FOREWORD This plan is a whole. It is composed of three chief features: general disarmament, arbitration and the sanction of non-intercourse. Each is a complement of the other two and all are essential for its successful operation. Many persons have seized one, become enthusiastic and started off to make some use of it; but my observation has yet to embrace the first instance in which I have felt that the balance in their interdependence had been fully grasped. Only one kind of disarmament is practicable— general disarmament—and the assertion is ventured, that, under no other plan can it be achieved and maintained, as the lines on which this is formulated are basic. No other one provides the first condition for it, which is the compulsory settlement, without resort to war, of all classes of disputes. * As soon as the laborers of the world realize, that there is a plan by which wars can be stopped, they will refuse to allow lords, titled, or nontitled, to maintain immense war establishments, so as to move them about, like pawns, to kill one another; for the payment of it all depends upon the brawn of their arms. Cannot the liberally-educated of the world anticipate such action by comprehending the interdependence of, and the necessity for, these features and proceed at once to install this system? W. H. B. PREFACE TO THE FIRST PUBLIC EDITION No change has been made in the text of this work, in the present edition. The subjects were treated so thoroughly in the original, that constant study of the events of the succeeding years has not suggested the desirability of adding to the principles presented, although opportunities for the useful application of them have been crowding up. The first of the copies distributed was sent to President Wilson, and, subsequently, copies with marked passages bearing on special topics as they came to the fore were addressed to him. An examination will show that it contains all of the principles which the President subsequently embodied in his "Fourteen (and other) Points;"1 for, while it deals primarily with an institution for compulsory arbitration and general disarmament as a judicial system, it also contains suggestions for conventions regarding the other subjects: self-determination (especially with reference to Alsace-Lorraine and colonies), territorial integrity, freedom of the seas, outlets to the sea, immigration, freedom to circulate, economic barriers, the necessity, in order to establish an enduring peace, of a negotiated convention, and not a dictated instrument, etc., etc. Secret treaties would be precluded, as entire dependence would be placed in a system of uniform law. The President's remarkable presentation of those principles, as ideals, secured for them universal approval, save from the imperialistically inclined. (1) See "Annex VIII" An examination will show, in proof of the above statements, that, were the "Covenant" discarded and the belligerent nations relegated to the situation which obtained at the time of the acceptance of President Wilson's "Points," as the basis of the peace, the provisions under "A Proposed Convention for Compulsory Disarmament and Arbitration” (p. 57) and the several suggestions for conventions on other topics (pp. 4549), all in statutory form, would adequately provide for the establishment of those principles, for which Americans were allowed to suppose that they were contributing to the war. When published, it was, and doubtless still is, the only work which treated all, or any number, of these subjects (which is here done in the compass of three score pages) and is the only one known to the writer which provides for a system of enforcing international obligations without the use of armed force, a system, moreover, under which all nations would co-operate to give support because of the srongest of incentives-self-preservation. While the principal feature in this "Plan," the sanction of non-intercourse, or isolation, to force nations, was adopted by the Paris Conference, the Committee limited its employment in the "Draft" to compel submission to the jurisdiction, of the League, only. It then extended it, in the adopted "Covenant," so as also to enforce compliance with decisions, in conformity with one of the suggesttions supplied it in the writer's "Memorandum on the Draft" (Annex III), but its application, like that of all of the provisions for supposed benefits under the Covenant, was so qualified by conditions as to leave no obligation that a powerful nation might not avoid. |