which, in important matters, will supersede our own? for that is what is implied in a "League of Nations ".

I shall not attempt to enter here upon any analysis of the various ingenious drafts of an international constitution, as the fundamental law regulating the legislative, judicial, and executive powers of such an international government,-a government which, within its sphere, will control the governments of the nations that subscribe to it. One thing, however, is plain, that to possess any efficiency these powers must detract in important ways and in large degree from the powers of the National Governments and involve a considerable sacrifice of their sovereignty. It is true, on the one hand, that sovereignty in what are called the “democracies" has been gradually transferred from a personal absolute monarch to the people, or to some portion of them; and it is also true, on the other hand, that the conception of sovereignty in constitutional States has been to some degree modified by the recognized limitation of the irresponsible use of force and the addition of ethical elements in its exercise. In brief, no people can rightly claim to possess rights in proportion to their power, and sovereignty cannot, in a juristic sense, be longer regarded as strictly absolute. In every state founded upon the rights of persons, which is the basis claimed by democracy, the rights of the whole people cannot exceed what is necessary to the maintenance of the right of each.

In proportion as they become republican, as Kant contends, States may find it easier to combine in federations than was the case with absolute monarchies; still, even republics are jealous of their sovereign powers, and they are not disposed lightly to surrender them. Every scheme for a League of Nations requires this surrender in some degree, for every such league creates in some form a supernational body of control, to which the members agree to submit. Membership in such a league, of necessity, implies the renunciation of any independent foreign policy.

In a world composed of nations varying in culture, character, education, and honor, as well as in numbers, strength, and military traditions, such a renunciation cannot wisely be made without unusual assurances, and it cannot be universal. If made at all, it must be made for the sake of advantages not otherwise attainable, and for an association that is beyond suspicion. A league which had for its object to enforce peace, without specific foreknowledge of the occasions that

might call for its exercise of the war-making power, could not be wisely created except between nations of the highest moral responsibility and mutual confidence, and could never safely be allowed to include any nation that could not be trusted to accept and obey the decisions of a tribunal to which it might consent to submit a difference.

A league professing to be composed only of “free nations" would rest upon a basis of an extremely ambiguous character. What nations are to be classed as "free"? Certainly no nation that holds in subjection any people not permitted to enjoy self-government. And the mutability of nations must not be overlooked. The expression" free nations " is especially equivocal in a period of revolution and transition, like the present. Neither Russia, nor Austria-Hungary, nor even Germany could claim a place in it, nor could the fragments into which they may possibly fall before the movements of revolt or secession are completed. And what is to be said of the suppressed nationalities which are aspiring to independence but have not yet attained it?

Is it not a little singular that the course of events and the effort to control them by general principles should have led men to claim that the coming peace should include such logical antinomies as a partial renunciation of national sovereignty and the complete attainment of self-determination?

The origin of the problem is more evident than its solution. On the one hand, some nations are regarded as too independent, too powerful, and too aspiring, to be considered safe for the rest of the world, unless they are willing to have imposed upon them certain restraints which equality seems to require; while, on the other, some nations are too much oppressed, too feeble, and too submissive, to assert the national rights which even-handed justice would assign to them.

We are here confronted with the indisputable fact of the natural inequality of nations, and this disparity extends to every circumstance of national life, except one. Juristically, all independent and responsible States, whether large or small, have equal abstract rights to existence, self-preservation, self-defense, and self-determination; but culturally, economically, and potentially, they are, and must remain, unequal. If they enter a "League of Nations ", they must enter it upon terms which the strong are disposed to grant to the weak and which the weak are obliged to accept from the

strong. It is evident who will make the laws. But if selfdetermination is a right, and its realization is possible only through the exercise of force, who shall say that a suppressed nation may not plan and achieve its own development, as the greater States have done? Shall the great empires impose upon the world an unchangeable status of their own devising; or shall the Balkan States, for example, agree upon their own boundaries and affiliations?

The problem of adjustment is further complicated by the fact that the modern nation is no longer a merely juristic entity, having for its only object the maintenance of order and justice among its own inhabitants. It has become an economic entity, a business corporation, looking for markets for its commodities and for raw material from which to manufacture them. The State owns mines, railways, steamships, colonies, and uses them as means of increasing its own power of control over the products and the markets of the world. Will it open its house to the passer-by, invite him to its banquet-board, and share with him its accumulated treasures?

This is a question which time will answer. And a very short time has sufficed for a partial response. Every one of the Powers is now planning how it may increase its trade, and how it may extend its control over natural resources.

In so far as the object of a "League of Nations" is to prevent this rivalry from becoming dangerously acute, its purpose is no doubt commendable; but the danger it involves is, that, in striving to enforce a legal compulsion, it may be felt to be oppressive, a new type of multiplex imperialism in place of the old. In one respect, at least, this danger is imminent. If a "League of Nations" proves to be a device to compel independent nations to make economic sacrifices for the benefit of others, and establishes a central control of resources which becomes a dispenser of benefits which the beneficiaries have not aided in creating, then the League will prove a bondage that will be resented, and will not be endured. It is very appealing to our better natures to inform us, that the future is to be "a life of service ", in which we must perform a generous part. If this is voluntary, the call may well be a spur to action. But if the "League of Nations" aims to obtain these sacrifices, not by such voluntary action as the associated nations have freely offered to one another during the period of war, by supplies of food, loans of money, free medical service, and gifts of a magnitude which

the world has never before known, but by the enforced operation of a legal contract, the call is different. In one scheme at least, the world's supplies, the world's credit, and the world's military strength, in the name of equal economic opportunity together with the "freedom of the seas," whatever that may mean, are to be placed under the control of a central authority, an International Ministry or Council of Delegates, whose decisions shall be paramount and final in the great questions of trade and war.

England cannot surrender her defense of the sea, nor France be forced into economic community with a convicted burglar, nor America obliged to open her ports on conditions imposed by a supernational control predominantly composed of foreign representatives.

If nations had not developed into business corporations, and had confined their activities to the realm of protecting the rights of their individual citizens, a "League of Nations" might have meant something quite different from this. Laws of a universal character might have been readily assented to for the uniform protection of individual persons which it is now difficult for sovereign Powers to accept as applying to themselves. This is particularly true when international restraints are directed against perfect freedom in national fiscal policy. No nation whose citizens are required by their habits and climate to maintain a high standard of living, or suffer deterioration by lowering it, can afford to bind itself to grant equal terms to imports, especially manufactured articles, from all countries alike. They would soon find their working classes reduced to starvation wages accompanied by the total paralysis of many lines of industry as a consequence of an enforced competition with lower races, living in climates and under conditions where the customary standard of life can be maintained at a trifling cost, while foreign employers were reaping rich harvests of profit by exploiting practically subject peoples.

Under such a régime, the people of the United States would suffer more than any others, for the reason that their standard of living is the highest in the world. It is on this account that by voluntary sacrifice the United States has been able to rescue from starvation and to supply with needed commodities the impoverished nations of the world. This has been one of their chief contributions to the Great Understanding, the Entente of Free Nations, in saving from ruin the

countries overridden by centralized economic power. It has been possible because personal initiative and enterprise, protected and left free to achieve its own development without absorption by the State, had accumulated forces and agencies which, being free, were in reality the most efficient in the world. Without that freedom and without that protection, the contribution of America in the war would have been impossible. Our country would have been in a state of colonial dependence upon the great manufacturing centers of the European nations.

Our interest and our policy are, therefore, plain: first of all, to hold fast to our freedom; and, next, to prevent from falling into desuetude that unwritten charter of union which constitutes the Entente of Free Nations, cherishing its unity of purpose as the most precious of human achievements. It is a moral, not a legal unity, that has given us the victory. Uncovenanted armies have gathered from every quarter of the globe to assert the determination of the free nations that the rule of arbitrary force shall be ended. Our sons and brothers have been among them. Together they have faced death and have shed their blood, and men of many nations sleep in common graves. It is the most splendid assurance for the peace of the world and the rule of justice that can be imagined. The sense of comradeship in a holy cause cannot perish. A new Brotherhood of Men has come into being. Let us not mar its simplicity by distrust or controversy, or try to force upon any of our co-belligerents any untried theory of legal union which might be honestly rejected, or accepted with doubt and reluctance. The battle has been fought in the name of freedom. Let us remain free in the hour of victory.

But in our freedom there are certain principles which must not and will not be forgotten. They will control the practice of the Entente of Free Nations, which must continue with its present provisions for conference, discussion, and united action. A marked step of advancement has been taken in the recognition of the principle that all international engagements and undertakings must be justified by the moral law and must have publicity. A formal covenant in this sense may be found possible, and it may take a solemn legal form; but, whether this be the case or not, the war has established a few precepts that will, undoubtedly, be admitted to a permanent place in the code of international right. No