League to prevent it. We would not be compelled to act as the sole policeman of this hemisphere, as we are now under the Monroe Doctrine. Instead of the doctrine being imperiled, it is strengthened. Its violation would, in every case except that of the sale of territory, be a direct violation of the legal rights of one of the nations of this hemisphere and would be a case for the League Court, brought by the assailed nation against its assailant. The judgment would be one which the United States would probably be delegated to enforce, acting exactly as it does in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine independently.

President Wilson said that a league of nations would extend the Monroe Doctrine to the world. Now, if it is extended to the world, I presume it would remain in the Western Hemisphere. The object of such extension of the doctrine would be to prevent the very thing which the United States resents, namely, the overthrow of weaker nations by force, and that is what all this machinery is provided for. The language of Article X is: "The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression, the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled."

This is a declaration against the disturbers of political independence and territorial integrity everywhere. I cannot read it in any other way. If that be so, the League and the United States will be maintaining the same thing, and signing the treaty will only give to the United States the protection of the League in its traditional attitude.

When the Monroe Doctrine was declared by the United

States, many American statesmen thought that it would certainly involve us in constant wars. For nearly a century, however, it has been peacefully and successfully maintained. Not a shot has been fired by the United States, not a soldier of the United States has been killed or injured in support of it. Its mere announcement, coupled with our known determination to enforce it, has dispensed with the necessity for the exercise of force.

It is a mistake to suppose that, under the League covenant, the armies of the United States are to be called into distant countries. We must expect the Executive Council to be reasonable in its recommendations in this respect not only because it will wish to be just but because it will want to act promptly in suppressing disturbance and the threat of war, and it can do this best by calling upon nations which are close at hand and which can do the work of the League most conveniently and economically. Moreover, with the unanimity required of the Council by a proper construction of the covenant, the presence of our representative in that Council will naturally make certain only a proper assignment of the League's work to the United States. The assumption that membership in the League will involve us in frequent wars is directly contrary to its purpose and natural operation. Its potential primitive force will prevent the coming of war.

Finally comes the question, my friends, whether we are willing to run the risk involved in joining the League. How much risk is there? I have tried to show that the risk is the danger of a boycott, the cost of a boycott, divided up between all the nations of the League, the risk involved in consenting to limit armament, after we have learned and consented to that limit, and the agreement to pay the

1

expenses of a secretariat of the League jointly with other nations. As a consideration, we secure the strength of the union of nations in common action and a common purpose to suppress war and make peace permanent.

I appeal to the women who hear me: Do they want war again? Are they not willing that we should make concessions now in order that we may avoid war ten and twenty years hence? Do they wish their children and their grandchildren subjected to the suffering that we have seen England and France and Italy undergo? It not this the time when enduring peace is to be born - when everybody is impressed with the dreadful character of war, and the necessity for avoiding it, when all the nations are willing to make concessions? Isn't now the time to take our share of the responsibility and say to our brothers: "We realize that the sea no longer separates us but is become a bond of union. We know that if a war comes to you, our neighbor, it will come to us, and we are ready to stand with you in order to keep off that scourge of nations. In the love of our brother we will do our share as men and women conscious of the responsibility to help along mankind, a responsibility which God has given this nation in giving it great power."

LEAGUE OF NATIONS AS BARRIER TO ANY GREAT WARS IN FUTURE 1

The practical working of this covenant will be to suppress and avoid most wars. Of course, hypotheses can be imag

1 Address at the National Congress for a League of Nations at the Odeon, St. Louis, Feb. 25, 1919.

ined that will break down any constitution, even that of the United States, or any plan of the kind I have described; but this plan has a real bite in it, a real mutual obligation for union of the lawful economic and military forces of the world to police the world and prevent the recurrence of such another awful war as that from which we have just emerged. I have said " from which we have just emerged.” That is a wrong term to use. I should use the expression "which we are now trying to end in such a way as to achieve its purpose and make the peace a stable and permanent one."

You have heard Mr. Morgenthau describe, with trenchant accuracy, the conditions that now prevail in the sphere of war in Europe, and the danger there is from the spread of Bolshevism and from a reaction to autocracy as a desperate antidote for Bolshevism. Some who oppose the covenant most are blind to the critical conditions now existing in Europe, are blind to the absolute necessity for a league such as this covenant creates.

. . From time immemorial a most frequent subject matter of treaties is an agreement to submit differences to arbitration. The earliest treaties made by the United States with England and the Barbary States, and with other countries, contained a clause providing for such arbitration.

Since that time we have had numbers of treaties of arbitration, among them general treaties of arbitration. These latter excepted some classes of questions, it is true, but they were general treaties, notwithstanding, in that the character of the differences could not be anticipated. Not by the wildest stretch of the imagination can such an agreement be construed to be a delegation of governmental powers or a parting with sovereignty. It is no more a curtailment of sovereignty than is the obligation of a man to abide the judg

ment of an impartial court, or the award of an agreed arbitration, an infringement on his liberty secured by the constitution.

... This covenant does not create a super-sovereignty it is only a loose obligation among the nations of the world by which they agree to unite together in a policy of submitting their differences to arbitration and mediation, to withhold war until those efforts have proved unsuccessful and to boycott any nation which violates the covenant to comply with this obligation. It provides a method for reaching an agreement as to a limit of armament and an obligation to keep within that limit of armament until conditions shall require a change by a new agreement. The agreement on the part of one balances the agreement on the part of others in securing a general reduction of armament. It does not impair our just sovereignty in the slightest it is only an arrangement for the maintenance of our sovereignty within its proper limits: to wit, a sovereignty regulated by international law and international morality and international justice, with a somewhat rude machinery created by the agreement of nations to prevent one sovereignty from being used to impose its unjust will on other sovereignties. Certainly we, with our national ideals, can have no desire to secure any greater sovereignty than this.

The argument that to enter this covenant is a departure from the time-honored policy of avoiding entangling alliances with Europe is an argument that is blind to the changed circumstances in our present situation. The war itself ended that policy. Res ipsa loquitur. We attempted to carry it out. We stayed out of the war three years when we ought to have been in it, as we now see.

We were driven into it because, with the dependence of all