One of the things that makes a lawyer impatient is to see, as I did the other day, in the correspondence of Mr. David Lawrence, "Everybody recognizes that an agreement to make war is unconstitutional under the Constitution of the United States." That is one of these ad captandum expressions by a correspondent who I suppose has to know a little about everything, that has no foundation, and yet it gives the wrong impression. Now, isn't it possible for the United States to agree to make war, and to agree by the treaty-making power? Well, if it is not, she has done it. She did it in the case of Panama, where she guarantees the political and territorial integrity of Panama. What does that mean but that we will fight if anybody violates that political or territorial integrity? And we have done the same for Cuba.

Why is it unconstitutional? If we were to go into an agreement to send 250,000 men, and put them under a Marshal Foch, as part of a great international army, and say to Marshal Foch, "You can use our forces in obedience to the orders of the executive council of the league to make war against any member of the league which is recalcitrant"-that would be unconstitutional. But we are recommending something else, namely: That we should enter into an obliga

tion that when force is needed to suppress war we will furnish it.

How shall we furnish it? It is said that such an obligation is contrary to the constitution, in that Congress is empowered to declare and maintain war. That is true. That is the constitutional obligation; but when we make a treaty to do a thing, it is not then unconstitutional because Congress has to do it. We agreed to pay twenty million dollars for the Philippines, in the Treaty of Paris. Who is to perform it? The treaty-making power whose representatives went over there and I see one of our greatest supporters here, Judge Gray, of Delaware-when he went over there and put in that treaty an agreement to pay twenty million dollars, was he doing something which was unconstitutional because Congress had to appropriate the money? Oh, no. We make international promises by one branch of the Government and we perform them by another, according as the Constitution provides that another branch shall provide it.

So some say Congress has to subscribe to this. Congress should subscribe to this, although it is not necessary constitutionally. But when the treaty-making power agrees to pay money, when the time comes for the payment of that money, it is for Congress to decide whether the money shall be paid or not; that is, whether we shall respond to our honorable and constitutional obligations or not. In other words, we do not take away the discretion of Congress to dishonor our agreement-she did it once, in the case of the Chinese Ex

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clusion Act. And so when we promise to make war, we are to make war through a declaration of Congress, and the maintenance of our forces through Congress. We can repudiate it through Congress, but it does not render the original obligation unconstitutional or invalid any more than when a man allows a note to go to protest; that does not render his original note invalid. He will find out when he goes into Court. And so should we if we went into an International Court under such circumstances. There is nothing in this unconstitutional claim. It is only an instance of whether we want to claim freedom of the obligation and leave it to Congress to say whether it will honor it. It will be for Congress to determine whether the occasion has arisen for the immediate performance of the contract....

Then it is said that this is "supersovereignty." We live in an age of phrases. There are advantages about phrases, but here we are looking for some phrase in the League, which will carry a formidable meaning, and the less people know about it the more formidable the term. That is why lawyers who have no other case use the expression. "unconstitutional” with such threatening effect. So it is about "super-sovereignty."

This is said to create a supersovereign. Now what is sovereignty? Let us analyze it. Sovereignty is the freedom of action of nations. It is liberty of action of nations. We have liberty of the individual, and exactly analogous to that is the sovereignty of the nations.

Now, do we have complete liberty of action in individuals? Well, if you try it in some directions you would land in the penitentiary—and properly so. You do not have liberty of the individual, complete liberty of the individual: you have liberty regulated by law.

That is what you have in the individual, and that is what you ought to have in the sovereignty of nations. We have an International League— it is said not to be a League because it is not sanctioned by some authority-I do not think that is quite correct-I think it has the sanction of public opinion and works out as a moral force, perhaps, but we are a Christian nation, with high ideals, and willing to make sacrifices, and certainly we do not wish to contend for a sovereignty that shall not be limited by International Law, and that law should prevail in a decent community of nations. I mean the law of good form, the law of universal brotherhood, the law of neighborly feeling, which is over and above the absolute rules of International Law. All that this League proposes is that every nation shall enjoy complete sovereignty within the limitations of that International Law and that good form among nations.

We subscribe to that doctrine now. We pride ourselves upon it every time we get up except when we are discussing the League of Nations. When you are delivering a Fourth of July oration, no matter what your view of the League of Nations is, you are talking about our wonderful moral ideas, and that means sovereignty

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of the nation-I mean in International matters-that means eignty of the nation restrained by International Law and good form and moral tone.

What is this League of Nations to do? What is it to do to uphold that sovereignty? All it is to do is to have an agreement between all the nations that there should be some sanction to that law that regulates Sovereignty other than mere moral force; that there shall be an organization of the world that shall form and clinch that sovereignty regulated by law through the organized action of all the nations of the world. That is all there is to super-sovereignty. Any other view, any objection to that view, savors of what? It savors of the desire to use the sovereignty of our nation to achieve purposes that will be defeated by these restraints that the League offers. That is what it means. It is the German idea of sovereignty that prompts objection to this. It is the power to use that sovereignty to achieve your purpose whether it transgresses International Law or moral law that rouses the opposition based on such an argument as that I am considering.

And then, finally, we have the argument that we are violating the traditions against entering entangling alliances which were begun by Washington in his farewell address, characterized by Jefferson in his messages, and which we have sacredly

followed down to this war. If there was ever an ocular demonstration that we had reached the end of the application of that tradition these four years of war have given us that demonstration. You say we were carried into the war by the blindness of Germany. Doubtless we were, but we were carried into the war by the force of circumstances that Germany yielded to.

We have power and opportunity. Have we a right to say to the world: "You go on as you will; we are going back to the isolation that God gave us, and we are going to improve it. We are going to chase the dollar and have happiness and prosperity and everything else over here, and you can get into such a mess as you choose until something is done over

there that threatens our interests?"

Is that the attitude that the United States is to take? Is that the attitude that can be sustained by Websterian phrases on the Senate floor?

No, let us go on and speak for the faith that is in us. Let us hear and see the truth as we understand it. Let us appeal to the people of the United States. Let us support any real league of nations that is brought back-even if it does not give us all our desires-brought back by President Wilson, so that we can discuss its provisions, not in a nagging, crittical, unfair way, but with a contructive spirit, with team work for all, to go on and realize what should be the glorious fruits of the war.

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It is because they should be satisfied, it is because they must be satisfied, it is because without their satisfaction we can see no daylight anywhere, for public opinion in this country, which has risen to such heights during the war, which has articulated itself as a great nation, which has shown its common sciousness of right and wrong, that is the basis of what constitutes a nation, that public opinion must now realize that the dictates of necessity come with the dictates of justice, and that a state of mind must be created which will make for united action among the nations of the world, so that it will be possible to create some sort of legislative body which will put international morality upon some kind of a sure and firm foundation.

I remember that a dear old friend of mine, whom I honor beyond other men for his clarity of intellect, his precision of mind, his originality and power of thought, admired the world over, the late Admiral Mahanthan whom there was no better American, no greater thinker on matters of public concern and of world-politics, said to me one day when I was trying as a non-partisan to follow you, sir, (Mr. Taft) in bringing about arbitration treaties and other beneficent relations, which had nothing to do with low politics, but which were wholly confined to the higher sphere of world-politics :"The difficulty with all you gentlemen, from President Taft down". and he meant from the top to the bottom of the whole country-"the difficulty with you all is that you do

not realize and feel that international law is a dead thing, it is crystallized and ossified, and there is not any legislative body that can change it." He instanced to me, and I never could get away from the illustration, because it was sound, the attempt of the Germans to buy the Island of St. Thomas, before we acquired it some time ago. By the rules or laws of nations, one nation can cede its territory to another nation-the inhabitants being willing-and another nation can buy it, but the United States of America would never for a moment let Denmark cede St. Thomas to Germany. Why? Because we had a great, national policy, ingrained in the temper and fiber of the peoples, that we would not stand for having a great power from the other side of the ocean acquire new territory here, and yet in the name of international law you could not have prevented it

-we would have just had to say: "We will not stand for it, treaties or no treaties," and therefore he said: "You cannot bring about international relations on the basis of a law predicated on past usage and precedent-you can merely deduce things by logical formula, regarding which you cannot create legislation," and such was the clarity of his mind that he had gone right to the root of the difficulty.

International law, in that sense, is a slow growing creation like the common law, but it is difficult to bring about anything like a lasting innovation in human affairs.

Lord Salisbury, a practical man, not a dreamer, but a man who had to