entered into in the constitutional way and it is to be performed in the constitutional way.

It is said that to enter into such a compact would require us to maintain a standing army. I do not think this follows at all. If we become, as we should become, reasonably prepared to resist unjust military aggression, and have a navy sufficiently large, and coast defenses sufficiently well equipped to constitute a first line of defense, and an army which we could mobilize into half a million trained men within two months, we would have all the force needed to do our part of the police work in resisting the unlawful aggression of any one member of the League against another.

Fourth, it has been urged that for us to become a party to this League is to give up our Monroe Doctrine, under which we ought forcibly to resist any attempt on the part of European or Asiatic powers to subvert an independent government in the Western Hemisphere or to take from such a government any substantial part of its territory. It is a sufficient answer to this objection to say that a question under the Monroe Doctrine would come under that class of issues which must be submitted to a Council of Conciliation. Pending this, of course, the status quo must be maintained. An argument and recommendation of compromise would follow. If we did not agree to the compromise and proceeded forcibly to resist violation of the Doctrine, we should not be violating the terms of the League by hostilities thereafter. More than this, as Professor Wilson, of Harvard, the wellknown authority upon international law, has pointed out, we are already under a written obligation to delay a year before beginning hostilities in respect to any question arising between us and most of the Great Powers, and this neces

sarily includes questions relating to a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. It is difficult to see, therefore, how the obligation of such a League as this would put us in any different position from that which we now occupy in regard to the Monroe Doctrine.

Finally, I come to the most formidable objection, which is that entering into such a League by the United States. would be a departure from the policy that it has consistently pursued since the days of Washington, in accordance with the advice of his farewell address that we enter into no entangling alliances with European countries. Those of us who support the proposals of the League believe that were Washington living to-day he would not consider the League as an entangling alliance. He had in mind such a treaty as that the United States made with France, by which we were subjected to great embarrassment when France attempted to use our ports as bases of operation against England while we were at peace with England. He certainly did not have in mind a union of all the Great Powers to enforce peace; and while he did dwell, and properly dwelt, on the very great advantage that the United States had in her isolation from European disputes, it was an isolation which does not now exist. In his day we were only three and a half millions of people, with thirteen States strung along the Atlantic seaboard. We were five times as far from Europe as we are now in speed of transportation, and many times as far in speed of communication. We are now one hundred millions of people between the two oceans and between the Canada line and the Gulf. We face the Pacific with California, Oregon and Washington, which alone makes us a Pacific power. We own Alaska, the northwestern corner of our continent, a dominion of immense extent with

natural resources as yet hardly calculable and with a country capable of supporting a considerable population. This makes us a close neighbor of Russia across the Bering Straits; while ownership of islands in that sea brings us close to Japan. We own Hawaii, 2,000 miles out to sea from San Francisco, with 75,000 Japanese laborers constituting the largest element of its population. We own the Philippine Islands, 140,000 square miles, with eight millions of people, under the eaves of Asia. We are properly anxious to maintain an open door to China, and to share equally in the enormous trade which that country, with her 400 teeming millions, is bound to furnish when organized capital and her wonderful laboring populations shall be intelligently directed toward the development of her rich natural resources. Our discrimination against the Japanese and the Chinese presents a possible cause of friction, since the resentment that they feel may lead to untoward incidents. We own the Panama Canal in a country which was recently a part of a South American confederation. We have invested 400 millions in that great world enterprise to unite our Eastern and Western seaboards by cheap transportation, to increase the effectiveness of our navy and to make a path for the world's commerce between the two great oceans.

We own Porto Rico, with a million people, and we owe to those people protection at home and abroad, as they owe allegiance to us.

We have guaranteed the integrity of Cuba, and have reserved the right to enter and maintain the guaranty of life, liberty and property and to repress insurrection in that island. Since originally turning over the island to its people we have had once to return there and restore peace and order. We have on our southern border the international

nuisance of Mexico, and nobody can foresee the complications that will arise out of the anarchy there prevailing. We have the Monroe Doctrine still to maintain. Our relations to Europe have been shown to be very near by our experience in pursuing lawfully our natural rights in our trade upon the Atlantic Ocean with European countries. Both belligerents have violated our rights, and in the now nearly two years which have elapsed since the war began we have been close to war in the defense of those rights. Contrast our present world relations with those we had in Washington's time. It would seem clear that the conditions have so changed as to justify a seeming departure from advice directed to such a different state of things. One may reasonably question whether the United States, by uniting with the other great powers to prevent the recurrence of future world war, may not risk less in assuming the obligations of a member of the League than by refusing to become such a member in view of her world-wide interests. But even if 'the risk of war to the United States would be greater by entering the League than by staying out of it, does not the United States have a duty, as a member of the family of nations, to do its part and run its necessary risk to make less probable the coming of such another war and such another disaster to the human race?

We are the richest nation in the world, and in the sense of what we could do were we to make reasonable preparation we are the most powerful nation in the world. We have been showered with good fortune. Our people have enjoyed a happiness known to no other people. Does not this impose upon us a sacred duty to join the other nations of the world in a fraternal spirit and with a willingness to make sacrifices if we can promote the general welfare of men?

At the close of this war the governments and the people of the belligerent countries, under the enormous burdens and suffering from the great losses of the war, will be in a condition of mind to accept and promote such a plan for the enforcement of future peace. President Wilson, at the head of this administration and the initiator of our foreign policies under the Constitution; Senator Lodge, the senior Republican member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and therefore the leader of the opposition on such an issue, have both approved of the principles of the League to Enforce Peace. Sir Edward Grey and Lord Bryce have indicated their sympathy and support of the same principles, and we understand that M. Briand, of France, has similar views.

THE PURPOSES OF THE LEAGUE 1

The purpose of the League to Enforce Peace is, after the present war, to organize the world politically so as to enable it to use its power to prevent the hotheadedness of any nation from lighting a fire of war which shall spread into another general conflagration. It proposes to effect this by securing membership in the League of all the great nations of the world. The minor stable nations will then certainly join because of the protection which the League would afford them against sudden attack by a great power. The League will then become a World League. If it does not, it will fail of its purpose. No member of the League is to begin

1 Address delivered at the dinner of the Chamber of Commerce of the Borough of Queens, New York City, Saturday evening, January 20, 1917.