ment and reconstruction. Successful cooperation depends upon intelligence and good will. Unless they take more than hysterical interest in international affairs, Americans cannot expect to maintain beneficial leadership among the nations.

No one has improved upon President Wilson's summary of the merits of the League Treaty in his brief statement on the day it was signed. (See Page 431.) Some fearful souls may find reassurance of hope in the study of "How the League of Nations Differs from the Holy Alliance" on page 409. It doth not yet appear what the new order shall be. But as the first step toward general disarmament the treaty sweeps away the German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian military autocracies. The League sets up new standards of cooperation, responsibility and lawful intercourse among self-governing nations. It claims no super-state powers of taxation or conscription. Moreover, it disclaims infallibility by providing within itself the means of correcting faults as experience reveals them.

Issues of the war have been met

"The verdict of history will unquestionably be that the Peace of Paris carries into effect to a remarkable degree the program accepted in advance by the peoples of the world and embodied in the Fourteen Points put forth by the American Government on January 8, 1918. The treaty as signed makes a new world, politically, physically, morally, and spiritually. It has set the world upon a new path of progress. It marks the triumph of American ideas, policies and institutions, by extending to a league of sovereign nations the democratic principles first embodied in our league of Sovereign states."-World Peace Foundation, Boston.

and new agreements of the most helpful and hopeful character have been laid down in the most important international document ever drawn, says Secretary Lansing. He adds pertinently:

"World statesmanship will be sorely tried in the next few years. Two things are essential: First, an alert, intelligent, interested public opinion, and second, cooperation of the nations. The former is needed both as a check on any sinister purposes that may crop up, and as the great support for common action. The second is essential, unless the nations are to return to a selfish particularism which can only breed the most dangerous disputes.

"The Peace Conference has been history's greatest instance of a unified world statesmanship directing the moral and material resources of the world's family of nations. To allow the spirit behind it to disintegrate at this moment of emergency, when united action is imperative, would be fatal to all the hopes of permanent peace with which we entered the war.

"If it is true that one nation can destroy the equilibrium of all, it is all the more true that each nation is bound by its own law of self-preservation to cooperate with the others to check troubles before they get their headway."

To the continuous cultivation of sane, wide-visioned public opinion in order to help the League live, grow and work in the right way and with the right spirit, the open forum policy of this magazine is devoted.

FRANK CHAPIN BRAY.

"Any power which would be unwilling to covenant against its own aggressions would not be a fit member of any League of Nations."-Oscar Straus.

"The real question is whether we believe that it is not better for the United States to have a say in European matters and thus try to prevent another horrible war or to keep our hands off and wait until the world is aflame and then endeavor to assert our might to protect our rights. In one case we have a hand in shaping the destinies of mankind. In the other, in refusing to accept responsibility, we suffer the consequences that are likely to come from an uncontrollable situation in Europe."-Senator Peter G. Gerry of Rhode Island.

C

AN good come out of anything

that terms itself a "balance of power"? Does not that name describe something so utterly condemned that a man invites rejection for anything to which the phrase is applied? "The balance of power is dead and damned," said a popular preacher recently -though it is rather more damned than dead, since there was a certain element that cannot die in the old arrangement which existed through the century between the Napoleonic wars and the present world struggle. It is inherent in the cosmic order a principle rather than a particular international arrangement-and it is not dead. Comparative power is an element in deciding between war and peace.

Fifty years ago every schoolboy read in his text-book of History that the peace of Europe was maintained by an approach to equality of power in a group of five great states. These, in order of their importance, were said to be "England, France, Austria, Russia and Prussia"-the controlling state in present Germany coming last and least and the remainder being outside of the pale. It was held that any attempt on the part of one of these greater states. to get much additional power would endanger the freedom of the others and would bring about a combination against it.

It was a potential combination and not an actual one that guarded the peace, for there never was a union of four of these powers making

a disciplinary war on the fifth, and until the latter half of the century, when Russia made two efforts to get Constantinople, there was nothing that greatly resembled it. What certain powers on those two occasions actually did in restraining the ambitious efforts of Russia corresponds, in a way, with what more of them were earlier ready to do whenever one of their number should make a bold grasp at new territory. Enough was done in these cases to thwart the attempted grab, but nothing of the kind was done when Prussia, in 1866, made her first great empire building effort. There were those, in that day, in France and in England who bitterly regretted that their two countries did not come to the aid of

Austria and her allies and check the perilous extension of Prussian power. There, certainly, the "balance of power" registered a failure, because the actual equilibrium disappeared. The undue growth of one state did not bring about the expected levelling action and there was no longer a balance.

"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones, so let it be with"-states and groups of states, in so far as the present argument is concerned. There is no proposal to revive the old condition. If an approach to equality of forces were relied on to forestall war, the balance would have to be between two groups of states instead of between five members of a single group. Such a dual arrange

ment would be far less secure than the old and abandoned one. Four states could easily overmaster one if it did anything looking toward world dominion; but if one of twopresumably the stronger one-should do it, where could a restraining power be found? A highly insecure condition for the entire world would be that which should range the nations in two alliances both of which should be inspired by the militarist spirit and by world conquering ambition. One or the other would comparatively soon accomplish its purpose. This would mean a terrific war followed by the enslaving of rival peoples.

There is everything in the spirit that actuates a man, a nation or a league. A group that is democratic and inherently anti-militaristic can preserve the peace of the world-if it is also powerful enough to do it. A city is a safe place to live in because the policemen, who represent the union of peace loving citizens, overmatch the thugs. Democracy Democracy within states tends toward peaceful courses of action between states, albeit democratic ones have been known

to make grabs. For a very long time after the present war a dread of another one, like it but vastly more destructive, will hold in ways of peace a group made of such material as that of the states in the Entente. If the same cannot be said of a group which Germany may make out of Central and Eastern Europe, the hope of peace will depend on a league of nations strong enough to restrain German ambitions as they were not restrained in 1866 and

1870. This means that the most perilous condition possible would be one in which Teutonic power should mould to its purposes the vast areas and peoples lying eastward from it, while the western states, where forces of peace reside, should be weakly united and deserted by their great ally beyond the Atlantic.

The principle of equilibrium that the world needs to recognize and act on is that there is some protection against wars of conquest in a grouping of five or more nations of a more or less similar spirit and power, but none in two groups of about equal power and large ambition. One will be sure, in the end, to outgrow the other and have a continent, or possibly a world, at its mercy. The equilibrium may be good while it lasts, but it will disappear. If a continent is divided between two groups of which one is martial and aggressive and the other peaceful, the peace loving one must be the stronger or the same thing will happen. fact that comparative power is an Nothing can blink the element in keeping the peace. Nothing can obscure the fact that the hope of averting an annihilating war depends on the power as well as the spirit of the combined forces of peace. The Entente with America out may be in danger and the whole world may share the peril. With America in, it will have the power and the spirit that are needed and will grow from strength to strength till its present enemies become safe and welcome members.

JOHN BATES CLARK.

PR

RIOR to the present time the most serious experiment in international cooperation was the League of Nations formed in 1815 by the conquerors of Napoleon, and usually called "The Holy Alliance." For nearly a decade it was the undisputed master of Europe. For a generation it was a power to be reckoned with, steadily exerted to bolster up tyrannies and to crush the hopes of freemen. As a barrier against its ambition to rule the world, the Monroe Doctrine was first framed and declared. It will now be pertinent to inquire how far the Leagues of 1815 and 1919 resemble each other in origin, nature, and promise of development.

Some resemblances in origin are undeniable. Each League was a sequence of a terrific world-war, the struggle in the former case lasting through a quarter-century; in the latter, only five years.

Each League was formed by the foes of a would-be world-emperor. William openly avowed his study of Napoleon's career, and his assurance of success wherein Napoleon had failed. Each League sprang from the widespread resolve that wars should be prevented, and that sensible, pacific methods of settling international disputes should be found.

Each League was accompanied by an abundant growth of popular so

cieties, inspired by such resolutions. The New York Peace Society, the oldest organized peace society in the world, was established in the summer of 1815. The English Peace Society, organized a few months later, had had an informal, unofficial existence for a dozen years. These two were soon followed by a host of new peace societies, all devoted to the abolition of war.

In like manner, an international alliance to render wars less likely has been demanded and supported during the years 1915-1919 by strong, popular associations in all enlightened countries.

Each League was formed by a handful of negotiators representing the Great Powers that had overthrown the aspiring Cæsar, and working in secret conclave until their agreements were perfected.

Each League was based upon agreements which these men drew up as a part of a final treaty-but at this point resemblances end and contrasts begin.

The Agreement of 1815 was not a part of the treaty of peace, imposing settlements upon defeated France. Those terms had been previously fixed. The agreement was an integral part of a treaty of alliance between four Powers, Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia, who rearranged the map of Central

Europe and assumed the leadership and governance of the whole continent.

The Covenant of 1919 is included in the treaties of peace with Germany and its allies, and is so framed as to place the terms of peace under international supervision and control. The Covenant of 1919, like its predecessor, recognizes the hegemony of the Great Powers, now England, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, but it groups with them practically all the other powers in the world as sharers in the responsibility for settlement and reconstruction.

The Covenant of 1919 provides for the future inclusion of Germany and other States, now chaotic, in their appropriate places in the League of Nations. In 1815 no such recognition was accorded to France, although she was in fact admitted to the alliance of Great Powers in 1818.

The Agreement of 1815 was therefore an item in an alliance between four victorious States to over

awe a rival and to grasp for them

selves the domination of a continent.

The Covenant of 1919 is itself an all-inclusive world-alliance to insure the progressive development of the principles of international coopera

tion.

The only treaty of separate alliance framed at the Paris Conference is the suggested Anglo-American guarantee to France against the fear of attack that obsesses her. There is no trace of selfish ambition in it, and the fancied need of it must disappear if and when the League of

Nations begins to live and grow. In truth there were present at both Vienna and Paris the shadows of a great fear and of a fierce resentment. In the one case France was deemed the public enemy; in the other, Germany. At Vienna, France was admitted to the councils of reconstruction, and, although attempts were made to isolate her, the genius of Talleyrand baffled them and won for conquered France diplomatic victories.

At Paris, Germany and its allies were only allowed to come to hear their fate. Those who had tried to enslave the world were rightly excluded from the work of rebuilding its freedom. In 1815 as in 1919, an army of occupation was left in the conquered country until the terms of peace should be fulfilled. In the earlier time Prussia and the two

Emperors-in the later time France urged the immediate creation of an international force, to be stationed in the Rhine valley as a protection against a renewal of aggression. In both instances the project was vetoed by England, to the great disquietude

of Prussia in 1815, and of Clemenceau and Foch in 1919.

In the human conditions of their environment at the time of origin, the two Leagues were in sharp contrast. The Congress of Vienna sat for more than a year amid a continuous whirl of social festivities, lavishly provided by the Habsburg Court. All that was left of feudal Europe was in attendance, with a gay crowd of hangers-on of both sexes. To the public eye dancing and dining were much more in evidence than negotiation.