(2) nothing but a League of some kind will prevent this; ergo (3), we must and will have a League. It will go hard with the statesmen in this country or elsewhere, who shall go before the people with the demand that they reject every League and take the chance of war. One and all they have before their minds the vision of the terrible enginery that another war would call into being more and better tanks, airplanes, submarines, machine-guns, longrange cannon, poisonous gases, death-dealing electricity, etc. They see great cities as utterly destroyed as were the French villages in the field of invasion. They see armies They see armies taking and paying toll in life which amounts to mutual annihilation, and there is optimism enough in the world to make it say of such a literal day of doom, "We can prevent it because we must do it. The malign forces that threaten us reside in the wills of men and the united will of mankind will have to overcome them. As between impending destruction and a union of nations, however difficult, we should take the latter. As between the doom and any tolerable League, we should choose the latter instantly, unless the madness which goes before destruction is already on It raised. If our choice must be between the proposal for a League as it stands and no League at all, our people will probably accept the proposed plan without amendment. is better than war or danger of war. Per contra, if the Europeans merely prefer something something which America will not concede, they can as little afford to carry their preferences to the point of defeating the entire plan as can America. For the world as a whole nothing better is possible than conceding minor points of each side and, by this means, securing major ones for both. "I forego what I prefer in order that you may have what you imperatively need" expresses the atti tude that will make a constitution a success; and the way is entirely open to that course in the case of a plan of union that is as the hope of life itself to the world. Let it be fairly treated on both sides of the Atlantic. What is to be hoped for is a few changes that will be of great value to America and not injurious to her European allies. The minor preferences on both sides could then yield to the major ones. The draft that has been given to the world has met with fewer criticisms than did our national Constitution in 1787, and amendments so slight that they would not mar the working of the League, would remove all that is really serious in the American objections. If so, the outcome that is called for is the acceptance of the plan by an easy compromise. An explicit statement that the League is not "eternal and unchangeable," that a Nation can retire from it and that it is estopped from bringing the three Americas under European control would meet the legitimate demand of our people. It is wholly right for Americans, whether Senators or private citizens, to ask for such changes. Before the Senate is called on to vote on the treaty of peace and before the people are called on to express their wishes to their Senators-the treaty PR should take the form that meets the League of Nations By EMERSON McMILLIN ROBABLY not within the historic period has a question of such transcendent importance presented itself for solution by the progressive and constructive statesmen, or one of such deep interest to so vast a number of people, as the question that is now being discussed by the press, in the pulpit and in all public and private gatheringsa League of Nations. A League in some form that will prevent war or greatly lessen its probabilities. Alliances and coalitions between powerful nations have been made in the past with a similar end in view, and long and serious negotiations between reigning sovereigns have taken place with the view of conserving future peace. All have failed of their purpose. But the necessity for a successful effort was never so great nor so intensely impressed upon the minds of all classes of suffering humanity as it is to-day. Progress in the sciences in recent years has so aided the facilities for destructive warfare that had the man-power and economic resources of the belligerents in the late world war been more evenly balanced the destruction of civilization itself would have been a possibility. With a corresponding increase in the facilities for destruction during the next half century one can only contemplate a future war with abject horror. During the last three centuries progress has been made in all phases of life, barring only the ultimate mode of settling international differences. Barbarians settled their disputes with the most destructive implements available. The enlightened Twentieth Century has done likewise. Now the masses of mankind are demanding a more rational way. If they do not obtain it, condemnation will be meted out to those responsible for failure. With the world draped in mourning for murdered fathers and sons, starved mothers and children, and with the humanitarian belligerents absolutely dominant, this is the psychological time to work and strive for a sane mode of preserving peace. Apparently the effort can fail only through obstinancy or inefficiency on the part of the people's representatives. For several years broad-minded, capable men and women, both in America and in Europe, have been working faithfully to inform the people; to impress upon their minds. the importance, the necessity and the advantages of having an international organization to settle differences without resorting to war, and but little, if any, opposition had manifested itself until the publication of the proposed Constitution. People abroad have apparently looked upon America, the great peace-loving nation, as the logical leader in the movement. How astonished they must have been at the outburst of opposition in the United States Senate upon the publication of the Constitution, evolved by a Committee composed of representatives from fourteen sovereign States with our own President as Chairman! Wholesome criticism is not objectionable, constructive criticism is indeed essential, but destructive criticism or condemnation is deplorable. The antagonists made no effort to improve and the protagonists made no effort to explain or conciliate; opposition on the one side and absence of tact on the other. That the advocates of a League of Nations should have succeeded in having a constitution reported with the unanimous approval of the Committee was, of itself, commendable progress in the great work. That the form of constitution reported is susceptible of improvement should not be denied by its most earnest supporters. The Executive Council, the working body of the proposed Organization, is to be composed of five representatives, one to be appointed from each of the five great nations; and four other members are to be selected from the forty or more (when all are represented) other States. With all Central and Eastern Europe in a chaotic condition such assumption may be excusable or even desirable, but a better impression would doubtless have been created, had a provision been made for terminating this self-constituted control by the five great powers at the end of a three or five year period, and thereafter choosing the Executive Council under some equitable system of votAs it ing by all the adherents. stands to-day it probably contains the seeds of disintegration. In the Supreme or Delegated Body, each and every State has one vote, without reference to population or commerce. This will doubtless not long obtain, possibly will never be adopted by the States. That a State with two or three hundred thousand population should wield equal power with France, having a total population of about ninety million people and a great commerce, and being possibly the leading nation of the world in cul ing a ture, art and the sciences, needs but to be suggested to be condemned. That Great Britain, aided by her Dominions and Dependencies, should cast five votes while the United States can cast but one, is a provision that will probably not be approved by our Senate. That the British Empire with her four hundred millions of people should have greater voting power under some rational system of voting, can not be rightfully questioned, yet the principle and dignity of our Nation forbid that the British Empire shall cast five times as many votes as the American Government. the In the draft of the Constitution as it now exists, the word "shall" is used in two instances where the word "may" would have answered. The use of any word implying compulsion, especially where it can be avoided, is, to say the least, not tactful. Again: "The limit of military forces shall not be exceeded without permission of the Executive Council." People with chips on their shoulders will probably resent the use of the word "permission." The provision for mandatary supervision seems to be generally regarded as a camouflage, but no substitutes are offered. The mandataries will eventually absorb, in some form, their protegés. However, the provisions for the present will serve as an excuse for those committed against annexation. A great demand is in the air for a Peace Treaty first and a League of Nations later. The reason given for this demand is to hasten peace. Much might have been said in favor of the opposite plan. The working out of a plan for a League need not necessarily have delayed the work essential to the drafting of a Peace Treaty and it probably has not delayed the work. Had a Constitution for a League been evolved that was acceptable to those whose approval is essential, then a Peace Treaty could have been consummated between the belligerents in a short time; and the duty of adjusting the differences between Italy and the Jugo-Slavs or Greater Serbia, and the differences between Roumania and Hungary, and the line of demarkation between Poland and Germany, and the boundaries between Czecho-Slovakia and Austria could all have been passed over to the League, which could have taken the necessary time to do justice to all without delaying progress toward normal conditions in all these countries through the absence of peace treaties and the raising of blockades. But the Constitution, as drawn, did not meet the approval of a sufficient number of United States Senators, and an effort for an immediate Peace Treaty with a delayed League seems inevitable, whether or not the friends of the League would have it so. None of the objections named are insurmountable nor even difficult of correction. The draft of the Constitution is possibly as near the ideal as could have been reasonably expected, until the Committee should hear from the people and until it should receive constructive criticism. by those whose approval is essential. If the constructors invite and accept rational criticism, and if objectors will strive to improve the construction of the document, success will eventually crown the efforts and those who make possible the success will be entitled to and doubtless will receive the commendation and gratitude of mankind; but if a failure to agree is the result of indifference to rational suggestions on the one side and pique and prejudice on the other, then those responsible will deserve and probably will receive the condemnation of a large majority of the thinking peoples. The Cost of the War By NEWTON D. BAKER From a Speech by the Secretary of War before the League of Nations Congress in Boston ROM the English Channel to FR the Swiss frontier are acres and acres of crosses under which lie some part of the heroic dead who have died in this war; seven million three hundred thousand killed in battle or died of battle wounds in this war. More than nine million soldiers have lost their lives when we add to the seven million three hundred thousand those who have died from other causes, disease and so on, in the great military camps, and the number will be increased when we know the number of dead in the prison camps who died of starvation. This is one of the consequences of its having been too late when Sir Edward Grey strove to save the world. In the meantime the expenditures which the world has made on this war stagger the imagination. I asked the general staff to send me the figures just before I left Washington and I have them here on the reading desk, the figures they sent me, but I will not stop to read them. They foot up as the expenditures of the nations in this war 197,000 million dollars. But that does not take into account the value of the property destroyed-just the money spent. Now none of us know what any such sum as that means but I can give you a fair estimate of it according to the Census Bureau of the United States. According to the Census Bureau of the United States, quoted in the World Almanac in 1912, the aggregate value of all the real and personal property in the United States, including all the land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the Gulf, all of the personal property, all of the houses and buildings, all that added value to the land that comes from cultivation, all of the personal property, money and other things of value in this great continental empire of ours, the ag-gregate value of it was $186,000,000,000 or something less than the cost of this war to the belligerents. Can we stand another like that? |