The Paris Conference of 1919 applied itself straightway and strictly to business during the six months of its sessions. There was no gallery of princes and attachés to be entertained, no outlying fringe of titled adventuresses and soldiers of fortune. Instead of a cordon of pleasureseekers, the Paris Conference was surrounded by a small army of journalists and savants, experts in geography and history. This difference shows that the diplomacy of the more democratic age bears a healthier relation to the outer world.

More evidence of the same progress lies in the spirit in which the negotiators worked. Both Leagues were framed by a few men in conference, and this has been loudly condemned by our "57 varieties" of Bolsheviki, who love to strain the phrases about "open covenants" which President Wilson uttered in a moment of rhetorical exuberance. But it is obvious that the agreements of Governments cannot be safely formulated where every query and suggestion would be immediately megaphoned from a thousand market places. Diplomacy by newspapers would be as intolerable as trial by newspapers, especially if the journalistic cohorts were led by the discontented highbrows who camouflage revolution with the name of radicalism.

The Congress of Vienna lived before the Fourth Estate had come to power. Its proceedings and even its conclusions were not studied by the multitude, and were only gradually known to the few. The chief desire of its leaders was to reestablish as much of medieval Europe as had

survived the impact of French aggression, whether revolutionary or Napoleonic, and to protect the holders of privilege from any repetition of that experience. Their gaze was fixed upon the Past rather than the Future. Their idea of Reconstruction was Restoration rather than Renovation, though it was patent to them as to all others that much of the structure of Eighteenth Century Europe had been destroyed beyond hope of resurrection.

The negotiators at Vienna represented only sovereigns or ruling cliques. Not one was the spokesman of a democracy.

They did not respect the claims of Nationality. Italy was restored to its ancient tyrants. Poland was left on the dissecting table. The desires of the subject races of Austria and the Balkans were ignored. Germany was treated as a bargain counter, where fragments were bartered for the benefit of Prussia and Austria.

The English and Russian Governments emerged as the dominating forces of Europe. The former was chiefly interested in the preservation of its maritime empire. The Czar Alexander, the chief figure at the Congress, was filled with fantastic notions of a universal union under the sovereignty of God, of whom he and his brother monarchs were to be the faithful oracles,-notions which, embodied in the Imperial and Royal declaration of September 26, 1815, fastened upon the new League the epithet, "Holy." This ecstatic conception of personal government, tho approved by all the sovereigns of

Europe except three, the Pope, the Sultan and the King of England, never had any more force than that which the personality of Alexander imparted to it, and disappeared utterly after a few years when another mood possessed him.

The Paris Conference has breathed a different air and obeyed a better spirit. Behind Napoleon there were mighty forces of revolt from slavery, which were almost as alien to him as to the Bourbons. But the members of the Paris Conference met to bury a Kaiserism which spelled autocracy and special privilege without a single redeeming hope. Their vision was of the future, of a reconstruction which should bring freedom and justice to many peoples, long oppressed.

The diplomats at Paris were all accredited from parliamentary Governments, which, with the partial exception of Japan, are responsible to the public opinion of free citizens.

They acted, even the Big Four or Five, under the constant play of the journalistic searchlight. Their work was submitted to inspection as fast as it was sufficiently completed, and the most responsible leaders appealed from time to time to their constituents at home by message and by personal visit, a recognition of the source of authority which would have been inconceivable alike to Metternich, to Alexander, and to Castlereagh.

The fundamental purpose of their work, after Germany had paid the price of its folly and wickedness, was to see that justice be done to the submerged nationalities and to reconcile, if possible, their often conflicting

claims. The Congress of Vienna mutilated Saxony to aggrandize Prussia. The Paris Conference revived Poland in the name of outraged Freedom, and began the processes of justice for every other downtrodden race from Finland to the Egean, from Serbia to Persia. This is a sufficient witness to its fidelity to duty, to the magnitude of its achievement, and to the imperative necessity of continued international responsibility for its undertakings.

Two powers have emerged from the Paris Conference as the strongest forces in the world. They are kindred English-speaking nations. Their motives differ by a whole sky from those of England and Russia, one hundred years ago. Their purpose is to promote local autonomies, to decrease, wherever possible, the burdens of control, to diminish armaments, to substitute Law-right for Fist-right, Reason for Force. These are the ends for which they have devised the League of Nations of 1919, just as clearly as the League of 1815 was devised to prevent insurrections. The League of 1919 specifically repudiates any interference in domestic conflicts.

The methods by which the two Congresses sought to attain their ends are as dissimilar as their spirit and purposes. The League of 1815 is to the League of 1919 as a beartrap to a steam-engine.

In 1815 the Council of the four Great Powers agreed to call Conferences or Congresses "at fixed intervals" for the maintenance of peace. Their Council could invite other powers as it pleased. The

work of restoration having been completed by 1818, from that time until 1823 the League met in some form every year. Apparently the difference between a Conference and a Congress was that sovereigns in person might be seen at the latter.

There had been at Vienna a suggestion of an international court, a suggestion soon lost sight of, but the Conference or Congress of the League was, all at once, a Court, a Legislature, and an Executive Council. It heard and decided questions about the rights of succession in German States. It disciplined the King of Sweden for failure to perform an agreement. But when it moved to crush the uprisings of Nationality and Democracy in Italy and Spain, England withdrew from it, and it became openly and avowedly an alliance of autocrats for the preservation of despotic monarchy. The United States in 1823, with the efficient co-operation of England, established the Monroe Doctrine to bar the Holy Alliance forever from the western hemisphere. Between 1848 and 1871 Bismarck built upon its foundations and inspired with its traditions the power of Prussia, which has now gone down, we hope, to final and well-deserved ruin.

The League of 1919 is designed to suppress in international relations that principle of Deified selfish Force, which the Holy Alliance first, and afterwards Bismarck and William II. tried to enthrone. Its covenant is a pledge not to resort to war, framed as before, by four Great Powers, but signed already by the delegates of thirty-two nations, and

offered for the approval of thirteen more. The Covenant does not deny the responsibility of the Great Powers for the welfare of the community of nations, but it offers even to the smallest of those nations the possibility of sharing in that responsibility. In the Assembly of Nations, or before its Executive Council, meeting at stated intervals, any member of the family of nations may bring forward for discussion "any matters affecting the peace of the world.”

And besides the Assembly and Council, the Covenant of 1919 proposes an International Court of Justice, Arbitral Tribunals and Commissions of Inquiry, a permanent Secretariat or Administrative Staff, many International Commissions, including a Labor Council and Conference, and a plan for governing backward and disorganized areas under international supervision and guarantees.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. No institutions will be better than the men who administer them. The Holy Alliance became a tool of tyrants, because none but despots belonged to the Alliance. The present League of Nations is in the hands of men whose power depends upon the votes of their fellow citizens. The European monarchs by Divine Right have all been swept away, for even the new Czars, Lenin and Trotzky, will not make that claim. It is inconceivable that a League of Nations, directed by France, Italy, the United States, and England with her Dominions, will renew ancient despotisms, or de

velop the life of the new league in any manner contrary to the will of the people whom those Governments represent.

The dangers that may threaten the present League will arise from the chance of disagreement among the dominant democracies, or from defects in the treaties of peace. Some of the latter, like the sections about China, and the possible Adriatic and Levantine agreements, might indeed contain the seeds of new wars. clearly the best insurance against such a calamity is to be found in the authority lodged by agreement in the Council of the League, which must consider any conditions that imperil the world's peace.

But

If there were no League of Nations, and States obeyed only the rule of "Every one for himself and Devil take the hindmost," would not rival alliances, competitive armaments and wars be ever with us? As

for the possibility of disagreement among the Great Powers, it is surely less likely to lead to a catastrophe if the League lives and grows than it would be if there were no strongly supported usages for the judicial or arbitral settlement of international disputes.

Disagreement among the Powers cannot induce war unless it disrupts the League, a misfortune which public opinion will never permit if statesmen guide the League with discretion.

One thing is certain; if for any reason whatever, the present League should fail, another union of nations for the same purpose must be established in its place. The world is so

small, and the economic and political, and even social interdependence of nations has become so inevitable that nations can no longer live without sharing responsibility for the common welfare. This has been plainly evident for more than a century, and each new decade makes the duty and the necessity more binding.

In the Monroe Doctrine the United States asserted against the Holy Alliance the principle of self-determination of peoples. In the name of the same principle the United States has now helped to thrust the successors of that Alliance from their thrones. The League of 1919 is the outcome of an application of the Monroe Doctrine to Europe and to the world. Two millions of American soldiers in France have established forever the universal validity of the Monroe Doctrine. We are all to be safeguarded henceforth from "external aggression." That is the gist of all Monroe Doctrines, and that is the whole meaning of Article X of the Covenant, in which ambitious. demagogs and desperate partisan politicians are vainly trying to discover something sinister.

Upon that doctrine as a corner stone, the United States is helping to erect in Europe a dozen new nations. It has undertaken to save It is about them from starvation. to rescue them and their neighbors from impending bankruptcy.

This is by no means pure altruism, since our own commercial, financial and cultural welfare depends on the salvation of Europe. We are members one of another, and the

League of Nations must become our necessary protection for the present and our best hope for the future.

The statesmen of 1815 looked -backward for their models. The statesmen of 1919 are looking forward, in the hope of assuring to the world as a whole that security and order which only individual communities have hitherto enjoyed. The

experiment is nobly conceived, and wisely planned to preserve liberty of action for each State. We, in America, will be disgraced if narrowminded partisanship and personal rivalries and animosities are permitted to wreck our share in this effort and to make our republic appear as an ignoble shirker and quitter in the family of nations.

TH

HE treaty which the Peace Conference at Paris has prepared with conscientious labor, patient discussion, and many inevitable compromises will soon be before the American people in its final form. It aims at justice, liberty, and peace for Europe and America, and at the promotion of all national and international righteousness and well-being. It is by far the most promising agreement among the freer and more progressive nations that has ever been worked out.

In intention or purpose its merits. are manifold and extraordinary. It rights great wrongs committed by autocratic European governments in the past. It suggests and will promote the organization of several new republics. These will make free and secure populations that have suffered for generations severe oppression from alien autocratic governments, accustomed to compel submission by cruel use of military and police forces. It provides for the creation of the first international legislative body, the first executive council with

adequate powers, and the first international court with a sanction behind its decrees.

This unprecedented treaty also makes the first international provision for the reduction of competitive national armaments, a remarkable provision considering the continuing dread of armed aggression under which France and Italy labor.

The treaty contains many provisions for the gradual improvement of the various institutions it establishes, and is in important respects elastic rather than rigid.

The League of Nations which the treaty will establish is indispensable to the gradual bringing into execution of the new policies the treaty embodies. It is the League which must procure, through its assembly, council, and legal tribunal, order and peace throughout the civilized world, while the new republics set up in Europe and Asia are becoming stable and orderly, and are gaining experience in self-government. It is the League which is gradually to provide an intelligent and righteous