of labor.

8. (To) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories under their control.

9. (To) intrust the League with the general supervision over traffic in women and children and dangerous drugs; and also over the trade in arms and ammunition where this is necessary in the common interest.

10. (To) make provision to secure and maintain freedom of communication and of transit and equitable treatment of the commerce of all members of the League, paying also special regard to the needs of the devastated regions.

11. (To) endeavor to take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control of disease. Art. XXIII.

12. To pay their proportion of the expenses of the Secretariat.

Art. VI-3.

RIGHTS

Art. XXII.

In common with the other members, the United States has the following rights:

1. To withdraw from the League after two years' notice (if she has fulfilled her international obligations). Art. 1-3.

2. "To bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council any circumstances whatever affecting international relations which threatens to disturb either the peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends."

Art. XI-2.

3. In certain cases (as a member of the Council), to make public the facts of a dispute and its conclusions thereon. Art. XV-4.

4. “To take such action as she considers necessary for the maintenance of right and justice" in disputes where member of the Council not parties to such disputes fail to agree. Art. XV-6.

tion of suffering."

Art. XXV.

In connection with paragraphs 7-13 it should be noted that much of the important work of the League will be carried on through the permanent Secretariat, established at Geneva. This will be the headquarters of many international organizations, each made up of experts in some particular line. Art. XXIV.

We shall also be asked to share in the duties of the advanced nations in

5. In case the United States is attacked, the other members of the

tercourse with the attacking state and the United States has the right to effective naval and military help from them in order "to protect the Covenants of the League."

Art. XVI-1.

"For myself, I would not be influenced in my attitude toward the League of Nations by any explanations that might be offered by the President or any one else. I am against the League covenant because of the things to which it commits the United States, and I intend to oppose these in the Senate and vote against them."-Senator Wm. E. Borah of Idaho.

P

RESIDENT WILSON at his conference with newspaper correspondents at the White House on the morning of July 10, a few hours before reading his address to Congress, declared that without Article X, the League of Nations would be merely a debating society and that he would not be interested in that. He indicated his uncompromising hostility to the proposed reservation by which the United States would refuse to give its consent to that article in ratifying the Treaty of Peace.

At the same time, President Wilson made it plain that under Article X the Constitutional prerogative of Congress to declare war was not infringed, and that he had repeatedly made this fact clear to his associates at the Peace conference. Congress, he asserted, would still have to declare war even under the obligations devolving upon the United States under Article X.

In this connection, it is interesting to examine briefly the obligation the United States will assume under that Article. Suppose the League of Nations, the American member of its supreme council concurring, should adjudge that a situation had arisen requiring military action, and the Congress of the United States withheld its sanction of the use of Amer

ica's armies and fleets: the United States would then become morally derelict not only, but accountable to the League of Nations as well. As Westel W. Willoughby says: "Treaties remain internationally binding upon the United States even when Congress refused the legislation necessary to put them into full force and effect, or when it has abrogated them by subsequent legislation, or when the Supreme Court has declared them unconstitutional."

That principle has been upheld repeatedly by the United States Government in its relations with other nations.

There are obiter dicta of the Supreme Court which assert that "a treaty which undertook to take away what the Constitution secured, or to enlarge the federal jurisdiction, would be simply void," and that “the court denies the faculty of the Federal Government to add to its powers by treaty."

But the Supreme Court never has declared a treaty void; it has merely indicated some undertakings which might render a treaty unconstitutional and void. There are neither decisions nor dicta, however, which imply that the League of Nations Covenant, or any Article of it, transcends the treaty-making power, unless there be such an implication in the

opinion of the Court in holding valid an act of Congress whose terms violated a treaty previously entered into with China; it declared there were sovereign powers the right of whose exercise whenever the interests of the country required it was incapable of transfer to any other parties. The Court continued: "They cannot be abandoned or surrendered. Nor can their exercise be hampered, when needed for the public good, for any consideration of private interest. The exercise of these public trusts is not the subject of barter or contract."

Supporters of the League of Nations have abandoned the claim that Article X does not bind the United States, under formal contract with other nations, to wage war jointly with them under certain contingencies, and the supreme fight in the Senate over the League Covenant will be over that Article. The Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, according to best-informed opinion, will submit with a favorable report to the Senate a set of reservations including a reservation of Article X in substantially the words recommended by former Senator Root: "In advising and consenting to the ratification of the said Treaty, the Senate reserves and excludes from its consent the tenth article of the Covenant for the League of Nations, as to which the Senate refuses its consent."

In Washington it is believed that the advocates of amendment, who now seemingly are concentrating their efforts upon securing the passage of reservations, will obtain a

majority of votes in the Senate in favor of the reservations. It is taken for granted that all the reservations, relating to Article X, withdrawal from the League, the Monroe Doctrine, etc., will be adopted or fail together. Apparently intimately informed concerning the sentiment and determination of the Senators, President Wilson, at his conference with the press, maintained that, to be effective, any reservation would have to obtain a two-thirds vote, the proportion required to give the Senate's approval of the Treaty itself, and although this proposition met with opposition among Senators, it is generally accepted as reasonable and

correct.

If this is correct, there is wide opinion that the reservations will not carry, certainly not until the Treaty itself shall have been voted upon. Admitting that the opponents of Article X may have a clear majority against that Article, careful observers assert that it will be impossible for them to muster a two-thirds vote, and that, therefore, after the failure of the reservations to pass, the Treaty itself will be approved and sent to the President for ratification.

The fate of the League of Nations, then, would appear to be settled, but the foes of Article X, admitting, in their turn, the possibility of the failure of the reservations to obtain a two-thirds vote, state that the Treaty itself cannot obtain a two-thirds vote with Article X included, and that, should the League proponents prove uncompromising, there will result a deadlock and the

Treaty will not be ratified. Champions of the League are more sanguine, professing to believe that the enemies of the League, or more literally the enemies of Article X, will not dare to defeat approval of the Treaty after the failure of the reservations to obtain a two-thirds vote.

It has been noted since President Wilson addressed Congress when submitting the Treaty that public and private expressions of some Senators and Members have differed, and that usually, in private conversation, there has been regret voiced that President Wilson did not make a more telling appeal to the Congress and to the nation in behalf of the League of Nations. There was something akin to a note of apology in his address for certain of the settlements, none specified, made by the peace conference. This note had been anticipated when the President informed the newspaper men only a few hours before he appeared before the Congress that it had been found impossible for European nations and America to see things alike, to think the same way. He was found wholly averse to discussing the special alliance with France, indicating that he desired first to have the Treaty of Peace gotten out of the way, and it is thought that he contemplates explaining to the Senate, or to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in camera the reasons why he feels that the United States ought to bind itself, in a wholly one-sided pact, in addition to the League of Nations, to protect France. There is no reciprocity in the undertaking.

President Wilson did, while speaking

to the newspaper men, say that under the League of Nations there would be delay in our going to the help of France, but he did not explain in what manner the special alliance, which, however, he declared was not an alliance, although giving it no other name, would facilitate and quicken our action, as in either case it would be necessary for Congress to declare war.

Supporters of the League of Nations Covenant hold that it was not necessary for President Wilson to give further particular arguments in favor of the League in his Senate address; that every great argument in favor of it had already been uttered, that it was, indeed already an accomplished fact, and that the one question now for the United States is whether to accept or to reject membership in it. One of the elements in the contest, an element which makes crystallization of judgment in the Senate difficult, is the doubt here of any strong national current of opinion either for or against the League, together with the assumption of its proponents that the nation is for it, opposed to the other assumption that the nation is hostile to it. What appears to be a fact is, that the lack of a crystallization in the Senate betokens a lack of crystallization in the nation, that the subject is so comprehensive and vast that the people, once at least, have been content to let the competent Constitutional authorities decide the question for them. For, as President Wilson has said, the League and the terms of peace are inseparable, and

the terms of peace cannot be enforced without the League. Now there are some of the terms of peace which do not meet with universal approval, and the average citizen is content to let those who have the authority decide whether, say, Article X itself is essential; whether, under that Article, the interests of other nations coincide with or are superior to the interests of America, if it should not be to the interest of America to go to war on a given occasion. The criticism of the project of the League to Enforce Peace, by one of America's foremost authorities on international law, in a private letter to the writer immediately after the 1915 convention of that League in Philadelphia applies to the covenant of the League of Nations, and also to the proposed alliance with France; and it may fairly be said that fundamentally the criticism by Senators of Article X springs from sentiments embodied in that authority's words. He wrote:

"Their plan as adopted requires the Governments signatory to the League treaty to act 'forthwith,' without investigation or deliberation. The League proceeded on the unfounded supposition that it always clearly appears on the surface, which Power begins the war. How Bismarck would have smiled at this naive assumption!

"Such a plan as this neglects the elementary principles of law. Execution without trial, upon an apparent fact that may mean one thing or may mean the opposite, is known in domestic affairs as lynching. It would have the same intrinsic character in international affairs.

"The determination by whom a war is begun is one of the most difficult of all questions, and no action would be justifiable before ascertaining which Power had done the thing condemned. To move against a Power that declared war, or that fired the first shot, because of those acts alone, without determining the facts as to guilt, would wholly exclude the possible necessity of selfdefense."

These comments apply solely to Article X. There is no longer any question that, aside from Article X,

reservation affecting withdrawal and amendment, and a distinctly clear reservation concerning the Monroe Doctrine also being admissible, the Senate would approve with more than a two-thirds vote the Treaty of Peace. Former Senator Root's letter to Senator Lodge settled that question.

The conclusion of peace with Germany still leaves the world in such a state as never before had been contemplated. Russia is divided against herself, with the Allied and associated Governments giving moral and material aid to one faction, moral and physical discomfort to the other, without being able to decide to extend legal recognition to any. There arises here a pertinent question: Should the League of Nations, taking for granted that America will ratify the Treaty, decide that the military forces of the member States. must be employed against the Soviet Republic of Russia, would the Congress of the United States vote war? There is a tremendous sentiment in the United States hostile to any project for the employment of military force by the United States against the Soviets. At the present moment the Peace Conference is unable to decide what steps ought to be taken to compel servile submission by the Soviet Republic of Hungary, a submission which would reach to the Soviet Government's abdication, although there is every reason to believe that it is supported by the people of Hungary. Is it properly