TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NKW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA* LTD. TORONTO TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS EDITED BY THEODORE MARBURG, M.A., LL.D. AND HORACE E. FLACK, P H ,D. Jfteto THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 AU riahu reterved OOPYMGIHT, 1920. BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotypcd. Published October, igao. Speeches and articles by William Howard Taft, and extracts therefrom, covering period from May 12, 1915, to the adoption of the revised Paris Covenant, April 28, 1919. One article on the revised Covenant is added. FOREWORD These addresses, articles and editorials were written when the issue was purely on the merits of the League to Enforce Peace plan for a League of Nations, and of the Covenant of the League of Nations as signed by President Wilson in Paris and by him submitted to the Senate. I have nothing to recall in what is said in them. But the present issue over the League is very different from that when these papers were written, and is made so by the very unfortunate atti- tude of President Wilson in refusing to allow the United States to join the League of Nations because the Senate would not consent to Article X as he had drafted it and put it into the Covenant. It is conceded that the other members of the League would have accepted us as a member with the modification of Article X insisted on by a sufficient number of senators to prevent ratification. The Democratic party and its platform adopt completely Mr. Wilson's position and, if Governor Cox is elected, the League will be defeated and a deadlock ensue just as before. Two-thirds of the Republican senators have already voted for the League with reservations and enough Democrats have expressed themselves in the Senate and elsewhere on this matter to ensure a ratification of the League with the Republican reservations if Mr. Harding is elected and sub- mits the German Treaty to the Senate. The doubt on this point is whether Mr. Harding will do so, arising from his FOREWORD failure to say, in his letter of acceptance, that he will do so. My own belief is that, as Mr. Harding has already twice voted for the League with reservations, and will find that a Democratic minority will prevent his putting through a separate treaty with Germany, he will conclude that the only satisfactory solution is a ratification of the League Covenant with reservations. For these reasons though had I been a senator I would have voted for the League Covenant just as submitted and also for it with the reservations I shall vote for Mr. Harding. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT. Pointe au Pic, Province of Quebec, Canada, July 23, 1920. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION .. . vii LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE . I VICTORY PROGRAM : . 2 THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS ... 4 PLAN FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS TO ENFORCE PEACE . . 28 PROPOSALS OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE ... 46 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE PROPOSALS 52 A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT . . . 61 THE PURPOSES OF THE LEAGUE 74 STATEMENT MADE AT RICHMOND, VA., MARCH 21, 1917 . 79 THE MENACE OF A PREMATURE PEACE 81 WORLD PEACE DEBATE 98 VICTORY WITH POWER 132 OUR PURPOSE 133 SELF DETERMINATION 136 PERIL IN HUN PEACE OFFER 138 THE OBLIGATIONS OF VICTORY 141 WORKINGMEN AND THE LEAGUE 152 A LEAGUE OF NATIONS OUR NATIONAL POLICY . . .153 WHY A LEAGUE OF NATIONS Is NECESSARY . . . .156 LESSER LEAGUE OF NATIONS 160 DISARMAMENT OF NATIONS AND FREEDOM OF THE SEAS . 163 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE GERMAN COLONIES . 164 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY . . 166 PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS . . 169 SENATOR LODGE ON THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS .... 174 THE LEAGUE: WHY AND How 177 FROM ARTICLE IN THE PUBLIC LEDGER, JANUARY i, 1919 194 CONTENTS PAGE REPRESENTATION IN THE LEAGUE 195 CRITICISM SHOULD BE CONSTRUCTIVE 198 ROOSEVELT'S CONTRIBUTION TO LEAGUE OF NATIONS . . 201 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT MUST BE 205 LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADVISERS . 210 " THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS Is HERE " 213 THE LEAGUE'S " BITE " 217 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE GERMAN COLONIES . 221 FROM ADDRESS AT ATLANTIC CONGRESS FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 5, 1919 .... 225 IRELAND AND THE LEAGUE 225 THE GREAT COVENANT OF PARIS 228 To BUSINESS MEN 241 FROM ADDRESS AT SAN FRANCISCO, FEBRUARY 19, 1919 . 2.17 FROM ADDRESS AT SALT LAKE CITY, FEBRUARY 22, 1919 . 249 LEAGUE OF NATIONS AS BARRIER TO ANY GREAT WARS IN FUTURE 257 THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS . . . 262 ANSWER TO SENATOR KN'OX'S INDICTMENT 280 PARIS COVENANT HAS TEETH 290 To MAKE PEACE SECURE 295 LEAGUE OF NATIONS HAS NOT DELAYED PEACE . . . 300 " OPEN DIPLOMACY " SLOW 303 RUSSIA, FRANCE, DANZIG 305 THE ROUND ROBIN 307 GUARANTIES OF ARTICLE 10 308 RELIGIOUS AND RACIAL FREEDOM 309 SECRET TREATY PROVISIONS THAT ARE AT THE ROOT OF THE CRISIS AT THE PARIS CONFERENCE . . . . 3! I ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT AS AMENDED . .313 CORRESPONDENCE 321 INTRODUCTION Here in the United States the main attack on both the preliminary project and the perfected Covenant of the League of Nations was on the ground that the League would operate as an interference with our sovereignty and with the Monroe Doctrine, that it involved abandonment of our traditional policy against entangling alliances, and that the country lacked the power, under its Constitution, to enter into such a treaty. These objections are fully met by Mr. Taft in the speeches and articles embraced in this volume. Sovereignty is shown to be just so much liberty of action on the part of States as is consistent with their obligation, under international law and morality, to permit of the exercise of equal sovereignty or liberty of action by their sister States. The League Covenant secures all States in their exercise of this sovereignty free from oppression by other States, and he who wants more is really seeking the license selfishly to disregard these obligations to reject, for example, the just judgments of a properly con- stituted tribunal which is the German conception of sovereignty. The Monroe Doctrine is shown to be strengthened, not impaired, by the Covenant. In its original form the doctrine opposed future colonization on the American conti- nents by European governments and all interference by Europe with the free governments of America. Later on, the United States, under the Polk and under the Taft admin- Viii INTRODUCTION istrations, voiced its opposition to the transfer of American territory by sale to any European or Asiatic government. The original doctrine is strengthened by the League Covenant in that it is, for the first time, specifically recog- nized by the nations, and is extended to the world by the provisions of Article X, which preserves " against external aggression the territorial integrity and political independ- ence of all members of the League." Certainly we are not authorized by that, nor, in fact, by any other article of the Covenant, to acquire territory in Europe by conquest or purchase, and similarly European countries are not author- ized by the Covenant to do it in this hemisphere. The attitude both of Secretary Seward and of President Roosevelt is cited to the effect that the Monroe Doctrine does not forbid non- American Powers from justly disciplin- ing American countries provided the action does not extend to the point of interfering with the latter' s independence and territorial integrity. Similarly the guaranties of territorial integrity and political independence under Article X of the Paris Covenant will not come into operation until the char- acter of a war, otherwise legally begun, discloses itself as aggressive in this respect. Neither are wars^of independ- ence within the legal purview of the League though it will naturally take notice of them and invite friendly settlement. The sale of American territory to non-American Powers is not specifically forbidden by the League Covenant ; but the motive for such attempted action is lessened by the very existence of the League. When the Monroe Doctrine is to be enforced in the western hemisphere, it is natural to expect that a strong American State, close to the seat of trouble, will be selected to execute the mandate of the League. Similar reason would control the action of the INTRODUCTION ix League in employing the forces of a nearby State to quell disturbances in other parts of the world ; so that, unless the struggle be formidable or unless an international force be needed to allay fear of abuse of power, the forces of the United States will rarely be called upon to act abroad. The " entangling alliance " argument is met by a whole series of facts and considerations. The detached position of the United States, which obtained in Washington's day, is shown to have disappeared with the spread of dominion and interests since then. From a country limited to a comparatively narrow settlement along the Atlantic sea- board, the United States has extended its empire over the continent to the Pacific, has acquired Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, Porto Rico, and the Panama Canal strip, while a multiplied commerce and social intercourse tie up her fortunes intimately with the fortunes of other peoples. The life that pulses through her veins today is the life of the world and disease in the body politic elsewhere affects her own health. We have seen that we cannot keep out of a general world conflict and we risk less by assuming the obligations of membership in the family of nations and throwing our great influence in the scale for the preservation of peace than if we were to attempt isolation and play the role of onlooker until the conflagration drew us irresist- ibly in. Our presence will make the potential strength of the League so overwhelming that the hand of the would-be aggressor will be stayed, making serious assault on the world's peace unlikely. In most instances the need for the actual use of force will be avoided; just as the declared purpose of the United States to maintain the Monroe Doctrine has resulted in its being respected without our X INTRODUCTION being called upon to fire a shot or sacrifice the life of a single soldier in its defence. Accordingly there will be less likeli- hood of our being called upon to go to war than if we declined the commitments of the League with a view to avoiding war. While the United States, in entering the League, will assume new responsibilities, it will not assume new burdens. The League will prove to be a source of economy rather than of new expense to us; for it should not only enable us to escape the crushing expense of actual warfare, but, in course of time, should likewise relieve us of part of the present burden of armaments. So much from the standpoint of self-interest. But, irrespective of self-interest, the United States, having become a powerful nation in point of numbers, talent and resources, has a duty to perform in this respect to her sister nations. Modern ingenuity has so multiplied the destructiveness of war that the very preservation of the race is dependent on adequate organization to suppress war. Such organization cannot come about without the participation of the United States. Unless we join, other important countries will remain out and we will witness the world divided once more in hostile groups. Without a League of Nations, the many new States which have come into being, lacking experience and the self-restraint which makes successful self-govern- ment possible, will not only be unable to maintain their independence but will be a source of danger to the general peace, by reason of quarrels among themselves and quarrels with the States of which they were formerly a part ; for, on the one hand, racial animosity and the memory of the tyranny formerly practiced against them " will prompt them to be impatient and headstrong" in dealing with their former masters, while, on the other hand, the latter will INTRODUCTION XI harbor resentment against States whose independent exist- ence will remind them of their own " deserved humiliation." Our experience in Cuba indicates what we may expect of them. After three years of existence as an independent republic, Cuba indulged in a revolution. " Mr. Roosevelt sent me down there to stop it and launch the Republic once more. Well, I could not stop it except by sending for the army and navy of the United States. That step had a wholesome, conciliatory, quieting effect. We were not called upon to fight. We took over the island and held it for two years. We passed a lot of good statutes, among them an election law, held a fair election under it and then turned over the government to those elected. We had launched her once more. If she ever requires it we will do the same thing over again and launch her again, and then again, until she gets strong enough I hope she is now . to stand alone." This unpretentious and good-natured recital of the accom- plishment of a task which for another might have proved difficult indeed and lengthy, if not bloody shows, more clearly than any abstract dissertation possibly could, exactly the patience and fatherly concern which Mr. Taft feels will be required of us in starting the new nations of Europe safely on their way. Our own sacrifices and the more awful sacrifices of our allies, who were fighting our battle long before we awoke to the fact, were made in order to suppress militarism, to safeguard democracy and to make peace more lasting. It was the United States, acting through its President, that pointed the way to a league of nations. The hope of it gave ne\v courage to the armies of our allies and to the people that suffered toil and hardship at home; it helped Xll INTRODUCTION nerve the arm of our own boys and encouraged the masses in the enemy country to revolt against their leaders. Shall we now disappoint their hope? Prove traitor to our pro- fessions? Tell the maimed and the mothers of the dead, at home and abroad, that we did not mean what we said? Suffer conditions to grow up which will make similar nay, far graver sacrifices necessary in the future? "I say that the men who advocate our staying 1 out of the League by reason of a policy against entangling alliances laid down by Washington for a small nation struggling for existence, whereas today we are one of the most powerful nations in the world I say deliberately that these men are little Americans and belittle the United States and its people." Now is the time to set up the international organ- ization which for generations thinking men have sought; now, while the dreadful character of war has so impressed itself on nations that they are willing to make the concessions called for. 4 * Should we not, then, say to the nations of Europe : " We realize that the sea no longer separates us but is become a bond of union. We know that if war comes to you, our neighbor, it is apt to come to us, and we are ready to stand with you in order to suppress this scourge of nations. For love of our brother we will do our share as men and women conscious of the responsibility to help along mankind, a responsibility which God has given this nation in giving it great power." Led, by experience in furthering new measures, to expect violent attack on the proposed League from the side of the Federal Constitution, Mr. Taft took early occasion to deal with that important question. His full and satisfactory INTRODUCTION xiii treatment of it is among his most valuable contributions to the discussion of the League project. The United States is a nation, endowed with all the powers, so far as external relations are concerned, that appertain to a sovereign nation. Practice and legal decisions are cited to show that its treaty-making power extends to all subjects usually dealt with in treaties. These include, in practice and in law, the right to agree to submit to arbitra- tion not only existing disputes but likewise disputes which may arise in future. Among the latter, instance the approval, by the United States Senate, of the Hague conven- tion for an international Court of Prize and of the Bryan treaties. Such agreements may apply to extra-legal con- troversies as well as to justiciable controversies. The latter are defined as matters resolvable by the rules of law and equity. Precedent for instituting an international Court of Justice to pass upon the latter category of questions is found in the Supreme Court of the United States which is called upon at times to apply international law in con- troversies between the States of the Union. Settlement of extra-legal questions by a tribunal would simply be arbi- tration as we commonly know it. A long series of agree- ments of this nature, beginning with the Jay Treaty of 1/94, affirms the practice of the country in respect thereto. Sub- mission of an issue to a judge, which this is, is not a dele- gation of power to an agent. Nor is the Government exceeding its constitutional powers when it enters into an agreement to go to war under certain conditions. For the complete act, the exercise of two con- stitutional functions is required. It is the President who, by and with the consent of the Senate, makes a treaty. " For this purpose the President and Senate are the United INTRODUCTION States." That is one thing. It is the Congress which, observing the requirements of the treaty, takes supplemen- tary action. That is quite another thing. A treaty calling for a declaration of war under certain conditions can no more be carried out without action on the part of Congress than a treaty calling for the payment of money; because in Congress alone resides the power to declare war just as in Congress alone resides the power to make appropriations of money from the Treasury. The requirements of the Constitution are fulfilled only by this double action. But that fact cannot be interpreted as limit- ing the constitutional power of the Government to make treaties. The treaty we made with France during the Revolution was of that character. The Senate accepted the principle when it approved the treaties under which we guaranteed the independence of Cuba and Panama. ' The obligation was entered into in the constitutional way and is to be performed in the constitutional way." Neither can the constitutional power of the country to enter into an agreement to limit armaments be questioned. This power was exercised early in the history of the country by the agreement with Canada ( 1817) to abolish armaments on the Great Lakes and maintain no fortifications along our lengthy common border. The charge that the League sets up a Super-State like- wise falls before an examination of the project. The central organs of the League recommend they do not command definite courses of action by the States of the League. When armaments are in question, the limit prescribed for each State is not definitive until that State has agreed to it. For the United States, it is the Congress, acting under the Constitution, which will finallv determine what our arma- INTRODUCTION XV ments are to be. When mandates for administering back- ward regions are assigned, the mandatory is free to accept or reject the mandate. When the use of force is required, each State of the League will decide for itself whether or not it will observe the recommendation of the central organ of the League that force be used. True, among the positive agreements which may not be ignored, are two of major importance, namely, the agreement to institute a boycott against a member of the League which resorts to war in violation of its covenants and the agreement to " afford passage through their territory to the forces " engaged in disciplining the recalcitrant. These provisions abolish neu- trality in the case of an aggressive war; but it is a condi- tion which arises not by reason of any command of the cen- tral organs of the League but by reason of the act of the recalcitrant itself in waging war illegally. The power of the League rests, not on a super-govern- ment, but on the covenants of the members to cooperate voluntarily by boycott and by the use of force, to punish aggression. Combatting the views of persons who object to the ele- ment of force in the League program, Mr. Taft declares his respect for the motives of the advocates of non-resist- ance but doubts whether nations are as yet proof against the " temptations to cupidity, cruelty and injustice " manifested in men, and whether, on that account, an international police is not as requisite as the constabulary which " protects the innocent and the just against the criminal and unjust " within the State. Mr. Bryan, in the written debate with Mr. Taft, urges that the use of force invites violence, and cites the laying aside of weapons by private persons as having made for the xv j INTRODUCTION peace fulness of society. Mr. Taft replies that the instance is not well chosen, because " men gave up weapons when they could rely on the police, exercising the force of the community, to protect them against violence. . . . Would Mr. Bryan dispense with the police in city, state and na- tion?" "There is no means of suppressing lawless vio- lence except lawful force." Mr. Bryan's view that a popular referendum should be taken before a nation may declare war is met by the supposi- tion that the people of one country to a dispute might well vote for war while that of the other country voted against it. " Shall another vote be taken ? In which country ? Or shall it be in both ? " We may add that when the na- tional legislature had gone so far as to submit the question of peace or war by referendum to the people, what likeli- hood is there that the prospective enemy would await the decision before striking? Picture any of the great Euro- pean countries referring to popular vote the question of war against a neighbor. "How long would the latter delay war- like action? The debate offers an interesting comparison, throughout, of the minds of the two participants. The assertion, made in certain quarters, that the League plan has little value because nations will disregard the obli- gations of the pact is met by the admission that nations are sometimes utterly immoral and shamelessly break treaties on the plea of necessity but that we cannot, on that account, abandon treaty-making " any more than we can give up com- mercial contracts because men sometimes dishonor them- selves by breaking them." Moreover, flying in the face of an organized world opinion and combined world power involves very different consequences from those which fol- lowed breach of treaty under the old order. INTRODUCTION XV11 The fear that judgments of an international tribunal will affect adversely the interests of the United States is dis- missed in these words: "If the judgment against her is just she ought to obey it. If it is not, why assume that it will be rendered at all, or, that if rendered all nations would join in world war to enforce it? Indeed, may not our imagination, if we let it run riot, as easily conceive such a union of the military forces of the world against the United States without a league and its machinery as with them?" No inconsistency is recognized between in- tense love of country, which is regarded as helpful and right, and universal brotherhood. " The relation of one to the other should be as love of home and family is to love of country." They strengthen each other. A league, such as is now planned, is viewed as a necessary and natural outgrowth of the treaty foreshadowed by the demands of the Allies. In fact the proposed treaty is im- possible of fulfillment without the aid of some such organi- zation. Even though drawn " by the ablest lawyers who ever drew a contract '' its numerous provisions will call for authoritative interpretation. What instrument is there better fitted than a court to interpret a contract authorita- tively? Next, there are sure to be conflicts which are not justiciable among the nations. What better institution for settling such questions than a tribunal of inquiry and con- ciliation? Unruliness on the part of backward countries, or of those children among the nations to whom reference has already been made, will call for the use of force to con- fine and restrain it. " You do not always have to use the broad hand but it is helpful to have it in the family." That was the third plank in the platform of the League to Enforce Peace. Lastly, we cannot escape the task of de- XV111 INTRODUCTION veloping and defining international law, and that is the fourth plank. As the discussion proceeded Mr. Taft was led to change, in the direction of enlarging, his view of the length to which nations might be expected to go in conferring powers on a central organization. Of the desirability of sanc- tion for all the pronouncements of the League there was never a question. The problem was to avoid wrecking the project by demanding more than the nations would be willing to concede at this time. It will be observed, for example, that in the earliest speeches, intention to enforce the judgment of an interna- tional court is denied; whereas, later on and with Mr. Taft's approval, the platform of the League to Enforce Peace moved up to that demand. At the same time Mr. Taft has stood, from the beginning, for the power to hale a nation into court. The framers of the Paris Covenant were mani- festly unwilling to confer both powers conjointly on an in- ternational tribunal. They neglected to confer on the League the power to hale offenders before a tribunal or court in matters suitable for arbitration justiciable mat- ters are included in the term but, having once submitted the matter, the disputants are bound to respect the judg- ment or award. On the other hand, disputants in the field of extra-legal matters, including conflicts of political policy, may be haled before a tribunal the Council or a com- mittee thereof while the recommendation arrived at by the tribunal is not en forcible. Mr. Taft is of the opinion that there is still a way, through the instrumentality of the Council, to bring a nation into the Court of International Justice under the Covenant. Certainly it is not unreason- INTRODUCTION XIX able to expect further development of the powers of its tribunals, as well as of the general powers of the League, as time may disclose the need for them. So, too, the earlier position that the League should oper- ate only on its own members was abandoned by Mr. Taft and his associates in favor of insistence on resort to inquiry in the hope of peaceful settlement before even nations out- side the League were suffered to go to war. This is the attitude of the Paris Covenant. The messages printed at the end of the volume reveal the part played by Mr. Taft in securing modification of the covenant originally reported to the Paris Conference (February 14, 1919). His sug- gestions were made with a view to meeting the objections raised against the instrument by members of the United States Senate. The attitude of the latter, after the ob- jections voiced had been largely met by these modifications, indicates the true nature of much of the opposition, namely, desire to destroy the Covenant itself a fearful responsi- bility in view of future consequences to the welfare of man- kind. In addition to meeting, with his usual touch of kindly humor and convincing reasoning, the arguments advanced against the League project, Mr. Taft discloses in these papers a deep conviction that a League of Nations is neces- sary and that within it lie boundless possibilities for good. Some one has said that the man whom we are inclined to regard as wise is the man with whose views we happen to agree. Be that as it may, in reviewing Mr. Taft's utter- ances one is struck with the extent to which the things he has advocated are the things that have been realized or are still regarded as desirable. His basket of discarded no- XX INTRODUCTION tions notions discarded for him by the public is ex- ceptionally small. Among the speeches in his best vein is that of Montreal (September 26, 1917) analysing German motive in the light of Prussia's history and reviewing the events which led up inevitably to our own entry into the war. While stamped with his characteristic fairness, it constitutes such a sweep- ing indictment of Germany, is so eloquent and full of fire, so exact, comprehensive and satisfactory that it should live as a masterpiece in the literature of the war. It goes without saying that the Papers are replete with new evidence of our honored ex-President's grasp of the guiding legal principles of our government, gathered on the bench and in executive office, and of the attitude of mind which the best thought and feeling of the country heartily accepts as true Americanism. THEODORE MARBURG. Baltimore, November n, 1919. TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE The League to Enforce Peace was organized in Independ- ence Hall, Philadelphia, June 17, 1915. Its objects are set forth in the following: PROPOSALS We believe it to be desirable for the United States to join a league of nations binding the signatories to the following: First: All justiciable questions arising between the signatory powers, not settled by negotiation, shall, subject to the limitations of treaties, be submitted to a judicial tri- bunal for hearing and judgment, both upon the merits and upon any issue as to its jurisdiction of the question. Second: All other questions arising between the signa- tories and not settled by negotiation shall be submitted to a council of conciliation for hearing, consideration and recom- mendation. Third: The signatory powers shall jointly use forth- with both their economic and military forces against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits acts of hostility, against another of the signatories before any ques- tion arising shall be submitted as provided in the forego- ing. 1 1 The following interpretation of Article 3 has been authorized by the Executive Committee : " The signatory powers shall jointly employ diplomatic and economic i 2 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Fourth: Conferences between the signatory powers shall be held from time to time to formulate and codify rules of international law, which, unless some signatory shall signify its dissent within a stated period, shall thereafter govern in the decisions of the Judicial Tribunal mentioned in Article One. VICTORY PROGRAM Adopted at a meeting of the Executive Committee, held in New York, November 23, 1918, as the official platform of the League to Enforce Peace, superseding the proposals adopted at the organisation of the League in Philadelphia, June 17, 1915. The war now happily brought to a close has been above all a war to end war, but in order to ensure the fruits of victory and to prevent the recurrence of such a catastrophe there should be formed a League of Free Nations, as uni- versal as possible, based upon treaty and pledged that the security of each state shall rest upon the strength of the whole. The initiating nucleus of the membership of the League should be the nations associated as belligerents in winning the war. The League should aim at promoting the liberty, progress, pressure against any one of their number that threatens war against a fellow signatory without having first submitted its dispute for inter- national inquiry, conciliation, arbitration or judicial hearing, and awaited a conclusion, or without having in good faith offered so to submit it. They shall follow this forthwith by the joint use of their military forces against that nation if it actually goes to war, or com- mits acts of hostility, against another of the signatories before any question arising shall be dealt with as provided in the foregoing." VICTORY PROGRAM 3 and fair economic opportunity of all nations, and the orderly development of the world. It should ensure peace by eliminating causes of dissen- sion, by deciding controversies by peaceable means, and by uniting the potential force of all the members as a standing menace against any nation that seeks to upset the peace of the world. The advantages of membership in the League, both economically and from the point of view of security, should be so clear that all nations will desire to be members of it. For this purpose it is necessary to create 1. For the decision of justiciable questions, an impartial tribunal whose jurisdiction shall not depend upon the as- sent of the parties to the controversy; provision to be made for enforcing its decisions. 2. For questions that are not justiciable in their character, a Council of Conciliation, as mediator, which shall hear, consider, and make recommendations ; and failing acquies- cence by the parties concerned, the League shall determine what action, if any, shall be taken. 3. An administrate organisation for the conduct of af- fairs of common interest, the protection and care of back- ward regions and internationalized places, and such matters as have been jointly administered before and during the war. We hold that this object must be attained by methods and through machinery that will ensure both stability and progress ; preventing, on the one hand, any crystallization of the status quo that will defeat the forces of healthy growth and changes, and providing, on the other hand, a way by which progress can be secured and necessary change effected without recourse to war. 4. A representative Congress to formulate and codify 4 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS rules of international law, to inspect the work of the ad- ministrative bodies and to consider any matter affecting the tranquility of the world or the progress or betterment of human relations. Its deliberations should be public. 5. An Executive Body, able to speak with authority in the name of the nations represented, and to act in case the peace of the world is endangered. The representation of the different nations in the organs of the League should be in proportion to the responsibilities and obligations they assume. The rules of international law should not be defeated for lack of unanimity. [Similar provisions of the two drafts paralleled for comparison] Text of the Plan Adopted by Text of the Plan Presented the Paris Peace Confer- at the Paris Peace Con- ence April 28, ipip ference Feb. 14, PREAMBLE PREAMBLE In order to promote inter- In order to promote interna- national cooperation and to tional cooperation and to secure achieve international peace and international peace and security security, by the acceptance of by the acceptance of obligations obligations not to resort to war, not to resort to war, by the pre- by the prescription of open, just scription of open, just and and honorable relations) between honorable relations between na- nations, by the firm establish- tions, by the firm establishment ment of the understandings of of the understandings of inter- international law as the actual national law as the actual rule rule of conduct among Govern- of conduct among governments, ments, and by the maintenance and by the maintenance of jus- THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS of justice and a scrupulous re- spect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, the high contracting parties agree to this covenant of the League of Nations. ARTICLE I The original members of the League of Nations shall be those of the signatories which are named in the annex to this covenant and also such of those other states named in the annex as shall accede without reserva- tion to this covenant. Such ac- cessions shall be effected by a declaration deposited with the Secretariat within two months of the coming into force of the covenant. Notice thereof shall be sent to all other members of the League. Any fully self-governing state, dominion or colony not named in the annex may become a member of the League if its ad- mission is agreed to by two- thirds of the Assembly, provided that it shall give effective guar- antees of its sincere intention to observe its international obli- gations and shall accept such regulations as may be prescribed by the League in regard to its military, naval and air forces and armaments. Any member of the League may, after two years' notice of tice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the deal- ings of organized people with one another, the powers signa- tory to this covenant adopt this constitution of the League of Nations : ARTICLE VII Admission to the League of States, not signatories to the covenant and not named in the protocol hereto as States to be invited to adhere to the cove- nant, requires the assent of not less than two-thirds of the States represented in the body of delegates, and shall be limited to fully self-governing countries, including dominions and colonies. No State shall be admitted to the League unless it is able to give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to observe its international obligations and un- less it shall conform to such principles as may be prescribed by the League in regard to its naval and military forces and armaments. TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS its intention so to do, withdraw from the League, provided that all its international obligations and all its obligations under this covenant shall have been ful- filled at the time of its with- drawal. ARTICLE II The action of the League un- der this covenant shall be effected through the instrumen- tality of an Assembly and of a Council, with a permanent Sec- retariat. ARTICLE III The Assembly shall consist of representatives of the members of the League. The Assembly shall meet at stated intervals, and from time to time as occasion may require, at the seat of the League, or at such other place as may be de- cided upon. The Assembly may deal at its meetings with any matter within the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world. At meetings of the Assembly each member of the League shall have one vote, and may ARTICLE I The action of the high con- tracting parties under the terms of this covenant shall be effected through the instrumentality of meetings of a body of delegates representing the high contract- ing parties, of meetings at more frequent intervals of an Execu- tive Council, and of a perma- nent international secretariat to be established at the seat of the League. ARTICLE II Meetings of the body of dele- gates shall be held at stated in- tervals and from time to time, as occasion may require, for the purpose of dealing with matters within the sphere of action of the League. Meetings of the body of delegates shall be held at the seat of the League, or at such other places as may be found convenient, and shall con- sist of representatives of the high contracting parties. Each of the high contracting parties shall have one vote, but may have not more than three repre- sentatives. THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS have not more than three repre- sentatives. ARTICLE IV The Council shall consist of representatives of the principal allied and associated powers, to- gether with representatives of four other members of the League. These four members of the League shall be selected by the Assembly from time to time in its discretion. Until the appointment of the representa- tives of the four members of the League first selected by the As- sembly, representatives of Bel- gium, Brazil, Spain and Greece shall be members of the Council. With the approval of the ma- jority of the Assembly, the Council may name additional members of the League, whose representatives shall always be members of the Council; the Council with like approval may increase the number of members of the League to be selected by the Assembly for representation on the Council. The Council shall meet from time to time as occasion. may re- quire, and at least once a year, at the seat of the League, or at such other place as may be de- cided upon. ARTICLE III The Executive Council shall consist of representatives of the United States of Amer- ica, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, together with representatives of four other States, members of the League. The selection of these four States shall be made by the body of delegates on such prin- ciples and in such manner as they think fit. Pending the ap- pointment of these representa- tives of the other States, repre- sentatives of shall be mem- bers of the Executive Council. Meetings of the council shall be held from time to time as occasion may require, and at least once a year, at whatever place may be decided on, or, fail- ing any such decision, at the seat of the League, and any matter within the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world may be dealt with at such meetings. Invitations shall be sent to any power to attend a meeting of the council, at which matters directly affecting its interests are to be discussed, and no de- cision taken at any meeting will be binding on such a power un- less so invited. TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS IV The Council may deal at its meetings with any matter with- in the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world. Any member of the League not represented on the Council shall be invited to send a repre- sentative to sit as a member at any meeting of the Council dur- ing the consideration of matters specially affecting the interests of that member of the League. At meetings of the Council, each member of the League represented on the Council shall have one vote, and may have not more than one representative. ARTICLE V Except where otherwise ex- pressly provided in this cove- nant, or by the terms of the present treaty, decisions at any meeting of the Assembly or of the Council shall require the agreement of all the membersi of the League represented at the meeting. All matters of procedure at meetings of the Assembly or the Council, including the appoint- ment of committees to investi- gate particular matters, shall be regulated by the Assembly or by the Council and may be decided THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 9 by a majority of the members of the League represented at the meeting. The first meeting of the As- sembly and the first meeting of the Council shall be summoned by the President of the United States of America. ARTICLE VI The permanent Secretariat shall be established at the seat of the League. The Secretariat shall comprise a Secretary Gen- eral and such secretaries and staff as may be required. The first Secretary General shall be the person named in the annex; thereafter the Secretary General shall be appointed by the Council with the approval of the majority of the Assembly. The secretaries and the staff of the Secretariat shall be ap- pointed by the Secretary Gen- eral with the approval of the Council. The Secretary General shall act in that capacity at all meet- ings of the Assembly and of the Council. The expenses of the Secre- tariat shall be borne by the members of the League in ac- cordance with the apportion- ment of the expenses of the In- ternational Bureau of the Uni- versal Postal Union. ARTICLE V The permanent secretariat of the League shall be established at , which shall constitute the seat of the League. The secretariat shall comprise such secretaries and staff as may be required, under the general di- rection and control of a Secre- tary General of the League, who shall be chosen by the Execu- tive Council. The secretariat shall be appointed by the Secre- tary General subject to con- firmation by the Executive Council. The Secretary General shall act in that capacity at all meet- ings of the body of delegates or of the Executive Council. The expenses of the secre- tariat shall be borne by the States members of the League, in accordance with the appor- tionment of the expenses of the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union. 10 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS ARTICLE VII The seat of the League is established at Geneva. The Council may at any time decide that the seat of the League shall be established else- where. All positions under or in con- nection with the League, includ- ing the Secretariat, shall be open equally to men and women. Representatives of the mem- bers of the League and officials of the League when engaged on the business of the League shall enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities. The buildings and other prop- erty occupied by the League or its officers or by representatives attending its meetings shall be inviolable. ARTICLE VIII The members of the League recognize that the maintenance of a peace requires the reduc- tion of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforce- ment by common action of in- ternational obligations. The Council, taking account of the geographical situation and circumstances of each state, shall formulate plans for such reduction for the consideration and action of the several Governments. Such plans shall be subject to ARTICLE VI Representatives of the high contracting parties and officials of the League, when engaged in the business, of the League, shall enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities, and the buildings oc- cupied by the League or its officials, or by representatives attending its meetings, shall en- joy the benefits of extra-terri- toriality. ARTICLE VIII The high contracting parties recognize the principle that the maintenance of peace will re- quire the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety, and the enforcement by com- mon action of international obli- gations, having special regard to the geographical situation and circumstances of each State, and the Executive Council shall formulate plans for effecting such reduction. The Executive Council shall also determine for the consideration and action of THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS II reconsideration and revision at least every ten years. After these plans shall have been adopted by the several Governments, the limits of arm- aments therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concur- rence of the Council. The members of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of muni- tions and implements of war is open to grave objections. The Council shall advise how the evil effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the necessities of those members of the League which are not able to manufacture the munitions and implements of war neces- sary for their safety. The members of the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, naval and air programs and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to warlike purposes. ARTICLE IX A permanent commission shall be constituted to advise the the several Governments what military equipment and arma- ment is fair and reasonable in proportion to the scale of forces laid down in the program of dis- armament and these limits, when adopted, shall not be exceeded without the permission of the Executive Council. The high contracting parties agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war lends itself to grave objections, and direct the Executive Council to advise how the evil effects at- tendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the necessities of those countries which are not able to manufacture for them- selves the munitions and imple- ments of war necessary for their safety. The high contracting parties undertake in no way to conceal from each other the condition of such of their industries as are capable of being adapted to war- like purposes or the scale of their armaments, and agree that there shall be full and frank interchange of information as to their military and naval programs^ ARTICLE IX A permanent commission shall be constituted to advise the 12 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Council on the execution of the provisions of Articles I and VIII and on military, naval and air questions generally. ARTICLE X The members of the League undertake to respect and pre- serve as against external ag- gression the territorial integrity and existing political independ- ence of all members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggres- sion, the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled. ARTICLE XI Any war or threat of war, whether immediately ^affecting any of the members of the League or not, is hereby de- clared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. In case any such emergency should arise, the Sec- retary General shall, on the re- quest of any member of the League, forthwith summon a meeting of the Council. It is also declared to be the fundamental right of each mem- ber of the League to bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council anv circum- League on the execution of the provisions! of Article VIII and on military and naval questions generally. ARTICLE X The high contracting parties shall undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integ- rity and existing political inde- pendence of all States! members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such ag- gression the Executive Council shall advise upon the means by which the obligation shall be fulfilled. ARTICLE XI Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the high contracting parties or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the League, and the high contract- ing parties reserve the right to take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. It is hereby also declared and agreed to be the friendly right of each of the high contracting parties to draw the attention of the body of delegates or of the Executive Council to any cir- cumstance affecting interna- tional intercourse which threat- ens to disturb international THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 13 stance whatever affecting inter- national relations which threat- ens to disturb either the peace or the good understanding be- tween nations upon which peace depends. ARTICLE XII The members of the League agree that if there should arise between them any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, they will submit the matter either to arbi- tration or to inquiry by the Council, and they agree in no case to resort to war until three months after the award by the arbitrators or the report by the Council. In any case under this article the award of the arbitrators shall be made within a reason- able time, and the report of the Council shall be made within six months after the submission of the dispute. ARTICLE XIII The members of the League agree that whenever any dispute shall arise between them which peace or the good understand- ing between nations upon which peace depends. ARTICLE XII The high contracting parties agree that should disputes arise between them which cannot be adjusted by the ordinary pro- cesses of diplomacy they will in no case resort to war with- out previously submitting the questions and matters involved either to arbitration or to in- quiry by the Executive Council and until three months after the award by the arbitrators or a recommendation by the Execu- tive Council, and that they will not even then resort to war as against a member of the League which complies with the award of the arbitrators or the recom- mendation of the Executive Council. In any case under this article the award of the arbitrators shall be made within a reason- able time, and the recommenda- tion of the Executive Council shall be made within six months after the submission of the dis- pute. ARTICLE XIII The high contracting parties agree that whenever any dispute or difficulty shall arise between TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS they recognize to be suitable for submission to arbitration and which cannot be satisfactorily settled by diplomacy, they will submit the whole subject matter to arbitration. Disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question of international law, as to the existence of any fact which if established would constitute a breach of any inter- national obligation, or as to the extent and nature of the repara- tion to be made for any such breach, are declared to be among those which are generally suitable for submission to arbi- tration. For the consideration of any such dispute the court of arbitration to which the case is referred shall be 'the court agreed on by the parties to the dispute or stipulated in any con- vention existing between them. The members of the League agree that they will carry out in full good faith any award that may be rendered and that they will not resort to war against a member of the League which complies therewith. In the event of any failure to carry out such an award, the Council shall propose what steps should be taken to give effect thereto. ARTICLE XIV The Council shall formulate and submit to the members of them, which they recognize to be suitable for submission to arbi- tration and which cannot be satisfactorily settled by diplo- macy, they will submit the whole matter to arbitration. For this purpose the court of arbitration to which the case is referred shall be the court agreed on by the parties or stipulated in any convention existing between them. The high contracting parties agree that they will carry out in full good faith any award that may be rendered. In the event of any failure to carry out the award the Executive Council shall propose what steps can best be taken to give effect thereto. ARTICLE XIV The Executive Council shall formulate plans for the estab- THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1 5 the League for adoption plans for the establishment of a perm- anent Court of International Justice. The court shall be competent to hear and determine any dispute of an international character which the parties thereto submit to it. The court may also give an advisory opinion upon any dispute or question referred to it by the Council or by the Assembly. ARTICLE XV If there should arise between members of the League any dis- pute likely to lead to a rupture, which is not submitted to arbi- tration in accordance with Article XIII, the members of the League agree that they will submit the matter to the Council. Any party to the dis- pute may effect such submission by giving notice of the existence of the dispute to the Secretary General, who will make all necessary arrangements for a full investigation and considera- tion thereof. For this purpose the parties to the dispute will communicate to the Secretary General, as promptly as possible, statements of their case, all the relevant facts and papers ; and the Council may forthwith direct the publication thereof. The Council shall endeavor to effect a settlement of any dis- lishment of a permanent court of international justice, and this court shall, when established, be competent to hear and determine any matter which the parties recognize as suitable for sub- mission to it for arbitration under the foregoing article. ARTICLE XV If there should arise between States, members of the League, any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, which is not submitted to arbitration as above, the high contracting parties agree that they will refer the matter to the Executive Council; either party to the dispute may give notice of the existence of the dispute to the Secretary General, who will make all necessary arrangements for a full investigation and consideration thereof. For this purpose the parties agree to communicate to the Secretary General, as promptly as possible, statements of their case, with all the relevant facts and papers, and the Executive Council may forthwith direct the publication thereof. Where the efforts of the council lead to the settlement of the dispute, a statement shall be i6 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS pute, and if such efforts are suc- cessful, a statement shall be made public giving such facts and explanations regarding the dispute and terms of settlement thereof as the Council may deem appropriate. If the dispute is not thus settled, the Council either unani- mously or by a majority vote shall make and publish a report containing a statement of the facts of the dispute and the recommendations which are deemed just and proper in re- gard thereto. Any member of the League represented on the Council may make public a statement of the facts of the dispute and of its conclusions regarding the same. If a report by the Council is unanimously agreed to by the members thereof, other than the representatives of one or more of the parties to the dispute, the members of the League agree that they will not go to war with any party to the dis- pute which complies with the recommendations of the report. If the Council fails to reach a report which is unanimously agreed to by the members thereof, other than the repre- sentatives of one or more of the parties to the dispute, the mem- bers of the League reserve to themselves the right to take published, indicating the nature of the dispute and the terms of settlement, together with such explanations as may be appro- priate. If the dispute has not been settled, a report by the council shall be published, set- ting forth with all necessary facts and explanations the recommendation which the council think just and proper for the settlement of the dispute. If the report is unanimously agreed to by the members of the council, other than the parties to the dispute, the high contract- ing parties agree that they will not go to war with any party which complies with the recom- mendations, and that, if any party shall refuse so to comply, the council shall propose meas- ures necessary to give effect to the recommendations. If no such unanimous report can be made it shall be the duty of the majority and the privilege of the minority to issue statements, in- dicating what they believe to be the facts, and containing the recommendations which they consider to be just and proper. The Executive Council may in any case under this article refer the dispute to the body of delegates. The dispute shall be so referred at the request of either party to the dispute, pro- vided that such request must be THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS such action as they shall con- sider necessary for the main- tenance of right and justice. If the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them, and is found by the Council, to arise out of a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic juris- diction of that party, the Council shall so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement. The Council may in any case under this article refer the dis- pute to the Assembly. The dis- pute shall be so referred at the request of either party of the dispute, provided that such re- quest be made within fourteen days after the submission of the dispute to the Council. In any case referred to the Assembly all the provisions of this article and of Article XII relating to the action and powers of the Council shall apply to the action and powers of the Assembly, provided that a report made by the Assembly, if concurred in by the represen- tatives of those members of the League represented on the Council and of a majority of the other members of the League, exclusive in each case of the representatives of the parties to the dispute, shall have the same force as a report by the Council, made within fourteen days after the submission of the dispute. In any case referred to the body of delegates, all the provisions of this article, and of Article XII, relating to the action and powers of the Executive Council, shall apply to the action and powers of the body of dele- gates. i8 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS concurred in by all the members thereof other than the repre- sentatives of one or more of the parties to the dispute. ARTICLE XVI Should any member of the League resort to war in disre- gard of its covenants under Article XII, XIII or XV, it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all the other members of the League, which hereby un- dertake immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibi- tion of all intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant-breaking State and the prevention of all finan- cial, commercial, or personal in- tercourse between the nationals of the covenant-breaking State and the nationals of any other State, whether a member of the League or not. It shall be the duty of the Council in such case to recom- mend to the several Govern- ments concerned what effective military, naval or air force the members of the League shall severally contribute to the arma- ments of forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League. The members of the League agree, further, that they will ARTICLE XVI Should any of the high con- tracting parties break or disre- gard its covenants under Article XII it shall thereby ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all the other members of the League, which hereby undertakes immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant-break- ing State and the prevention of all financial, commercial, or per- sonal intercourse between the nationals of the covenant-break- ing State and the nationals of any other State, whether a mem- ber of the League or not. It shall be the duty of the Executive Council in such case to recommend what effective military or naval force the mem- bers of the League shall sev- erally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League. The high contracting parties agree, further, that they will mutually support one another in the financial and economic meas- ures which may be taken under THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 19 mutually support one another in the financial and economic measures which are taken under this article, in order to minimize the loss and inconvenience re- sulting from the above meas- ures, and that they will mutually support one another in resisting any special measures aimed at one of their number by the cove- nant-breaking State, and that they will take the necessary steps to afford passage through their territory to the forces of any of the members of the League which are cooperating to protect the covenants of the League. Any member of the League which has violated any covenant of the League may be declared to be no longer a member of the League by a vote of the Council concurred in by the representa- tives of all the other members of the League represented thereon. ARTICLE XVII In the event of a dispute be- tween a member of the League and a State which is not a mem- ber of the League, or between States not members of the League, the State or States not members of the League shall be invited to accept the obligations of membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, upon such conditions as the this article in order to minimize the loss and inconvenience re- sulting from the above meas- nres, and that they will mutually support one another in resisting any special measures aimed at one of their number by the covenant-breaking State and that they will afford passage through their territory to the forces of any of the high contracting parties who are cooperating to protect the cove- nants of the League. ARTICLE XVII In the event of disputes be- tween one State member of the League and another State which is not a member of the League, or between States not members of the League, the high con- tracting parties agree that the State or States, not members of the League, shall be invited to accept the obligations of mem- bership in the League for the 2O TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Council may deem just. If such invitation is accepted, the pro- visions of Articles XII to XVI inclusive shall be applied with such modifications as may be deemed necessary by the Council. Upon such invitation being given, the Council shall imme- diately institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the dispute and recommend such action as may seem best and most effect- ual in the circumstances. If a State so invited shall re- fuse to accept the obligations of membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, and shall resort to war against a member of the League, the provisions of Article XVI shall be applicable as against the State taking such action. If both parties to the dispute, when so invited, refuse to ac- cept the obligations of member- ship in the League for the pur- poses of such dispute, the Council may take such meas- ures and make such recom- mendations as will prevent hos- tilities and will result in the settlement of the dispute. purposes of such dispute, upcr such conditions as the Execu- tive Council may deem just, and upon acceptance of any such in- vitation, the above provisions shall be applied with such modi- fications as may be deemed necessary by the League. Upon such invitation being given, the Executive Council shall immediately institute ar inquiry into the circumstances and merits of the dispute and recommend such action as may seem best and most effectual in the circumstances. In the event of a power so in- vited refusing to accept the obli- gations of membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, and taking any action against a State member of the League, which in the case of a State member of the League would constitute a breach of Article XII, the provisions of Article XVI shall be applicable as against the State taking such action. If both parties to the dispute, when so invited, refuse to ac- cept the obligations of member- ship in the League for the pur- poses of such dispute, the Executive Council may take such action and make such recommendations as will prevent hostilities and will result in the settlement of the dispute. THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 21 ARTICLE XVIII Every convention or interna- tional engagement entered into henceforward by any member of the League shall be forthwith registered with the Secretariat and shall as soon as possible be published by it. No such treaty or international engagement shall be binding until so regis- tered. ARTICLE XIX The Assembly may from time to time advise the reconsidera- tion by members of the League of treaties which have become inapplicable, and the considera- tion of international conditions whose continuance might en- danger the peace of the world. ARTICLE XX The members of the League severally agree that this cove- nant is accepted as abrogating all obligations or understandings inter se which are inconsistent with the terms thereof, and solemnly undertake that they will not hereafter enter into any engagements inconsistent with the terms thereof. In case members of the League shall, before becoming a member of the League, have undertaken any obligations in- ARTICLE XXIII The high contracting parties agree that every treaty or inter- national engagement entered into hereafter by any State member of the League shall be forthwith registered with the Secretary General and as soon as possible published by him, and that no such treaty or interna- tional engagement shall be bind- ing until so registered. ARTICLE XXIV It shall be the right of the body of delegates from time to time to advise the reconsidera- tion by States members of the League of treaties which have become inapplicable and of in- ternational conditions of which the continuance may endanger the peace of "the world. ARTICLE XXV The high contracting parties severally agree that the present covenant is accepted as abrogat- ing all obligations inter se which are inconsistent with the terms thereof, and solemnly engage that they will not hereafter enter into any engagement in- consistent with the terms thereof. In case any of the powers signatory hereto or sub- sequently admitted to the League shall, before becoming a party to this covenant, have 22 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS consistent with the terms of this covenant, it shall be the duty of such member to take immediate steps to procure its release from such obligations. ARTICLE XXI Nothing in this covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine for securing the maintenance of peace. ARTICLE XXII To those colonies and terri- tories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the states which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the prin- ciple that the well being and de- velopment of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the perform- ance of this trust should be em- bodied in this covenant. The best method of giving practicable effect to this prin- ciple is that the tutelage of such peoples should be intrusted to advanced nations who, by reasons of their resources, their experience or their geographi- cal position, can best undertake undertaken any obligations which are inconsistent with the terms of this covenant, it shall be the duty of such power, to take immediate steps to procure its release from such obligations. ARTICLE XIX To those colonies and terri- tories which, as a consequence of the late war, have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the prin- ciple that the well-being and de- velopment of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the perform- ance of this trust should be em- bodied in the constitution of the League. The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be intrusted to advanced nations, who by reason of their resources, their exper- ience, or their geographical posi- THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 23 this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as mandataries on be- half of the League. The character of the mandate must differ according to the stage of the development of the people, the geographical situa- tion of the territory, its eco- nomic condition and other similar circumstances. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of develop- ment where their existence as independent nations can be pro- visionally recognized, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a man- datary until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal considera- tion in the selection of the man- datary. Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the mandatary must be responsible for the admin- istration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and re- ligion, subject only to the main- tenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses, such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic and the prevention of the tion, can best undertake this re- sponsibility, and that this tute- lage should be exercised by them as mandatories on behalf of the League. The character of the mandate must differ according to the stage of the development of the people, the geographical sit- uation of the territory, its economic conditions and other similar circumstances. Certain communities, form- erly belonging to the Turkish Empire, have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized, subject to the rendering of ad- ministrative advice and assist- ance by a mandatory power until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the mandatory power. Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the mandatory must be responsible for the admini- stration of the territory, subject to conditions which will guar- antee freedom of conscience or religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic, and the liquor traffic, and TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defense of territory, and will also secure equal opportuni- ties for the trade and commerce of other members of the League. There are territories, such as Southwest Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their population or their small size or their remoteness from the cen- ters of civilization or their geo- graphical contiguity to the ter- ritory of the mandatary and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the mandatary as integral portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards above men- tioned in the interests of the in- digenous population. In every case of mandate, the mandatary shall render to the Council an annual report in reference to the territory committed to its charge. The degree of authority, con- trol or administration to be ex- ercised by the mandatary shall, if not previously agreed upon by the members of the League, be explicitly defined in each case by the Council. A permanent commission shall be constitued to receive and ex- amine the annual reports of the the prevention of the establish- ment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the de- fense of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League. There are territories, such as Southwest Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of the population, or their small size, or their remoteness from the centers of civilization, or their geographical contiguity to the mandatory State and other cir- cumstances, can be best admin- istered under the laws of the mandatory States as integral portions thereof, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population. In every case of mandate, the mandatory State shall render to the League an annual report in reference to the territory com- mitted to its charge. The degree of authority, con- trol, or administration, to be ex- ercised by the mandatory State, shall, if not previously agreed upon by the high contracting parties in each case, be ex- plicitly defined by the Executive Council in a special act or charter. THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 25 mandataries and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the man- dates. ARTICLE XXIII Subject to and in accordance with the provisions of interna- tional conventions existing or hereafter to be agreed upon, the members of the League (a) will endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, women and chil- dren both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial relations extend, and for that purpose will establish and main- tain the necessary international organizations; (b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories under their control; (c) will in- trust the League with the gen- eral supervision over the execu- tion of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and chil- dren, and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs; (d) will intrust the League with the general supervision of the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the con- trol of this traffic is necessary The high contracting parties further agree to establish at the seat of the League a mandatory commission to receive and ex- amine the annual reports of the mandatory powers, and to assist the League in insuring the ob- servance of the terms of all mandates. ARTICLE XX The high contracting parties will endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane con- ditions of labor for men, women, and children, both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and in- dustrial relations extend ; and to that end agree to estalish as part of the organization of the League a permanent bureau of labor. ARTICLE XVIII The high contracting parties agree that the League shall be intrusted with the general su- pervision of the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest. ARTICLE XXI The high contracting parties 26 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS in the common interest; (e) will make provision to secure and maintain freedom of communi- cation and of transit and equit- able treatment for the commerce of all members of the League. In this connection the special necessities of the regions devas- tated during the war of 1914- 1918 shall be in mind; (f) will endeavor to take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control of dis- ease. ARTICLE XXIV There shall be placed under the direction of the League all international bureaus already established by general treaties if the parties to such treaties consent. All such international bureaus and all commissions for the regulation of matters of in- ternational interest hereafter constituted shall be placed under the direction of the League. In all matters of international interest which are regulated by general conventions but which are not placed under the control of international bureaus or com- missions, the Secretariat of the League shall, subject to the con- sent of the Council and if de- sired by the parties, collect and distribute all relevant informa- tion, and shall render any other assistance which may be neces- sary or desirable. agree that provision shall be made through the instrument- ality of the League to secure and maintain freedom of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of all States members of the League, having in mind, among other things, special ar- rangements with regard to the necessities of the regions devas- tated during the war of 1914- 1918. ARTICLE XXII The high contracting parties agree to place under the control of the League all international bureaus already established by general treaties, if the parties to such treaties consent. Further- more, they agree that all such international bureaus to be con- stituted in future shall be placed under control of the League. THE PARIS COVENANT FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS The Council may include as part of the expenses of the Sec- retariat the expenses of any bureau or commission which is placed under the direction of the League. ARTICLE XXV The members of the League agree to encourage and promote the establishment and coopera- tion of duly authorized volun- tary national Red Cross organi- zations having as purposes im- provement of health, the preven- tion of disease and the mitiga- tion of suffering throughout the world. ARTICLE XXVI Amendments to this covenant will take effect when ratified by the members of the League whose representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the members of the League whose representatives compose the Assembly. No such amendment shall bind any member of the League which signifies its dissent there- from, but in that case it shall cease to be a member of the League. ANNEX TO THE COVENANT One. Original members of the League of Nations. Signatories of the Treaty of Peace. ARTICLE XXVI Amendments to this covenant will take effect when ratified by the States whose representatives compose the Executive Council and by three-fourths of the States whose representatives compose the body of delegates. 28 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS United States of America, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, British Empire, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hedjaz, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portu- gal, Rumania, Serbia, Siam, Czecho-Slovakia, Uruguay. States invited to accede to the covenant. Argentine Republic, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Nether- lands, Norway, Paraguay, Per- sia, Salvador, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela. Two. First Secretary Gen- eral of the League of Nations, The Honorable Sir James Eric Drummond, K.C.M.G.', C.B. PLAN FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS TO ENFORCE PEACE 1 Institutional advances in the progress of the world are rarely made abruptly. They are not like Minerva who sprang full armed from the brain of Jove. If they are to have the useful feature of permanence, they must be a growth so that the communities whose welfare they affect may come to regard them as natural, and so accept them. Our so-called Anglo-Saxon civil liberty with its guaranties of the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of 1 Address before the World Court Congress, at Cleveland, Ohio, May 12, 1915. PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 29 Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Independence of the Judiciary, constituting the unwritten British Constitution, made our American people familiar with a body of moral restraints upon executive and legislative action to secure the liberty of the individual. The written limitations upon legislative action in colonial charters granted by the Crown and their enforcement by the Privy Council of England, probably suggested to the framers of our Federal Constitu- tion that the principles of British Constitutional liberty be given written form and be committed to a supreme and inde- pendent Court to enforce them, as against the Executive and Congress, its coordinate branches in the Government. The step, epochal as it was, from judicially enforcing such limitations against a subordinate legislature under a written charter of its powers, to a judicial enforcement of the limita- tions imposed by the sovereign people on the legislature and executive that they, the people, had created in the same instrument, was not radical but seemed naturally to follow. The revolted colonies after the Revolution, though united by a common situation and a common cause in their struggle with Great Britain, and acting together through the Con- tinental Congress in a loose and voluntary alliance, were sovereigns independent of one another. The Articles of Con- federation which declared their union to be permanent were not agreed to and ratified in such a way as to be binding until some five years after the Declaration of Independence. Meantime, it had become increasingly evident that, strong as were their common interests, they had divergent ones, too, which might embarrass their kindly relations. The leagues of Greece had furnished an example of confederations of small states forced together by a common oppressor and foe, which had found it wise to settle their own differences by some kind of an arbitral tribunal. The office which the 3<3 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Privy Council and the Crown had performed in settling intercolonial controversies suggested an analogy less remote than those in Grecian history and prompted the adoption of a substitute. So there was inserted in the Articles of Con- federation a provision for a " court to determine disputes and differences between two or more States of the Con- federation concerning boundary jurisdiction or any other cause whatever." The complainant state was authorized to present a petition to Congress stating the matter in question, and praying for a hearing. Notice of this was to be given by order of Congress to the other state in the controversy and a day was assigned for the appearance of the two parties by their lawful agents who should agree upon judges to constitute a court for hearing the matter in question. If they could not agree, Congress was then to name three persons out of each of the thirteen states. From this list each party was required alternately to strike out one until the number was reduced to thirteen, and from these thirteen not less than seven or more than nine names, as Congress should direct, were in the presence of Congress to be drawn by lot, and the persons whose names were so drawn, or any five of them, constituted the court to hear and finally de- termine the controversy. Proceedings were instituted under this provision before the Constitution by New Jersey against Vermont, by New York against Vermont, by Massachusetts against Vermont, by Pennsylvania against Virginia, by Pennsylvania against Connecticut, by New Jersey against Virginia, by Massachu- setts against New York, and by South Carolina against Georgia. Only one of these cases came to hearing and deci- sion by a court selected as provided. That was the case of Pennsylvania against Connecticut involving the govern- mental jurisdiction over the Valley of Wyoming and Luzerne PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 3! County. The court met and held a session of forty-one days at Trenton, in New Jersey. Able counsel represented the parties, and the court made a unanimous decision in favor of Pennsylvania, without giving reasons. A compromise is suspected, because Connecticut promptly acquiesced and soon thereafter, with the approval of the Pennsylvania delega- tion, Congress passed an act accepting a cession by Connecti- cut of all the lands claimed by it west of the west line of Pennsylvania, except the Western Reserve, now in Ohio, which Connecticut was thus given ownership of, and which it sold and settled. A number of the other cases were com- promised and, in some, no proceedings were taken after the initial ones. In the Constitutional Convention the necessity for some tribunal to preserve peace and harmony between the states was fully conceded by all, but the form of the court was the subject of some discussion. One proposal was that the Senate should be a court to decide between the states all questions disturbing peace and harmony between the states while the Supreme Court was given only jurisdiction in con- troversies over boundaries. Ultimately, however, the judi- cial power of the United States exercised through the Su- preme Court was extended to " controversies between States," without exception. To those who do not closely look into this jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, it seems no different from that of the ordinary municipal court over controversies between in- dividuals. The states are regarded merely as municipal or private corporations subject to suit process, trial and judg- ment to be rendered on principles of municipal law declared by statute of State Legislature or Congress, or established as the common law. It is assumed that the Constitution destroyed the independence and sovereignty of the states 32 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS and made the arrangement a mere domestic affair. This is a misconception. The analogy between the function of the Supreme Court in hearing and deciding controversies between states and that of an international tribunal sitting to decide a cause between sovereign nations is very close. When the suit by one state against another presents a case that is controlled by provisions of the Federal Constitution, of course there is nothing international about it. But most controversies between states are not covered by the Federal Constitution. That instrument does not, for instance, fix the boundary line between two states. It does not fix the correlative rights of two states in the water of a non-nav- igable stream that flows from one of the states into another. It does not regulate the use which the state up stream may make of the water, either by diverting it for irrigation, or by using it as a carrier of noxious sewage. Nor has Congress any power under the Constitution to lay down principles by Federal Law to govern such cases. The legislature of neither state can pass laws to regulate the right of the other states. In other words, there is nothing but international law to govern. There is no domestic law to settle this class of cases any more than there would be if a similar con- troversy were to arise between Canada and the United States. For many purposes the states are independent sovereigns and not under Federal control. They have lost the powers which the people in the Constitution gave to the Central Government; but in the field of powers left to them, each is supreme within its own limits, and by the exercise of that power may trespass on the exercise of sim- ilar power by its neighbor. How is such a conflict to be settled? It may be by diplomacy, i. e., by negotiation and compromise agreement; but this, under the Constitution, PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 33 must be with the consent of Congress. It might be settled by war; but the Constitution forbids. And the state invaded by the forces of another state can appeal to the General Government to resist and suppress the invasion, no matter what the merits of the quarrel. In other words, one of the attributes of sovereignty and independence which the people in ordaining the Constitution took away from the states was the unlimited power to make agreements between each other as to their respective rights, and the other was that of making war on each other when other means of settlement failed. What did the people through the constitution substitute for these attributes of unrestricted diplomatic negotiation and compromise and the right to go to war over such in- terstate issues? The right of the complaining state to hale the offending state before the Supreme Court and have the issue decided by a binding judgment. Now, can the complaining state bring every issue between it and another state before the Supreme Court? No. The only issues which the Court can hear and decide are questions which in their nature are capable of judicial solution. Mr. Justice Bradley first called such questions " justiciable " * and Chief Justice Fuller and Mr. Justice Brewer used the same terms. There are issues between states of a character which would be likely to lead to high feeling and to war if they arose between independent sovereignties, and which the Supreme Court can not decide because they are not capable of judicial solution. In such cases between states, of course there can be no war because the Federal Government would suppress it. Therefore, if an amicable understanding can not be reached, the states are left with an unsettled dispute *A conventional French word [Ed.]. '34 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS between them and no way of deciding it. They must put up with the existing state of things. There have been several interesting cases before our Supreme Court illustrating the character of the jurisdiction I have been describing. Chicago built a sewage canal to drain her sewage with the aid of the waters of Lake Mich- igan into the Desplaines River, thence into the Illinois and thence into the Mississippi from which St. Louis and other Missouri towns derived their water supply. The State of Missouri brought suit in the Supreme Court of the United States to enjoin the State of Illinois and the Sanitary Dis- trict of Chicago from continuing the flow, on the ground that the impurities added to the Mississippi water had greatly increased the typhoid fever in Missouri. It was held that this was a subject matter capable of judicial solution, that Missouri was the guardian of her people's welfare and had a right to bring such a suit and, if she made a clear case, to enjoin such use of the Mississippi and its tributaries. Mr. Justice Shiras, in upholding the jurisdiction (Mis- souri v. Illinois, 180 U. S. 208, 241), spoke of the court as follows : " The cases cited show that such jurisdiction has been exercised in cases involving boundaries and jurisdiction over land and their inhabitants, and in cases directly affecting the property rights and interests of a state. But such cases manifestly do not cover the entire field in which such controversies may arise, and for which the Constitution has provided a remedy ; and it would be objection- able, and indeed impossible, for the court to anticipate by definition what controversies can and what cannot be brought within the original jurisdiction of this court. " An inspection of the bill discloses that the nature of the injury complained of is such that an adequate remedy can only be found in this court at the suit of the State of Missouri. It is true that PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 35 no question of boundary is involved, nor of direct property rights belonging to the complainant state. But it must surely be con- ceded that, if the health and comfort of the inhabitants of a state are threatened, the state is the proper party to represent and de- fend them. If Missouri were an independent and sovereign state, all must admit that she could seek a remedy by negotiation, and, that failing, by force. Diplomatic powers and the right to make war having been surrendered to the general government, it was to be expected that upon the latter would be devolved the duty of providing a remedy and that remedy, we think is found in the con- stitutional provisions we are considering." This hearing was on demurrer. When the case came be- fore the court again on the merits, Mr. Justice Holmes de- livered the judgment of the court and, while affirming the jurisdiction of the court, points out the difficulties the court has in exercising it and the care it must take in doing so. He said in the course of his opinion: " It may be imagined that a nuisance might be created by a state upon a navigable river like the Danube which would amount to a casus belli for a state lower down unless removed. If such a nuisance were created by a state upon the Mississippi, the controversy would be resolved by the more peaceful means of a suit in this court." Speaking of this provision in the Constitution extend- ing the judicial power to controversies between states, Mr. Justice Bradley in Hans v. Louisiana ( 134 U. S. 1-15) said: " Some things, undoubtedly, were made justiciable which were not known as such at the common law ; such, for example, as controversies between states as to boundary lines, and other ques- tion admitting of judicial solution. And yet the case of Penn v. Lord Baltimore (i Ves. Sen. 444), shows that some of these unusual subjects for litigation were not unknown to the courts ven in colonial times; and several cases of the same general 36 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS character arose under the Articles of Confederation, and were brought before the tribunal provided for that purpose in those articles (131 U. S. App. i). The establishment of this new branch of jurisdiction seemed to be necessary from the extin- guishment of diplomatic relations between the states. Of other controversies between a state and another state, or its citizens, which, on the settled principles of public law, are not subjects of judicial cognizance, this court has often declined to take juris- diction." A very satisfactory discussion of the scope of the power of the Supreme Court to settle controversies between states is contained in Mr. Justice Brewer's opinion in the suit brought by Kansas against Colorado to restrain the latter from absorbing so much of the water of the Arkansas River flowing from Colorado into Kansas as to interfere seri- ously with the supply of water from the river for irrigation purposes in Kansas. He said (206 U. S. 95, 99) : " When the States of Kansas and Colorado were admitted into the Union they were admitted with the full powers of local sov- ereignty which belonged to other states, Pollard v. Hagan, supra; Shively v. Bowlby, supra; Hardin v. Shedd, 190 U. S. 508, 519; and Colorado by its legislation has recognized the right of ap- propriating the flowing waters to the purposes of irrigation. Now the question arises between the states, one recognizing gen- erally the common law rule of riparian rights and the other pre- scribing the doctrine of the public ownership of flowing water. Neither state can legislate for or impose its own policy upon the other. A stream flows through the two and a controversy is presented as to the flow of that stream. It does not follow, however, that because Congress can not determine the rule which shall control between the two states or because neither state can enforce its own policy upon the other, that the controversy ceases to be one of a justiciable nature, or that there is no power which can take cognizance of the controversy and determine the relative rights of the two states. Indeed, the disagreement, PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 37 coupled with its effect upon a stream passing through the two states, makes a matter for investigation and determination by this court. . . . " As Congress cannot make compacts between the states, as it cannot, in respect to certain matters, by legislation compel their separate action, disputes between them must be settled either by force or else by appeal to tribunals empowered to de- termine the right and wrong thereof. Force under our system of Government is eliminated. The clear language of the Constitution vests in this court the power to settle those disputes. We have exercised that power in a variety of instances, determining in the several instances the justice of the dispute. Nor is our juris- diction ousted, even if, because Kansas and Colorado are states sovereign and independent in local matters, the relations between them depend in any respect upon principles of international law. International law is no alien in this tribunal. " One cardinal rule, underlying all the relations of the states to each other, is that of equality of right. Each state stands on the same level with all the rest. It can impose its own legislation on no one of the others, and is bound to yield its own views to none. Yet, whenever, as in the case of Missouri v. Illinois, 180 U. S. 208, the action of one state reaches through the agency of natural laws into the territory of another state, the question of the extent and the limitations of the rights of the two states becomes a matter of justiciable dispute between them, and this court is called upon to settle that dispute in such a way as will recognize the equal rights of both and at the same time estab- lish justice between them. In other words, through these succes- sive disputes and decisions this court is practically building up what may not improperly be called interstate common law." Controversies between one state and another or its citizens which are not justiciable or capable of judicial solution find examples in the suits brought before the Supreme Court. One case of which the Supreme Court refused to take juris- diction was Wisconsin v. The Pelican Insurance Company 38 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS (i U. S.)> in which the State of Wisconsin sought to enforce against a Louisiana Insurance Company a judgment rendered in a Wisconsin court for penalties by a Wisconsin Statute upon Foreign Insurance Companies for failure to comply with statutory regulations of its business. It was held that neither under international comity nor law was one nation required to enforce extraterritorially the criminal law of another nation and therefore that the controversy pre- sented was not one of which, as between the states of the Union, the Supreme Court could take cognizance. Again in Louisiana v. Texas, 176 U. S. i, Louisiana sought to restrain the Governor of Texas from so enforcing a quaran- tine law as to injure the business of the people of Louisiana. The law itself on its face was a proper one for the protection of Texas. In dismissing the suit the court said : " But in order that a controversy between states, justiciable in this court, can be held to exist, something more must be put for- ward than that the citizens of one state are injured by the mal- administration of the laws of another. The states cannot make war, or enter into treaties, though they may, with the consent of Congress, make compacts and agreements. When there is no agreement, whose breach might create it, a controversy between states does not arise unless the action complained of is state action, and acts of state officers in abuse or excess of their powers cannot be laid hold of as in themselves committing one state to distinct collision with a sister state. "In our judgment this bill does not set up facts which show that the State of Texas has so authorized or confirmed the alleged action of her health officer as to make it her own, or from which it necessarily follows that the two states are in controversy within the meaning of the Constitution." Controversies between independent nations suggest them- selves which are not capable of judicial solution and yet are quite capable of leading to war. PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 39 Thus suppose C nation in the exercise of its conceded powers admits to its shores and indeed to its citizenship the citizens or subjects of A nation and excludes those of B nation from both. The discrimination is certainly within the international right of C nation, but it may lead to acrimony and war. This is not a justiciable question nor one that could be settled by a court. The so-called General Arbitration Treaties negotiated by Secretary Knox with France and England used the word " justiciable " to describe the kind of questions which the parties bound themselves to submit to arbitration. They defined this to include all issues that could be decided on principles of law or equity. The issue whether a question arising was justiciable and arbitrable was to be left to the decision of a preliminary investigating commission. The term justiciable and indeed the whole scheme of these treaties were suggested by the provision for settling con- troversies between states in the Federal Constitution and the construction of it by the Supreme Court. The controversies between states, decision of which was not determined by rules furnished by the Constitution or by congressional regulation, were strictly analogous to questions arising be- tween independent nations and were to be divided into justiciable and non-justiciable questions by the same line of distinction. The treaties were not ratified but their approval by Eng- land and France and by the Executive of this country con- stitute a valuable and suggestive precedent for the framing of the constitution and jurisdiction of an arbitral court to be one of the main features of a League of Peace between the great nations of the world. Is it idle to treat such a league as possible? Well, let us 4O TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS take England and Canada. For a hundred years we have been at peace. For that period of time the frontier between us and Canada, four thousand miles long, has been entirely undefended by forts or navies. \Ye have had issue after issue between the two peoples that, because of their nature, might have led to war. But we have settled them by negotia- tion or, when that has failed, by arbitration, until now it is not too much to say that the " habit " of arbitration between us is so fixed that a treaty to secure such a settlement in future issues would not make it more certain than it is. I concede that conditions have been favorable for the creat- ing of such a customary practice. The two peoples have the same language and literature, the same law and civil liberty and the same origin and history. Each has had a wide domain, in the settlement and development of which their energies and ambitions have been absorbed. The jealousies and encroachments of neighbors in the thickly pop- ulated regions of Europe have not been present to stir up strife. And yet we ought not to minimize the beneficent significance of this century of peace by ignoring the fact that many of the issues which we have settled peaceably seemed at the time to be difficult of settlement and likely to lead to war. The Alabama Claims issue and the Oregon Boundary dispute were two of this kind. It is interesting to note that we now have two permanent arbitral English-American Commissions settling questions. One of them is to determine the equitable rules to govern the use of waters on our national boundary, in which both nations and their citizens have an interest, and to apply them to causes arising. The analogy between the function which the Supreme Court performed in the Kansas and Colorado case in regard to the use of the Arkansas River and that PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 41 of this Commission in respect to rivers traversing both coun- tries and crossing the border is perfect. Having thus reached what is practically the institution of a League and Arbitral Court with England and Canada for the preserva- tion of peace between us, may we not hope to enlarge its scope and membership and give its benefits to the world ? Will not the exhaustion in which all the belligerents, whether victors or vanquished, find themselves after this awful sacrifice of life and wealth make them wish to make the recurrence of such a war less probable ? Will they not be in a mood to entertain any reasonable plan for the settle- ment of international disputes by peaceable means? Can we not devise such a plan ? I think we can. The Second Hague Conference has proposed a perma- nent court to settle questions of a legal nature arising be- tween nations. But the signatories to the convention would, under such a plan, not be bound to submit such questions. Nor were the conferring nations able to agree on the consti- tution of the court. But the agreement on the recommenda- tion for the establishment of such a court shows that the idea is within the bounds of the practical. To constitute an effective League of Peace, we do not need all the nations. Such an agreement between eight or nine of the Great Powers of Europe, Asia and America would furnish a useful restraint upon possible wars. The successful establishment of a Peace League between the Great Powers would draw into it very quickly the less power- ful nations. What should be the fundamental plan of the League? 1 1 This is the earliest public utterance of these four principles which correspond to the four articles of the program of the League to En- force Peace as formally adopted at Phila., June 17, 1915. The prin- ciples were worked out at a series of meetings the last of which, 42 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS It seems to me that it ought to contain four provisions. First: It ought to provide for the formation of a court, which would be given jurisdiction by the consent of all the members of the League to consider and decide justiciable questions between them or any of them, which have not yielded to negotiation, according to the principles of inter- national law and equity, and that the court should be vested with power, upon the application of any member of the League, to decide the issue as to whether the question arising is justiciable. Second: A Commission of Conciliation for the con- sideration and recommendation of a solution of all non- justiciable questions that may arise between the members of the League should be created, and this Commission should have power to hear evidence, investigate the causes of differ- ence, mediate between the parties and then make its recom- mendation for a settlement. Third: Conferences should be held from time to time to agree upon principles of international law, not already established, as their necessity shall suggest themselves. When the conclusions of the Commission shall have been submitted to the various parties of the League for a reason- able period of time, say a year, without calling forth objec- tion, it should be deemed that they acquiesce in the principles thus declared. Fourth: The members of the League shall agree that if any member of the League shall bring war against any other member of the League, without first having submitted the question, if found justiciable, to the arbitral court pro- April 9, 1915, was attended by Mr. Taft were formulated by a small group on April loth and immediately submitted to Mr. Taft who gave them the final form substantially embodied, later on, in the Phila. platform. (Editor.) PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 43 vided in the fundamental campact, or without having sub- mitted the question, if found non- justiciable, to the Commis- sion of Conciliation for its examination, consideration and recommendaton, then the remaining members of the League agree to join in the forcible defense of the member thus prematurely attacked. First: The first feature involves the principles of the general arbitration treaties with England and France, to which England and France agreed, and which I submitted to the Senate, and which the Senate rejected or so mutilated as to destroy their vital principle. I think it is of the utmost importance that it should be embraced in any effective League of Peace. The successful operation of the Supreme Court as a tribunal between independent states in deciding justiciable questions not in the control of Congress, or under the legislative regulation of either state, furnishes a prece- dent and justification for this that I hope I have made clear. Moreover, the inveterate practice of arbitration, which has now grown to be an established custom for the disposition of controversial questions between Canada, and the United States, is another confirmation of the practical character of such a court Second : We must recognize, however, that the questions within the jurisdiction of such a court would certainly not include all the questions which might lead to war, and that, therefore, we should provide some other instrumentality for helping the solution of those questions which are non- justiciable. This might well be a Commission of Concilia- tion, a commission to investigate the facts, to consider the arguments on both sides, to mediate between the parties, to see if some compromise cannot be effected, and finally to formulate and recommend a settlement. This may involve 44 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS time; but the delay, instead of being an objection, is really one of the valuable incidents of the performance of such a function by a commission. We have an example of such a Commission of Conciliation in the controversy between the United States and Great Britain over the Seal Fisheries. The case on its merits as a judicial question was decided against the United States; but the world importance of not destroying the Pribilof Seal Herd by pelagic sealing was recognized, and a compromise was formulated by the arbitral tribunal, which was ultimately embodied in a treaty between England, Russia, Japan and the United States. Similar recommendations were made by the court of arbitration which considered the issues arising between the United States and Great Britain in respect to the Newfoundland Fisheries. Third: Periodical conferences should be held between the members of the League for the declaration of principles of international law. This is really a provision for some- thing in the nature of legislative action by the nations con- cerned in respect to international law. The principles of in- ternational law are based upon custom between nations established by actual practice, by their recognition in treaties and by the consensus of great law writers. Undoubtedly the function of an arbitral court established as proposed in the first of the above suggestions would lead to a good deal of valuable judge-made international law. But that would not cover the whole field. Something in the nature of legislation on the subject would be a valuable supplement to existing international law. It would be one of the very admirable results of such a League of Peace, that the scope of international law could be enlarged in this way. Mr. Justice Holmes, in the case of Missouri v. Illinois, to which PLAN FOR A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 45 I have already referred, points out that the Supreme Court, in passing on questions between the states, and in laying down the principles of international law that ought to govern in controversies between them, should not and can- not make itself a legislature. But in a League of Peace, there is no limit to the power of international conferences of the members, except the limit of the wise and the practical. Fourth : The fourth suggestion is one that brings in the idea of force. In the League proposed, all members are to agree that if any one member violates its obligation and begins war against any other member, without submitting its cause for war to the arbitral court, if it is a justiciable question, or to the Commission of Conciliation, if it is other- wise, all the members of the League will unite to defend the member attacked against a war waged in breach of plighted faith. It is to be observed that this does not involve mem- bers of the League in an obligation to enforce the judgment of the court or the recommendation of the Commission of Conciliation. It only furnishes the instrumentality of force to prevent attack without submission. It is believed that is more practical than to attempt to enforce judgment after the hearing. One reason is that the failure to submit to one of the two tribunals the threatening cause of war for the con- sideration of one or the other is a fact easily ascertained, and concerning which there can be no dispute, and it is a palpable violation of the obligation of the members. It is wiser not to attempt too much. The required submission and the delay incident thereto, will in most cases lead to acquiescence in the judgment of the court or in the recom- mendation of the Commission of Conciliation. The threat of force against plainly unjust war, for that is what is in- volved in the provision, will have a most salutary deterrent 46 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS effect. I am aware that membership in this League would involve, on the part of the United States, an obligation to take part in European and Asiatic wars, it may be, and that in this respect it would be a departure from the traditional policy of the United States in avoiding entangling alliances with European or Asiatic countries. But I conceive that the interests of the United States, in view of its close business and social relations, with the other countries of the world, much closer now than ever before, would justify it, if such a League could be formed, in running the remote risk of such a war in order to make more probable the securing of the inestimable boon of peace to the world, an object of desire that now seems so far away. PROPOSALS OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE . PEACE 1 In calling this meeting my associates and I have not been unaware that we might be likened to the Tailors of Tooley Street who mistook themselves for the people of England. We wish, first, to say that we do not represent anybody but ourselves. We are not national legislators, nor do we con- trol the foreign policy of this Government. But we are deeply interested in devising a plan for an international agreement by which, when the present war shall cease, a recurrence of such a war will be made less possible. We are not here to suggest a means of bringing this war to an end ; much as that is to be desired and much as we 1 Address delivered at the Convention of the League to Enforce Peace which was held at Philadelphia, June 17, 1915. PROPOSALS OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 47 would be willing to do to secure peace, that is not within the project of the present meeting. We hope and pray for peace, and our hope of its coming is sufficient to make us think that the present is a good time to discuss and formulate a series of proposals to which the assent of a number of the Great Powers could be secured. We think a League of Peace could be formed which would enable nations to avoid war by furnishing a practical means of settling international quarrels or suspending them until the blinding heat of passion had cooled. When the world conference is held, our country will have its official representatives to speak for us. We, Tailors of Tooley Street, shall not be there; but, if in our post-prandial leisure we shall have discussed and framed a practical plan for a League of Peace, our official representatives will be aided and may in their discretion accept it and present it to the Conference as their own. There are Tooley Streets in every nation to-day and the minds of earnest men are being stirred with the same thought and the same purpose we have heard from them through various channels. The denizens of those Tooley Streets will have their influence upon their respective official repre- sentatives. No man can measure the effect upon the peoples of the belligerent countries and upon the peoples of the neutral countries which the horrors and exhaustion of this unprecedented war are going to have. It is certain that they all will look with much more favorable eye to leagues for the preservation of peace than ever before. In no war, moreover, has the direct interest that neutrals have in pre- venting a war between neighbors been so clearly made known. This interest of neutrals has been so forced upon them that it would require only a slight development and 48 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS growth in the law of international relations to develop that interest into a right to be consulted before such a war among neighbors can be begun. This step we hope to have taken by the formation of a Peace League of the Great Powers, whose primary and fundamental principle shall be that no war can take place between any two members of the League until they have resorted to the machinery that the League proposes to furnish to settle the controversy likely to lead to war. If any member of the League refuses to use this ma- chinery, and attacks another member in breach of his League obligation, all members of the League agree to defend the member attacked by force. We do not think the ultimate resort to force can be safely omitted from an effective League of Peace. We sincerely hope that it may never become necessary, and that the deter- rent effect of its inevitable use in case of a breach of the League obligation will help materially to give sanction to the laws of the League and to render a resort to force avoid- able We are not peace-at-any-price men, because we do not think we have reached the time when a plan based on the complete abolition of war is practicable. As long as nations partake of the frailties of men who compose them, war is a possibility and that possibility should not be ignored in any League of Peace that is to be useful. We do not think it necessary to call peace-at-any-price men cowards, or apply other epithets to them. We have known in history the most noble characters who adhered to such a view and yet the ex- ample of their physical and moral courage is a heritage of mankind. To those who differ with us in our view of the necessity for this feature of possible force in our plan, we say PROPOSALS OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 49 we respect your attitude. We admit your claim to sincere patriotism to be as just as ours. We do not ascribe your de- sire to avoid war to be a fear of death to yourselves or your sons ; but rather to your sense of the horror, injustice and ineffectiveness of settling any international issue by such a brutal arbitrament. Nevertheless, we differ with you in judgment that, in the world of nations as they are, war can be completely avoided. We believe it is still necessary to use a threat of overwhelming force of a great League with a willingness to make the threat good in order to frighten na- tions into a use of rational and peaceful means to settle their issues with their associates of the League. Nor are we militarists or jingoes we are trying to follow a middle and practical path. Now what is the machinery, a resort to which we wish to force on an intending belligerent of the League? It consists of two tribunals, to one of which every issue must be sub- mitted. Issues between nations are of two classes : ist. Issues that can be decided on principles of international law and equity, called justiciable. 2nd. Issues that cannot be decided on such principles of law and equity, but which might be quite as irritating and provocative of war, called non-justiciable. The questions of the Alaskan Boundary, of the Bering Sea Seal Fisheries, and of the Alabama Claims were justiciable issues that could be settled by a court, exactly as the Supreme Court would settle claims between States. The questions whether the Japanese should be naturalized, whether all American citizens should be admitted to Russia as merchants without regard to religious faith, are capable of causing great irritation against the nation denying the privilege ; and yet such nations, in the absence of a treaty on 5O TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS the subject, are completely within their international right and the real essence of the trouble can not be aided by a resort to a court. The dispute is non-justiciable. We propose that for justiciable questions we shall have an impartial court to which all questions arising between mem- bers of the League shall be submitted. If the court finds the question justiciable, it shall decide it. If it does not, it shall refer it to a Commission of Conciliation to investigate, con- fer, hear argument and recommend a compromise. We do not propose, in our plan, to enforce compliance either with the Court's judgment or the Conciliation Com- mission's recommendation. We feel that we ought not to attempt too much. We believe that the forced submission, the truce taken to investigate and the judicial decision, or the conciliatory compromise recommended, will form a ma- terial inducement to peace. It will cool the heat of passion and will give the men of peace in each nation time to still the jingoes. The League of Peace will furnish a great opportunity for more definite formulation of the principles of international law. The arbitral court will amplify it and enrich it in their application of its general principles to particular cases. They will create a body of judge-made laws of the highest value. Then the existence of the League will lead to ever recur- ring congresses of the League, which, acting in a quasi- legislative capacity, may widen the scope of international law in a way that a court may not feel able or competent to do. This is our plan. It is not complicated, at least in state- ment. In its practical application, difficulties now unfore- seen may arise, but we believe it offers a working hypothesis upon which a successful arrangement can be made. PROPOSALS OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 5! \Ye are greeted first by the objection that no treaties can prevent war. We are not called upon to deny this in order to justify or vindicate our proposals as useful. We realize that nations are sometimes utterly immoral in breaking treaties and shamelessly bold in avowing their right to do so on the ground of necessity. But this is not always the case. We cannot give up treaties because sometimes they are broken any more than we can give up commercial contracts because men sometimes dishonor themselves by breaking them. We decline to assume that all nations are always dishonorable or that a solemn treaty obligation will not have some deterrent effect upon a nation which has plighted its faith, to prevent its breach. In every nation there are people who are in favor of peace and opposed to war, and when you furnish a treaty that binds the nation not to go to war, you strengthen the hands of the people in that nation that do not want to go to war and are in favor of preserving the honor of the nation. When we add to this the sanction of an agreement by a number of powerful nations to enforce the obligation of the recalcitrant and faithless member, we think \ve have a treaty that is much more than a "scrap of paper " and we base our faith in this on a common sense view of human nature. We have got to depart from the traditional policy of this country, I agree. But this war has borne in on us the fact that we are so near to all the nations of the world to-day that we are vitally interested in keeping war down as far as we can, and that we had better step forward and assume certain obligations in the interest of the world and in the interest o'f mankind, because there is a utilitarian reason for it we are likely to be drawn in ourselves. Therefore we ought to depart from the policy of isolation that heretofore 52 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS has served us so well, because we are a strong nation. We must bear our share of the responsibilities of the moment, and we must help along the world, and incidentally help along ourselves, for I believe, even if you view it from a selfish standpoint, in the long run it will be a better policy. It is objected that we only propose to include the more powerful nations. We'll gladly include them all. But we don't propose to have the constitution of our court compli- cated by a demand for equal representation of the many smaller nations. We believe that when we have a League initiated by the larger powers, the smaller powers will be glad to come in and enjoy the protection that the League will afford against the unjust aggression of the strong against the weak. CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE PROPOSALS x To me has been assigned the discussion of the constitu- tional objections to the proposals of the League to Enforce Peace. These objections, so far as I understand them, are directed against the first and third planks in our platform. The first plank reads as follows : "First: All justiciable questions arising between the signatory powers, not settled by negotiation, shall, subject to the limitations of treaties, be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judgment, both upon the merits and upon any issues as to its jurisdiction of the question." This looks to an organization of a permanent court by 1 Address delivered at the First Annual Assemblage of the League to Enforce Peace, Washington, D. C, May 26, 1916. CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE PROPOSALS 53 the signatories to the League. It contemplates the oppor- tunity of any member of the League, having a cause of com- plaint against any other member of the League, to sue such member in this court and bring it into court by proper pro- cess. The complainant's pleading will, of course, state its cause of action. The defendant may wish to question the jurisdiction of the court on the ground, for instance, that the cause of action stated by the complainant does not involve a justiciable issue; that it can not be decided on principles of law or equity. The court, upon this preliminary question, must decide upon its jurisdiction. If it finds the question not to be justiciable, it must dismiss the complaint ; but it may properly refer its investigation to the Commission of Conciliation. If it finds that it is justiciable, it must require the defendant nation to answer. What I have to discuss is whether the President and the Senate, constituting the treaty-making power for this Government, may consent, for and on behalf of the United States, to the settlement of any justiciable issue arising be- tween the United States and any other member of the League by this permanent court; and whether it may leave to that court the power to decide whether the issue raised is a jus- ticiable one. It was argued against a similar provision in the general arbitration treaties with England and France that such a stipulation constituted a delegation by the President and Senate of the authority reposed in them over the foreign relations of our Government and therefore that it was ultra- vires. Both upon reason and authority this objection is untenable. The United States is a nation, and, from a foreign standpoint, a sovereign nation, without limitation of its sovereignty It may, therefore, through its treaty- 54 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS making power, consent to any agreement with other powers relating to subject matter that is usually considered and made the subject of treaties. The well-known language of Mr. Justice Field, in the case of Geofrey v. Riggs, 133 U. S. 258, leaves no doubt upon this point. It is as follows : " That the treaty power of the United States extends to all proper subjects of negotiations between our Government and the Governments of other nations, is clear. . . . The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited, except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the Government, or of its Departments, and those aris- ing from the nature of the Government itself, and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the char- acter of the Government, or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter without its consent. But with these exceptions, it is not perceived that there is any limit to the questions which can be adjusted touch- ing any matter which is properly the subject of negotiation with a foreign country." Issues that can be settled on principles of law and equity are proper subjects for decision by a judicial tribunal. Such issues have been settled by Boards of Arbitration, agreed to by independent sovereigns since there were governments. The first provision agreed to by the United States for an arbitration of this kind was in the Jay Treaty in 1794; and since that time there have been eighty-four international arbitrations to which an American nation was a party. In forty, or nearly one-half of these, the other party was an European Power, while the arbitrations between American nations were forty-four. To about two-thirds of all of these the United States was a party, the number of arbitrations be- tween other American powers being fourteen. Of this CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE PROPOSALS 55 number, there were ten that related to questions of boundary, which are, of course, questions capable of solution on princi- ples of law and equity. In such cases, it was never suggested that the Govern- ment was delegating any power at all to the tribunal. A submission to a judicial decision is not a delegation of power as to an agent. It is a submission of an issue to a judge. It is an error to call such a submission a delegation, or to determine its validity on principles of delegation of power as that is limited in constitutional law. In the discussion of the general arbitration treaties in the Senate, there was a suggestion that the agreement to submit to a court questions which had not yet arisen described only by definition and classification, with power in the court to take jurisdiction, was more of a delegation of power than the mere submis- sion of an existing question to arbitrators. There is, how- ever, not the slightest difference in principle between the two. If one is a delegation, the other is. If one is invalid, the other is ; and if one is not invalid, the other is not. Nor does the right to determine jurisdiction of the court involve in principle any more of a delegation than the mere voluntary submission of the issue to the court. It only somewhat enlarges the issues to be submitted. The question whether the court has jurisdiction of an issue is dependent on the question of law, involving the construction of the treaty, and such a subject matter is the commonest instance of the class of questions submitted to arbitration or a court. More than this, the Senate has consented from time to time to arbitrations on issues which may arise in the future and defined by language of the treaty of submission. The last notable instance, and the one which involved a really permanent court is the advice and consent by our 56 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Senate to the Hague International Prize Court Convention in which a permanent international prize court was estab- lished, and the United States bound itself to submit all questions, arising between it and foreign nations in respect to questions of prize in naval warfare, to this international prize court, and to abide the decision, even though that de- cision might involve, as it generally would, the reconsidera- tion of an issue already decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. The treaty is not in force because Eng- land did not finally approve, but our Senate approved it. The International Prize Court must of necessity pass upon its own jurisdiction, and by agreement between the parties, its decision is to be accepted and to be carried out in good faith. The question as to whether commissioners of arbi- tration, under the Jay Treaty, had power to determine their own jurisdiction was brought by Rufus King, American Minister in London, to the attention of Lord Grenville who submitted the question to Lord Chancellor Loughbo rough. The Lord Chancellor resolved the difficulty by declaring : " That the doubt respecting the authority of the Commissioners to settle their own jurisdiction was absurd; and that they must necessarily decide upon cases being within, or without, their com- petency." A similar question was raised by the British Government in regard to the power of the Geneva Tribunal to deal with what were known as the " indirect claims," and her arbi- trators decided that they did not have jurisdiction of the indirect claims, and this was acquiesced in by both Govern- ments. In correspondence with the Chilean Minister over an arbi- tration between this country and Chile, Mr. Olney, then Secretary of State, used this language : CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE PROPOSALS 5/ " But the question whether any particular claim is a proper one for the consideration and decision of an international commis- sion is necessarily one which the commission itself must deter- mine. The conventions under which such commissions are organized usually describe in general terms the class of cases of which the commission is to take jurisdiction, and whether any particular case presented to it comes within this class the com- mission must, of course, determine. The decisions of the late commission, both interlocutory and final, are binding upon both Governments, the latter absolutely so, the former unless reversed, after proper proceedings for a rehearing." I come now to the other objection. The third plank of the platform is as follows: "Third: The signatory powers shall jointly use forthwith both their economic and military forces against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits acts of hostility, against another of the signatories before any question arising shall be sub- mitted as provided in the foregoing." It is objected to this clause that it violates the Constitution in that the effect of such a treaty signed by the United States would take away from Congress the power, conferred upon it by section eight of article one, to declare war. I had the pleasure and privilege of hearing Mr. Bryan advance this argument at the Lake Mohonk Conference. He said that we should need an amendment to the Consti- tution before we could agree to any such provision. He said that in order to carry out the provision we must have a joint council of the powers to determine when the time had arrived for military action and war, and that this would substitute the action of the council for the constitutional discretion of Congress. I venture to think that this view is wholly without founda- 58 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS tion. Although it is not necessary, I am willing to accept the assumption that some kind of a council would be ap- pointed by the powers to make the announcements when the time had come for the use of economic and military forces against the recalcitrant member. Does that take away from Congress the power to declare war? It does not. If the war is a foreign war, it could not be begun under the Consti- tution until Congress had declared war. The President would not be authorized to direct the Army and the Navy to begin war until Congress had declared it. What, then, would be the situation if the fact were an- nounced upon which the obligation of the United States to make war arose under this treaty? It would be to make war by Constitutional means, that is, by the preliminary declaration of Congress that war existed. Congress might decline to exercise that power and refuse to declare war. What would be the effect of that? It would merely be a breach of faith on the part of Congress, and so a breach of faith on the part of the United States and we would not go to war. The treaty-making power under the Constitution creates the obligation to declare war in certain contingencies. That obligation is to be discharged by Congress under its Constitutional power to declare war. If it fails to do so, and thus comply with the binding obligation created by the treaty-making power, then it merely breaks the contract of the Government. It is left to Congress to carry out that which we in a Constitutional way have agreed to do. Thus to impose in a Constitutional way by treaty an obligation on Congress is not to take away its power to discharge it or to refuse to discharge it. In 1904 we entered into a treaty with the Republic of Panama, the first article of which is: CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE PROPOSALS 59 " The United States guarantees and will maintain the independ- ence of the Republic of Panama." What is the necessary effect of this guaranty? It neces- sarily means that if any nation attacks Panama and attempts to take territory from her or to subvert her Government, the United States is under treaty obligation to make war to de- fend Panama. Was it ever supposed that such an obligation took away from Congress the power to declare war? This treaty obligation makes it the duty of the Government to declare war under certain conditions that may arise, creates a contract obligation to the Republic of Panama that it shall do so, and this duty can only be discharged through the action of Congress in declaring war. Does that deprive Congress of its Constitutional power to declare war? It seems to me the question answers itself. In our relations with Cuba we find in the present treaty: ARTICLE I " The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers which will im- pair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, nor in any manner authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes or otherwise, lodgment in or control over any portion of said Island." ARTICLE II " The Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban in- dependence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty, and for dis- charging the obligation with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States now to be assumed and under- taken by the Government of Cuba." ARTICLE III " To enable the United States to maintain the independence of 6O TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own de- fense, the Government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States, lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at 'certain specific points to be agreed upon with the President of the United States." It is quite clear from these three articles that the Govern- ment of the United States binds itself to maintain the inde- pendence of Cuba and to exclude other governments from lodgment in the Island. If any Government attempts to filch territory from Cuba or to subvert the government, it becomes .the duty of the United States to make war and defend against such invasion. Does this treaty obligation thus created take away from Congress the power to declare war? It only creates the obligation on the part of the United States to wage war, and in discharging this obliga- tion Congress must act, or the Government must be recreant to its agreement. Thus, by reason and precedent, it would appear clear that this third plank of the platform of the League is not in any way an attempt to take from Congress the power which it has to declare war under the Constitution. The suggestion that in order to carry out such an obligation on the part of the United States, it would be necessary to amend the Con- stitution, grows out of a confusion of ideas and a failure to analyze the differences between the creation of an obligation of the United States to do a thing and the due, orderly and Constitutional course to be taken by it in doing that which it has agreed to do. A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT 6l A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT * What is International Law? It is the body of rules governing the conduct of the nations of the world toward one another, acquiesced in by all nations. It lacks scope and definiteness. It is found in writings of international jurists, in treaties, in the results of arbitration, and in the decisions of those municipal courts which apply international law, like the Supreme Court of the United States and courts that sit in prize cases to determine the rules of international law governing the capture of vessels in naval warfare. It is obvious that a Congress of the League with quasi-legisla- tive powers could greatly add to the efficacy of international law by enlarging its application and codifying its rules. It would be greatly in the interest of the world and of world peace to give to such a code of rules the express sanction of the family of nations. As to the submission of all questions at issue of a legal nature to a permanent international court, it is sufficient to point out that the proposal is practical and is justified by precedent. The Supreme Court of the Unted States., exer- cising the jurisdiction conferred on it by the Constitution, sits as a permanent international tribunal to decide issues between the States of the Union. The law governing the settlement of most of the controversies between the States cannot be determined by reference to the Constitution, to statutes of Congress, or to the legislation of the States. Should Congress in such cases attempt to enact laws they would be invalid. The only law which applies is that which 1 Address delivered before the National Educational Association, New York City, July 3, 1916. 62 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS applies between independent governments, to wit: Inter- national Law. Take the case of Kansas against Colorado, heard and decided by the Supreme Court. Kansas com- plained that Colorado was using more of the water of the Arkansas River which flowed through Colorado into Kansas than was equitable for purposes of irrigation. The case was heard by the Supreme Court and decided, not by a law of Congress, not by the law of Kansas, not by the law of Colorado, for the law of neither applied. It was decided by principles of International Law. Many other instances of similar decisions by the Supreme Court could be cited. But it is said that stick a precedent lacks force here because the States are restrained from going to war with each other by the power of the National Govern- ment. Admitting that this qualifies the precedent to some extent, we need go no further than Canada to find a com- plete analogy and a full precedent. There is now sitting to decide questions of boundary waters (exactly such questions as were considered in Kansas and Colorado) a permanent court, consisting of three Americans and three Canadians, to settle the principles of international law that apply to the use of rivers constituting a boundary between the two countries and of rivers crossing the boundary. The fact is, that we have gotten so into the habit of arbitration with Canada that no reasonable person expects that any issue arising between us and that country, after a hundred years of peace, will be settled other than by arbitration. If this be the case between ourselves and Canada and England, why may it not be practical with every well- established and ordered government of the Great Powers? The Second Hague Conference, attended by all nations, recommended the establishment of a permanent International A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT 63 Court to decide questions of a legal nature arising between nations. The second proposal of the League involves the submis- sion to a Commission of Conciliation of all questions that cannot be settled in court on principles of law or equity. There are such questions which may lead to war, and fre- quently do, and there are no legal rules for decision. We have such questions giving rise to friction in our domestic life. If a lady who owns a lawn permits children of one neighbor to play upon that lawn and refuses the privilege to the children of another neighbor because she thinks the latter children are badly trained and will injure her lawn or her flowers, it requires no imagination to understand that there may arise a neighborhood issue that will lead to friction between the families. The issue is, however, a non-jus- ticiable one. Courts cannot settle it, for the reason that the lady owning the lawn has the right to say who shall come on it and who shall be excluded from it. No jus- ticiable issue can arise, unless one's imagination goes to the point of supposing that the husbands of the two differing ladies came together and clashed, and then the issue in court will not be as to the comparative training of the children of the families. We have an analogous question in our foreign relations with reference to the admission of the Chinese and Japanese. We discriminate against them in our naturalization and im- migration laws and extend the benefit of those laws only to whites and persons of African descent. This discrimina- tion has caused much ill-feeling among the Japanese and Chinese. \Ve are within our international right in exclud- ing them ; but it is easy to understand how resentment, be- cause of such discrimination, might be fanned into a flame, 64 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS if through lawless violence or unjust State legislation the Japanese should be mistreated within the United States. We have had instances of the successful result of com- missions of conciliation where the law could not cover the differences between the two nations. Such was the case of the Bering Sea controversy. l We sought to prevent the 1 In an address before the National Geographic Society in Wash- ington, D. C., Jan. 17, 1919, Mr. Taft has the following to say in re- gard to this arbitration : " The United States, by a transfer from Russia, became the owner of the Pribiloff Islands, in the middle of the Bering Sea. Upon those islands was the breeding place of the largest herd of fur-bearing seals in the world. They were a valuable property ami a considerable annual income was derived by the United States from the sale of the fur. Canadian schooners began what was called pelagic scaling. They shot the seals in the open Bering Sea. This indiscriminate hunting killed the females of the herd and was destroying it. Revenue cutters of the United States, by direction of the government, scixed such sealing vessels, brought them into a port of the United States, where were instituted proceedings to forfeit them. Great Britain objected on the ground that the United States had no legal jurisdiction. The case was submitted to an arbitration. The treaty contained a provision that the arbitrators, should they reach the conclusion that the United States had no legal right, might recommend a basis of compromise. The United States asserted its right, on the ground, first, that it had terri- torial jurisdiction over the open waters of the Bering Sea by transfer from Russia, which had asserted, maintained, and enjoyed such juris- diction, and, second, that it owned the seals while in the sea in such a way that the Canadian schooners were despoiling its personal prop- erty. The court of arbitration held against the United States on both points, deciding that Russia never had any territorial jurisdiction over the open Bering Sea to transfer to the United States, and that when the seals left the islands and swam out into the open sea they were the property of no one and were subject to capture by any one. The judgment of the court, therefore, was against the United States and awarded damages. Pursuing, however, the recommendation of the treaty, the court made itself into a council of mediation. It said that while the killing of seals in the open sea was not a violation of the legal rights of the United States of which that country could legally A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT 65 killing of female seals in the Bering Sea and asserted our territorial jurisdiction over that sea for this purpose. The question was submitted to international arbitrators and the decision was against us ; but the arbitrators, in order to save to the world the only valuable and extensive herd of fur seals, recommended a compromise by treaty between the na- tions concerned, and accordingly treaties have been made between the United States, Great Britain, Russia and Japan which have restored the herd to its former size and value. So much, therefore, for the practical character of the first two proposals. The third proposal is more novel than the others and gives to the whole plan a more constructive character. It looks to the use of economic means first, and military force if necessary, to enforce the obligation of every member of complain, it was nevertheless a great injury to the common welfare of the world to destroy this greatest seal herd of the world, first, because the fur was valuable and useful for the garments of men and women, and, second, because the destruction of the herd would destroy valuable and useful industries in the preparation of the seal pelts for use. Therefore, they said it was good form and in the interest of the world that the four nations concerned should agree upon a compromise by which the United States might continue to maintain the herd and sell the seal pelts gathered on the islands and that pelagic sealing should be stopped, but that the United States, in consideration of the other three nations restricting their citizens from pelagic sealing, should divide with the other three nations some of the profits of the herd. Accordingly, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, and the United States made such a treaty, which is still in force and under which the herd has been restored to its former size and value. Here we have an example of a court passing on questions of legal right and deciding them against the United States. Then we have the court changing itself into a council of mediation and recommending a compromise, prompted by considerations of decency and good form and the public welfare of the world, which the nations appealed to have adopted and embodied in a treaty." 66 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS the League to submit any complaint it has to make against another member of the League, either to the permanent inter- national court, or to the Commission of Conciliation, and to await final action by that tribunal before beginning hostili- ties. It will be observed that it is not the purpose of this pro- gram to use the economic boycott or the jointly acting armies of the League to enforce the judgment declared or the com- promise recommended. These means are used only to pre- vent the beginning of war before there has been a com- plete submission, hearing of evidence, argument and de- cision or recommendation. We sincerely believe that in most cases, with such a delay and such a winnowing out of the issues and such an opportunity for the peoples of the different countries to understand the position of each other, war would generally not be resorted to. Our ambition is not to propose a plan, the perfect working out of which will absolutely prevent war; first, because we do not think such a plan would work; and second, because we are willing to concede that there may be governmental and international injustice which cannot be remedied except by force. If, therefore, after a full discussion and decision by impartial judges or a recommendation by earnest, sincere and equit- able compromisers, a people still thinks that it must vindicate its rights by war, we do not attempt in this plan to prevent it by force. Having thus explained what the plan is, let us consider the objections which have been made to it. The first objection is that, in a dispute between two mem- bers of the League, it would be practically difficult to de- termine which one was the aggressor and which one, there- fore, in fact, began actual hostilities. There may be some trouble in this, I can see ; but what we are dealing with is a A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT 67 working hypothesis, a very general plan. The details are not worked out. One can suggest that an International Council engaged in an attempt to mediate the differences might easily determine for the League which nation was at fault in beginning hostilities. It would doubtless be neces- sary where some issues arise to require a maintenance of the status quo until the issues were submitted and decided in one tribunal or the other; but it does not seem to me that these suggested difficulties are insuperable or may not be com- pletely met by a detailed procedure that, of course, must be fixed before the plan of the League shall become operative. The second objection is to the use of the economic boycott and the army and the navy to enforce the obligations entered into by the members of the League. I respect the views of Pacifists and those who advocate the doctrine of non- resistance as the only Christian doctrine. Such is the view of that Society of Friends which, with a courage higher than that possessed by those who advocate forcible means, are willing to subject themselves to the injustice of the wicked in order to carry out their ideal of what Christian action should be. They have been so far in advance of the general opinions of the world in their history of three hundred years, and have lived to see so many of their doctrines recognized by the world as just, that I always differ from them with reluctance. Still, it seems to me that in the necessity of preserving our civilization and saving our country's freedom and individual liberty maintained now for one hundred and twenty-five years, we have no right to assume that we have passed beyond the period in history when nations are affected by the same frailties and the same temptations to cupidity, cruelty and injustice as men. In our domestic communities we need a police force to protect the innocent and the just 68 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS against the criminal and the unjust, and to maintain the guaranty of life, liberty and property. The analogy be- tween the domestic community and that of nations is suf- ficently close to justify and require what is in fact an inter- national police force. The attitude of those who oppose using force or a threat of force to compel nations to keep the peace is really like that of the modern school of theoreti- cal anarchists, who maintain that if all restraint were re- moved and there were no government, and the children and youth, and men and women were trained to self-responsibil- ity, every member of society would know what his or her duty was and would perform it. They assert that it is the existence of restraint that leads to the violation of right. I may be permitted to remark that with modern fads of educa- tion we have gone far in the direction of applying this prin- ciple of modern anarchy in the discipline and education of our children and youth, but I do not think the result can be said to justify the theory if we can judge from the strikes of school children or from the general lack of discipline and respect for authority that the rising generation manifests. The time has not come when we can afford to give up the threat of the police and the use of force to back up and sus- tain the obligation of moral duty. The third objection is that it would be unconstitutional for the United States, through its treaty-making power, to enter into such a League. This objection is based on the fact that the Constitution vests in Congress the power to declare war. It is said that this League would transfer the power to de- clare war away from Congress to some foreign council, in which the United States would only have a representative. This objection grows out of a misconception of the effect of A CONSTRUCTIVE PLAN FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS in the Senate of the United States and elsewhere. Some speeches, notably that of Senator Lodge, have been useful in taking up the League Covenant, article by article, criticis- ing its language and expressing doubts either as to its mean- ing or as to its wisdom. The President will differ, as many others differ, with Senator Lodge in respect to many of the criticisms, but in the constructive part of his speech he will find useful sug- gestions which he will be able to present to his colleagues in the conference. These suggestions should prove especially valuable in the work of revising the form of the Covenant and in making changes, to which the conference may readily consent, where Senator Lodge and other critics have misunderstood the purpose and meaning of the words used. The League Covenant should be in the Treaty of Peace. It is indispensable if the war is to accomplish the declared purpose of this nation and of the world and if it is to bring the promised benefit to mankind. We know the President believes this and will insist upon including the Covenant. Our profound sympathy in his purpose and our prayers for his success should go with him in his great mission. ANSWER TO SENATOR KNOX'S INDICTMENT 1 My friend, Senator Knox, has presented a formidable in- dictment against the proposed Covenant of the League of Nations. A number of his colleagues seem to have accepted his views as to its meaning. He says that it is unconstitu- 1 Address at dinner of Economic Club of New York, March nth, 1919. ANSWER TO SENATOR KNOX's INDICTMENT 28l tional in that it turns over to the Executive Council of the League the power to declare and make war for us, to fix our armament and to involve us as a mandatory in all sorts of duties in the management of backward peoples. He says that it thus transfers the sovereignty of this nation to the governing body of the League, which he asserts the Executive Council to be. When Senator Knox's attack upon the validity of the Cov- enant is analyzed, it will be seen to rest on an assumption that the Executive Council is given executive powers, which is unwarranted by the text of the instrument. The whole function of the Executive Council is to be the medium through which the League members are to exchange views, the advisory board to consider all matters arising in the field of the League's possible action and to advise the members as to what they ought, by joint action, to do. The Council makes few if any orders binding on the members of the League. After a member of the League has agreed not to exceed a limit of armament, the Execu- tive Council must consent to raising the limit. Where the Executive Council acts as a mediating and inquiring body to settle differences not arbitrated, its unanimous recom- mendation of a settlement must satisfy the nation seeking relief, if the defendant nation complies with the recom- mendation. These are the only cases in which the United States as a member of the League would be bound by action of the Executive Council. All other obligations of the United States under the League are to be found in the covenants of the League, and not in any action of the Executive Council. When this is understood clearly, the whole structure of Senator Knox's indictment falls. 282 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS The Executive Council is a most necessary and useful body for coordinating the activities of the League, for initiating consideration by the members of the League of their proper joint and individual action, and for keeping all advised of the progress of events in the field of the League jurisdiction. It is impossible, in the time I have, to follow through Senator Knox's argument in all the Articles of the League, but his treatment of Article XVI is a fair illustration of the reasons he advances for ascribing to the Executive Council super-sovereign power. Article XVI is the penalizing section. Whenever a member of the League violates its covenant not to make war under Article XII, it is an act of war against the other members and they are to levy a boycott against the outlaw nation. There is in the Covenant no agreement to make war. An act of war does not produce a state of war unless the nation acted against chooses to declare and wage war on account of it. The Executive Council is given the duty of recommending what forces should be furnished by members of the League to protect the covenants of the League. The members are required to allow military forces of a member of the League, cooperating to protect the covenants, passage through their territory. Of this article Senator Knox says : " If any of the high contracting parties breaks its cov- enant under Article XII, then we must fly to arms to pro- tect the covenants." Again he says of it: "Whether or not we participate, and the amount of our participation in belligerent operations, is determined not by ourselves but by the Executive Council in which we have seemingly, at most, but one voice out of nine, no matter what we ANSWER TO SENATOR KNOX's INDICTMENT 283 think of the controversy, no matter how we view the wisdom of a war over the cause, we are bound to go to war when and in the manner the Executive Council determines." He asserts that the power of the Executive Council is that of " recommending what effective military or naval forces each member of the League shall contribute to protect the cov- enants of the League, not only against League members but non-League members: that is, as a practical matter, the power to declare war." I submit in all fairness that there never was a more palp- able non sequitur than this. I venture to think that were Senator Knox charged as Secretary of State with construing the obligation of the United States under this Covenant, he would on behalf of the United States summarily reject such a construction. By what manner of reasoning can the word " recom- mend " be converted into a word of direction or command? Yet upon this interpretation of the meaning of the words " recommend," " advise '' and words of like import, as they occur in many articles, depends his whole argument as to the powers of the Executive Council under the Covenant, and their super-sovereign character. Senator Knox contends that the plan of the League will create two Leagues one of the Allies and one of the out- cast nations. The Covenant provides for a protocol to in- vite in all nations responsible and fit for membership. Cer- tainly Germany and the other enemy countries ought not now to be taken in, but they ought to be kept under control. The League wishes to prevent war in the world and realizes, of course, that excluded nations are quite as -likely to make war as their own members. The Covenant therefore declares the concern of the League 284 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS in threatened war between nations whether members or not and asserts its right to take steps to prevent it. This dec- laration is made as the justification for Article XVII, by which a nation or nations not members of the League who threaten war are invited to become temporary mem- bers of the League in order to enable them to settle their disputes peaceably as permanent members covenant to do. These temporary members are visited with the same penalties for acts which would be, if committed by per- manent members, breaches of their covenants not to begin war. Thus the scope of the League's action is extended to all nations. This is the explanation and the purport of Articles XI and XVII. They involve the whole world in the covenants of the League not to make war. They operate to defeat the formation and warlike organization of a rival league of nations, composed of countries not admitted as permanent members to this league. They unite the rest of the world against such nations in any case of war threatened by them. There is no supreme court to construe this Covenant and bind the members, and each nation, in determining its own obligations and action under it, must construe it for itself. Our duties under it are not to be declared and enforced against us by a hostile tribunal or by one actuated by dif- ferent principles and spirit from our own. Its whole strength is to rest in an agreed interpretation by all. Its sanction must be in the good sense of the covenanting na- tions who know that, in order that it may hold together and serve its purpose, they must all be reasonable in their con- struction. What rules of interpretation should and must we therefore apply? The President and Senate are to ratify this Covenant if it ANSWER TO SENATOR KNOX's INDICTMENT 285 be ratified, by virtue of their constitutional power to make treaties. This power, as the Supreme Court has held, en- ables them to bind the United States to a contract with an- other nation on any subject matter usually the subject matter of treaties between nations, subject to the limitation that the treaty may not change the form of government of the United States, and may not part with territory belonging to a State of the United States, without the consent of the State. The making of war, of embargoes, or armament, and of arbitration are frequently subject matter of treaties. ' The President and Senate may not, however, confer on any body, constituted by a league of nations, the power and function to do anything for the United States which is vested by the Federal Constitution in Congress, the treaty making power or any other branch of the United States Government. It, therefore, follows that whenever the treaty-making power binds the United States to do anything, it must be done by the branch of that Government vested by the Con- stitution with that function. A treaty may bind the United States to make or not make war in any specific contingency; it may bind the United States to levy a boycott, to limit its armament to a fixed amount ; it may bind the United States to submit a difference or a class of differences to arbitration. But the only way in which the United States can perform the agreement is for Congress to fulfill the promise to de- clare and make war ; for Congress to perform the obligation to levy a boycott; for Congress to fix or reduce armament in accord with the contract; and for the President and Senate, as the treaty-making power, to formulate the issues to be arbitrated and agree with the opposing nation on the character of the court. 286 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS When the treaty provides that the obligation arises upon a breach of a covenant, and does not make the question of the breach conclusively determinable by any body or tribunal, then it is for Congress itself to decide in good faith whether or not the breach of the Covenant upon which the obligation arises, has in fact occurred, and finding that, it has to per- form the obligation. These plain limitations upon the Federal treaty-making power are known to nations of this conference, and any treaty of the United States is to be construed in the light of them. Following these necessary rules of construction, the provisions of the Covenant entirely and easily conform to the Constitution of the United States. They lose alto- gether that threatening and dangerous character and effect which Senator Knox and other critics would attach to them. They delegate to no body but to our own Federal consti- tutional agencies the duty of deciding in good faith what our obligations under the Covenant are, when they become immediate, the appropriate means and method by which they are to be performed, and the performance of them. By the first article the action of the high contracting par- ties under the Covenant are to be " effected through the in- strumentality of a meeting of a body of delegates represent- ing the high contracting parties, of meetings at more fre- quent intervals of an Executive Council, and of a permanent international secretariat." This means only that when the high contracting parties wish to take joint action, it is to be taken through such meetings. This does not vest these bodies with power ex- cept as it is especially described in the succeeding articles. The unusual phrase " effected through the instrumentality of meetings " means what it says. It does not confer ANSWER TO SENATOR KNOX's INDICTMENT 287 authority on the Body of Delegates or the Executive Coun- cil, but only designates the way in which the high contract- ing parties shall, through their representatives, express their joint agrement and take action. On this head, Lord Robert Cecil, who had much to do with formulating the Covenant, made an illuminating remark in his address following the report by the Committee of the Covenant to the Conference. He said: "Secondly We have laid down (and this is the very great principle of the delegates, except in very special cases, and for very special reasons which are set out in the Cov- enant) that all action must be unanimously agreed to in accordance with the general rule that governs international relations. That this will to some extent, in appearance at any rate, militate against the rapidity of action of the organs of the League is undoubted. In my judgment, that de- fect is far more than compensated by the confidence that it will inspire that no nation, whether small or great, need fear oppression from the organs of the League." This interpretation by one of the most distinguished draftsmen of the League shows that all its language, rea- sonably contrued, delegates no power to these bodies to act for the League and its members without their unanimous concurrence unless the words used make such delegation clear. Senator Knox asserts that, as the recommendation for a reduction of armaments will be made with the consent of our representative on the Council, we shall be in honor bound to accept the limit and bind ourselves. It is difficult to follow this reasoning. The body which is to accept the limitation is the Congress of the United States. Why should the Congress of the United States be bound by a 288 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS representative selected by the President to represent the United States in this function, in respect to a matter of great importance under the control of Congress? That the United States should recognize the wisdom of a reduction of armament, under a world plan for it, seems manifest. The history of competitive armaments, with its dreadful sequel, is too fresh in the minds of the peoples of the world for them not to recognize the wisdom of an agreed reduction. If we are to have an agreed reduction, then there must be some limit to which the governments agree to submit. If the nations of Europe, with so many dangerous neighbors, are content to bind themselves to a limitation, why should we hesitate to help this world move- ment? There is not the slightest probability that we will wish to exceed the limit proposed. Our national failing has been not to maintain enough armament. Senator Knox objects to the provision that no treaties made by members of 'the League shall have effect until after they have been registered in the office of the League. He says this is contrary to the Constitution, because treaties are to take effect when ratified by the Senate and proclaimed by the President. This objection is not very formidable. All this requires is that the United States shall provide, in every one of its future treaties, that the treaty shall not take effect until it is registered in the Secretariat of the League. Certainly an agreement on the part of the United States and the nation with whom it is making a treaty as to conditions upon which it shall take effect is not in violation of the constitutional requirements to which Senator Knox refers. ANSWER TO SENATOR KNOX's INDICTMENT 289 Senator Knox criticizes the League because it recognizes the possibility of war and proposes to use war to end war. Certainly there is no means of suppressing lawless violence but by lawful force, and any League which makes no provi- sion for that method, and fails to recognize its validity, would be futile. He points out that the plan of the League is not war-proof, and that war may come in spite of it. Then he describes the kind of league which he would frame, a league which will involve the United States in quite as many wars and in just as great a transfer of its sovereignty as he charges this Covenant with doing. He proposes to have compulsory arbitration, before an in- ternational court, of international differences, including questions of policy. His court would not settle all differ- ences likely to lead to war, for questions of policy are just as likely to produce war as questions which are justiciable. Then he would declare war a crime and punish any nation engaged in it, other than in self-defense, as an international criminal. Would not punishing a nation as a criminal be likely to involve war? The court would have the right to call on powers constituting the league to enforce its decrees and awards by force and economic pressure. It would be difficult to conceive a league more completely transferring sovereignty to an outside body and giving it power to in- volve us in war than the plan of Senator Knox. It is far more drastic and ambitious, and derogates much more from national control than anything in this league. In contrast with it, the present league is modest. The supporters of the present covenant do not claim it to be a perfect instrument. It does not profess to abolish war. It only adopts a somewhat crude machinery for mak- ing war improbable, and it furnishes a basis for the union TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS of nations by which, if they are so minded, they can pro- tect themselves against the recurrence of the disaster of such a war as that with which Europe has been devastated during the last four years. Experience under the League will doubtless suggest many improvements. But it is the first step that counts. Let us take it now when the whole world is yearning for it. PARIS COVENANT HAS TEETH 1 Many misconceptions of the effect of the Covenant of Paris have been set afloat by broadside denunciations of the League based on loose constructions of it entirely unwar- ranted by the text. The attitude of those who favor the Covenant has been misconstrued, increasing the confusion in the mind of the public in respect to the inestimable value of the instrument as it is. Were the alternatives presented to me of adopting the Covenant exactly as it is, or of post- poning the coming of peace and continuing the state of war until the conference could reconvene and make other provi- sions for peace, I should, without the slightest fear as to the complete safety of my country under its provisions, vote for it as the greatest step in recorded history in the betterment of international relations for the benefit of the people of the world and for the benefit of my country. I was president of the League to Enforce Peace and continue to be. Our plan was somewhat more ambitious in the method of settling differences peaceably, in that fewer might escape a binding peaceful settlement. The proposed 1 Article in Public Ledger Mar. 16, 1919. PARIS COVENANT HAS TEETH 2QI covenant, however, makes provision for peaceful settlement of most differences Both plans include a definite obliga- tion on the part of all members of the League to use economic power to suppress an outlaw nation by wither- ing world ostracism. Ours also provided for definite con- tributions of force to an army to be called upon if the boy- cott failed to effect its purpose. The present covenant does not, in my judgment, impose such a definite obligation on the members of the League, but its theory, doubtless sound, is that their voluntary action in their own interest will lead to the raising of sufficient force without a covenant. The proposed league has real teeth and a bite to it. It furnishes real machinery to organize the power of the peaceful nations of the world and translate it into economic and military action. This, by its very existence and certainty, will keep nations from war, will force them to the acceptance of a peaceable settlement, and will dispense with the necessity for the exercise of economic pressure or force. Why, then, it is asked, if this is my view, have I ani- madverted upon the language of the League Covenant and suggested changes ? I have done this not because I wished to change the structure of the League, its plan of action or its real character. I have done it for the purpose of re- moving objections to it created in the minds of conscientious Americans. There are many such anxious for a league of nations, anxious to make this peace permanent, whose fears have been roused by suggested constructions of the Cov- enant which its language does not justify. These fears can, without any considerable change of language or additions, be removed. The language of the Covenant is in diplomatic phrases, is verbose and not direct. When, however, we examine the 292 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS important treaties of history, including those negotiated- by our own country, we find that this is characteristic of most of them. They are not drawn with the concise, direct words of a business contract, nor in the clear style of a domestic statute. When reduced to such a style, the Covenant be- comes quite clear and presents to me no danger whatever of involving the United States in any obligation or burden which its people would not be, and ought not to be, glad to bear for the preservation of the peace of the world and their own. Take, for instance, the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine in spirit and effect is a policy of the United States which forbids any non-American nation, by external ag- gression, by purchase or by intrigue, to acquire the terri- tory in whole or in part, or the governmental power in whole or in part, of any country or nation in this Western Hemisphere. So far as external aggression is concerned, the policy is fully covered by Article X of the Covenant, which would enable tlie United States to use the whole power of the League, in addition to its own, to preserve the doc- trine. So far as the acquisition of such territory or power by purchase or intrigue is concerned, the United States could at once bring the matter before the Body of Dele- gates, which will include representatives of all the na- tions of North, South and Central America. Unless the whole Body of Delegates, so constituted, unanimously re- jects the Monroe Doctrine, the United States is completely at liberty to proceed to enforce it. Can it be supposed, by the wildest flight of imagination, that such a unanimous report could be obtained from a body including representa- tives of seventeen or eighteen countries of this Western Hemisphere? Though I have this view, I am entirely will- PARIS COVENANT HAS TEETH 293 ing to see, and will be glad to see, a reservation introduced into the Covenant which shall be more explicit and more satisfying to those whose fears are roused. From the plan of the Covenant, from the language of Lord Robert Cecil, one of its chief draftsmen, and from the general rules of construction of international agreements, I think that the action of the executive council, unless other- wise expressly provided, must be unanimous. This would necessitate the concurrence of a representative of the United States in such recommendations and other actions as it may, in the course of its duties in the League, have to take. The same is true of the Body of Delegates. But I would be entirely willing to have the rule of unanimity stated ex- pressly ; it would clarify a matter which troubles many. Doubt has been expressed as to the time during which this Covenant is to run. There is now no express limitation. I would be glad to have a definite time limitation, say of ten years, for the League as a whole, and perhaps of five years for the obligation to restrict armament within a limit agreed to by the Congress of the United States. This would relieve many who reasonably fear perpetual obliga- tions. My own view is that, unless this be done, the nations composing the League will construe this to be a covenant from which any one of them may withdraw after reasonable notice. I think it is wiser to give it a definite term than to have it a covenant from which any member may with- draw at will. I do not mean to say there may not be other changes of a similar character that would aid in relieving unfounded objections. But I am distinctly opposed to a revision of the form of the League so as to change its nature. This is the League which, as amended in the conference, must be 294 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS adopted unless we are to have an indefinite postponement of peace. The suggestions of the impossible and radically different leagues which have been put forward as a better solution than tfie present one will not be particularly relevant or helpful. To provide for amendments and reservations, that do not change the structure of the League and its es- sence and do satisfy doubting, conscientious Americans in respect to the safety of the United States in the obligations assumed, is a high and important duty of the representa- tives of the United States in this conference. If they per- form it, they will help materially to secure the ratification of the treaty. Of course the securing of amendments after fourteen na- tions have fought their way by earnest discussion to an agree- ment in committee is not free from difficulty. European nations, anxious to have us join the League, will consent to reservations and limitations as to strictly American ques- tions and policies; but it is not the easiest task to draw these in such form as to prevent their having wider effect. The solution of this problem will be facilitated by a con- sideration and study of the criticisms which are construc- tively directed to rendering this league unobjectionable, I regret to say that many of the speeches are so far afield and so entirely unwarranted by the present language of the Covenant that they are not helpful. TO MAKE PEACE SECURE 295 TO MAKE PEACE SECURE 1 I favor the obligation on the part of all the nations to use their military force to maintain the covenants of the League. That was a feature of the plan of the League to Enforce Peace. I do not think it is clearly set forth in the present Covenant. The nearer it comes to that the more satisfactory it is to me, and the more effective that League will become. The burden of carrying on war, which has been held up as a reason for not entering the League, is one entirely re- moved by the certainty of cooperation of the nations. The usefulness of such a league is far greater in its warning and restraining effect upon reckless nations willing to begin war than even in its actual suppression of war. It is vastly more economical on our part to agree that, should occasion arise, we will contribute economic and military pressure to suppress war than it is to refuse such an agreement and then be drawn into a war like the one we have just passed through, leaving an indebtedness of twenty-five billions, a war that would have been avoided by the knowledge on the part of Germany and Austria that aggression would array the whole world against them. The arguments that Senator Borah advances in this regard are arguments that are the figments of his imagination. The very object of the League is to prevent war, not to fight little wars, and the clearer the obligation to exert economic pressure and military force against the aggressor, the greater the im- probability that wars will come. Instead of being a source of increased expense, the League will greatly reduce ex- penses to the government of the United Stats, first, in re- 1 From an Address at the Methodist Church in Augusta, Georgia, March 23, 1919. 296 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS ducing armaments, and second, in reducing the number of the wars into which it is likely to be drawn. If the provisions I have mentioned were limited to the members of the League they would lack comprehensiveness in preserving world peace, because it may be some time be- fore two-thirds of the Body of Delegates shall conclude that it is wise to admit to permanent membership in the League countries like Germany, Austria, Turkey or Bul- garia, or countries with no sense of responsibility and so weak in police power and self-restraint as not to be able to perform the covenants of the League. To correct what otherwise would be a defect in the constitution of the League, there is a declaration that the League is interested in war between any countries whether members of the League or not, and will take such action as the peace of the world may require in order to prevent injury from such a war. The four great steps to secure peace are, first, reduction of armament; second, union against conquest by arms; third, peaceful settlements of differences and a covenant not to begin war until every effort has been made to secure such peaceful settlement, together with a world boycott of the outlaw nation and the exercise of military compulsion, if necessary; and finally, fourth, the inhibition of all secret treaties and an enforcement of open diplomacy. Nothing like it has heretofore been attempted in the history of the world. The problem of German peace has forced it. We have fourteen nations, seven of them being the na- tions who won the war with Germany, agreeing through their representatives at Paris upon these steps. The ques- tion now is whether the Senate of the United States is to destroy the possibility of this advance in the civilization of TO MAKE PEACE SECURE 297 the world by its vote against the action of the President and against what I verily believe to be the opinion of the majority of the people of the United States. I would un- hesitatingly vote for the Covenant just as it was unanimously reported by the committee of representatives of the fourteen countries engaged in drafting the treaty. I am hopeful, however, that the fears of some, who conscientiously favor the treaty, as to certain possibilities of danger may be re- moved by more express limitation. The treaty is in process of amendment now and any clarifying amendments should be welcomed in order, if possible, to secure ratification. I believe the President and the Commission have a sense of duty in this regard and that we may look for amendments of this character. What are the objections to the League? They are, first, that the United States has gotten along so well since the beginning without being drawn into the politics of the out- side world that it ought to keep out of them and ought not to involve itself in a league of nations. This opinion, I think we may say, is confined to a small body of persons rep- resented by Senators Borah, Reed and Poindexter. If there are others who take this position in the Senate, their names do not occur to me. All the other members of the Senate who have objected to this covenant have averred that they are in favor of a league of nations to secure peace. If they are, they are in favor of something that binds the United States to some kind of an obligation to help in the preservation of peace. A league of nations means some- thing that binds one nation to another in respect to certain obligations. That is the etymological derivation of the word and that is its actual meaning. If they are therefore in favor of a league of nations, they have, by that fact, ad- 298 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS mitted the necessity of departing from the traditional policy of the United States to enter into no alliances with foreign nations, because a league is an alliance, and, as a league contains obligations, it must entangle the United States to the extent at least of the performance of those obliga- tions. We cannot avoid being affected by international quarrels in Europe. It is economical for us to unite with the other countries to maintain peace instead of waiting until we are driven into war and then making a superhuman effort to defend ourselves against a war that has meantime grown into enormous proportions because of our failure, and that of the other nations, of the world to suppress it in its in- ception. The Executive Council has no power to fix the obligation. It does not determine conclusively for any member of the League any fact upon which the obligation of that member becomes immediate. Jts duties are executive in the sense that it acquires all the necessary information, follows closely matters with which the League has to do and takes action in the sense of making a recommendation to the various Powers as to how the difficulties shall be met. It furnishes a means by which the Powers confer together in order that they may agree upon joint action; but in no sense is any power delegated to it to declare war, to wage war, to declare a boycott, to limit armament or to force arbitration. The only two things which it does, things that can be said in any way to be binding on nations, are, first, not to increase the limit of armament to which a nation has agreed to confine itself after full consideration, and, second (where TO MAKE PEACE SECURE 299 jurisdiction is not taken from it by reference to the Body of Delegates) if it can act unanimously, to make a report of settlement of a difficulty such that if the defendant nation complies with it, the plaintiff nation may not begin war to get more. It may propose measures to the members of the League by which they can carry out its recommendations of settlement, but it does not decide upon those measures and it is left to the members of the League to agree whether they desire to use force to carry out recommendations or not. In every other respect its action is advisory and of a recommending character. Still less can there be said to be sovereign authority dele- gated to the Body of Delegates. The Body of Delegates selects the four countries whose representatives are to enter the Executive Council. It elects, by two-thirds vote, new members to the League after they have shown themselves able to fulfill the covenants of the League. It may be sub- stituted as a mediating body and a body to recommend set- tlement in place of the Executive Council. It may also ad- vise the reconsideration by members of the League of treaties which have become inapplicable to international conditions and which may endanger the peace of the world. This is all. It is impossible, therefore, for one looking through the Covenant, without a determined purpose to formulate ob- jections to it, to find any transfer of sovereignty to the Executive Council or the Body of Delegates. The whole theory of the Covenant is that the nations are to act to- gether under obligations of the Covenant, that they are to come to an agreement, through these two bodies, but that the action to be taken is to be determined by each nation on its conscience under its agreement, and that when the 3OO TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS action is to be taken it is to be taken by that nation in ac- cord with its constitution. LEAGUE OF NATIONS HAS NOT DELAYED THE PEACE ' The project of the League of Nations has, in the minds of its opponents, to bear the blame for many things. Ac- cording to their view, if it had not been for the League of Nations, peace would now have been declared and every- thing would be smooth and easy in the sphere of the late war. It is their view that only the absurd insistence of idealists has postponed the settlement needed to produce normal times. The fact is entirely otherwise. The League of Nations was made the first subject of consideration by the conference because it could be more promptly and easily disposed of than other issues rearing their ugly heads among the Allies. These latter needed earnest and painful con- sideration in confidential interviews between the represen- tatives of the leading powers. The full facts were not known to the conference and the issues were not ready for open discussion. The delay in fixing the terms of the League would not have happened but for the need of settling the other ques- tions. One of the most troublesome of these is the amount of the indemnities which France and Belgium and Italy and England and Serbia should exact from the Central Powers. It is complicated with the question how much the Central Powers can pay. Each premier has found himself em- 1 Article in Public Ledger Mar. 29, 1919. LEAGUE OF NATIONS HAS NOT DELAYED PEACE 30! barrassed by promises to his people as to what the treaty must contain. In this regard, each one has found that his claims, based only on the viewpoint of himself and his countrymen, must be moderated. Another burning question is that of the boundary of Italy on the Adriatic. Italy insists on having Fiume be- cause the port has probably a majority of Italians in it. But it has always been the port of the Slav dependency of Hungary and it is surrounded by a country with which it has the closest business connection, a country which is overwhelmingly Slav. It is the normal and appropriate seaport of the projected Jugo-Slav State. Sonnino, the Minister of Foreign Af- fairs of Italy, is reported to be uncompromising in his de- mand. Fiume has become a political issue in Italy. Or- lando, a man of more judicial and conciliatory mind, is said to be embarrassed by Sonnino. Both are affected by the fact that the Italian elections are near at hand. Then, as a background to the whole settlement, there is the question of the defense of France against another and sudden attack by Germany. Marshal Foch and the French military strategists see no complete protection unless France, in some way, controls the crossing of the Rhine. A pro- posal which has received great support in the French papers and which has been urged by France has been the creation of a buffer state called Rhineland. The objection to this is that Rhineland is really German. Its separation from Germany is not within the basis of the armistice. It has never within centuries been French. Its sympathies would all be with Germany. It would create a new Alsace-Lor- raine, with the boot on the other leg. It would be a con- stant source of irritation in Germany and a persistent in- 3O2 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS vitation to a new war by her when opportunity offered. Lloyd George is seeking to make such a frontier unneces- sary by a required limitation on conscription in Germany and an agreed limitation of armament among the Allied Powers. This, of course, would become a part of the machinery of the League of Nations for securing peace. The question of Hungary, which is now being made prominent by the threat of Bolshevism or its actual appear- ance at Budapest and in the surrounding country, is also a difficult one. Unscrupulous leaders of Hungarian politics seem to have invited Bolshevism in order to fight a settle- ment which would limit Hungary to the Magyar country and the Danubian plains. The Magyars are a masterful race, a race of aristocrats, who have arbitrarily oppressed the Slovaks in mountainous northern Hungary, the Rumanians in Transylvania and indeed the Germans where they have settled within the Hungarian kingdom. As they see their power passing, they have become desperate and war threatens again.' The specter of Bolshevism will not down. To charge this to delay due to seeking an agreement upon the League of Nations is ridiculously opposed to the facts. The outbreak in Hungary only demonstrates the necessity for a strong, firm league. The signing of a treaty which formally re- stores peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary will not give us peace unless there is guaranty in the power of the united Allies to compel peace. That power will be dis- solved unless a league of allies, the nucleus of the League of Nations, shall be established, not only to suppress im- mediate disorder, but also to settle differences (a great number of which will at once arise between the new gov- ' OPEN DIPLOMACY " SLOW 303 ernments established and the old ones cut down) and to enforce the settlements peaceably arrived at. The news that amendments are being considered in the League of Nations and that it is nearly ready for incorpora- tion in the treaty itself demonstrates that it has not inter- fered at all with reaching terms of peace with Germany. The truth is, a league of nations is necessary to a satis- factory treaty. It helps and speeds it. " OPEN DIPLOMACY " SLOW 1 The fluid conditions in the countries of the Central Pow- ers lead all to press for a speedy peace treaty that shall stabilize them. But this very fluidity adds to the com- plexity of the problem and delays its solution. The Allies are also embarrassed by the unrest of their troops, who re- garded the armistice as the end of the war and wish now to be released and to go home. Yet armies of occupation, and perhaps armies for further campaigns, are necessary. Then, between the seven Powers which fought the war, the peace terms are not easy to agree upon the treatment Germany is to receive, the amount of indemnity -she is to pay, the restrictions, if any, upon her competition in the world trade pending the slow industrial recovery of France and Belgium, the balancing considerations of the heavy in- demnity and her opportunity for freedom in trade to enable her to pay it, the defensive frontier of France, the Italian frontier on the Adriatic shore, the boundaries of the new States, the definition of neighborhood rights, the Balkan 1 Article in Public Ledger Apr. 5, 1919. 304 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS boundaries, the autonomous units in Asia Minor, the dis- position of the German colonies all involve controversy, some of it of the most acute and irritating character. We must bear in mind that the conference was delayed by the need to gather together, from fourteen nations from all over the world, men who are to frame the treaty. Special commissions had to be formed to get at the facts. Hear- ings had to be held for claimants. The British elections kept Lloyd George at home, and during that time made it impossible for him to join in those confidential interviews with other leaders and premiers so necessary in smoothing out difficulties and reaching understandings. While the making of the terms has been in the absence of the defeated powers, the interests of the conferees themselves are often acutely adverse. Then, too, the disinterested attitude of the United States leads its representatives to consider more care- fully than those of the conferees seeking purely selfish ob- jects the wisdom of restrictions upon Germany. Too great severity may defeat its own purpose. The treaty is being negotiated by representatives of pop- ular constituencies and not by kings. Explanation is easier to one man than to a people. Room has to be given for what is called in this country "buncombe." A show of fight must be made on hopeless issues for home consumption. " Open " diplomacy cannot move so swiftly as the old- fashioned kind. Then, there is a more substantial reason for time in the deliberations: the negotiators must discuss and argue all of the conflicting issues over and over again until each one has deeply impressed on him the real point of view of every other. This often takes the form of heated criticism and even recrimination, apparently most discouraging to a pros- RUSSIA, FRANCE, DANZIG 305 pect of agreement but necessary to clear the air. Such talk is not waste of time. It is the usual and the only way to reach a compromise. The armistice in our Spanish war was signed on the I2th of August, 1898, and the treaty of Paris was not signed till December 12, a period of four months. This was in con- nection with a war which had only begun in the previous April. And it was a peace which involved the settlement of rather simple issues between only two nations. The period between the armistice and the treaty of peace in the Franco-Prussian War was about the same and there, also, the issues were simple and limited to two countries. The Congress of Vienna, convened to arrange the map of Europe after the Napoleonic wars, took a year for its delib- erations, and the conferees had only kings and emperors to satisfy. We see, therefore, that the delegates now at Paris have not been unreasonably slow in their work, con- sidering the great detail and the many conflicting interests they have to settle and agree upon. RUSSIA, FRANCE, DANZIG 1 One may admit that a great mistake was made in not sending large armies to Archangel and Vladivostok to es- tablish an Eastern front in Russia during the war. Had this been done, Bolshevism could have been then repressed and an opportunity for a Russian constituent assembly and popular government could have been secured. But that is 1 Article in Public Ledger Apr. 7, 1919. 306 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS past history and the conference at Paris is dealing with present conditions. One of these is the difficulty of main- taining large armies at this juncture to enter upon a mili- tary crusade against Bolshevism in Russia. All the Allies hope to do is to prevent its spread into other countries. It will probably burn itself out in Russia because of its un- fulfilled and impossible promises. The issue with France as to proper provisions for her safety is not by any means so clear as these cocksure statesmen and correspondents would have their readers believe. The razing of fortresses on the German front, the en- forced limit of German armament, the restriction upon Ger- man conscription, the appropriation of the German navy, the taking over of German guns and the united power of the League of Nations to defend France and restrain Ger- many will in the long run be far better protection to French territory and independence than what France now seeks at the instance of her military strategists. The hesitation over Danzig is regarded as another damn- ing proof of a weak yielding to German truculence. Dan- zig is a German city. The people object to Polish sov- ereignty. It is the only practical port of access to the sea for Poland. Can it be made a free port for full use by Poland without complete sovereignty? This is being argued in the conference. It is not a question which an- swers itself. One may differ with the statesmen, corres- pondents and critics and still not be guilty of basely betray- ing Poland or truckling to Germany. A similar question is presented, as to Fiume, between the Italians and the Jugo-Slavs. THE ROUND ROBIN 307 THE ROUND ROBIN l The League of Nations is an organization which cannot disclose its advantages in the rapid manner an army or a military expedition can. Its operation is bound to be slow and cumbersome at first. Its influence on its members and on outside nations in avoiding war and promoting jus- tice will grow as the real strength of the uniting and common covenants comes to be clearly perceived. Experience under the League will disclose defects and suggest useful changes to make it more practical and effective. But the agreement upon a covenant providing for reduction and limitation of armament, for union of nations to prevent conquest, for definite postponement of war till after every opportunity for peaceful settlement has been secured, and for spreading international agreements on the table before the world is a series of steps forward toward permanent peace which only " ready made " military correspondents can belittle. If the cabled information as to the character of the amendments adopted is reliable, we may now confidently hope that the Senators who signed the Round Robin will be able to vote for the League as it is amended without being embarrassed in any degree by their signatures to that document. It will be remembered that they merely said that the Covenant in its then form was unacceptable to them, which of course does not prevent their consistently sup- porting the Covenant as at present amended. The further statement in the Round Robin was that they thought the peace treaty ought to be adopted at once and that the League should be postponed for further consideration. Of course 1 From an article in the Public Ledger April 12, 1919. 308 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS such a view, which rested on the importance of having peace come at once without delaying it for the sake of framing a league of nations covenant, ceases to apply when the peace treaty has been signed, with the League of Nations Cov- enant as a part of it, and indeed as an indispensable con- dition to its effective enforcement. The Round Robin Senators may well say that the second objection is removed, because now to insist upon opposing or amending the League, which is web and woof of the peace treaty submitted to them, is to postpone peace rather than to expedite it. GUARANTIES OF ART. X It has been suggested that this Article X is in the interest of Great Britain, that it is designed to preserve the terri- torial integrity of her far-flung empire through the aid of the United States and pther countries. There is no founda- tion for such a suggestion. Can any one point out in the history of the last fifty years any war against Great Britain by a foreign country to take away territory from her ? No ; war of that sort is not ordinarily begun against a nation as powerful as Great Britain. Wars are begun as Austria began the war against Servia, namely, because Servia was a weak nation and Austria a strong one ; and this guaranty is for the benefit of the weaker nations whom it is to our in- terest to protect against a war of conquest that will ulti- mately involve the world, as the attack upon Servia did. Another objection made to this Article is that if Ireland were to rebel against England and seek to establish her- 1 From an address at Kansas City, April 19, 1919. RELIGIOUS AND RACIAL FREEDOM 309 self as an independent republic, England could invite, under this Article X, the other nations of the world to assist her in suppressing the rebellion. This is utterly unfounded, be- cause Article X is only an undertaking to preserve territorial integrity and political independence against external aggres- sion. Nations must take care of their own revolutions, and, if their conduct of government is such that revolutions occur and new nations are established out of old ones, there is nothing in Article X to prevent this happening. RELIGIOUS AND RACIAL FREEDOM * News comes from Paris that the effort of a committee of the Jews to secure, in the constitution of the League, a declaration in favor of religious tolerance and the means of securing it has failed. This is not accurate. There is in the League Covenant a provision that in all countries which are to be governed by a mandatory of the League, the charter, under which the mandatory acts, shall require protection of religious freedom. This provision will apply in Constantinople, in Palestine, in Syria, in Armenia, in Mesopotamia and in the former colonies of Germany in Africa and the Pacific. The Executive Council may add to such general provi- sions detailed guaranties and machinery to make the general declaration effective. The mandatories have to render yearly reports of their stewardship, so that violations of such guaranties may be brought before the organs of the League for remedy. 1 Article in Public Ledger Apr. 24, 1919. 3IO TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS The failure of the application for a general declaration in respect to freedom of religion was doubtless due to the sensitiveness of the British colonies and, indeed, of the United States, toward the attempt of Japan to obtain a declaration in favor of social equality and against racial discrimination in any state of the League. The American representatives probably felt that such a declaration, however neutral in its effect in this country because our Constitution secures the equal protection of the law to all, would be suc- cessfully used to defeat the ratification of the League Cov- enant as part of the treaty. They were therefore obliged to sacrifice the clause securing religious tolerance. But there still remains an opportunity to achieve every useful and practical end in regard to religious freedom. There exists no danger of pogroms and oppressive laws against the Jews in the United States or Britain or France or Italy. It exists only in certain states like Poland, Rumania, the Ukraine and possibly in the Czecho-Slav and Jugo-Slav countries. ' Of these, Rumania is the chief of- fender. Poland, under Paderewski, also shows obduracy in the matter. All these states are, so to speak, children of the League; they may well be required, as a condition of their national independence and the protection they are to en- joy from the League, to give pledges against racial and religious discrimination in their laws and in favor of com- plete religious freedom. Means should be retained by the League to enforce the pledges. Pledges were required by the Congress of Berlin in 1879 from Bulgaria, Servia and Rumania that their fundamental laws would put Jews on an equality with all other citizens and protect them in the exercise of their religion. Bulgaria and Servia faithfully complied, but Rumania deliberately SECRET TREATY PROVISIONS 3! I and dishonestly evaded, and dishonored, her solemn obliga- tion. If now she is to receive Transylvania from Hungary by decree of the League, she may well be put under effective bond to give to her Jewish people that freedom and justice which she has faithlessly denied to them for forty years. Poland, too, which was long the only refuge for the op- pressed and unhappy children of Israel, should be made, as the price of her restoration to nationality, to issue a new charter of religious liberty and civic equality to her Jewish citizens. The Jews are not the only denomination who need pro- tection. There are Unitarians and others who, in some of these new states, have suffered for their faith. It will be an important accomplishment if the League uses its power to remove this last vestige of medievalism. SECRET TREATY PROVISIONS THAT ARE AT THE ROOT OF THE CRISIS AT THE PARIS CONFERENCE 1 ITALIAN CLAIMS TO FIUME WOULD, IF GRANTED, SOW THE SEEDS OF TROUBLE AND DISCONTENT AMONG THE JUGO-SLAVS The peace treaty with Austria-Hungary is delayed by the controversy over the disposition of the port of Fiume, near the head of the Adriatic. When the war broke out in 1914 the Entente Allies and Germany wooed Italy intensively to induce her to join their respective sides. The obligations of the Triple Alliance had not been made public, but it was 1 Article in Public Ledger, Apr. 25, 1919. 312 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS understood that Italy was bound to lend her aid to Austria and Germany in case of a defensive war. Italy positively insisted that this was not such a war, and so maintained her neutrality for a time. Then she was induced by promises of the Entente Allies (Great Britain, France and Russia) to declare war on Austria and subsequently on Germany. Her course was criticized as one wholly in- fluenced by greed of territory. The treaty by which she became an ally of France and Great Britain was secret, but enough was known to enable Italy's critics to aver that it was the consummation of a successful bid. Italy's de- fenders met these attacks by showing that she was entitled under the treaty of the Triple Alliance to be consulted be- fore Austria attacked Serbia, and by revealing the bad faith of Germany and Austria in Italy's war with Turkey and their secret aid to the Sultan. This aroused sympathy with Italy, and it was assumed that the heart cry of the Irre- dentists for a restoration of Italy's territory everywhere had been satisfied by an agreement that Trentino and Trieste should become hers. It now appears that the Dalmatian coast was also included in territory promised to Italy. As to Fiume, Italians per- haps form a majority of the inhabitants, but it is, and has been for years, a Croatian city. It is, and has been always, the port by which the solidly Slav population in the country behind the city reach the sea. Italy seeks to push the principle of self-determination too far. The unit of population in which the majority is to determine the nation's control should include the back country with which the port is united. Unless some explanation is given, Italy's insistence will tend to revive the charge that greed was her chief motive ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT AS AMENDED 313 in this war. Our entrance into the war was accompanied by a declaration in favor of only just restitution of ter- ritory and upon the assumption, often stated, that it was not a war of conquest by the Allies. The terms of the armistice followed these lines. If the facts are correctly stated, the public opinion of the United States and the disinterested world will sustain the President in resisting Italy's determination to take over Fiume and close Croatian access to the sea. The question is one of Italian politics. Italy has taken possession of Fiume with the strong hand of conqueror against the Croatians. Orlando may lose power in the Italian Parlia- ment if he fails to stand by the Italian claim. Sonnino, his colleague at the conference and his associate as premier, is rigid and uncompromising. He would probably resist Orlando if the latter yielded. The situation is therefore acute. But can Italy afford to break, on such an issue, with the conference? One would think not. The Presi- dent would seem to be clearly right in maintaining that at least Fiume be made a free port for Croatia as Danzig is to be for Poland. If Italy's wish were to prevail, the set- tlement, with palpable injustice in it, would create a sense of wrong among the Jugo-Slavs that would return to plague Italy when most inconvenient. ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT AS AMENDED 1 The amendments to the Covenant of the League of Na- tions adopted in Paris on Monday will bear careful study, 1 Article in Public Ledger Apr. 30, 1919. 314 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS and perhaps it is unwise hastily to express a confident opinion. But several readings suggest the following com- ment: In the first place, the language and arrangement of the articles have been greatly improved. The use of different terms to mean the same thing, which tended to prevent an easy reading of the document, has been largely corrected. Provisions having immediate relation to one another have been assembled where they belong, avoiding application of them to subjects or countries which they were not intended to affect. Then names, misleading or clumsy, have been changed. The Executive Council, which was and is not executive but advisory, has become the Council. The Body of Delegates has become the Assembly, a much more suit- able term. Second, rules of construction that ought to have ob- tained in interpreting the original Covenant are now made express and relieve the real doubts of friends and supporters of the League. The most important of these, perhaps, is the privilege specifically reserved to any member of the League to withdraw from it after two years' notice and after a compliance with its obligation under international law and under the League Covenant incurred before with- drawal. This gives any nation an opportunity to test the operation of the League and its usefulness and to avoid undue and unreasonable danger or burden in the future which actual trial may develop. Moreover, taken with the power of amendment which can be effected by a unanimous vote of the nine countries whose representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the members of the League, there is ample opportunity for such a country as the United States to secure a revision of the Covenant and a reexami- ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT AS AMENDED 315 nation of the status of the states composing the League after peace has stabilized conditions and has shown where changes should be made. We are so important a member of an effective world league, and so indispensable to its suc- cessful working, because of our impartial position and world power, that an announcement of our purpose to with- draw unless amendments were made would be most per- suasive. In this view Mr. Root's suggestion, that it would be well to reexamine treaty provisions made just after the war in the light of the test of five years or more of peace, can be carried out. The second change of the same character is the provision that, except where otherwise specifically provided, the action of the Council or the Assembly shall be by unanimous vote. The original covenant, properly interpreted, meant this, but it is of great importance to remove objections of those who did not think so. There are some who believe that such required unanimity will make the League ineffective and that a majority would have sufficed. But progress toward com- plete international cooperation in a new field like this must be gradual, and must, for the present, leave safeguards to nations against abuse of joint power which, experience may show, can be dispensed with later. The required unanimity in the action of the Council is very important in the answer it gives to the claim that under Articles X and XVI the United States may be required to send expedi- tionary forces into distant parts of the world to defend the integrity and independence of a country with which we have no relation of interest or to suppress remote wars not affecting us. Such expeditions are to be planned and recom- mended by the Council, and the plan is to be accepted in the discretion of the countries to whom the recommendation 316 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS is addressed. The plan would certainly mark the limit of the obligation of the nations to whom it is presented. The United States will have a representative on the Council, whose vote must approve the plan before its presentation. Is it likely, then, that the plan will be unreasonable in pro- posing an undue share of the League's work to the United States? May we not be sure that what is to be done will be apportioned according to the convenience and natural interest of the members of the League, because it must in ef- fect be by mutual agreement? It is now made clear that under Article VIII the limit of armament for each country, under a general plan of reduction proposed by the Council, is only to be adopted and made binding as a covenant for each member of the League after its full examination and acceptance by that member. Moreover, there is to be a reexamination of the plan and the limits every ten years, and meantime a specific limit may be increased by consent of the Council. It is now made an express provision that only nations who choose to accept the duty may be made mandatories of the League. This removes another objection that was strongly pressed. We do not have to take charge of Constantinople or Armenia unless we choose to do so. One important change made by addition is the result of Mr. Root's constructive criticism. Mr. Root thought, and all who supported the plan of the League to Enforce Peace agreed with him, that the provision for arbitration ought to have required arbitration in justiciable issues, and he de- fined what he thought was clearly within the meaning of that term. By the present Article XIII the members agree to submit to arbitration any dispute which they recognize as suitable for arbitration. The Covenant then declares dis- ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT AS AMENDED 317 putes of the character described by Mr. Root, and, as the writer recollects, in Mr. Root's language, to be suitable for arbitration. Disputes as to interpretations of treaties, as to international law, as to facts upon which its applica- tion turns and damages for its breach are all declared to be arbitrable, or, in other words, justiciable. This imposes on members of the League having a dispute the duty of recog- nizing such disputes to be arbitrable and to submit them to arbitration. Can this duty be enforced under the League? Practically yes. If a nation declines to arbitrate such an issue, it goes to the Council or Assembly, with interested members excluded. Such body will at once recommend arbitration or will refer the issue to an international court of the League, as it may, to determine whether the issue is arbitrable under the obligations of the Covenant and will doubtless follow the judicial advice thus given. As this machinery thus works out indirectly the result sought for in the plan of the League to Enforce Peace, an amendment to substitute a court of the League to take up and decide such questions directly will doubtless approve itself to the nations. Mr. Root was anxious that, in addition to the declaration in the preamble, there should be practical recognition of international law as a guiding star of the League, its tri- bunals and its action. In the addition to Article XIII, which we have been discussing, we find such a recognition in the present Article XIV providing for a permanent international court of justice which is competent to hear and determine any dispute of international character submitted to it and to give an advisory opinion upon any dispute or question referred to it by the Council or Assembly. The provision for mediation and recommendation of set- 318 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS tlement in the first report of the Covenant, which met Mr. Root's unqualified approval, has not been changed, except that the unanimity required for an effective recommendation by the Body of Delegates is now made unanimity by coun- tries represented in the Council and a majority of the As- sembly, a change which makes for effectiveness. Another important change is the addition of Article XXI, as fol- lows: Nothing in this covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine, for securing the maintenance of peace This meets two of Mr. Root's criticisms in full. First, it removes all doubt that all present arbitration treaties are to stand and bind the parties to them whether members of the League or not, and relieves those who were concerned lest progress toward peace by arbitration already made might be lost. Second, it not only 'enables the United States to maintain the Monroe Doctrine, which was all that friends of that doctrine asked, but it recognizes it as a regional understand- ing for the securing of international peace. Never before in our history has the world set its approval upon the doc- trine as in this Covenant. It is really a great triumph for the supporters of the doctrine. It is not only a reservation in favor of the United States asserting it, but it is an af- firmative declaration of its conventional character and of its value in securing international peace. The exclusion of immigration and tariff and other in- ternal and domestic questions is secured by the following: If the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them and is found by the Council to arise out of a matter which by inter- ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT AS AMENDED .319 national law is solely within the jurisdiction of that party, the Council shall so report and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement. If anything is clearly settled in international law, it is that, except where a nation limits its rights by treaty, it may impose whatever condition it chooses upon the admission of persons or things into its territory. Those who express alarm lest the Council should reach a different conclusion, in spite of international law, can hardly be aware how jealous all countries must and will be of their right to deter- mine methods of raising taxes and protect their industries, and how strenuously many of the nations will insist on the right to exclude persons not desirable as permanent resi- dents. Indeed, Japan has not urged, in the conference, the view that immigration was anything but a domestic ques- tion, but only pressed for an express recognition of racial equality in the treatment of foreign persons resident in each country. Even this the conference did not deem it wise to grant. Finally, we come to Article X, by which the members of the League undertake to respect and preserve against ex- ternal aggression the territorial integrity and political in- dependence of every member. Mr. Root, as the writer understands, strongly favors this article ; but he thinks there should be a ree'xamination of the arrangements made under the influence of the recent war, after conditions have be- come stabilized by peace, to remedy the possible mistakes made and to avoid too great rigidity. How this can be brought about indirectly through powers of amendment and withdrawal has already been pointed out. The arguments against Article X which have been most pressed are those directed to showing that under its obli- 32O TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS gallons the United States can be forced into many wars and burdensome expeditions to protect countries in which it has no legitimate interests. This objection will not bear examination. If Germany were to organize another con- spiracy against the world, or if she and her old allies, to- gether with Russia, were to organize a militant campaign for Bolshevism against the world, we should wish to do our share in fighting her, and in doing so quickly. If a stronger nation were to attack a weaker nation, a member of the League, our immediate and selfish interest in the matter would be determined by the question whether it would develop into a world war and so drag us in. But we are interested as a member of the family of nations in main- taining international justice in the interest of international peace everywhere, and we should share the responsibility and burden. It was a mixture of all these motives which carried us into this war and we accepted as a slogan the cry: " The world must be made safe for democracy. We make this war to secure the liberty and independence of nations against the doctrine that ' might makes right.' ' This is all that Article X proposes. It is an answer to Germany's assertion of her right of conquest. It organizes the powers of the world to maintain the international com- mandment, " Thou shall not steal." To what extent will it involve us in war? Little, if any. In the first place, the universal boycott, first to be applied, will impose upon most nations such a withering isolation and starvation that in most cases it will be effective. In the second place, we will not be drawn into any war in which it will not be reasonable and convenient for us to render ef- ficient aid, because the plan of the Council must be approved by our representative, as already explained. CORRESPONDENCE 32 1 In the third place, the threat of the universal boycott and the union of overwhelming forces of the members of the League, if need be, will hold every nation from violating Article X and Articles XII, XIII and XV, unless there is a world conspiracy, as in this war, in which case the earlier we get into the war the better. The warning effect of such a threat from a combination of nations, like those in the League, is shown conclusively in the maintenance of our Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine was announced in 1823. Its declaration was deprecated by American statesmen because it would involve us in con- tinual friction and war. It was directed against most powerful European nations. Yet we have maintained it inviolate without firing a shot or losing a soldier for now near a century. Article X merely extends the same pro- tection to the weaker nations of the world which we gave to the weaker nations of this hemisphere against the greed of non- American nations. If our declaration accomplished this much, how much more can we count upon the effective- ness of the declaration of a powerful world-league of nations as a restraint upon a would-be bully and robber of a small nation ! CORRESPONDENCE The following correspondence is published with the con- sent of President Wilson. Washington, Tuesday, March 18, 1919. Personal. Dear Mr. Tumulty: I enclose a memorandum note to the President that is 322 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS probably superfluous, but may contain a suggestion. Do with the note as you choose for the next ten days, the situation in Paris will be crucial and critical. Sincerely yours, WM. H. TAFT. Hon. Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, The White House, Washington, D. C. Washington, D. C. 931 Southern Building, March 18, 1919. Mr. President: If you bring back the treaty with the League of Nations in it, make more specific reservation of the Monroe Doctrine, fix a term for duration of the League and the limit of arma- ment, require expressly unanimity of action in Executive Council and Body of Delegates, and add to Article XV a provision that, where .the Executive Council of the Body of Delegates finds the difference to grow out of an exclu- sively domestic policy, it shall recommend no settlement, the ground will be completely cut from under the opponents of the League in the Senate. Addition to Article XV will answer objection as to Japanese immigration as well as tariffs under Article XXI. Reservation of the Monroe Doctrine might be as follows: Any American State or States may protect the integrity of American territory and the independence of the govern- ment whose territory it is, whether a member of the League or not, and may, in the interests of American peace, object to and prevent the further transfer of American territory or sovereignty to any European or non-American power. CORRESPONDENCE 323 Monroe Doctrine reservation alone would probably carry the treaty but others would make it certain. WM. H. TAFT. Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, Paris, France. Augusta, Georgia. March 19, 1919. My dear Mr. Tumulty: Gus Karger has telegraphed me that the President will welcome any suggestions, and the sooner the better. I have thought perhaps it might help more if I was somewhat more specific than I was in the memorandum note I sent you yester- day, and I therefore enclose another memorandum for such action as you deem wise. Sincerely yours, WM. H. TAFT. Hon. Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, Washington, D. C. Augusta, Ga., March I9th, 1919. Memorandum for the President: From William H. Taft. Duration of the Covenant Add to the Preamble the following: 4< from the obligations of which any member of the League may withdraw after July I, 1929, by two years' notice in writing, duly filed with the Secretary General of the League." Explanation. I have no doubt that the construction put upon the agree- 324 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS ment would be what I understand the President has already said it should be, namely that any nation may withdraw from it upon reasonable notice, which perhaps would be a year. I think, however, it might strengthen the Covenant if there was a fixed duration. It would completely remove the objection that it is perpetual in its operation. Duration of Armament Limit Add to the first paragraph of Article VIII, the following : " At the end of every five years, such limits of armament for the several governments shall be reexamined by the Exe- cutive Council, and agreed upon by them as in the first in- stance." Explanation The duration of the obligation to limit armament, which now may only be changed by consent of the Executive Council, has come in for criticism. I should think this might be thus avoided, without in any way injuring the Covenant. Perhaps three years is enough, but I should think five years would be better. Unanimous action of the Executive Council or Body of Delegates Insert in Article IV, after the first paragraph, the follow- ing: " Other action taken or recommendations made by the Executive Council or the Body of Delegates shall be by the unanimous vote of the countries represented by the members or delegates, unless otherwise specifically stated." Explanation Great objection is made to the power of the Executive Council by a majority of the members and the Body of CORRESPONDENCE 325 Delegates to do the things which they are authorized to do in the Covenant. In view of the specific provision that the Executive Council and the Body of Delegates may act by a majority of its members as to their procedure, I feel confident that, except in cases where otherwise provided, both bodies can only act by unanimous vote of the countries represented. If that be the right construction, then there can be no objection to have it specifically stated, and it will remove emphatic objection already made on this ground. It is a complete safeguard against involving the United States primarily in small distant wars to which the United States has no immediate relation, for the reason that the plan for taking care of such a war, to be recommended or advised by the Executive Council, must be approved by a representative of the United States on the Board. Add to Article X. a. " A state or states of America, a member or members of the League and competent to fulfil this obligation in respect to American territory or independence, may, in event of the aggression actual or threatened, expressly assume the obligation and relieve the European or non-American members of the League from it until they shall be advised by such American state or states of the need for their aid." b. " Any such American state or states may protect the integrity of any American territory and the sovereignty of the government whose territory it is, whether a member of the League or not, and may, in the interest of American peace, object to and prevent the further transfer of Ameri- can territory or sovereignty to any European or non-Ameri- can power." 326 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS Explanation Objection has been made that, under Article X, European governments would come to America with force and be con- cerned in matters from which heretofore the United States has excluded them. This is not true, because Spain fought Chili, in Seward's time, without objection from the United States, and so Germany and England instituted a blockade against Venezuela in Roosevelt's time, This fear could be removed, however, by the first of the above paragraphs. Paragraph (b) is the Monroe Doctrine pure and simple. I forwarded this in my first memorandum. It will be observed that Article X only covers the integ- rity and independence of members of the League. There may be some American countries which are not sufficiently responsible to make it wise to invite them into the League. This second paragraph covers them. The expression " European or non-American " is inserted for the purpose of indicating that Great Britain, though it has American dominion, is not to acquire further territory or sovereignty. Japanese Immigration and Tariffs Add to Article XV: "If the difference between the parties shall be found by this Executive Council or the Body of Delegates to be a question which by international law is solely within the do- mestic jurisdiction and polity of one of the parties, it shall so report and not recommend a settlement of the dispute." Explanation Objection is made to Article XV that under its terms the United States would be bound by unanimous recommenda- tion for settlement of a dispute in respect to any issue foreign or domestic; that it therefore might be affected seriously CORRESPONDENCE 327 and unjustly by recommendations against the exclusion of Japanese or Chinese, or by recommendations forbidding tariffs on importations. In my judgment, we could rely on the public opinion of the world, evidenced by the Body of Delegates, not to interfere with our domestic legislation and action. Nor do I think that under the League as it is, we covenant to abide by a unanimous recommendation. But if there is a specific exception made in respect to matters com- pletely within the domestic jurisdiction and legislation of a country, the whole criticism is removed. The Republican Senators are trying to stir up anxiety among Republicans, lest this is to be a limitation upon our tariff. The President has already specifically met the objection as to limitation upon the tariff when the fourteen points were under discus- sion. Nevertheless, in respect to the present language of the Covenant, it would help much to meet and remove ob- jections, and cut the ground under Senatorial obstruction. Prospect of Ratification My impression is that if the one article already sent, on the Monroe Doctrine, be inserted in the treaty, sufficient Republicans who signed the Round Robin would probably retreat from their positions and vote for ratification so that it would carry. If the other suggestions were adopted, I feel confident that all but a few who oppose any League at all would be driven to accept them and to stand for the League. TELEGRAM The White House, Washington, D. C, March 22nd, 1919. Hon. William H. Taft: Have just received following from the President. 328 TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS " Please thankfully acknowledge to Mr. Taft his message and say that I hope it will be very useful." J. P. TUMULTY. TELEGRAM Augusta, Georgia, March 28, 1919. Hon. Joseph P. Tumulty, White House, Washington, D. C. Venture to suggest to President that failure to reserve Monroe Doctrine more specifically, in face of opposition in conference, will give great weight to objection that League as first reported endangers Doctrine. It will seriously em- barrass advocates of League. It will certainly lead to Senate amendments embodying Doctrine and other provi- sions in form less likely to secure subsequent acquiescence of other nations than proper reservation now. Deem some kind of Monroe Doctrjne amendment now to Article Ten vital to acceptance of League in this country. I say this with full realization that complications in conference are many and not clearly understood here. A strong and suc- cessful stand now will carry the League. WM. H. TAFT. The White House, Washington, D. C., Mar. 31, 1919. Hon. Wm. H. Taft, Dayton, Ohio. The President has asked me to thank you for your cable- gram about the Monroe Doctrine. J. P. TUMULTY. CORRESPONDENCE 329 New York, N. Y., April loth, 1919. My dear Mr. Tumulty: We are very much troubled over the report that the Monroe Doctrine amendment to the Covenant is being op- posed by England and Japan. Will you be good enough to send the enclosed to the President? We had a meeting to- day of the Executive Committee of the League to Enforce Peace, and Dr. Lowell and I, at the instance of the League, will be glad to have this matter presented directly to the President by cable. Sincerely yours, WM. H. TAFT. Hon. Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, The White House, Washington, D. C. New York, N. Y., April loth, 1919. The President, Paris. Friends of Covenant are seriously alarmed over report that no amendment will be made more specifically safeguard- ing Monroe Doctrine. At full meeting of Executive Com- mittee of League to Enforce Peace, with thirty members from eighteen States present, unanimous opinion that, with- out such amendment, Republican Senators will certainly defeat ratification of treaty because public opinion will sus- tain them. With such amendment treaty will be promptly ratified. f WILLIAM H. TAFT. A. LAWRENCE LOWELL. 33O TAFT PAPERS ON LEAGUE OF NATIONS THE WHITE HOUSE Washington 14 April, 1919. Dear Mr. Taft: I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the tenth instant, and to say that I have transmitted to the President by cable the message enclosed. Sincerely yours, J. P. TUMULTY, Secretary to the President. Hon. William H. Taft, Washington, D. C. WILLIAM H. TAFT WASHINGTON, D. C. May 5, 1919. My dear Mr. Tumulty : I am very much troubled that this conference at Paris was unable to adopt a provision in favor of religious freedom throughout the world. > There is no necessity for such a reso- lution in respect to the allied countries, because there is now religious freedom there. The acute necessity for it is with respect to Poland, Rumania, and those other new States carved out of Russia, Austria and Germany. I would like, therefore, to have you transmit to the President, as coming from me, a cable message of the following purport : " The Tews of the United States are greatly disturbed over re- liable reports coming to them of continued abuses of their co- religionists in Poland, Rumania and in the new Slav States created under the auspices of the conference. Is it not possible to im- pose on these States, as a condition of their recognition and membership in the League, the maintainence of religious free- dom under their respective governments? What was done in the CORRESPONDENCE 331 Berlin Conference of 1879 ought to be possible in the more favorable atmosphere of this conference, with the additional securities of performance that the League will give." I understand that unless something of this sort is done, there will be a strong movement among the Jews to attack the League and I do not need to tell you that there are men in the Senate who will seize every opportunity of this kind as an instrument to defeat its ratification. Sincerely yours, WILLIAM H. TAFT. Hon. Jos. P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, The White House, Washington, D. C. THE WHITE HOUSE Washington, 6 May 1919. My dear Mr. Taft: Let me acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the fifth of May quoting a message regarding religious freedom which you wish me to transmit to the President. I am doing so to-day by cable. Sincerely yours, J. P. TUMULTY, Secretary to the President. Hon. William H. Taft, 931 Southern Building, Washington, D. C. PRINTED IN TH UNITED 8TAT18 OV AMBBICA INDEX Adams, John Quincy, reference to, 252 Administrative Organization of League, 3 Alabama Claims, 40, 49, 192 Alaskan Boundary Arbitration, 49, 241 Alsace-Lorraine, reference to, 85, 132, 136, 165, 222 Ammunition, Supervision of trade in, 25 Appeal to Business Men, 241 Appeal to Women, 257 Arbitration (see " Arbitration Treaties " and " Concilia- tion"), 13, 191, 220, 232, 241, 264, 316 Concerning Seal Fisheries, 44 With Canada, 62 Arbitration, compulsory, 289 Arbitration Treaties, 39, 43, 178, 262 Arbitration Treaties of the United States, 54 Armaments Limitation of, 102, 109, 157, 298, 324 Reduction of, 10, 116, 149, 178, 208, 248, 263, 264, 288 Armenia, reference to, 136, 143, 154, 248 Armenia as mandatory, 224 Armenians, 167 Armistice, basis of, 183 Arms (see " Munitions ") Articles of Confederation, refer- ence to, 29, 30 Article 10 of the League Arguments against answered, 319 Article 10 of the League confd. Discussion of, 255, 269, 325 Guaranties of, 308 Asquith, Mr., quoted, 218 Referred to as favoring the League, 98 Assembly, reference to, 6, 7, 314 Australian System of Military Training (see " Military Training ") B Balkan States, reference to, 136, 143, 237 Baltic Provinces, 139, 143, 237 Beck, James M., reference to, 214, 215 Belgium, invasion of, 92 Belgium's Neutrality, Violation of obligation to protect, 89 Bering Sea Controversy, arbitra- tion of, 44, 64, 241 Bernhardi, reference to, 87 Bessarabia, 143 Bethmann-Hollweg referred to as favoring League, 98 Bismarck, reference to, 85, 86, 89, 181 Body of Delegates, 265, 271, 299 Bohemia, 143 Bolsheviki, 175, 183, 184, 213, 219 Bolshevism, 158, 177, 273, 302, 305 Bourgeois, M. Leon, reference to, 212 Borah, Senator Objections of to League an- swered, 76 Reference to, 198, 217, 260, 295, 297 Bosnia, reference to, 224 333 334 INDEX Boycott, reference to, 65, 219, 232, 245, 267, 268, 321 Objections to answered, 67 Use for prevention of war, 105 When to be instituted, i, 18 Boxer Affair, reference to, 122 British League of Free Nations, 206 Briand, M., referred to as favor- ing the League, 74, 98 Bryan, W. J., answered as to con- stitutionality of plank for use of military forces, 57 Debate with on League to En- force Peace, 98-132 Bryce, Lord, referred to, 74 Business Men, appeal to, 241 Canada Agreement with as to fortifica- tions, etc., XIV, 240, 264 Arbitration with, 62 Our relations with, 40 Caucasus, the, reference to, 248 Canning, reference to, 252, Cases Cited Geoffrey v. Riggs, 54 Hans v. Louisiana, 35 Kansas v. Colorado, 36, 52 Louisiana v. Texas, 38 Missouri v. Illinois, 34 Wisconsin v. The Pelican In- surance Co., 37 Cecil, Lord Robert, Quoted, 287 Reference to, 212, 220 Children, Traffic in, 25 Chinese, Question as to naturali- zation of, 63 Civil War, Analogy to war with Germany, 83 Clemenceau Quoted, 215 Reference to, 194, 202, 212, 213 Commission on Conciliation, 42, 43, 50, S3, 189, 196 Compulsory Military Training, 123 Conciliation, Instances of, 63, 64 Conciliation, Commission of (see " Commission on Concilia- tion " and " Council of Con- ciliation ") Confederations of small States, example of, 29 Congress of Nations, 205 Congress, Power to declare war (see Treaty-making power), 68 Conscription law, reference to, 96 Constantinople as mandatory, 224 Constitution of United States, framing of, 224 Constitutionality of Proposals of the League to Enforce Peace, 52 Constitutionality of the League, 276 Council of Conciliation, 100, 160, 205 Court (see "International Court ") Court Decisions (see " Cases Cited ") Court of International Justice, 14 Covenant of Paris (see " Paris Covenant ") Criticism of League, should be constructive, 198, 200 Cuba Integrity guaranteed, 149 Our relation to, 72 Reference to, 159, 187 Treaty with, 59 Czecho-Slovaks, reference to, 136, 139, 175, 237 Czecho-Slavs, 143, 154 Czecho- Slavs, in Russia, 219 D Dalmatian Coast, 312 Danzig, 306 INDEX 335 Dardanelles, 183 Delegates, Body of (see " Body of Delegates") Democrats, Support of League by, 199 Denmark Schleswig-Holstein taken from, 85 Disarmament, 149, 163, 239 Disarmament and Freedom of the Seas, 163 Disease, Control of, 26 Disputes Cases before Court to determine disputes between States un- der Articles of Confederation, 30 Procedure for settlement of, 15, 19 Divine Right of Kings, 142 Draft, reference to, 96 England, Our relations with, 40 England and Her Navy, 164 Entangling Alliances (see " Wash- ington's Advice ") Economic Barriers, discussion of, 176 Europe, to rearrange map of, 144, 154 Executive Council Power of, 209, 298 Reference to, 206, 260, 265, 276, 281, 314 Fess, Mr., reference to, 260 Finland, 143, 237 Fisheries Case, 192 Fiume, reference to, 301, 306, 311, Foch, Marshal, reference to, 301 Forf (see "Military Force") Discussion of, XV, 103, 124, 160, 189 Necessary for effective League, 108 Necessary to use force against force, 133 Fourteen Points, reference to, 139, 142, 149, 155, 157, 163, 165, 171, 176, 183, 215 France, War of 1870, 85 Freedom of the Seas, 160, 163, 176 French Association for the Soci- ety of Nations, 207 German Colonies, reference to, 22, 142, 164, 248 German Colonies and the League, 221 German efficiency, 182 German Militarism, reference to, 81, 91, 94 German Preparedness for War, 87 Germany, 157 And the membership in the League, 151 Essential to defeat, 132 Growth and development of, 85 Hemming in, 187 Not to join League at once, 193 War of 1870, 85 Grant, General, quoted, 95 Great Britain, Representation of, 271 Greater League, 101, 161 Great Powers and the League, 151, 161, 162, 177, 192, 195, 196, 197, 202, 215, 216, 217 Greece, Leagues of, 29 Grey, Lord In favor of League, 74, 98 Quoted, 79 H Hague Conference, Second, 41 Hague Tribunal, referred to, 220 336 INDEX Hamilton, reference to, 224 Hayes and Tilden dispute, 159 Henry, Patrick, reference to, 247 Herzegovinia, reference to, 224 Holy Alliance, reference to, 142 Hughes, Mr., referred to as fav- oring League, 99 Hungary, 302 Immigration, 318 Indemnities, 300 International Bureau of Labor provided for in League, 247 International Army, Necessity for, ISO International Bureaus, 26 International Court, 50, 53, 61, 99, 160, 188, 196, 205, 225, 317 Supreme Court as precedent for, 43 International Law, 50, 189, 195, 205, 208 Conferences to agree upon, 42, 44 Definition of, 61, 93, 125 Method for formulating, and codifying, 2, 3 The League to formulate princi- ples of, loo International Police (see " Mili- tary Police") International Prize Court, 56 Internationalism, Argument as to answered, 146 Ireland and the League, 225 Isolation inconceivable, 162 Italy and Her Entrance into the War, 311, 312 Japanese, Immigration and natu- ralization of, 49, 63, 266, 310, 326 Jay Treaty, 54, 56 Jefferson, Thos., reference to, 119, 174, 252 Jews and religious liberty, 166, 309, 330 Jews in Rumania, Poland, etc., 310 Jugo Slavs, 136, 139, 143, 154, 175, 237 Justiciable, definition of, 179 Justiciable questions, I, 3, 33, 39, 49, 53 Kaiser, reference to, 140 Kant, reference to, 113 Knox, Senator Answered, 280 Discussion of plan of League proposed by, 289 Reference to, 198, 201, 210, 214, 215 L Labor, to improve conditions as to in all countries, 25 Lansing, Secretary, reference to, 212 Larger League, 189 League A barrier to wars, 257 Analogy to Domestic Govern- ment, 78 British, 206 Constitutionality of, 276, 277, 280 ff Covenant, As amended, Analysis of, 313 English plan referred to, 83 Feasibility of, discussed, 78 Functions of, 195 Fundamental plan of, 41 ff Greatest step in history, 290 Members of, 27 Objections to, 297 Reasons for entering, 249 Withdrawal from, 323 INDEX 337 League of Nations (sec " Paris Covenant"), 52 Defined, 178 League to Enforce Peace Constitutionality of Proposals, 52 Planks of Platform, 188 Platform of, I, 205 Purposes of, 74 Steps in organization of, 180 Legislative Body of League (see " Assembly " and " Body of Delegates "), 3 Lesser League, 101, 160, 163, 195, 208, 217 Lesser Powers and the League, 151 Lincoln, referred to, 83 Lithuanians, 175 Lloyd George Quoted, 115, 218 Reference to, 194, 202, 212, 302 Lodge, Senator Reference to, 74, 198, 214 Referred to as favoring the League, 99, 174 Loughborough, Lord Chancellor, quoted, 56 M Madison, James, reference to, 252 Mandatories, 22, 223, 224, 234, 262, 309, 3i6 Mason, George, reference to, 247 Members of League, 27 Mesopotamia, reference to, 248 Milyukoff, quoted, 135 Militarism, 94, 138, 142, 157, 165, 221 Military Aid, when to be given, 18 Military Force Analogy to police in maintain- ing order, 106 Discussion of, 65, 100, 112 Objections to answered, 57, 67 When to be used, I, 18, 42, 45, 48 Military Training, Universal, 150, 163, 204, 217 Missouri v. Illinois, 34 Monroe Doctrine Interpretation of, 269 Message of President Monroe enunciating, 253 Reference to or discussion of, VII, VIII, 22, 70, 77, 119, 203, 216, 252, 254, 274, 275, 276, 292, 322, 328, 329 Reservation as to, 318 Morgenthau, Mr., reference to, 258 Munitions, manufacture of, n N Napoleon, reference to, 95, 103, 141 National isolation impossible in the future, 134 Nationalism, League not incon- sistent with, 146 Naturalization, 63 Neutrality of Belgium, Violation of, 90 New Nations or Republics to be created, X, 143, 145, 160, 185, 187, 188, 236 Non-Justiciable Questions, 49 O Objections to League, 198, 200, 209, 249 Answered: (1) As to Boycott, 67 (2) As to Military Force, 67 (3) As to Unconstitutional- ity of, 68 Olney, former Secretary of State, quoted, 57-58 Opium, Traffic in, 25 Oregon Boundary Dispute, 40 Orlando, reference to, 313 INDEX Paderewski, reference to, 310 Palestine, 248 As Mandatory, 224 Panama Independence of, guaranteed, 59 149 Treaty with, 58 Panama Canal, reference to, 72 Paris Covenant, discussion of, 228, 233, 262, 290 Peace Dangers of Premature, 81 Not delayed by League, 300 Steps to secure, 296 Peace Offer, Danger of, 138 Pennsylvania v. Connecticut, un- der Articles of Confederation, 30 Platform of League (see " League ") Discussion of, 98, 107, 145 Plunkett, Sir Horace, reference to, 226 Poincare, President, reference to, 213 Poindexter, Senator Answered, 147, 240 Quoted, 239 Reference to, 154, 260, 297 Pogroms, reference to, 167 Poland, 143, 154, 237 Poles, 175 Police (see " International Po- lice ") Polk, President, quoted, 253 Preparedness, in relation to League, 80 Presidential Election, description of, 185-186 Pro-German sentiment, 92, 97 Purpose of United States in the War, 133 R Racial Freedom, 309 Reasons for entering the League, 249 Reed, Senator, reference to, 154, 260, 297 Referendum, discussion of use be- fore declaring war, 115 Regional Understandings, Reser- vations as to, 318 Religious Liberty, 166, 309, 330 Republicans and the League, 199 Reptile Fund, reference to use of to bribe the press, 89 Republics, New (see "New Re- publics ") Roosevelt, Former President, re- ferred to, 75, 201, 202, 203 Roosevelt and the Japanese-Rus- sian War, 83 Root, Mr., reference to, 315, 317, 319 Round Robin, the, 307 Rumania, 143 Rumania and the Jews, 168, 310 Russia Discussion of problems of, 183 Reference to, 87, 91, 135, 136, 143, 154, 175, 219, 305 S Scott, James Brown, reference to, 212 Seal Fisheries (see " Bering Sea Controversy ") Secret Treaties, 311 Self -Determination, 136 Self-Government, definition of, 185 Separate Peace, Logical result of those opposing League, 154 Slovakia (see " Czecho-Slavs ") Smuts, General, reference to, 235, 261 Saar District, 222 Small Nations, 196, 197 Protection of by League, 193 Smaller League (see "Lesser League ") INDEX 339 Socialists, reference to, 146, 153 Sonnino, reference to, 301, 313 Sovereignty, discussion of, VIII, 147, 148, 191, 279 Submarine Warfare, reference to use of, 80, 89, 93, 94, 157, 180, 181 Sully, reference to, 201 Super-sovereignty, League not to establish, XIV, 148, 215, 259 Supreme Court, Analogy to inter- national tribunal, 32 Swiss System of Military Train- ing (see "Military Train- ing ") Syria, reference to, 248 Tariff, Exclusion from League, 3i8, 326 Tennyson, reference to, 201 Treaties Secret, 311 To be registered with League, 20 Those negotiated by Mr. Bryan, in Treaty of Versailles Delay in making, 303 Long and complicated, 188 Treaty-making Power, discussion of, 53, 58, 68, 239, 285, 286 Treaty of Peace and the League of Nations, 272, 280 Trentino, reference to, 136, 154, 165, 312 Triple Alliance, reference to, 104, 312 Triple Entente, reference to, 104, 312 Turkey, reference to, 136, 143 Turkish Empire, Disposition of certain communities, 23 U Ukraine, reference to, 143, 237 United States Discussion as to whether the United States should join the League, 117 Driven to the war, 156 Influence in League, 194 Power, wealth and growth of, 71 ff, 79 Purpose of in the war, 133, 181 Universal Training (see " Mili- tary Training ") Victory, Obligations of, 141 Victory Program, 2 Victory with Power, 132 Viviani, M., quoted, 135 W War Delay of by investigation, ni Right of Congress to declare, 149 Washington's advice against en- tangling Alliances, Discussion of, IX, XII, 71 ff, 119, 132, 156, 174, 274 White, Henry, reference to, 212 Wilson, President And the Fiume Controversy, 313 Correspondence with in refer- ence to the League, 321 ff Influence in Europe, 194 Quoted, 79, 91, 134, 157, 218 Reference to, 74, 153, 154, 162, 169, 211, 223, 230, 238, 255 Referred to as favoring the League, 98 Wilson, Professor, quoted, 70 Women, Appeal to, 257 Workingmen and the League, 152 World Court, discussion of, 114 340 INDEX World Court Congress, Address Z before, 28 World Politics, 134 Zeppelins, reference to use of, 89 World War, Beginning of, 87 Zones, Division of world into, 216 DATE DUE PRINTED INU.S. A. : SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY II I II II III I II I III II II A 000 538 530 7