a treaty and make provisions specific for every event that may come in the future. Therefore, you have got to have some kind of a judicial body to interpret that treaty; and not only to interpret it, but you have got to have the authority of a League back of it to make that interpretation authoritative. (Applause.)

If the Senators that are opposing this can suggest any constructive measure by which those nations that are gathered around that council table can get along without the maintenance of the League and the creation of machinery for deciding these questions and making the decisions authoritative, I would like to hear what they have to say. (Applause.) I have not heard from any opponent to the League any constructive suggestion with reference to the problem that confronts us now.

And we are interested in that problem. Our soldiers are over there to see that this peace is carried through. We are going to be involved in any mix-up that comes from a futile attempt to settle his war without having the instrumentality for making that settlement effective. It is not a remote thing. It is at your door. We have got the responsibility for this peace along with all the other nations. These nations have realized that responsibility and have established the League of Nations, founded now with fourteen, with a view of enlarging it afterwards and letting in others as they shall show themselves fit.

No Party in Foreign Relations

This is not an academic dream. This is essential to the peace of the world; and I want to arouse you to that understanding. I am told that there is indifference here, that there is some opposition to it. Well, if that opposition exists, I want to have that opposition intelligent and if it is intelligent and patriotic then it will furnish some other solution than the one that is offered. (Applause). And no other solution is now offered. This is not a political question. God forbid. It is a question that overshadows every political issue in this country. President Wilson is a Democrat and I am a Republican. Mr. Wilson is going to continue to be a Democrat; I am going to continue to be a Republican. But our differences in reference to international matters end with the Atlantic Ocean and with the Pacific Ocean. (Standing applause.)

Now, in honor, we have got to stand with this League of Nations. We went into this war; we were driven in. When we got in, the President announced in his messages what our purpose was. What was it? To defeat militarism and to make the world safe for democracy (applause), and as a means of making the world safe for democ

racy, to insure permanent peace, because you cannot have democracy unless you do have permanent peace.

Now, that is what he said in messages framed with great ability and with trenchant language. And those messages went abroad, and even before we entered the war we got assurances from all the other nations that they would join the League of Nations. And then the war came on. Then he stated our purpose, as I have said, and then he promised the League of Nations, and all the other nations took it up and agreed to it. And I know that the poilus, that the English army, that the Italian workers and soldiers, hugged to their souls the idea of the League of Nations which should make this the last war. It was that and the promise of the United States, through its President, that we were coming over there to help them out and to join a League of Nations, that gave them the morale with which they held out until we could get our men there and win the war.

The Promise of Democracy

Now, during that time there was not a protest, a whisper from anybody against those statements of the President. The whole people were back of it. And when he went over there-and I am glad he went (applause)-and when he went over there he got the reception which he did, why? Of course, the President of the United States will always get a hospitable reception; but that does not explain the exuberant enthusiasm, the pathetic emphasis of his reception. What did that come from? It came because he represented the highest type of democrat in the world, and they knew if he stood in that conference the conference would never have any intrigue of autocracy in it. It would have the democratic stamp. That was one thing; and the other thing was that he was coming with a promise of a League of Nations, and that was the thing for which they had a passionate desire.

Now, Lloyd George and Clemenceau are practical leaders. They are not the ones that led with the idea of the League of Nations, but they have come out flat-footed for it. Why? Because there is an underlying popular demand among the laboring men and the socialists and the plain people for that League of Nations. And now the question is whether that whole world's league is to be defeated because we cannot get two-thirds majority in the Senate.

That is the reason why we are here. We are going around for the purpose of arousing the people. We take every means possible to arouse them. Publicity-I am not a professor of it, but I know its effect-requires iteration and reiteration and damnable reiteration

not, as I say, to awaken the intellect, because that exists in the American people, but to challenge their attention, to spur them to use their logic and their reason to see the importance of an interest like this, and to have a little forward vision, to see how it will come to us the minute war is threatened on the other side.

I yield to no man in my profound respect for the Constitution of the United States as the greatest fundamental instrument ever struck from the brain of man. But it makes me impatient to see a perversion of its meaning and purpose urged in order to keep this great country out of a covenant to secure peace among men. Among those engaged in this are men whose adherence to the guaranties of civil liberty in that great instrument, and the means of maintaining them through the courts have not been conspicuous in the past, and whose disposition to amend or weaken them in the past makes me feel that I would hesitate to trust them with the constitution over night.

And then "sovereignty"-what is sovereignty? Well, I can give you the German view and then I can give you the American view. The German view is that sovereignty is the power of force to overcome the sovereignty of other nations. That is what it is. That is all. Now, what is the American idea of sovereignty? It is a sovereignty regulated by international law and international morality and international decency and international neighborly feeling. Do we wish any sovereignty better than that? Sovereignty is nothing but an analogy to liberty. We speak of the liberty of the individual. That is nothing but the liberty of the individual regulated by law so as to protect that liberty; and international sovereignty is the same thing applied to nations with certain necessary limitations. We do not change that in this League of Nations at all. All we do is to furnish the means of determining peaceably and justly what those limitations are, and then the means of maintaining those limitations. Does that deprive us of any sovereignty?

A Partnership of Equals

They say, "Oh, it is a super-government of super-sovereigns." We live in an age when, if we can invent a big word and hurl it against anything, it is supposed to sweep it away. It is not a super-sovereignty. It is a partnership by which all the nations agree that they will unite when any little bantam rooster of a selfish nation wishes to stir up trouble, and does; it provides the means by which that nation shall be stepped on. It provides how the nations shall constantly confer, recommending, coming closer together to a better understanding,

and using, when necessary, every joint action to compel obedience to justice.

Now, can we avoid that? Are we going to retire into our shells and say, "Let the world wag on as it will; we are all right; we have resources within ourselves; we can live against the boycott; we can go on chasing the dollar comfortably and keep our people prosperous. What is the use? Why should we bother ourselves about the other nations?" That is what we thought before this war, but we got into it.

Now, merely on selfish grounds, in order to avoid the complications that may come in another war, we ought to do everything we can in the way of reasonable contribution to the general safety-and, certainly, all we ask here is reasonable contribution. We are asked to join in a boycott; we are asked to unite with the other members of the League to say to any outlaw nation or recalcitrant nation when it should threaten to bring on war, "When you do, every cent of money belonging to your citizens we will hold up; all contracts with your citizens we will suspend; all trade we have with you we will stop; all the food and all the products and all the manufactures and the raw materials we are sending you will stop in our harbors; we will withdraw our ambassadors and consular agents." And when all the world says that to a nation it will occupy a position grand, gloomy and peculiar. (Applause.)

Obligations of Members

We agree among ourselves that if there is any particular loss on individual nations, all the nations of the League will share the loss. That may involve us in some uncomfortable losses. It may be troublesome to some of our merchants who have dealings with this country, but we can indemnify them, and doubtless the country would be entirely willing to.

So far as the forcing of this country into war is concerned, there is nothing obligatory in the constitution of the League. There was such a provision in the League to Enforce Peace, and I should be glad to have it so. France wanted it. Of course, France is at the point of danger, and she is where she thinks she needs an obligation on the part of the other nations to come to her assistance; but the other nations did not agree to go so far. All they did was to provide that the executive council should recommend the number of forces that each country should contribute to make the League effective, and any neighbor of the outlaw nation is bound to allow the League's soldiers to go over its territory. All that is provided in this agreement involves us in very little responsibility. It does unite us with other

nations; it does say that we shall keep up to our ideals in dealing justly with other nations, and with respect to the sovereignty of the other nations; but that is all it entails.

We are told in a lurid set of speeches that we are surrendering our sovereignty and we are violating the Constitution. My friends, I commend you to read the speeches that were made after the Constitution of the United States was framed. I commend you to the speeches of George Mason and Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, and all those patriots who were vociferous in their denunciations of the Constitution of the United States; and if you find anything in the speeches in the Senate that are more startling and threatening and lurid than in those speeches I will give up.

Always in a forward movement you have those who are looking backward. Always in a forward movement you have those who see the difficulties without seeing the advantages. And in their enthusiasm of debate they exaggerate those difficulties to such a point that after the thing is done they are very willing to forget it, and the others have not time to look back to see how ridiculous they were.

Now, gentlemen, what we ask you is not that you should acquiesce in our argument. All we ask you is to regard this as an acute matter, a matter that is pressing on the world, a matter that is pressing on us, a matter that is pressing on the President, who is responsible. And, having studied out the matter and analyzed the difficulty, if you cannot reach any other solution and see that this is the only one, then yield your acquiescence to it; and, having so yielded, communicate to those who represent you in the Senate, and have them understand that you are watching them, and that you know the issue, and that you want to be heard in reference to your opinion on the subject. Goodbye. (Standing applause.)