It is Persia's hope and expectation that the incubus of foreign, unsympathetic intervention, even obstruction, in her affairs shall be removed; that she shall be permitted to take her natural and rightful place among independent nations, and that she shall not be prevented hereafter, as she has been prevented in the past, from building upon her resources and her genius. It is Persia's desire to gather, wherever she will, such ad visers in her Government as she herself freely elects, without the constraining advice of other Powers, so that her destiny may be realized naturally and freely. Through her Government she has declared that her aspirations are based upon President Wilson's fourteen principles, which all the belligerent Powers have accepted, and that she expects the American Government not to refuse to assist her in their realization. The Unsolved Czecho-Slovak Army TH Problem By J. F. SMETANKA HE smashing defeat of the Bolsheviki at Perm by the CzechoSlovak General Gaida, commanding an army composed principally of Siberian troops with a few Czecho-Slovak regiments, has helped to draw attention once more to the little Czecho-Slovak Army in the Urals. On May 27, 1918, these men without a country were compelled to use what few arms they possessed in defense of their lives and liberty. They took over the Siberian railroad originally from the Bolsheviki in order that they might continue their journey to Vladivostok, but in a few days their leaders realized that to abandon the cities taken over by them would mean wholesale massacre, since the Bolsheviki threatened to destroy Siberian cities which had welcomed the Czecho-Slovaks as liberators. So these few fighters stayed, not knowing at first whether they would be backed by their leader Masaryk or by their great Allies. A month later assurances began to reach them from the French, English and even American military and diplomatic representatives that their course was approved and that the Allies would send them help. On September 3 President Wilson announced that he would furnish such protection and help as is possible to the Czecho-Slovaks, and the Japanese two days later announced in a declaration that the Czecho-Slovak troops justly commanded every sympathy and consideration from cobelligerents to whom their destiny is a matter of deep and abiding con cern. Thus encouraged, the Czecho-Slovaks won notable victories both east of Lake Baikal and on the Volga. On September 11 Lloyd George cabled to Masaryk on behalf of the British War Cabinet: I send you our heartiest congratulations on the striking success won by the CzechoSlovak forces against armies of Austrian and German troops in Siberia. The story of the adventures and triumphs of this small army is indeed one of the great epics of history. . . . We shall never forget it. Among the startling things accomplished by the Czecho-Slovaks was the capture of 800,000,000 rubles in gold. This treasure was turned over to the Siberian Government at Omsk, organized under the protection of Czecho-Slovak arms. They also made possible the gathering of the All-Russian Assembly at Ufa. At the time when war broke out between them and the Bolsheviki, the Czecho-Slovaks numbered some 70,000 combatants, and only about 12,000 auxiliary troops; most of the work to be done in the rear of the lines was done for them by German prisoners of war. From the end of May to the end of November the Czecho-Slovaks were engaged in constant fighting on numberless fronts. By that time their numbers went down to 35,000 combatants, the rest being dead or in hospitals. There was still no help from the Allies and even the supplies sent to them from America had not yet reached them. On top of that a coup d'état occurred at Omsk and the democratic AllRussian Government was replaced by the dictatorship of Admiral Kolchak. The Czechs did not trust him, and away to the east Semenoff cut the railroad traffic and broke connections with Vladivostok, because he would not recognize the recent overturn. The Czecho-Slovak soldiers thought they had been deserted by the whole world and when the Russian Branch of the Czecho-Slovak National Council, their political leaders elected by the soldiers themselves at the July Convention at Omsk, ordered the Czech army to start another offensive the soldiers refused to go. But about that time General Milan R. Stefanik, member of the original Czecho-Slovak Revolutionary Government and now Minister of War of the Prague government, came to Ekaterinburg with General M. Janin, chief commander of all the Czecho-Slovak Armies. By the exercise of much tact as well as judicious employment of authority, Stefanik succeeded in restoring the morale of the army, and so the Czecho-Slovaks are again fighting the Bolsheviki alongside of the Russian National troops. This, however, does not solve their problem. They originally volunteered to fight for the sake of liberating their native land; the majority of them have been away from home for four years without seeing their wives and children. Bohemia is now free, but the end of their task is nowhere in sight. They have deserved well of the Allies and are justified in asking that the great Western Powers either throw a few divisions into Russia and finish the job on hand, or else instruct the CzechoSlovaks to withdraw and go home. Here follow several representative contributions to our continuous symposium on the subject of the League of Nations from members of the National Advisory Board of The World's Court League: Philip Van Ness Myers, historian; Professor Irving Fisher, economist; Charles Grove Haines, specialist in government; Frances E. Clark, father of the Christian Endeavor Movement; John Barrett of the Pan-American Union. A number of brief messages from other members of the Advisory Board appear elsewhere in this issue of THE WORLD COURT Magazine. POLITICAL AND MORAL BASES OF THE By Philip Van Ness Myers, Dean of CR in the way of a creation of a League of Nations is that the nations stand at different moral levels. The difficulty arises not merely from the existence of backward peoples, with low moral standards, but from the existence of a great people, highly civilized and dangerously efficient, that has adopted a moral standard as low in some respects as that of savages. A backward people with an immature moral code might very well be denied admission to the league until such time as its moral standard had reached that of the federated states, since its position outside of the league would not constitute a menace to the stability of the union; but to leave outside of the league, for moral reasons, such a state as Germany, strong, ambitious, intriguing and efficient, would constitute a positive peril. But notwithstanding the danger of excluding such a state, can we consistently do otherwise? We are agreed that certain political requirements for memPerhaps the most serious obstacle bership in the league shall be insisted RITICS of the proposed League of Nations maintain that such a league with an international force under a single command would be a menace to the independence of small states. We ask, and how have the small states fared under this system of unrestricted national sovereignty? Think of the fate under this system of Poland, Luxemburg, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania. It is only under the aegis of a League of Nations, the basic principle of whose constitution is the autonomy and territorial integrity of every state great and small, that these small states can hope to find that security which they have not found under this old régime of international anarchy and licensed brigandage. upon. Every state seeking admission to the federation must give proof that the people are in control of the government. Shall we demand rigid requirements as to the form of government and set no requirements whatsoever as to moral standard and character? Certainly moral prerequisites are quite as important as political prerequisites. There must be moral likeness as well as political likeness in the members of the league. This principle would exclude Germany from membership in the league until she has repented of her recent crimes, made reparation, and given evidence of a complete change of mind and heart by discarding her barbarian, pagan moral code, based on such principles as "Might is Right," "Necessity knows no Law," and adopted wholeheartedly the moral code of the civilized world. OPPORTUNITY FOR HUMANITARIAN AND DEMOCRATIC ECONOMICS By Professor Irving Fisher, Department of Political Economy, Yale University. IN N view of the large part played by German economists in laying the foundation of the war by indoctrinating the German people with a predatory economics in which property rights had no existence between states and in which "the German State" was the Hohenzollern dynasty, it clearly behooves us, in this country, to guard against the taint of national aggrandizement. If we contrast German and English economics, we cannot but be struck by the narrowness and selfishness of the former as contrasted with the breadth and liberality of the latter. Even before the war Germany's policy of foreign trade was thoroughly selfish. Transportation and manufacturing interests backed by the German banks and the German army and navy have gone into the foreign markets to expel the com merce of other countries by fair means or foul. If, now, at the final peace negotiations, the German style of economics is to dominate, the settlement will degenerate into a race for position "and the Devil take the hindmost." If the Allies should repudiate their own ideas, namely the ideas of international reciprocity in trade relations and of the open door and each should merely seek to secure all it can of territory, colonies, tradeconcessions, exclusive ports, coaling stations, canals, railway routes, and discriminatory tariffs, the peace table will turn into a gamblers' table, at which they will simply deal out the cards for the next great game of war, and, as often happens after a war, the ideas and ideals of the conquered will have made conquest over those of the conquerors. America has a special opportunity, a special mission, to uphold an humanitarian and democratic eco nomics. The very fact that Germany once inspired us toward an economics in the service of the State should spur us now to avoid the nationalistic perversions of that idea which befell our German colleagues. Any American economist who hereafter lends his talents to serve and inflame a hoggish chauvinism, is betraying the high ideals and purposes of America in the war. The call of the hour is to be just and generous. The concept of international obligation has been born. Henceforth any international arrangements must find their justification in international fairness, not in unfair national advantage. Whatever "place in the sun" we seek for ourselves we must accord to every other nation, small and great, weak and strong, new and old. The golden rule must be the rule between nations as well as within a nation. The proposed League of Nations is part and parcel of this great idea of international justice now having its new birth and baptism. Such a league is not only a political necessity as a preventative of war; it is also an economic necessity as a preventative of the economic burdens of militarism. Like our own league of forty-eight states, it would obviate the necessity of great armaments. Without such a league we must resume competitive armaments. We must, as our Naval men tell us, compete with England in naval strength. We are confronted by the same dilemma as that with which we are so familiar in business -cut-throat competition or combination. In a word, America must com pete with other nations in armaments or combine with them. Further competition in armies and navies would mean economic ruin to Europe and great impoverishment to the United States. There are two important special reasons why this would be true. true. One is that the world, especially Europe, is so nearly exhausted economically that even the old military burdens would now be far harder to bear than before the war. The other is that the renewed competition would be far more costly than the old, since we would start off with all the huge equipment which the war itself has brought. Even the upkeep of that equipment would cost billions for each nation; while its increase, to which every first-class power would have to devote itself, would cost many billions more. This mad race would absorb the economic strength of the world. As economists, our obvious duty to mankind is to help save this needless waste. And the only way to save it is by combination. Without combination we may be sure other countries will build bigger fleets and armaments and if they do, we must. Otherwise we shall have no safeguard against another Kaiser or another Napoleon. Unless, then, we wish to follow Germany's lead and seek the economic ruin of other nations in order, later, to take possession of them, we cannot do otherwise than, as economists, drop the outworn national economy and support wholeheartedly the new world-economy now proposed by the Economist-President of the United States. |