countries were agreed that such a league must be created to sustain the settlements that were to be effected. But at first I think there was a feeling among some of them that, while it must be attempted, the formation of such a league was perhaps a counsel of perfection, which practical men, long experienced in the world of affairs, must agree to very cautiously and with many misgivings. It was only as the difficult work of arranging an all but universal adjustment of the world's affairs advanced from day to day from one stage of conference to another that it became evident to them that what they were seeking would be little more than something written upon paper, to be interpreted and applied by such methods as the chances of politics might make available, if they did not provide a means of common counsel which all were obliged to accept, a common authority whose decisions would be recognized as decisions which all must respect.

And so the most practical, the most skeptical among them turned more and more to the League as the authority through which international action was to be secured, the authority without which, as they had come to see it, it would be difficult to give assured effect either to this treaty or to any other international understanding upon which they were to depend for the maintenance of

peace.

The fact that the covenant of the League was the first substantive part of the treaty to be worked out and agreed upon, while all else was in solution, helped to make the formu

lation of the rest easier. The Conference was, after all, not to be ephemeral. The concert of nations was to continue, under a definite covenant which had been agreed upon and which all were convinced was workable. They could go forward with confidence to make arrangements intended to be permanent.

The most practical of the conferees were at last the most ready to refer to the League of Nations the superintendence of all interests which did not admit of immediate determination, of all administrative problems which were to require a continuing oversight. What had seemed a counsel of perfection had come to seem a plain counsel of necessity. The League of Nations was the practical statesman's hope of success in many of the most difficult things he was attempting.

And it had validated itself in the thought of every member of the conference as something much bigger, much greater every way, than a mere instrument for carrying out the provisions of a particular treaty. It was universally recognized that all the peoples of the world demanded of the conference that it should create such a continuing concert of free nations as would make wars of aggression and spoliation such as this that has just ended forever impossible. A cry had gone out from every home in every stricken land from which sons and brothers and fathers had gone forth to the great sacrifice that such a sacrifice should never again be exacted. It was manifest why it had been exacted. It had been exacted because one nation desired

dominion and other nations had known no means of defense except armaments and alliances.

War had lain at the heart of every arangement of the Europe-of every arrangement of the world-that preceded the war. Restive peoples had been told that fleets and armies, which they toiled to sustain, meant peace; and they now knew that they had been maintained to promote national ambitions and meant war. They knew that no old policy meant anything else but force, force-always force. And they knew that it was intolerable.

Every true heart in the world, and every enlightened judgment demanded that, at whatever cost of independent action, every Government that took thought for its people or for justice or for ordered freedom should now lend itself to a new purpose and utterly destroy the old order of international politics.

Statesmen might see difficulties, but the people could see none and could brook no denial. A war in which they had been bled white to beat the terror that lay concealed in every balance of power must not end in a mere victory of arms and a new balance. The monster that had resorted to arms must be put in chains that could not be broken. The united power of free nations must put a stop to aggression, and the world must be given peace. If there was not the will or the intelligence to accomplish that now, there must be another and a final war, and the world must be swept clean of every power that could renew the terror.

The League of Nations was not merely an instrument to adjust and remedy old wrongs under a new treaty of peace; it was the only hope for mankind. Again and again had the demon of war been cast out of the house of the peoples and the house swept clean by a treaty of peace, only to prepare a time when he would enter in again with spirits worse than himself. The house must now be given a tenant who could hold it against all such.

Convenient, indeed indispensable, as statesmen found the newlyplanned League of Nations to be for the execution of present plans of peace and reparation, they saw it in a new aspect before their work was finished. They saw it as the main object of the peace, as the only thing that could complete it or make it worth while. They saw it as the hope of the world, and that hope they did not dare to disappoint.

Shall we or any other free people hesitate to accept this great duty? Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world? /

And so the result of the conference of peace, so far as Germany is concerned, stands complete. The difficulties encountered were very many. Sometimes they seemed insuperable. It was impossible to accommodate the interests of so great a body of nations-interests which directly or indirectly affected almost every nation in the world-without many minor compromises.

The treaty, as a result, is not exactly what we would have written. It is probably not what any one of the national delegations would have

written. But results were worked out which on the whole bear test. I think that it will be found that the compromises, which were accepted as inevitable, nowhere cut to the heart of any principle. The work of the conference squares, as a whole, with the principles agreed upon as the basis of the peace as well as with the practical possibilities of the international situations which had to be faced and dealt with as facts.

I shall presently have occasion to lay before you a special treaty with France, whose object is the temporary protection of France from unprovoked aggression by the power with whom this treaty of peace has been negotiated. Its terms link it with this treaty. I take the liberty, however, of reserving it for special explication on another occasion.

The rôle which America was to play in the conference seemed determined, as I have said, before my colleagues and I got to Paris-determined by the universal expectations of the nations whose representatives, drawn from all quarters of the globe, we were to deal with. It was universally recognized that America had entered the war to promote no private or peculiar interest of her own, but only as the champion of rights which she was glad to share with free men and lovers of justice everywhere.

We had formulated the principles upon which the settlement was to be made the principles upon which the armistice had been agreed to and the parleys of peace undertaken-and no one doubted that our desire was to see the treaty of peace formulated

along the actual lines of those principles-and desired nothing else. We were welcomed as disinterested friends. We were resorted to as arbiters in many a difficult matter.

It was recognized that our material aid would be indispensable in the days to come, when industry and credit would have to be brought back to their normal operation again and communities beaten to the ground assisted to their feet once more, and it was taken for granted, I am proud to say, that we would play the helpful friend in these things as in all others without prejudice or favor. We were generously accepted as the unaffected champions of what was right.

It was a very responsible rôle to play; but I am happy to report that the fine group of Americans, who helped with their expert advice in each part of the varied settlements sought in every transaction to justify the high confidence reposed in them.

And that confidence, it seems to me, is the measure of our opportunity and of our duty in the days to come, in which the new hope of the peoples of the world is to be fulfilled or disappointed. The fact that America is the friend of the nations, whether they be rivals or associates, is no new fact; it is only the discovery of it by the rest of the world that is new.

America may be said to have just reached her majority as a world power. It was almost exactly twenty-one years ago that the results of the war with Spain put us unexpectedly in possession of rich

islands on the other side of the world and brought us into association with other governments in the control of the West Indies.

It was regarded as a sinister and ominous thing by the statesmen of more than one European Chancellery that we should have extended our power beyond the confines of our continental dominions. They were accustomed to think of new neighbors as a new menace, of rivals as watchful enemies.

There were persons amongst us at home who looked with deep disapproval and avowed anxiety on such extensions of our national authority over distant islands and over peoples whom they feared we might exploit, not serve and assist. But we have not exploited them. We have been their friends and have sought to serve them. And our dominion has been a menace to no other nation. We redeemed our honor to the utmost in our dealings with Cuba. She is weak but absolutely free, and it is her trust in us that makes her free.

Weak peoples everywhere stand ready to give us any authority among them that will assure them a like friendly oversight and direction. They know that there is no ground for fear in receiving us as their mentors and guides.

Our isolation was ended twenty years ago, and now fear of us is ended also, our counsel and association sought after and desired. There can be no question of our ceasing to be a world power. The only question is whether we can refuse the moral leadership that is offered us, whether we shall accept or reject the confidence of the world.

The war and the conference of peace, now sitting in Paris, seem to me to have answered that question. Our participation in the war established our position among the nations, and nothing but our own mistaken action can alter it. It was not an accident or a matter of sudden choice that we are no longer isolated and devoted to a policy which has only our own interest and advantage for its object. It was our duty to go in, if we were, indeed, the champions of liberty and of right.

We answered to the call of duty in a way so spirited, so utterly without thought of what we spent of blood or treasure, so effective, so worthy of the admiration of true men everywhere, so wrought out of the stuff of all that was heroic that the whole world saw at last, in the flesh, in noble action, a great ideal asserted and vindicated by a nation they had deemed material and now found to be compact of the spiritual forces that must free men of every nation from every unworthy bondage. It is thus that a new rôle and a new responsibility have come to this great nation that we honor and which we would all wish to lift to yet higher levels of service and achievement.

The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God, who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else.

Work for the for the

in

Centre Européen

24 Rue Pierre Curie, Paris V. Dr. Charles H. Levermore,

Secretary League of Nations Union. Dear Sir:

I regret to be so slow in responding to your welcome letter of April 15.

As you have honored me with a request for a somewhat detailed account of what has been recently done in France in support of the League of Nations, I would like to send you such a statement, but I am unable to find time to write such an article, however modest in extent, for the pages of your excellent magazine. I must content myself with sending you these few lines, whose inadequacy I trust that you will overlook.

Your letter and the perusal of your magazine for April have informed me of the federation of three important societies, the World's Court League, New York Peace Society, and the American National Board of the Women's Committee for Permanent Peace, in the League of Nations Union.

The purposes of these units were clearly identical. They have fortunately combined their efforts in order to render them more effective, and I am convinced that the newly created Union will powerfully assist in the triumph of our cause in the United States. The opinion becomes a certainty when I examine the official roster of the League of Nations Union. Having been long conversant with Peace Societies and Congresses, I learned long ago to recognize and to respect the famous names of Nicholas Murray Butler, Theodore E. Burton, Charles Lathrop Pack, Charles H. Levermore, John Bates Clark, Oscar S. Straus, Miss Jane Addams, Mrs. Lucia A. Mead, and others. There are other names, alas! which were formerly well known to me and which death has removed from your list. Several years ago the American Peace Society lost its worthy and respected Secretary, Mr. Benjamin F. Trueblood, whose

genial and dignified presence we should rejoice to see again in the Peace Congress.

And now your letter announces the decease of Dr. Samuel T. Dutton, professor in the Teachers' College of Columbia University. This news has afflicted my colleagues in the European office of the Carnegie Endowment no less profoundly than myself. In the summer of 1913, indeed, we had the privilege of receiving Professor Dutton here in Paris. He came to join the Commission of Inquiry sent into the Balkans at the close of the Balkan wars by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For a week we had the good fortune to help him in preparing for the starting of the mission, and we were delighted with his friendliness, his agrecable common sense, his devotion to Justice and Peace. After the return of the mission his associates were eager in praise of his rare qualities. We shall faithfully preserve the memory of this good citizen who left us at the close of a life consecrated to the progress of humanity and to the cause of friendship among peoples.

During the last few months we have worked in accordance with our ability in France, to assist in their difficult task the statesmen charged with the construction of the Covenant of a League of Nations. As the Executive Secretary of the French Association for the Society of Nations I have been a daily witness of this undertaking. You know that the French Association was formed at the end of the year 1918 under the distinguished presidency of M. Leon Bourgeois, and that it has brought together in this country the most faithful and the most prominent advocates of a Society of Nations. With the support of the League to Enforce Peace, and of the British League of Nations Union, our association has created "Inter-Allied Headquarters of Associations for the Society of Nations" situated in Paris, 254 Boulevard Saint