Address by William Howard Taft

MR. TAFT: When it was settled in our committee that we were coming to California and to San Francisco, and to stay only two days, I said to the secretary, "You may fix the programme. I do not care to be consulted about it. How you can reconcile two days to the hospitality of San Francisco is a problem that I do not intend to try to solve." We are delighted to meet the five clubs, their presidents, and their hospitable members.

We are here on a mission which perhaps you have heard of. If you have not, that is what we are here for.

We have been discussing the question for four years as to how the world could make anything out of this war that would be useful for its further progress. Four years ago we adopted a plan in the League to Enforce Peace which provided for the co-operation of nations in attempting to stop the spread of war. We thought that if there was anything silly, anything cruel, it was war, and that the nations could not be said to be forward-looking or intelligent or business-like, or even to have common sense, if they permitted the condition of affairs to continue which made such a war as we have just had possible. Now, that was an academic question when we raised it-academic in the sense that people were thinking rather of how the war could be ended than what we should do after it ended.

Looking Forward

Then we got into the war ourselves. We were a long time in getting into the war. As we look back upon it now, I think we regret that we did not get into it earlier. (Applause.) I am offering no criticism that we did not, because our hindsight is a great deal better than our foresight; but what I would like to speak to you gentlemen, business men of San Francisco, about is this-to urge that you should use your foresight now rather than your hindsight hereafter in respect to this particular question that we are bringing before you. I do not want you to be in the attitude of the man who rides with his back to the engine and does not see anything until he gets by it. And that is what you are likely to do unless you take this thing to heart and understand what the necessity of it is, and what it means.

If in ten or twenty years again we are called into another war, that war would be world suicide. The instrumentalities now capable of being used in war are far more destructive than they were when this war began, and we have discovered explosives and poisonous gases which can destroy a whole community.

Now, are we going deliberately to allow that condition to continue which will make such a war possible? Are we going to sit down here in San Francisco and think that we are so many thousand miles away from Paris that we are not concerned in that matter?

That is what we thought for three years in this war, and then we were drawn into it. And even when we were drawn into it we did not realize it: it was remote. I know what I am talking about. I was going around the country. Those in Washington and those responsible began to realize and did, and there was a declaration of war. But it was a long time before the real spirit of earnestness entered into the people of the United States, and it spread west with a good deal of slowness. Then it became the solidest public opinion that America ever had. (Applause.)

Now we have come to the reaction from the efforts that we made to win the war, and we are looking around to get onto a peace basis. We feel that the war is over and that Germany, under this armistice, cannot come to the front as it did, and therefore we will let the world wag as it will, and we will not take an interest in quenching and closing that war so as to make another war impossible.

Vital to America

want to stir you up, men of business. The labor men are getting stirred up; they are receiving communications from their brethren over there and they are beginning to understand it. Now, I want you to study this thing, and take it to your hearts and souls, and understand that no one has a deeper interest in closing this League of Nations than you have. Make it a world issue. We are going around hoping to radiate from the centers that we attempt to organize the understanding of what this League is, and the understanding of its necessity.

The American people are intelligent, but the difficulty is that we cannot challenge their attention. They have got their minds on something else, and that something else is a question of domestic readjustment, and this deliberation at Paris and the telegrams concerning it, though they fill the front page of the newspapers, do not urge you on to consider and bring home to you the issues that are in Paris. Now, the question is whether you are up to date; whether you sympathize with the forward-looking men that are trying to take a great step forward in civilization and end war, or make it so remotely possible that you can say that the prospect is that it is ended; whether you are going to agree with men who believe that the sovereignty and the Consitution of the United States are for the purpose of going for

ward with other nations, or whether you agree that they are to be perverted to defeat the plans of the world for the benefit of mankind.

We are having thrown at us the objection of the "entangling alliances" that tradition handed down from the farewell address of Washington. That objection is reactionary, and it is reactionary to the point of going back one hundred years. (Applause.)

We are the greatest nation in the world, greatest in resources, greatest in average fortunes, greatest in population, greatest in potential military power. We are independent of the rest of the world. Therefore, you never can have a war in Europe of any size at all that we will not be drawn into it. There is to be no great neutral in the next war. There was not in this war. We thought there could be. We stayed out of it three years, and then we were drawn into it. Why were we drawn in? You say it was through the aggressions of Germany. That is true. But how did that arise? It arose because you cannot allow one nation to clear the sea, and then make the United States the source of her supply, without making the United States, so far as its opponent is concerned, so far as the enemy is concerned, an ally of the nation that commands the sea. That drives the United States into war every time.

A Substitute for War

Now, is it possible that we cannot agree to settle our differences peaceably and not go to the arbitrament of war, which never results in justice, but always in the victory of the strongest. Sometimes the strongest is right; sometimes it is wrong. Now let us adopt some means of settling differences that shall lean on justice as a guide, and not force. (Applause.)

It is not an academic question. It is acute. And your Presidentyour President representing us-and the thirteen nations there in Paris have agreed upon a League of Nations.

I wish you would study that; I wish you would work out what it means. It is a well-conceived plan. It does not involve as much compulsory force as our League to Enforce Peace has recommended, but it comes very near it; and it carries with it an arrangement for amendment and for an elasticity that, as experience goes on, will enable the League to adopt other methods.

Now, those nations that are gathered at Paris are in the presence of a very serious problem. Study it; analyze it; see whether they can get along without a League; see whether they can get along without the instrumentality for deciding questions justly by a tribunal of judges; see whether they can get along without a council of

conciliation in order to adjust and readjust matters between the twenty nations there created.

What does the peace cover? It covers middle and eastern Europe and Asia Minor and the German provinces. And what are they to do under the agreement by which the armistice was granted, and what are they doing? They are going to create six or seven republics in Europe: Finland, the Baltic provinces, Poland, the Ukraine, the Checko-Slavic state, that buffer state between Germany and Austria and Hungary, and the Jugo-Slav states next to Turkey. They are going to set up Palestine, Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia, the Caucasus, and Armenia, as autonomous states, with the assistance of a mandatory.

What does all that mean, in addition to giving assistance to the states heretofore oppressed? It means to hem Germany in so that Germany may never revive again the idea of conquering Russia through her business intrigue, and conquering middle Europe, and making an empire from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.

Increasing Causes of Friction

That brings about the establishment of twenty nations where there were four. It means the setting up of republics by people who have never had self-government, who have never been trained in self-government, which necessarily means instability. It means setting up twenty nations with their resentments, the one against the other, because the one was carved out of the other, and because that one rules in place of its former master, and because the other feels the maintenance of the one as a reflection upon it—a reminder of its deserved humiliation and defeat.

That treaty is going to be as complicated as a treaty can be. It is going to contain definitions of our rights as to the sea, rights as to the Danube, rights of transit across nations, such as across the strip that is going down into the Baltic to connect a port there with Poland. Now, if you can in your imagination conceive a greater opportunity for quarrels and differences than will be created right there among those nations that we are obliged to establish, I would be glad to have you name it. How are you going to deal with that danger? How are you going to make it so that we shall maintain peace instead of having continuous war?

It is necessary to establish these nations and to make them strong. It is necessary to keep war out of the sphere of the former war. How can you reach decisions in all the questions that will come from the interpretation of the treaties? No man can draw a great contract like

a treaty and make provisions specific for every event that may come in the future. Therefore, you have got to have some kind of a judicial body to interpret that treaty; and not only to interpret it, but you have got to have the authority of a League back of it to make that interpretation authoritative. (Applause.)

If the Senators that are opposing this can suggest any constructive measure by which those nations that are gathered around that council table can get along without the maintenance of the League and the creation of machinery for deciding these questions and making the decisions authoritative, I would like to hear what they have to say. (Applause.) I have not heard from any opponent to the League any constructive suggestion with reference to the problem that confronts us now.

And we are interested in that problem. Our soldiers are over there to see that this peace is carried through. We are going to be involved in any mix-up that comes from a futile attempt to settle his war without having the instrumentality for making that settlement effective. It is not a remote thing. It is at your door. We have got the responsibility for this peace along with all the other nations. These nations have realized that responsibility and have established the League of Nations, founded now with fourteen, with a view of enlarging it afterwards and letting in others as they shall show themselves fit.

No Party in Foreign Relations

This is not an academic dream. This is essential to the peace of the world; and I want to arouse you to that understanding. I am told that there is indifference here, that there is some opposition to it. Well, if that opposition exists, I want to have that opposition intelligent and if it is intelligent and patriotic then it will furnish some other solution than the one that is offered. (Applause). And no other solution is now offered. This is not a political question. God forbid. It is a question that overshadows every political issue in this country. President Wilson is a Democrat and I am a Republican. Mr. Wilson is going to continue to be a Democrat; I am going to continue to be a Republican. But our differences in reference to international matters end with the Atlantic Ocean and with the Pacific Ocean. (Standing applause.)

Now, in honor, we have got to stand with this League of Nations. We went into this war; we were driven in. When we got in, the President announced in his messages what our purpose was. What was it? To defeat militarism and to make the world safe for democracy (applause), and as a means of making the world safe for democ