treatment of non-combatants as in Belgium, France and Serbia.

7. Documents and Extracts on the Section.

(a) [§288] No Formal Alliance.

BY COMMISSIONER ARTHUR J. BALFOUR (April 25, 1917).

WILLINGNESS OF AMERICA TO AID.

No man who has had the opportunity which I have enjoyed in the last few days of seeing, hearing and talking to leading members of your State can for one moment doubt the full determination of the American people to throw themselves into the greatest conflict which has ever been waged in this world. I do not suppose that it is possible for you-I am sure it would not be possible were I in your place-to realize in detail, in concrete detail, all that the war means to those who have been engaged in it for now two years and a half. That is a feeling which comes, and can only come, by actual experience. We on the other side of the Atlantic have been living in an atmosphere of war since August, 1914, and you cannot move about the streets, you cannot go about your daily business, even if your affairs be disassociated with the war itself, without having evidences of the war brought to your notice every moment,

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NEED OF ASSISTANCE.

I arrived here on Sunday afternoon and went out in the evening after dark, and I was struck by a somewhat unusual feeling which at the first moment I did not analyze; and suddenly it came upon me that this was the first time for two years and a half or more when I had seen a properly lighted street. There is not a street in London, there is not a street in any city of the United Kingdom, in which after dark the whole community is not wrapped in a gloom exceeding that which must have existed before the invention of gas or electric lighting. But that is a small matter, anad I only mention it because it happened to strike me as one of my earliest experiences in this city.

FORMAL TREATIES NOT EXPECTED.

Gentlemen, I do not believe that the magnitude of that assistance can by any possibility be exaggerated. I am told that there are some doubting critics who seem to think that the object of the mission of France and Great Britain to this country is to inveigle the United States out of its traditional policy, and to entangle it in formal alliances, secret or public, with European powers. I cannot imagine any rumor with less foundation, nor can I imagine a policy so utterly unnecessary.

Our confidence in this assistance which we are going to get from this community is not based upon such shallow considerations as those which arise out of formal treaties. No treaty could increase the undoubted confidence with which we look to the United States, who, having come into the war, are going to see the war through. If there is any certainty in human affairs, that is certain.

SIGNIFICANCE OF AMERICAN AID.

Two years and a half have gone since the war began, and the great public on this side of the Atlantic has been watching, with deepening interest, the blood-stained drama going on across the ocean, and I am well convinced that as each month has passed, so has the conviction grown among you that after all it is no small or petty interest that is involved in this war, it is no struggle for so many square miles of territory, for some acquisition, some satisfaction of small national ambition. It was nothing short of the full consciousness that the liberties of mankind are really involved in the issue of this struggle that was animating the allied countries.

With such a cause the American public has always been in full sympathy, and now, after watching it through all these months, you have found yourselves impelled to join in the great conflict. I feel perfectly certain that you will throw into it all your unequalled resources, all your powers of invention, of production, all your man power, all the resources of that country which has greater resources than any other country in the world, and already having come to the decision, nothing will turn you from it but success crowning our joint efforts. (New York Times, April 26, 1917.)

(b) [$289] Alliance With the Allies.

BY CARMAN E. RANDOLPH (April 26, 1917).

Making war against Germany, the United States makes with the Entente Powers a spiritual alliance cemented by democratic ideals, a working alliance enlisting our financial aid and whatever reinforcement on sea and land shall speed a victorious peace. The Great Alliance is a fact. Should it crystallize into form?

A FORMAL ALLIANCE POSSIBLE.

A formal alliance is not discouraged by the familiar warning regarding Europe in Washington's Farewell Address-that "it must be unwise to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the vicissitudes of her politics or in the ordinary combinations or collisions of her friendships or enmities." This broad counsel is followed by the shrewdly discriminating advice: ""Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world. . . . Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies." An extraordinary emergency now makes an alliance permissible. What considerations of fact, of law, of diplomacy bear on the question of its expediency?

No authorization by Congress is needed; nor the Senate's approval, as for a treaty. While the Compact ranks with a treaty in honorable obligation, it is essentially a military measure—an executive agreement. Emphasizing the right of the President to sign the Compact of London our adhesion would be impolitic, both from our standpoint and that of the Entente.

The President could sign this Compact in virtue of his right, nay, his duty, as Commander in Chief, to make, if circumstances warrant, an agreement with brothers in arms that will at once solidify the striking power of the entire group and avert the possibility that withdrawals of recalcitrant members might leave the Republic in the lurch.

KINDRED AIMS WITH ALLIES.

We may expect a Congress of Nations after the conclusion of peace. Probably some of the problems of the war will necessarily be referred to it for final settlement, but a just assurance of concrete results demands their accomplishment in the very conditions of peace imposed by victors sufficiently powerful to make these conditions effective, sufficiently wise, magnanimous—aye, compassionate-to make them bearable by the defeated peoples. The aims of the Entente Powers and those of the United States will not be discordant. Conference, sincere and intimate, will not only avert this mischief, but bring reciprocal toleration in matters whereon formal agreement may be unattainable or undesirable. But these aims are, apparently, not entirely identical, nor need they be pressed to identity by mutually reluctant compromises, for it will appear that the variations are quite natural and need not impair the essential unity of method and purpose.

IS ALLIANCE DESIRABLE?

$$289-290] 305 President Wilson said in his memorable war address of April 2: "We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make." To this self-denying ordinance, so rightfully proclaimed, the outraged neighbors of Germany do not subscribe. They have heavy scores to settle, new boundaries to draw, neighborhood problems to adjust; and the "balance of power" purged of dynastic ambitions will concern far-sighted statesmen. The Republic will neither formally commit itself to such aims as these, nor dissuade the Entente Powers from pursuing them.

COMMON UNDERSTANDING DESIRABLE.

We are not surprised, though none the less gratified to know that at present no formal alliance is expected from us. Speaking for the Entente Powers, Mr. Balfour said with characteristic felicity of thought and word: "Our confidence in the assistance which we are going to get from this community is not based upon such shallow considerations as those which arise out of formal treaties. No treaty could increase the undoubted confidence with which we look to the United States, who, having come into the war are going to see it through."

Reserving his right to make hereafter such allowances as military exigencies may demand, the President might properly display to the Powers the firm foundation of their faith and pledge the Republic to the course on which it is firmly resolved-linked with the Entente Powers in a common aim of world-wide concern, to fight with them to the end. The pledge might lose point were the aim supplemented by others, however worthy in themselves; and, accomplishing this, the Great Alliance will clear the way for whatever projects may engage their interest. Indeed, our Commander in Chief could not pledge the Republic to any other than a military obligation.

(New York Times, April 26, 1917.)