do things and bear the responsibilities of a great Empire, spoke of the Concert of Europe as a legislative Europe, and he referred to what the Concert had done with regard to certain specific instances in regulating Europe in a certain legislative sense, so as to cut the Gordian Knot in certain problems that were impossible of solution under existing law and new statutes had to be created. That is why the new and present League of Nations, by getting together, can, in a sense, legislate, essay and create a new basis of solving new problems, applying old principles to new situations, and in that way supply the

great defect that has always existed during the last century, and as a resultant of the Congress of Vienna and things that sprang from it. This is just what was attempted at the Hague Convention when Europe made an endeavor to get together because the situation was intolerable and it was apparent that something must be done.

It is a great fundamental principle underlying a League of Nations, that it can create law, and in creating law can make a new world, utilizing the new conditions that have won the war and crystallizing them into into the form of law.

The following resolutions were adopted by the League of Nations Congress for the Atlantic States, February 7, cabled to PresiIdent Wilson and sent to the United States Senate:

"The purposes of the war can be effected, and the objects of the treaty of peace about to be drawn can be achieved only by the creation of a League of Free Nations to safeguard the peace now won by the Allies and the United States, and to maintain the settlement of international differences and disputes by reason, justice and conciliation rather than by war, and thereby to promote the free, orderly, peaceful development of the world. This League should have behind it the united force of these nations.

"The League to Enforce Peace stands by and upholds the President in his efforts to secure an agreement between the powers, covering the details of organization, the definition of functions, and the formulation of the joint obligations which the great nations would assume for maintaining the authority of such a League and carrying out its purposes.

"We are convinced that the public opinion of the United States is in favor of a League

to maintain the peace of the world, and will sustain and justify the President and his colleagues at the Peace Conference in approving, in terms consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the spirit of the American people, the assumption by this country of its proportionate burden, in company with the other great nations, for maintaining the authority of such a League.”

"The people of this country, like the people of every other country, do not wish to see their sons taken for military service nor do we wish to see the manufacture of arms made into a commercial business, nor do we wish to see any longer the construction of submarines for the purpose of the destruction of commerce. The League of Nations will be a League against Militarism. It should limit armies to the necessity of world police. It should prohibit the construction of submarines and should see that the prohibition is carried out. It should provide that arms and armaments should be manufactured only by the Governments and then only to a limited amount. I have yet to hear of any proposal other than the League of Nations which even remotely will reduce armaments and effect the objects which we all desire."-William Church Osborn at the League of Nations Congress.

TH

HE complete text of General Jan C. Smuts's plan for a League of Nations which immediately took front rank at the Peace Conference has, with commendable enterprise, been reprinted by the New York Nation as a supplement to its issue of February 8, 1919. General Smuts's outline of the project of a League is accompanied and illumined by an incisive, comprehensive and sensible discussion of the whole subject. It is clear that in this Boer leader the British Empire possesses a statesman of unusual quality, who is able to throw new light upon the familiar outline of institutions essential to the organization of a governed world. He proposes:

First, A Permanent Conference or Parliament (§ 1, 10, 11) of all nations of which the present Peace Conference may be regarded as the precursor. All constituent States will have equal voting power. The resolutions adopted by this Conference will be only recommendations to the National Governments and Parliaments. This Conference does not differ in character from the two Hague Conferences.

Second, A Supreme Council (§ 1214) in which the Great Powers shall be always represented by their Premiers or Foreign Secretaries or their accredited agents. "The British Empire, France, Italy, the United

States of America and Japan will be permanent members, to whom Germany will be added as soon as she has a stable democratic Government." The other States shall be classified in two groups, the States of secondary rank appearing as "the Middle Powers," and all the others as "the Minor Powers." Two representatives drawn in rotation from each of two panels, based on these groups, shall sit in the Council, in which the Great Powers will have a bare majority. A minority of three votes can veto any action or resolution of the Council.

The Council is the Executive Committee of the world and is the continuation of the present Supreme Council in character and in power, except that some delegates from smaller States are always entitled to membership, instead of attending by special invitation when matters affecting their States are under discussion. The Council will maintain a permanent secretariat or staff, and joint committees for the study of questions with which the Council deals.

Third, Arbitration and Conciliation (§ 18-21). The Council shall prepare from time to time a Panel of Arbitrators. Justiciable questions in dispute between members of the League shall be submitted to arbitrators chosen from this Panel, and

their decision shall be enforced by the members of the League.

Questions not justiciable shall be referred to the Council, which shall use methods of mediation and conciliation. The recommendations of the Council shall be published, but are not to be enforced as decisions. Against any State that moves to attack a member of the League without delaying for arbitral or conciliatory investigation, the whole power of the League shall be exerted under direction of the Council with an economic and financial boycott, and if necessary the use of military and naval force.

In one case peace is to be enforced as well as delay. After an inquiry by the Council has been made, the League will defend from attack any member of the League who has complied with the award or recommendation of the Council. This section adopts the machinery of the Hague Tribunal established by the First Hague Conference, and confers upon the Council the powers of a Commission of Inquiry as provided in the thirty or more treaties negotiated for the United States by Mr. Bryan, with an agreement to compel delay.

General Smuts proposes a penalty for the covenant-breaking State, after it has been subdued by the power of the League, viz. (§ 8). It shall, after peace is restored, be subject to perpetual disarmament and cannot be admitted again to the League unless it accepts the restrictions imposed upon its military force and armaments.

General Smuts prefers a Panel of Arbitrators to a permanent World Court on the ground that the real or presumable prejudices of the judges for the nations from which they came would unfit them for judicial duty when their own States or Nationals appeared as litigants. If one of the justices of our Supreme Court is for any reason disqualified from sitting in judgment upon a case, the Court hears that suit without him. General Smuts does not consider the possibility of such an usage in an international court.

If this is indeed his only reason for preferring arbitration to the regular judicial process, he has dismissed the latter idea on account of a merely superficial difficulty.

Fourth, Mandates (§ 2-9). A significant and carefully wrought part of General Smuts's plan is that which deals with the relation of the League of Nations to new and dependent States and territories. His premise is that the League must be regarded as the successor of the broken-down empires (Russia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey are mentioned), and that consequently it possesses the right of ultimate disposal in accordance with the principles of "no annexations" and "consent of the governed, fairly and reasonably applied."

With reference to capacity for self-determination, he thinks that the new States, or State-fragments, fail naturally into three classes: First, those capable of independence (Finland, Poland, Bohemia, Greater Serbia); second, those capable of inter

nal autonomy but needing external assistance (the Caucasian and Transcaspian provinces, Mesopotamia, Syria); third, those needing local administration by an outside authority (Palestine, the Armenian provinces). For the second and third classes General Smuts proposes that all necessary authority and control shall be vested in the League of Nations (i. e. practically, in the Council), and shall be delegated by the League to individual States as a "mandate" of international duty.

He condemns joint international administration as impracticable and dangerous. "Paralysis tempered by intrigue," he calls such a system. On the other hand he stipulates that whenever the League of Nations issues a mandate to any State to undertake the supervision or assistance of a dependent State, such a selection shall be made, wherever possible, by the nomination and with the approval of the dependent State, if it is autonomous. Furthermore, the League shall define the limitations of the mandate by special act or charter, shall reserve to itself full power of ultimate control and the right to entertain appeals against the conduct of the mandatary State, and shall decree in all such dependent territories the policy of the open door or equality of economic opportunity, and a prohibition of military organization beyond what is needed for internal police.

Finally, the League, i. e., the Council, is to reserve to itself, without mandate to any individual State, the supervision of relations between the

new independent States. This puts the Council squarely in charge of the hornet's nest in the Balkans and the row of buffer States between Slav and German, from the Black Sea to the Arctic.

Fifth, Disarmament (§ 15-17). Gen. Smuts accepts three proposals looking towards the destruction or prevention of militarism. The first is a universal abandonment of compulsory military service. Each State shall be defended by a volunteer or militia force, whose numbers and training shall be regulated by the Council of the League. The second is an agreement that the limits of military equipment and armament in each State shall be determined by the Council. The third provides that all munitions plants shall be nationalized and subject to inspection by the officers of the Council. The Council shall also keep track of the interState traffic in munitions within the League.

Gen. Smuts regards the abolition of conscription as at once the most important of these proposals, and the most feasible. He fails to consider the question of the limitation of sea-power. If the Council is empowered to control the size and training of all land forces, it would be as easily able to reach an agreement limiting the numbers of the warfleets, or at least placing a just check upon naval construction. The AngloAmerican Agreement of 1817 for disarmament on the Great Lakes suggests a precedent for limiting construction of sea-going warships, but it is likely that the hard fact that

England's war-fleet is virtually the island's only sure defence from attack will prove to be the rock on which all of these disarmament proposals will founder.

It may be that economic reasons will eliminate conscription. If the If the League of Nations can afford a reasonable guarantee of pacific settlements for international quarrels, the impoverished Great Powers of the European Continent may be ready to drop conscription in order to lighten the stifling burden of taxation. These

anti-militarist measures are not new.

They have been often debated and General Smuts frankly recognizes the difficulty of adopting any of them.

The most novel feature of this plan is the proposal of mandates, to which especial interest attaches because President Wilson seems to have approved it, and it has been written into the plan for a League of Nations, now under discussion by the Supreme Council.

The protective administration of weak and dependent States and territories, enumerated in General Smuts's second and third classes, must plainly be either given outright to this or that Power by right of conquest, or it must be vested in the supreme authority of the Family of Nations.

No one favors the former solution, so far as it concerns the States now sprouting from the wreck of the three Great Empires. If Australia and South Africa demand the annexation of former German colonies, it cannot be denied that the territories involved are not fit to be classified with any of the regions which General Smuts

has under consideration. Concerning the latter there will be universal assent to General Smuts's statement of the self-denying duty of the mandatary: "No State should make use of the helpless or weak condition of any of these territories in order to exploit them for its own purposes or acquire rights over them in the manner which has hitherto been a fruitful source of trouble and war."

The question at once arises: Can the League of Nations fairly and impartially exercise its responsibility for dependent territories without incurring the reproach of needless interference on the one hand or of perpetuating a chaos on the other? Two answers to this query have been suggested. On the one hand this plan of "mandates" is essentially a proposal to recognize, under a new name, a system of protectorates. The "mandate" would resemble the relation now existing between the United States and Cuba excepting in the fact that each Protector State would be in theory responsible to the Supreme Council of the League of States. The Cuban situation would be exactly analogous if the United States had recognized a superior authority in a Pan-American Congress. Such an arrangement on this side of the Atlantic would undoubtedly increase greatly the possibility of dangerous and unwelcome complications. Will it be any more fortunate in the Levant? Possibly however the theory of a restricted protectorate would not descend from the domain of theory. If the Supreme Council of the Powers regarded any complaint