difficulty of which no American will underestimate. The Chinese, who are almost a quarter of the human race, are left in a deadly feud with Japan. As a matter of law the league of nations has no equity in that feud except under article 11 of the covenant which gives any member of the league a right to draw the attention of the league to a threat of trouble. But under all the other articles of the covenant Japan's title is clear. Who then is to question Japan's legal rights in the interest of world justice and peace? No one but your humble servant the United States of America. All the other members of the big five are bound hand and foot by the secret treaties. Now, assuming that America wishes to help China to use the league to do what it is supposed to do-right the wrongs of the treaty? America alone will certainly have her hands full. And having her hands full, she may at any moment be called upon under article 10 to preserve M. Dmowski's Polish boundaries or Baron Sonnino's Adriatic frontiers.

If anyone thinks that the United States under these conditions is going to have a rôle in readjusting the settlement or of affecting the war-making propensities of European Governments, let him consider the majestic impotence of Mr. Wilson in Paris at a time when the effects of American military and economic intervention had not entirely worn off. If, as the Evening Post, the World, the Review, and others think, the league is to make a lasting peace out of this treaty, it will be not Japan, nor the United States, nor even Italy, but France and Great Britain who must do it. For the Continent of Europe they are the league, and America's privilege is to underwrite what they determine and to participate in the next war if they become involved in one.

Now, what France and Great Britain determine depends upon who governs in London and Paris. If those who have written this treaty on the lines laid down in the secret treaties and the Paris economic conference continue to manage British and French policy, then, in our opinion, it is expecting miracles to suppose that the absolute political and economic power obtained under the treaty will be voluntarily surrendered. There are too many excellent reasons, for hating the Germans to make it in the least probable that the future of Europe will become the prime consideration of their policy. Now, under article 10 of the covenant this power is confirmed in the hands of the present Governments. The risk to them of a reaction against anything they may wish to do is reduced, because while America can hardly affect what they do, she must guarantee what they have done. With American aid sealed and delivered in case of trouble, far-seeing Frenchmen and Englishmen may have an almost insuperable task in convincing the special interests who will profit most by the situation. that they are heading for a catastrophe. Instead of acting as the disinterested influence capable of readjusting the treaty to the necessities of world peace, America seems inevitably to become the major excuse for not readjusting it. Our power is employed not to make stability out of instability, but to try, vainly in the end, to stabilize the instability itself.

The inference is that America should withdraw from all commitments under the covenant which in any way impair her freedom of action. Those parts of the constitution of the league which provide machinery of conciliation, arbitration, and continuous conference,

and many or most of the minor provisions should be retained. Whatever is voluntary and advisory, whatever provides for better communication and understanding or for completer cooperation in international public service is still clear gain. Out of it the nations may ultimately devise a more ambitious society of nations. But the compulsory features, the special guarantees involving force, should be eliminated, on the plain unimpeachable ground of American safety. The situation left in Europe is too densely involved, too obscurely complicated, too precariously balanced on the apex to make it desirable from any point of view that the power of America should be committed in advance.

Looked at simply from the angle of European interests it is dangerous and undesirable that America should be so pocketed as to count as a sure thing in the calculation of the diplomats. Looked at from the American point of view, it would be the height of folly to commit a great people as the guarantor of a condition which is morbidly sick with conflict and trouble. Certainly Americans had nothing like this in mind when they acquiesced in the President's promises. He said, and they hoped, that they would participate in a Europe so chastened by the war that the interests of a lasting peace would take precedence over every other national advantage. The European Governments have chosen differently. Well and good. That must be their affair. It certainly should not be America's affair in the sense that American lives and American interests are entangled in it.

[From the New Republic, May 31, 1919.]

TO THE SENATE-A SUGGESTED RESOLUTION.

Whereas the peace contemplated by the treaties of Versailles rep-
resents the typical European settlement after every European

war;

Whereas it is the policy of this Nation not to guarantee such settle-
ments;

Whereas an abandonment of this policy should be made only in
order to participate in a settlement which is intrinsically stable:
Therefore the Senate understands article 10 and other articles
and the terms of the treaty to mean that the United States is in
no wise committed either as to its economic resources, its military
forces, or its foreign policy to intervene in the territorial or economic
arrangements of Europe or Africa. It leaves the execution of the
treaty to the European powers concerned.

The editorial writer of the New York Times really ought to be more careful. On Sunday, May 25, first sentence, first leader, he blurted out an idea which reveals altogether too much:

The United States Senate must ratify the treaty of peace for the same reasons that constrain and compel the Germans to sign the instrument.

The notion of a peace dictated to victor and vanquished alike is, to say the least, a novelty, and a Senator might reasonably inquire whether it was the peace conference or the American Nation which won the war. Now, of course, the Times did not mean to be as foolish as its pronouncement sounds, but what it said so crudely is really the

governing idea of a host of generously-minded Americans at this moment. They don't like the treaty. They know it breaks faith and that it is largely unworkable. They realize that it is not a real peace and they are profoundly disturbed at the thought of committing America as the guarantor of its details. But they do not know what to do about it. They are afraid that if they support the majority Senators in the plan to amend peace will be delayed and that the promising features of the covenant will be wrecked, the powers will sink back into the old isolation, and the idea of a league will be discredited. Rather than risk that result they are willing to trust the league itself to remedy wrong. And so they, like the Germans, feel they must sign on the dotted line.

Such is the power of the accomplished fact over many people's minds. But for a free people to sign away its freedom of judgment in this way has in it neither dignity nor common sense. The issues at stake in this treaty reach far beyond the immediate convenience of any living man. The commitments taken now go far into the future, and bound up with them is the safety and happiness of mankind. To gulp them down thoughtlessly because delay and consideration are a nuisance at this moment is just about as shortsighted a view as could be held. It will give us the appearance but not the substance of peace, and since we are acting now as the trustees of the future, it is to the substance and to the substance alone that we must look.

First of all we must get rid of the party nuisance. Just now it takes the form of saying that because many of the Republican Senators hate all things that emanate from Mr. Wilson, because many of these Senators are black reactionaries, therefore it is the duty of liberals to line up on the other side, no matter what that side may be. There is nothing in it. There are just as many reactionaries for the covenant as against it, just as many supporters for party reasons as there are opponents. So far as partisanship goes it is tweedledum and tweedledee, and there is as much honest progressivism in Hiram Johnson's record as there is in Woodrow Wilson's speeches. Certainly being nonpartisan doesn't consist in tying oneself up blindfolded to the Democratic Party, because it seems so strange that a liberal and a Republican should find any common ground in a national emergency. If the New York World thinks it bewildering that, after examining the treaty and the obligations it imposes upon this country the New Republic is in agreement with the Senators who wish to amend, we can only say that these new and temporary bedfellows are fully as agreeable to us as Mr. Burleson ever was. Being nonpartisan means, if it means anything, acting on an estimate of the facts as they are presented, not on "bedfellows" and "line-ups" and epithets.

It is no time to be coerced either by the convenience of the moment or by party tags, or, it should be added, by a vested interest in opinions long held. It is a great temptation to many people who consistently have preached the gospel of the league to seize anything that can be called a league and cling to it though the heavens fall. This is particularly true of men who have identified themselves publicly with the propaganda of the league and who find it just a little more than they can stomach to admit that things have not turned out as they hoped. But in a democracy there is nothing healthier than just this willingness to abandon pet theories good-humoredly when they have

ceased to apply. It is the only temper in which a democracy can escape the violence of party and the feuds of opinion, and there is no reason why liberals should be afraid to practice what they preach.

In defining an American policy there is no evading the complexity of the matter. The interwoven treaty and covenant present a very difficult thing to deal with, especially for those who wish to preserve as much of a league as they can. It would seem as if those Senators who wish to separate the two are proposing an impossible thing. For since the treaties contain the substance of the law which will control the major foreign interests of the world, simply to ratify the treaties, even without the covenant, might bind the United States to assist in enforcing them in all their detail. This would seem to indicate a total rejection of the treaty and covenant, followed by an act of Congress declaring the state of war at an end. But the trouble with this is that it will destroy what is good in the covenant and will result in America's moral isolation from the Allies.

There is, we believe, a clue to the right course in a brief Associated Press dispatch dated May 22, from Paris, saying:

The American delegation to the peace conference is favorably inclined to a suggestion received from Herman H. Kohlsaat, of Chicago, saying that a movement was under consideration by which the Senate would adopt a resolution giving its interpretation of certain articles in the covenant of the league of nations. It is pointed out that the effect of such a resolution would be to put on record the interpretation of the document upon which the Senate would base ratification and at the same time leave the covenant effective as an international document.

This news, if authentic, is certainly of first-rate significance, for it means bluntly that the peace mission is not unwilling to have the Senate extricate it from the muddle in which it finds itself. If the Senate can give its interpretation before ratification, the Senate can obviously define the degree of American commitment, and that, for practical purposes, is the immediate business in hand. By limiting the American obligation the Senate will not only affirm publicly that an American peace has not been written, but it will alter the whole balance of forces in Europe without which no peaceful revision of this peace is at all probable.

What should be the Senate's interpretation? Roughly, we should say something like this:

Whereas the peace contemplated by the treaties of Versailles represents the typical European settlement after every European war;

Whereas it is the policy of this Nation not to guarantee such settlements; Whereas an abandonment of this policy should be made only in order to participate in a settlement which is intrinsically stable:

Therefore the Senate understands article 10 and other articles and the terms of the treaty to mean that the United States is in no wise committed either as to its economic resources, its military forces, or its foreign policy to intervene in the territorial or economic arrangements of Europe or Africa. It leaves the execution of the treaty to the European powers concerned; it will participate if so desired in those portions of the covenant which are consultative in their character.

No doubt in taking such action many Senators would be inspired by a narrowly reactionary and provincial view of American responsibility for the peace of the world. That is not the essential point. What counts at this moment is not their motive but the result of their action, and the result would be twofold. It would disentangle

America from what is in all truth a real entanglement, the extent of which may be estimated by the President's statement that the proposed French alliance would merely hasten action to which we would in any case be committed. Now, if under the covenant we are thus committed to France, we are no less committed to Rumania, or Poland, or Jugoslavia, or Italy, or the Kingdom of the Hedjaz. The preservation of every European frontier would become an American obligation.

Would the withdrawal of this obligation leave them all exposed to war and aggression? It would, in our opinion, minimize the danger of war. It seems an unavoidable conclusion that the presence of America in Europe and the promise of her continued participation has aggravated the national claims of every one of the allied peoples. America gave them a sense of security which they have used in order to press to the limit demands they would not have dared to make under other circumstances. Had they been faced with the problem of organizing a Europe which Europeans alone guaranteed, it is altogether likely that prudence would not have been thrown to the winds. But with a big brother within call, many a boy will take risks that he would ordinarily decline with thanks. Wise Europeans have frequently pointed out that diplomatically America was upsetting the European balance and preventing it from finding its own equilibrium. This seems now to be a demonstrated truth.

Curiously enough, too, the effect of Mr. Wilson's popularity has been not to democratize the settlement, but to prevent the democracies from influencing it. They gave him their trust and affection. They believed he would fight their battle in the secret meetings. They held their tongues so as not to embarrass him, and the result of his failure was that they were neutralized. They expected America to do for them what, after all, they could do only for themselves, and the result is a peace which no Government in Europe would have dared to propose to its people were it not temporarily painted up with the fading glory of Wilson the democrat. Mr. Wilson's presence in Paris has been mischievous for Europe just because he drained to himself practically all the reason and sense and humanity in Europe and then surrendered them. He was the avenue of expression for all that Europe had learned from its agony, of all that it aspired to do in order to prevent its repetition. And the avenue has turned out to be a blind alley.

The American guaranty will, in our opinion, continue to checkmate the process of European reconstruction. "The real alternative," says the New York Evening Post [May 24], "is whether we shall permit the Old World to create problems for us to face as an accomplished fact, or whether we shall take a hand in shaping the decisions which we are bound to face." Our point is that the guaranty, especially under article 10, stultifies our effort to shape the decisions by giving the Old World too free a hand in shaping the policies without regard to consequences. Once commit America to preserving the status quo against anything that diplomacy can manipulate into the appearance of aggression, and it is hard to see how America can "shape decision" any more effectively in the future than Mr. Wilson has shaped them in Paris.

A word more about the league. The idea that the use of force is its cornerstone is a misreading of politics. A league to last must rest