LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. P. J. McCUMBER 
 
 OF NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 JUNE 18, 1919 
 
 n 
 
 C*3 
 
 12439019542 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 1919
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. P. J. McCUMBEE. 
 
 AKE EUROPEAN QUAHRELS OF NO CONCERN TO THE ONITBD STATES? 
 
 Mr. McCUMBER. Mr. President, the very first question that 
 challenges our attention in the matter of a league of nations is 
 the question of whether a war in Europe is a matter of concern 
 to the United States. The ultraopponents of any league of 
 nations assert that European quarrels and European battles are 
 no concern of ours. If that be true, we may well pause before 
 obligating ourselves to make them our concern. Is it true? 
 
 Mr. President, on the 28th day of June, 1914, in one of the most 
 insignificant countries of Europe, a country so small that its 
 exact location at that time was scarcely known by the American 
 people, a man and his wife were murdered by a little band of 
 political assassins. Had this murder been committed upon an 
 ordinary family it would not have been considered of sufficient 
 importance to have justified the expense of a cablegram to this 
 country. But as the victims of these misled malefactors were 
 of the Hapsburg family, the world was notified of the occurrence. 
 Had anyone then suggested that this act might bring on a great 
 world war, his mental balance would have been questioned. The 
 world was to civilized in the year 1914 to permit the destruction 
 of millions of innocent men because one man stabbed or shot an- 
 other to death. Austria would demand that the criminals be 
 brought to justice and that demand would be acceded to by Serbia. 
 If it were not agreed to, Austria would send an armed force into 
 Serbia and compel not only the execution of the criminals but 
 an apology to the Austrian Nation. And even if it did bring 
 on a war between Austria and Serbia, we need not concern our- 
 selves about it. Let those discordant Balkan States settle their 
 own scores with each other; America had nothing to do with 
 their quarrels. 
 
 Well, Mr. President, that murder has already cost the lives of 
 more than 50,000 young American boys, and so it did become 
 our concern. We can not look upon I heir fresh-made graves, 
 scarce yet softened by nature's verdant shroud, without yielding 
 our belief that it was no concern of ours. 
 
 That murder has cost us about $40.000.000,000 up to the pres- 
 ent time, and before we are through $100,000,000,000 will have 
 been paid out by the American people. Is a conflict in Europe 
 which compels us to load that enormous debt upon the American 
 people for a century a conflict which does not concern us? Our 
 Civil War cost us only about five or six billions of dollars, or 
 
 12439019542
 
 only about one-eighth of the cost of one year of this war. Is it 
 no concern of ours that there shall be left at the close of this 
 conflict the possibility, yes, the probability, that another worse 
 war shall blacken the earth? 
 
 About 8,000,000 boys, the best boys of the great white race, 
 were killed in battle or died of wounds. Close to 20,000,000 boys 
 of the same blood have died because of this war. Of course 
 only a very small proportion of them were our boys ; but they 
 were boys with the same ambitions, the same lofty hopes and 
 aspirations, and in whom the love of life was equally strong- 
 boys with mothers like the mothers of our boys their hopes, 
 their ambitions, their lofty aspirations all buried with their 
 mangled bodies. And yet I hear Senators still say this is no 
 concern of ours. Twenty million young girls of this generation, 
 the best young girls in the world, deprived of their God-given 
 right to reign queen of heart and home, must now go down to 
 their graves husbandless, homeless, childless. 
 
 But, say the advocates of American isolation, this is no con- 
 cern of ours. We are big enough to take care of ourselves. 
 Let other nations do the same. We do not want to be brought 
 into European squabbles. 
 
 Says the Senator from California [Mr. JOHNSON], speaking of 
 these European countries: 
 
 We do not need them as partners. They require us. They yield to 
 us nothing. They can yield to us nothing. We give to them every- 
 thing. Wfc can protect our borders for centuries to come just as we 
 have in the centuries past. The Lord has given us geographical isola- 
 tion and the Lord has denied just that thing to the different races of 
 Europe. 
 
 And he might have added, "And so the Lord be praised." 
 What do we get out of it? asks the Senator from California. 
 Do we ask ourselves that question in the thousands of acts of 
 generosity by which we gladden the lives of others? If the 
 Senator does not ask himself that question, and I know he does 
 not, then why does he insist that his Nation, which he loves 
 better than himself, should ask it? If the question means, What 
 are we to get out of it from a financial or a territorial stand- 
 point, I freely admit that we do not need the assistance of any 
 power on earth to protect our rights. I admit that we are so 
 much more powerful than any other single nation to-day, so 
 secure in our vast territorial expanse, in our geographical posi- 
 tion, and in our material resources that we are practically im- 
 mune from assault. But are we thereby relieved from any duty 
 toward the rest of the world, or does that immunity impose 
 upon us a greater duty toward those who are not so protected as 
 we are? What is the true American answer? There can be 
 but one answer : The God of international justice, by His special 
 favors, has given to us in territorial extent, in that splendid isola- 
 tion, in our vast resources, in our mighty population, has by His 
 very law of compensation imposed upon us a greater duty than 
 upon the less fortunate people of the world to shield the weak 
 and to compel international right. 
 
 Mr. President, there is no moral duty incumbent upon any 
 man in his relation to his fellow man that is not equally incum- 
 bent upon a nation in its relation to every other nation. Does 
 any man deny that proposition? What would you say of the 
 strong, vigorous man who would stand by while another strong 
 
 12430019542
 
 man was beating a weak child to death, and idly remark M It 
 Ife no concern of mine; it is not my child." What would you 
 say of a strong, vigorous swimmer who would stand on the shore 
 and see a woman straggling in the waves that would soon be 
 her death, reaching her white arms and crying for help, while 
 he folding his muscular arms announces : " Oh, that is no con- 
 cern of mine, she is not my wife or daughter." Mr. President, 
 this doctrine of " no concern of ours " is a shameful and mon- 
 strous doctrine from every standpoint of national morality. 
 
 " Oh," but say the opponents of the league of nations, " we 
 can make up our minds what to do when the occasion arises." 
 Well, Mr. President, what I want us to do is to be right there 
 on the spot, with the contractual right in our hand when the 
 occasion arises. Had the United States been right on the spot 
 with an agreement signed by us and signed by Germany, that 
 Germany would not make war on France or any other country 
 without submitting to a league of nations the question of the 
 righteousness of her cause, the world would have been spared 
 this awful conflagration with its consequent miseries which can 
 never be forgotten or forgiven. You know and I know that so 
 long as the present conception of international right continues, 
 the conception that sovereignty has no bounds or limitations! 
 we will not interfere unless some right of ours is attacked! 
 What we want to-day is an international law on this subject, a 
 law that will declare that war by one nation is a matter 'of 
 concern to every other nation, and that no unjust war shall be 
 waged by any nation. Now, that is just exactly what this league 
 of nations does. 
 
 So, Mr. President, all this prating about what we will do in 
 the future is worse than idle talk. We will do in the future 
 just what we have done in the past under a like conception of 
 sovereign rights. If there is no league of nations, the present 
 world understanding that a war waged by one great power to 
 annihilate another is not an assault upon other nations of 
 the world, and that no other nation is bound to take up the 
 cause of the weaker, will continue to prevail. You talk about 
 our entering this war for the cause of a great world principle. 
 The man who makes that assertion knows that he falsifies the 
 record. 
 
 He knows that we never uttered one word about our entrance 
 into the war being for the cause of humanity. We based our right 
 of action solely upon the ground that by the acts of Germany she 
 had made war upon us. Of course, when we got into the war we 
 were naturally fighting the cause of humanity. But it was not 
 the cause of humanity which brought us into it. Now, I want to 
 put ourselves in such a position that we shall never feel it neces- 
 sary to reiterate that falsehood in order to place ourselves 
 right before our own people or the world. I want this country 
 to be in a position where she can assert without any equivoca'- 
 tion, " This is our mutual agreement, signed by all of us, that 
 no one of us will wage a war of conquest, and that we will act 
 together to prevent the murder of millions of innocent human 
 beings for the selfish ends of any one nation." I want this 
 country to be in a position that it can say " Under the letter of 
 this bond and for the defense of this principle we command 
 you to halt your armies, and to maintain that principle we will 
 
 124300 19512
 
 consecrate the blood of our men, the tears of our women, and 
 every resource of our Nation." 
 
 We knew all along just what Germany had in mind ; we knew 
 the course of instruction which had been given to her people 
 from every possible source, that her destiny lay in the conquest 
 and destruction of her neighbors. We knew her scheme of 
 Mitteleuropa. We knew her purpose of world domination. \Ve 
 knew that she intended to destroy Belgium and annex the most 
 valuable portions of France as the first step toward the ac- 
 complishment of her world-domination idea, and that was the 
 time that we should have called the halt. But we did not have 
 the right under international law or under any agreement to 
 demand that she refrain from that hellish purpose. Had we 
 had the agreement proposed in this league of nations, then, 
 standing upon our contractual rights, we would have called 
 her to account, and Germany would have desisted and the world 
 would have been saved from these awful wrongs and suffer- 
 ings. We do not want this country or any other country or 
 the world to again be placed in such a. position of shameful 
 impotency. 
 
 And why, I ask you, do you boast of our fighting this war for 
 the sake of Immunity and for the higher principles of interna- 
 tional justice, while in the same breath you declare against any 
 obligation that shall bind us, in connection with other great 
 nations of the world, to prevent such war of injustice and wrong? 
 Is a war to prevent the accomplishment of an international 
 felony right, but an agreement to prevent the initiation of the 
 felonious purpose wrong? Let us at least attempt consistency. 
 
 Mr. President, the one regrettable thing to-day is that this 
 war was carried on so far from us that we saw but little of its 
 horrors, that we got into it so late that we suffered but little, 
 comparatively, of its sacrifices, and that our people knew so 
 little of the destitution in its wake. The closest estimate 
 places the number of soldiers who were killed or died of wounds 
 from the beginning of the war to November 11, 1918, at nearly 
 8,000,000, and there have been more people killed in Russia 
 since Russia's surrender to Bolshevism and German machina- 
 tions than there were of Russian troops killed in the war. I 
 think it safe to say as a fair estimate, if we include with the 
 soldiers the civilian populations that were killed or starved to 
 death or whose death was directly attributable to this war, 
 that up to the present time the war has caused the death of 
 more than 20,000,000 persons. 
 
 I wish it were possible for each of us to realize the suffer- 
 ings of one dying soldier, to see the stroke and hear the thud as 
 a rifle butt beats to a mass the head of a poor wounded boy, 
 to view the agonizing gasps of a drowning man, to watch as the 
 last breath passes the tender lips of a famished child. Then I 
 wish it were possible to comprehend the multiplication of those 
 things twenty million times over. We would then realize this 
 war. It is well that there is a limit to our power to realize 
 horrors, else the whole world would die of anguish. I wish 
 we could look upon the army of millions upon millions of arm- 
 less, legless, eyeless men who will suffer the agony of wounds 
 all the balance of their lives. I wish \ve could fully realize 
 for one moment the awful grief of a mother whose brave boy 
 went down to a watery grave in defense of his country. He 
 12439019542
 
 G 
 
 suffered but once, but his death agony is repeated again and 
 again every day of the life of this devoted mother. Multiply 
 that by the number of all the mothers whose sons died in this 
 conflict and we get even then only a slight conception of all the 
 suffering this war has caused. 
 
 Mr. President, if we could do this, nothing on earth would 
 prevent us from demanding immediately a combination of all 
 the peoples of the world to prevent a repetition of this war. 
 
 I can not understand how any man whose heart throbs for 
 the woes and cares of humanity, whose mind is capable of 
 grasping the awful misery inflicted by this most ungodly con- 
 flict, can fail to labor with all his power, with all his heart and 
 influence, to shield poor humanity from another such awful 
 crime. 
 
 And again when I come to the present cost of this war to the 
 principal nations engaged in it, I find that it aggregates little 
 less than $200,000,000,000. It is an awful debt to load upon 
 these impoverished countries. And yet with interest and pen- 
 sions and other obligations, that two hundred billions will prob- 
 ably be increased to two thousand billions before the debt is 
 wiped out and the last pension paid. 
 
 Senators, is such an impoverishment of the world as that no 
 concern of ours? 
 
 In making this estimate of the cost of the war, we might 
 yet add at least twenty-five billions for property destroyed. The 
 British Empire lost in value of ships and shipping alone more 
 than $4,500,000,000. The Allies alone lost 404 warships with a 
 displacement of 1,364,000 tons. The enemy lost 216 warships with 
 a displacement of 518,000 tons. 
 
 The Allies and neutrals lost in merchant tonnage 15,027,718 
 gross tons, of which Great Britain alone lost 8,889,659 tons. 
 The tonnage lost to the world was 15,336,922 gross tons. Nor- 
 way, a neutral country, a seafaring nation, the livelihood of 
 whose people is gained in great part by braving the waves of the 
 ocean, lost of her merchant marine 1,177,000 gross tons. She 
 lost more tonnage than any country engaged in the war except 
 Great Britain. Norway had committed no offense against Ger- 
 many, and yet she was made to suffer in this war a greater loss 
 in merchant marine than any belligerent except Great Britain. 
 Is a war which results in such loss to a neutral friendly nation 
 of no concern to us? 
 
 But you say we can continue a peaceful policy with the world, 
 without binding ourselves to act in any particular way. Yes ; 
 that is exactly what we were saying for years prior to 1914, 
 and especially prior to 1917. But we found that the world was 
 not so large that we could escape being drawn into the vortex 
 of a European conflagration. And while we scarcely got into 
 the real conflict before its close, while not more than a quarter 
 of a million American soldiers were on the actual battle line at 
 any one time, it is safe to say that this war has cost the United 
 States not less than $40,000,000,000. And before the principal 
 and interest and pensions have been fully met, it is a conserva- 
 tive estimate that we shall have expended not less than 
 $100,000,000,000. Have you contemplated what that means 
 to us? 
 
 Mr. President, one of the most beautiful structures in the 
 United States is our Public Library Building, facing Capitol 
 12439019542
 
 Square. That building cost about $6,000,000, less than one-thirxl 
 the cost of a modern battleship. That beautiful structure, glad- 
 dening the hearts of millions of people, may last as long as the 
 earth lasts. The battleship -will become obsolete in 10 years. 
 With just what money this single year of war will have cost us 
 we could build in the United States 17,000 of these build- 
 ing.s, 350 of them in each State in the Union, one in each city, 
 town, and village. With this sum we could purchase all the 
 flour at prewar prices and population, the American people, 
 would consume in 154 years. The cost of one year of this war 
 would pay all the expenses necessary to relieve all the distress, 
 hunger, or sickness of all the people for a hundred years. It 
 would save the lives annually of more than 100,000 invalids 
 afflicted with the great white plague who are too poor to 
 change their location or secure the rest necessary for their 
 convalescence. The expenses of the four years of this great war 
 could change this old world from a dingy workshop into a 
 paradise for a whole century. Arc European wars of no con- 
 cern to us? 
 
 No, Mr. President, these premises are wrong. They are our con- 
 cern ; and if there is any one great duty resting upon this coun- 
 try at the close of this sanguinary struggle, if that struggle has 
 made one thing in the world clear and definite, it is the com- 
 manding duty of this country, the country most able to prevent 
 war and without whose assistance such prevention is impossible, 
 to take the lead in this great world movement for the settlement 
 of international disputes by peaceful means. 
 
 Mr. President, there was speaking in this country some lit- 
 tle time ago a gentleman by the name of Philip Gibb's, who had 
 spent four years at the front. On the 7th of March, 1919, he 
 published in the New York Times an article which ought to be 
 read by every American statesman. He admits in that article 
 that the United States could get along without calling upon 
 Europe for assistance. But Europe the innocent people of 
 Europe, the peaceful people of Europe, the people who do not 
 wish to injure their fellow men, and whose aims are noble and 
 ideal need the United States to protect them against a repeti- 
 tion of this awful tragedy. I want to road a few excerpts 
 from that article. He says : 
 
 But what the American people I have mot do not understand, what 
 it is difficult for them to understand, is the patient yearning of great 
 masses of people for American aid in liberating them from the repeti- 
 tion of horrors through which they have passed in agony. 
 
 That, Mr. President, is Europe's call to America. Shall the 
 call go unanswered? Are we to reply that this is no concern 
 of ours? Are we to ask, as have some Senators asked, what 
 are we to get out of this.? 
 
 Again, he says : 
 
 Among the soldiers of the French Army, as well as among those of 
 the British Army, there was from the beginning a sense of despair that 
 civilization itself should have been dragged down to such depths of 
 degradation in the filth of the Imttle fields, with their wholesale 
 slaughter of youth and of life's beauty and decency. Their hatred of 
 the Germans, who were the direct cause of this, did not blind them to 
 the large truth that the whole structure, and philosophy of Europe had 
 been damnably guilty, and that if it; had been different, not even the 
 (Jerinans would or could have let those devils loose upon the boyhood of 
 the nations and upon women and children. 
 
 Mr. President, do we join them in this indictment? No man 
 dare question the truth of the statement. Are we willing, then, 
 12439019542
 
 8 
 
 to remedy the wrong by shouldering the responsibility, not 
 necessarily for our preservation, but in the name of God and 
 humanity; shoulder it for the preservation of the iunocent, 
 suffering peoples of Europe? I say the true American heart, 
 uninfluenced by false or misleading criticisms, will ever an- 
 swer, " Yes." 
 
 Again, he says: 
 
 Over and over again in the early days, French officers and men said. 
 
 of times nor scores of times, by bloody and bandaged men, but hun- 
 dreds of times. It was the common, general, passionate thought And 
 hundreds of times on the British front, in trenches and in dugouts, and 
 la officers messes our own men spoke to me in a similar line of thought 
 Deeper than their hatred of the enemy who had brought this thing upon 
 them, was their hatred of statesmen and politicians and men of wealth 
 and learning who had failed to foresee the horrors ahead and who had 
 gttne on in the foolish old way supporting balances of power, framing 
 secret alliances, influencing national hatreds and rivalries, and main- 
 taining the old philosophy of material force to hold and to grab, 
 loung English officers of good family argued passionately in the face 
 of death that all our social structure was wrong, and that there was 
 no hope for humanity for which thev were going to die they knew 
 that unless some new relationship between nations could be estab- 
 lished giving at least some postponement and respite to the spasms 
 of slaughter between periods of so-called peace, which were but a 
 preparation for a new massacre of youth. 
 
 And I say candidly, Senators, that you may defeat this treaty, 
 this league of nations; you may scatter abroad criticisms that 
 are unjust or baseless; you may appeal to a national pride and 
 to the selfish side of our natures and thereby destroy at this 
 time the hope that has been in the heart of every thinking, 
 feeling, loving human being for centuries that the time would 
 come when the same law which governs the rights of indi- 
 viduals would be applied to shield the lives of nations. But 
 as surely as this is defeated and the world suffers another such 
 calamity, deeper than the hatred of the enemy will be the 
 hatred toward the statesmen of the world who have failed in 
 this great opportunty to league together to shield poor, inno- 
 cent human beings from such sufferings and calamities as have 
 been visited upon them because there was no law to check a 
 great, powerful nation from criminal aggression. 
 
 Again, Mr. Gibbs says: 
 
 That conviction has not been killed by victory. It is in the hearts 
 of the living as it was in the souls of the dead. 'and I write of what I 
 know. It is in the hearts of the multitudes of women who gave their 
 first born sometimes their .second and third aud fourth to the de- 
 vouring monster of war. It is hot in the brains of millions of workers 
 who watch (he politicians of the world with increasing hatred and 
 distrust because of their failure to avert the frightful catastrophe, and 
 they are tinkering now with problems which must be handled largely 
 with an unshrinking courage in order to make the world clean of the 
 foul outrage against civilized ideals on these corpse-strewn fields in 
 I ranee. 
 
 You may eliminate it from the hearts of these people by 
 unjust and false interpretation, but if you do so, in my candid 
 judgment, you are committing a grievous wrong against the 
 best impulses of the best people in the world, including our 
 own : 
 
 Again, he speaks in prophetic words when he says : 
 America has the supreme chance of any power in the world to-day, 
 because she is looked upon by the peoples of Europe as a fair, unselfish, 
 and democratic arbitrator, aloof from their rivalries and untainted by 
 the disease which infected their civilization. 
 124390 19542
 
 9 
 
 Quoting again : 
 
 . It was the thoughts of men who fought and suffered that which 
 will form the motive power behind the league of nations. There were 
 certain elementary thoughts in the minds of those men. They saw 
 before them the long stretches of chalked German trenches and behind 
 those trenches vas the enemy. They knew it was that enemy that had 
 brought this thing to pass and that unless they killed the Germans 
 the Germans would kill them. These men knew that unless they 
 smashed the German front Germany would smash England and France. 
 These men asked why had this thing come to pass. They wanted to 
 know the meaning of it all. Why, they asked, are men with centuries 
 of civilization behind them thrown into these filthy, vermin-infested 
 holes? Why is everything that life holds most sacred destroyed? Why 
 did this thing happen in the twentieth century, so long after Christ? 
 
 It happened, Mr. President, because the great nations of the 
 world had never adopted as a code of international law that no 
 nation had a right to destroy another nation, to seize its do- 
 mains or murder its people. Infinitely worse than that, the 
 right to commit such crimes lias been, recognized from time im- 
 memorial as a right incident to sovereignty which no other 
 country could dispute, so long as its interest was not directly 
 jeopardized. That is why every nation for a hundred years has 
 stood idly by while Turkish soldiers have massacred hundreds of 
 thousands of defenseless Armenians. The nations have simply fol- 
 lowed the policy so ardently proclaimed by Senators, that while 
 they regret such atrocities, really it is not their national con- 
 cern. That is why, Mr. President, with full cognizance of 
 Germany's purpose, with full knowledge of the atrocities com- 
 mitted by command of her officers, we never raised a hand to 
 stay her until she had murdered our own people. Nay, further, 
 not until she had shaken the mailed fist in our face and sworn 
 that she would continue to kill our people wherever found upon 
 the high seas. 
 
 And it may be further answered that this thing will continue 
 to happen until this principle is written into international law 
 by all the nations and the honor of each and all pledged to up- 
 hold it with whatever force may be necessary. 
 
 Again says this writer : 
 
 Now, these men, those who survive, are going back to England and to 
 Canada. And they are thinking more positively and more silently than 
 they did on the battle field. I know that in England and in France 
 these thoughts are setting among the people of these nations and these 
 thoughts are being talked from man to man, and what I say applies not 
 only to our side but it is also what is happening on the German side. 
 
 I admit that the sentiment for a world league is not as strong 
 in this country, because few, comparatively, of our vast popu- 
 lation ever saw even one battle field. Slight, in comparison with 
 our population, were our losses. Other countries bathed in blood, 
 starved and emaciated, their cities full of cripples armless, 
 legless, sightless men are calling to us whose wounds were slight 
 to help them to rescue themselves from national hatreds and 
 jealousies which too many regard as elements of patriotism. 
 Shall we in the arrogance of our power and self-sufficiency turn 
 a deaf ear to their entreaties? 
 
 HOW PURPOSES OF LEAGUE EFFECTUATED. 
 
 Mr. President, after contemplating these horrors of war, after 
 
 placing in the balance on the one side whatever of cupidity and 
 
 purely selfish considerations we may be possessed of, and on the 
 
 other side our humanitarian impulses; after eliminating the 
 
 12439019542
 
 10 
 
 hatreds we may have against one foreign nation and partiality 
 for some other foreign nation ; after eliminating all political ad- 
 vantages to be gained by playing upon race or hyphenated Ameri- 
 can prejudices ; after concluding to forego tail twisting either for 
 our own edification or the edification of others, after conclud- 
 ing that this country has a higher and nobler destiny than mere 
 material gains, higher and nobler aspirations than mere na- 
 tional prowess, and having finally concluded that this, the 
 greatest Nation of the earth in population, wealth, and resources 
 has by virtue of her transcendent position incurred a moral 
 responsibility toward the weaker and less favorably situated 
 countries of the world and ought, therefore, to exercise her 
 mighty influence and power for the preservation of peace, the 
 settlement of international disputes by peaceful means, guided 
 by right and justice ought to help save the people of the world 
 from another such awful calamity as they have just passed 
 through, we are brought face to face with this question : By 
 what character of agreement between nations can we best secure 
 this result? Of course, not one of us would have written this 
 covenant just as it has come to us, either in its original or 
 revised form. Some of us would have inserted additional and 
 explanatory clauses and definitions and some of us would have 
 opposed any kind of agreement whatsoever for the preservation 
 of peace. And, I might add, another class would not have ac- 
 cepted any agreement unless it gave to this country special 
 advantages over every other nation of the world. 
 
 But, Mr. President, this covenant represents the deliberations 
 of nations, some very important, some very small and weak. 
 It deals with complex situations in Europe, both as to races 
 and boundaries. It comes to us as a compromise compact, which 
 all of these great nations believe will accomplish the purpose 
 of preventing any stupendous world war in the future. To secure 
 the support of this country special concessions have been given 
 to us. Our Monroe doctrine, which lias never been acquiesced 
 in by any European power except Great Britain, is by this in- 
 strument given a world sanction. 
 
 It seems to me that we are now put to the test as to whether 
 our boast of special humanitarian impulses is but the bragga- 
 docio mouthings of an insincere people or the deep heart con- 
 viction of a Christian nation. 
 
 I think none of us will claim that the instrument clearly and 
 definitely conveys its purposes. But that it is susceptible of 
 the construction many opponents have given it, and to the 
 criticism based upon such construction, I most emphatically deny. 
 During my 20 years as a Member of this body I recall but one 
 or two instances in which an instrument has been so viciously 
 and unjustifiably assailed. 
 
 Allegations have been made and published to the people of 
 this country concerning the powers granted to the council or 
 assembly provided for in this instrument and the dangers to 
 this country that are as false to the context and the true meaning 
 of the instrument as could possibly be imagined. It is my 
 purpose to analyze several sections of this compact, so far as it 
 relates to the league for permanent peace, and to present its 
 meaning in a spirit of absolute fairness, and with the hope that 
 I may be able to both simplify and clarify its meaning. 
 
 12439010542
 
 11 
 
 In the condemnatory discussions certain terms in the instru- 
 ment have been so employed by speakers as to confuse and mis- 
 lead. The term " league of nations " is frequently used synony- 
 mously with " council " or with " assembly," or with both. The 
 words "league of nations" are but descriptive of the organiza- 
 tion. It is the mere name. The powers and duties of the organi* 
 zation are exercised by and through two separate bodies, com- 
 posed in the council of the representatives of nine leading nations 
 and in the assembly of representatives of all nations entering into 
 the compact. 
 
 The members of the league are the several nations of the 
 world who join in its organization and such others as may there- 
 after be admitted to it. The following nations are included in the 
 present league : United States of America, British Empire, 
 France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Greece, Canada, Australia, South 
 Africa, New Zealand, India, Roumania, Serbia all of said 
 nations being directly involved in the war on the part of the 
 Allies ; also Czechoslovakia and Poland, newly created coun- 
 tries, and Siam, China, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Hedjaz, Hon- 
 duras, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Brazil all of which, as I remember, 
 declared war against the Central Powers, but took no further 
 action. This inclusion seemed necessary, because, foregoing 
 special advantages they might have reaped as neutrals, these 
 countries chose to declare themselves in a state of war against 
 our enemies as evidence of their belief in the justice of our 
 cause; and all would, therefore, necessarily join in the treaty of 
 peace. 
 
 In addition to these several States, the following neutrals have 
 by the instrument itself been invited to become members of 
 the league, namely : Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Denmark. Neth- 
 erlands, Norway, Paraguay, Persia, Salvador, Spain, Sweden, 
 Switzerland, and Venezuela. These constitute all the important 
 States of the world, except the enemy States and Russia. As 
 soon as stable governments are established in Germany, Austria, 
 and other enemy countries, as well as in Russia, and whenever 
 any of these countries shall give effective guaranties of their 
 intention to observe their international obligations, they will 
 be admitted to full fellowship under the provisions of article 1. 
 
 I am free to say that I would hesitate a long time before vot- 
 ing for any league of nations which should leave Germany out- 
 side its domains. If Germany shall sincerely relinquish her 
 doctrine of world conquest and her pretended right to rob or 
 destroy her neighbor, she should be made a party to this world 
 compact. This covenant should not be so drawn or arranged as 
 to compel other nations to unite and thus divide the world into 
 hostile camps. So if Russia shall have the ability to emerge 
 from her present chaos and take on the responsibilities of gov- 
 ernment, she, too, should be invited into this bond of national 
 fellowship. 
 
 Proceeding on the assumption that we really and sincerely 
 wish to avoid any great war in the future, and that we really 
 believe what wo say, assuming that we are willing to do our 
 part to accomplish such ;in understanding and in my opinion 
 the mere pledge of this Government in conjunction with the 
 other European Stales would produce this result, and we should 
 never be required to enlist a single soldier or lire a single gun 
 to assure such peaceful settlement let us proceed to analyze 
 
 124390 1<).-,42
 
 12 
 
 the instrument for the purpose of determining, first, whether 
 the adoption of its provisions would accomplish the purposes 
 sought ; second, whether any of its provisions would operate to 
 the Injury of the United States. 
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF PROVISIONS. 
 
 Mr. President, the spirit of sympathy or hostility, which more 
 or less influences every mind, very often leads us into strained 
 constructions to meet such sentiments. If we set out to search 
 for faults, we are apt to look only for words or sentences or as- 
 sumptions to support our purposes. 
 
 Admitting, as I do, that I sincerely wish for the adoption of 
 such a covenant, I shall nevertheless try to give to the proposed 
 instrument its true and natural construction. 
 
 The first and most important rule in the construction of any 
 law, contract, or document is that it shall be so construed as 
 to effectuate its purposes ; and when those purposes are de- 
 dared in the instrument itself, we must accept the declaration 
 made in the instrument and not substitute our own views as 
 to what might have been the purpose of the makers of the instru- 
 ments. 
 
 While to my mind the preamble is somewhat vague and cjumsy, 
 I do not think anyone will question that the following are the 
 purposes which it intends to convey : 
 
 1. International cooperation to achieve international peace 
 and security. 
 
 2. The acceptance of obligations not to resort to war to settle 
 international disputes. 
 
 3. To prescribe what are just and honorable relations be- 
 tween nations. We have not done so heretofore. 
 
 4. To establish the understanding of international law as a 
 rule of conduct among governments. We have never had such an 
 understanding heretofore. 
 
 5. To maintain a just and scrupulous respect for all treaty 
 obligations. 
 
 The second, third, fourth, and fifth declared purposes are all 
 to subserve the first great purpose the achievement and main- 
 tenance of international peace and security. 
 
 Is not every one of these purposes most laudable, most hon- 
 orable, most devoutly to be prayed for? 
 
 One of the necessary tilings to be agreed upon is to establish 
 the understanding of international laws as a rule of conduct 
 among governments. About the only international law we now 
 have is a set of rules generally acquiesced in by warring na- 
 tions, governing the action of belligerents and neutrals when 
 war is on. What the world has been needing for thousands of 
 years has been not a code governing war but an international 
 code which should define the duties and relations of nations in 
 their intercourse with and relations to each other in times 
 of peace, and thereby make war practically impossible. There 
 is an international understanding or law which recognizes and 
 limits the right of blockade, the seizure of ships and cargoes 
 of neutral vessels when war is on, a rule that no belligerent 
 shall sink the merchant ship of a neutral without warning, and 
 that the question of whether the ship or cargo is subject to con- 
 fiscation shall be determined by a prize court. But there is not 
 now, and therw never has been, a rule of international law that 
 prohibits any nation from making a war of conquest agaiust a 
 
 124390-^19542
 
 13 
 
 weaker nation or committing any character of atrocity or 
 brutality against such weaker nation. When Germany declared 
 war against France and Belgium, when she initiated this war 
 for the purpose of robbing her weaker neighbors she was guilty 
 of no breach of international law. To-day, so far as interna- 
 tional law is concerned, any nation can commit any act of 
 atrocity or brutality against any other nation without laying 
 itself open to the charge of general international misconduct. 
 There is nothing to-day iii any international law which makes it 
 the duty of the honorable nations of the world to pi-event the 
 most heinous offenses committed by any dishonorable nation. 
 The time has now arrived for the world to declare that a war 
 by one or more nations for conquest and plunder and wrong of 
 any kind is a breach of international law against every other 
 nation of the world and a cause for war against the offending 
 nation, and the only way to make that an international law is 
 for the nations to agree that it is a world concern, and the only 
 Way to make it a living precept is for the nations of the world 
 to agree that they will enforce it. That is just what this league 
 agreement does. It is a simple proposition. Those who wish 
 war, those who are less concerned about international right and 
 justice than they are about personal interest or political advan- 
 tage would naturally be against a proposition of this kind. 
 Those who have the capacity to realize the horrors of this war 
 and the conscience to wish to defend the world from another 
 ought to be earnest advocates of some constructive plan to bring 
 about the result. If this is not the best plan, formulate and pre- 
 sent a better one, which will stand a chance of adoption by all the 
 leading nations of the world. 
 
 Had the world powers had such an agreement in July, 1914, 
 with this Nation as a signatory power, does anyone for an 
 Instant believe that Germany would have made this war? Mr. 
 President, the haughty sword of Wilhelni would never have 
 been drawn, not a soldier would have had to be raised for world 
 defense, not a life would have been sacrificed, and not a dollar 
 of debt piled up for future generations to pay. The fact that 
 we had no such world agreement made this damnable war pos- 
 sible. If we now refuse to join other nations in such a com- 
 pact, the responsibility for another such damnable war will 
 rest upon us. 
 
 UNFAIR CRITICISM (ART. 10). 
 
 Mr. President, in connection with the processes by which these 
 purposes are to be accomplished, let us examine into the code 
 of international ethics on which these nations agree in their 
 relations with each other. Considering them in relative im- 
 portance rather than in the order in which they may appear in 
 the text, they are: 
 
 1. The members of tho league agree to respect * * * the terri- 
 torial integrity of every other member of the league. (Art. 10.) 
 
 We hear talk of eliminating this provision. Mr. President, 
 the right to live as a nation is inseparable from the right to 
 occupy exclusively a definite area of God's green earth. Agree- 
 ment to respect this right is the very foundation of any agree- 
 ment to maintain international peace. The structure of inter- 
 national peace must necessarily be bottomed on the maintenance 
 of this inviolable right of territory. 
 12-439019542
 
 2. The members of the league undertake to preserve the territorial 
 integrity only against external aggression. 
 
 This, again, is as it should be. A community of landowners, 
 where there is no other law to appeal to for the protection of 
 individual right, may most properly unite to protect the land 
 of each and every one against the avariciously inclined of any 
 one or more of them. As to what the owner of any tract of 
 land may do concerning his own, how he may divide his acreage 
 among his children, the community has nothing to do. But 
 ft has the right to say that no one shall take the land of his 
 neighbor by force. So, if the people of Russia wish to divide 
 their territory into three or more separate countries, that is 
 their concern. The league has nothing to do with her internal 
 broils or divisions. All the league can do and all it ought to 
 do is to say to every other country, " Hands off." 
 
 I can understand, and do xinderstand, how the Pan-German- 
 ists, having sought to despoil France of her territory and having 
 failed, are now looking forward to the conquest of Poland and 
 Russia, and how such Pan-Germanists view with earnest dis- 
 approval this world doctrine of " hands off " ; but I can not see 
 how any intelligent man, capable of realizing what Pan-Ger- 
 manism has inflicted upon the innocent people of the world, can 
 oppose this doctrine of territorial sanctity. 
 
 It has been asserted and reasserted in all the false attacks 
 on this instrument that the United States would be compelled 
 to help Great Britain preserve her domains against her own in- 
 ternal revolutions or rebellions. Oh, Mr. President, nothing could 
 be more false. India, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Scotland, or 
 any other British possession or integral part of the Empire, may 
 assert and maintain its independence, and we are in no way, 
 under this instrument, compelled to come to the assistance of the 
 mother country. It is only against " external aggression " that 
 the league assures its protection. If the league were once to ad- 
 mit that an outside country might interfere to assist any integral 
 part of the Government to secure its independence, the league 
 would be absolutely helpless, because, admitting such a right, any 
 propaganda could stir up an insurrection, and, on the theory of 
 assistance, inaugurate a war of aggression. German propaganda 
 would h'nd ample opportunity to stir up insurrection on her own 
 eastern border, or even in Alsace and Lorraine, and begin again 
 the struggle for world dominion. 
 
 The claim reiterated again and again by those who oppose a 
 league of nations that this country could be called upon to bolster 
 up disintegrating countries is so clearly false that I can 
 scarcely understand how anyone having any regard for fairness 
 could possibly make it. That there might be no possible mis- 
 understanding as to the scope of the obligation imposed ; that 
 there might be no possible claim that the league must guarantee 
 the boundaries of a nation changed by revolution or secession or 
 Internal dissension, the conferees carefully limited the protection 
 which should be accorded each State to a defense against exter- 
 nal aggression, thereby clearly negativing any claim that any 
 country could be called upon to defend another if it failed to so 
 conduct itself toward every other section of its domain as to re- 
 tain the loyalty of the people of such .section. Such a claim is 
 an appeal to national animosities and not an appeal to either 
 reason or right. 
 124300 19ii42
 
 15 
 
 " But," say our antagonists, " you purpose to maintain the lif& 
 of decaying nations, and thereby stay all progress in the world." 
 I deny it. We recognize that the immutable law of disintegra- 
 tion, which brings the feebleness of age and final dissolution of 
 the body, must operate upon nations as upon individuals. We 
 permit men to die of old age in this country, but we make a law 
 against murdering them. Section 10 permits any country to dis- 
 integrate from any internal cause ; it simply makes international 
 murder an international crime. There is, and can be, no argu- 
 ment either against the righteousness of this principle or the 
 duty of right-minded nations to maintain it. 
 
 3. The members of the league undertake to preserve the political in- 
 dependence of all members of the league. 
 
 Of course, Mr. President, the protection of the territorial in- 
 tegrity would be of no avail to a nation if its political inde- 
 pendence were destroyed. Its people could be exploited and 
 enslaved and the incitement to so exploit and enslave would 
 be all the greater if the State should be vassal while the ter- 
 ritory remained foreign to the superior power. 
 
 4. The members of the league agree to the reduction of national 
 armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the 
 enforcement by common action of international obligations. 
 
 Mr. President, one of the greatest burdens imposed upon the 
 peoples of the world has been that of maintaining means of 
 defense against each other. Prior to this war three-fourths of 
 all the revenues of the great nations were raised for the purpose 
 of war or defense against war. After the close of this war 
 nine-tenths of all the taxes and immensely increased taxes will 
 be required for the payment of interest on war debts, a sinking 
 fund to take care of the principal, and to maintain armies 
 and navies to watch each other. 
 
 If we would only stop to contemplate how everlastingly 
 ridiculous would be the position of each citizen if to-day one- 
 half of all his work and energy were required in the manu- 
 facture of implements and weapons, in building barriers to de- 
 fend himself against his neighbor how ridiculous would be our 
 condition if every man were filled with apprehension and with 
 certain knowledge that every other person was more or less 
 jealous of him and was at perfect liberty to take his life and 
 property, we should then better realize the like ridiculous posi- 
 tion of continuing these same relations among nations. 
 
 Mr. President, thousands of years ago, in the gradual, pro- 
 gressive enlightenment of humanity, there came a day when 
 the right, theretofore conceded to the strong, to murder his 
 fellow being, to seize his property, to enslave his children, began 
 to be questioned by the little communities, began to be con- 
 sidered a matter of concern to all of them, and so the people 
 got together and said to the stronger man, the man who could 
 swing the bigger club: " While you" may be more powerful than 
 any one of us, you are not more powerful than all of us, and 
 we have concluded to inaugurate a new community code which 
 shall protect the weak from the strong. We therefore com- 
 mand you to lay down that club and submit your difference 
 with your neighbors to the judgment of good men who shall be 
 selected by the community, and it! you refuse to do so we will 
 compel you to do so." Naturally this stronger man said : " That 
 is an interference with my sovereign rights. If I agree to do 
 12439019342
 
 16 
 
 that, I shall be surrendering my sovereignty and shall lose my in- 
 dependence. While I may desist from doing those things which 
 you consider unjust, I could not bind myself by an agreement 
 not to do them, because I would thereby allow my neighbors to 
 pass judgment on what I ought to do, and that would be a 
 clear violation of my constitutional prerogatives." But he did 
 consent and agree, just as you and I have consented and agreed 
 to substitute a government of law for a government of brute 
 force. 
 
 And, Mr. President, from that final decision forced upon com- 
 munities by the atrocities committed by the stronger man, from 
 that period began a system which developed into the courts of 
 to-day, with their well-defined powers and jurisdiction, govern- 
 ing every individual right. All that the world has since accom- 
 plished in progress, in enlightenment, and human happiness has 
 followed in consequence of that decision arrived at in that far- 
 off age, that the community would henceforth protect the life 
 and property of the weak against the strong. All that we now 
 know of the beauty and grandeur of life on this earth has re- 
 sulted from that decision which freed each individual from the 
 necessity of expending the greater part of his life's energy in 
 devising means to protect himself from his neighbor, when the 
 community, acting together, responded to the slogan, " Down 
 with the club, and long live law." Except for the establish- 
 ment of that doctrine men would still be living in caves, gnaw- 
 ing bones, and expending the greater part of their time in mak- 
 ing flint spears. 
 
 And by the same rule, Mr. President, and for the same reason, 
 this old world of ours will progress in grandeur and in enlight- 
 enment and consequent happiness when the nations of the world 
 shall adopt the slogan, " Down with might and long live right." 
 
 And yet to-day, Mr. President, the human family lias been only 
 partially emancipated from this thralldom of personal violence 
 and crime. While the individual, with a sense of absolute im- 
 munity from personal danger, may walk among his fellowmen 
 with all his undivided and unimpeded thought directed toward 
 the betterment of his condition and the happiness of those de- 
 pendent upon him, this is not true in any sense of people in 
 their collective capacity. Individual murder, theft, and rob- 
 bery have been abolished, but collective murder, theft, and 
 robbery are still sanctioned by international law. You can and 
 do punish with death the man who willfully causes the death 
 of another, but you not only condone the crime but you even 
 refuse to enjoin the nation which would be guilty of the willful 
 murder of twenty millions of people and which would render 
 defenseless and helpless another twenty-five or thirty million 
 men, women, and children. 
 
 What a travesty on human intelligence! What a condemna- 
 tion of international impotency ! 
 
 And why lias such a strange inconsistency between the ideals 
 of individual justice and right and international justice and 
 right so long existed? It is because our national selfishness so 
 greatly exceeds our individual selfishness: because in every 
 country there is such a fervent ambition that that country shall 
 be able to overawe all others. We curse that propensity which 
 in late years lias been driven by systematic national education 
 r,42
 
 17 
 
 into the German mind, while we regard it as an element of 
 patriotism in our own national character. 
 
 And so we wave aloft the banners of sovereignty and inde- 
 pendence as a scarecrow to frighten those who do not stop to 
 consider that every compact or treaty between nations that 
 has ever been adopted or ever will be adopted is just as much a 
 surrender of our sovereignty or national independence as 
 though the same treaty was made en bloc with all the nations 
 in a single instrument. Whenever one nation agrees with an- 
 other to do or not to do a thing which it has the right to 
 decline to do or to do, it does not thereby surrender its sover- 
 eignty or its independence, but it agrees in honor that it will 
 not exercise its sovereign authority on the subject covered by 
 the agreement during the life of the compact without the con- 
 sent of the other party to that compact; and, Mr. President, 
 the other party to the contract withholds the exercise of its 
 sovereign power exactly in the same manner. 
 
 If a nation stood upon its dignity and its right to exercise 
 its judgment whenever it saw fit, it not only would never enter 
 into any treaty agreement but at all times would, if a powerful 
 country, be a menace to the peace of the world. In all the 
 arguments against a league of nations we hear of the powers 
 which we surrender but not a word of the powers surrendered 
 by every other nation of the world and all surrendered or 
 held in abeyance for the grandest purpose that ever challenged 
 the attention of nations. 
 
 Mr. President, why do we spend many hundreds of millions 
 yearly for our Army and Navy? We do so because other 
 nations do the same thing. Arid they do so because of their 
 fear of us and of each other. And so, prior to this war, nations 
 were following a policy of outdoing each other in armaments 
 that meant ultimate bankruptcy for the weaker ; and the states- 
 men of each nation were proclaiming the doctrine that being 
 prepared for war was an assurance of peace. And so we were 
 all preparing for war, and we have had this awful illustration 
 of the fallacy of such a doctrine. There were many of us who 
 were not statesmen, of course, who insisted that a general 
 preparation for war by all the great nations was an assurance 
 that war would result sooner or later. Naturally, we all know 
 that if one nation is prepared and the other great nation is 
 not prepared, the weaker is always in danger of a threatened 
 attack by the stronger. But it is far more certain that if no 
 nation were prepared for an extensive aggressive war there 
 'would be universal peace. Long before the time any nation 
 could prepare for hostility against another the world would 
 learn which was right and which was wrong, the sense of jus- 
 tice would prevail, and war would be avoided. 
 
 So, Mr. President, the conference was unquestionably right 
 when it declared in article 8 : 
 
 The members of the league recognize that the maintenance of peace 
 requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point con- 
 sistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of 
 international obligations. 
 
 Mr. President, when this matter was before us at the last 
 session this provision was viciously attacked by those who op- 
 pose a league of nations on the ground that it allows Europe, 
 whose interests might be antagonistic to our own, to determine 
 
 12439019542 2
 
 18 
 
 the size of our Army nnd Navy, and weaken us in our ability 
 to maintain our national policies, and especially our Monroe 
 doctrine. As a matter of fact, in that instrument each nation 
 must agree to the limitation, and therefore we could not be 
 bound unless we should agree that the comparative reduction 
 was just, and every other nation would have to agree to the 
 same thing. 
 
 And, again, instead of this danger of a combination against 
 us, he would be a very poor reader of European rivalries who 
 would not understand that these nations of Europe are far 
 more fearful and far more jealous of each other than any one 
 of them is or ever will be of the United States. It is the near 
 danger and not the remote danger that always awakens rivalry 
 and enmity. Therefore, if there were any danger of national 
 Jealousies or antipathies playing any part in the scheme of dis- 
 armament, the United States would in all probability have the 
 best of it. And in any event the United States is not deprived 
 of the power to say tliat in the proposed reduction of arms the 
 relative diminution is not just to us and refuse to accept it until 
 it is made to conform to our idea of reductions. 
 
 It is most vital to the cause of peace that the loaded guns 
 pointing across national boundary lines, speaking only the lan- 
 guage of destruction and hate, should be lowered. Along the 
 more than 3,000 miles of boundary between the United States 
 and Canada not a fort is erected, a cannon mounted, or a war- 
 ship afloat. Does anyone of sane mind contend that the same 
 entiment of trust and friendliness between these two nations 
 would exist if bristling bayonets, glistening like the white teeth 
 of a snarling dog, fenced that entire way? Grim cannon are 
 not the vehicles of international fraternity. 
 
 In view of the almost hysterical attitude of the opponents of 
 disarmament, is it not strange that no one in all our history has 
 ever complained that when we entered into the agreement with 
 Canada, through Great Britain, exactly the kind of agreement 
 we now purpose to enter into with other nations, that we were 
 giving Canada a voice in determining the size and character of 
 our Navy or Army, that we were surrendering our sovereignty? 
 Who to-day would reverse that policy? Who would erect along 
 that boundary line the engines of national hate? No one but 
 him who hates international amity and glories in international 
 
 But stress is laid upon the proposition that the constitutional 
 right of Congress to raise and support armies and navies is 
 limited and controlled by this partially foreign body. I have 
 hown that Congress must adopt this plan before we become even 
 morally bound. Every other country must do the same. It is no 
 more binding upon us than upon every other party to this com- 
 pact But, Mr. President, it is exactly the same from every 
 standpoint of constitutional legality and authority as any other 
 treaty. When we entered into an agreement with Great Britain 
 and Canada that neither would maintain war vessels on the 
 Great Lakes or forts along the boundary we, of course, agreed 
 to hold in abeyance during the life of that agreement a limited 
 portion of our constitutional right to maintain armies and 
 navies We did not surrender the constitutional right to do so. 
 And that is exactly true of every other treaty made. When- 
 
 12489019542
 
 19 
 
 ever we have submitted any matter to arbitration we have au- 
 thorized some foreign citizen or ruler to say what we should do 
 or refrain from doing; and not only that, we have agreed in 
 advance, so far as we could bind a future Congress, which, of 
 course, is morally only, that we would abide by his decision. 
 We have done this from the very beginning of our national life, 
 and it has never occurred to anyone to declare that we were 
 thereby surrendering our independence or our sovereignty or 
 delegating our constitutional authority. But a few years ago 
 we submitted a controversy to a sole arbitrator, the King of 
 Sweden and Norway. In that instance the decision of a foreign 
 autocrat was to bind our national honor. Did that mean that 
 our Constitution was shattered? That we had delegated the 
 authority of Congress to the King of Sweden? No, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, it meant simply that as Congress had the sole right to 
 say whether we would pay a claim urged against us, or would 
 not pay it, so it had the equal right to say that we would pay 
 the claim if, after an investigation, a chosen arbitrator should 
 say that we should pay it, or any part of it. 
 
 The Senator from Pennsylvania, in his resolution for the 
 separation of the league of nations provision from the peace pro- 
 visions of the treaty, asserts in the preamble that some provisions 
 of this league in effect violate the Constitution, from which I 
 infer he means that such provision was never contemplated in 
 the Constitution or that it is contrary to the spirit and purpose 
 of that instrument. I feel quite certain that the Senator will 
 never go on record as declaring that an agreement made by this 
 country with another country, or with other countries, whereby 
 upon the happening of a contingency agreed upon by all, the 
 nations shall act together to effectuate the purposes of the 
 agreement, would be violative of any provision of the Constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 When we entered into a treaty with Great Britain and Japan 
 and Russia to protect the seals in the Bering Sea and off the 
 Pribilof Islands that treaty meant to all intent and purposes 
 that our warships would act jointly with theirs against any 
 people or any nation that would attempt to destroy those seals. 
 Did we thereby surrender our power to declare war or to main- 
 tain an Army and Navy? And is it possible that we can enter 
 into such an alliance to protect the lives of a few thousand seals 
 without violating our Constitution, but that if we make a like 
 agreement with the nations of the world to prevent the whole- 
 sale slaughter and starvation of millions of human beings we 
 are violating the fundamental law of the land and surrendering 
 the independence of the country? 
 
 But, Mr. President, this provision for disarmament Is far 
 more carefully guarded than an ordinary agreement for either 
 arbitration or for unity of action. The fourth paragraph of 
 article 8 declares : 
 
 The council, taking account of the geographical situation of each 
 State, shall formulate plans for such reduction for the consideration 
 and action of the several governments. 
 
 Under this provision the council does not make or order the 
 
 reduction. It simply formulates a plan for reduction. This 
 
 plan is then to be submitted " for the consideration and action of 
 
 the several governments." That means in this country that 
 
 124.''.90 19542
 
 20 
 
 Congress must act before the plan becomes binding even in 
 honor upon us. Of course, after it is adopted by one Congress 
 the next Congress is in honor bound to comply with it. 
 
 If it is necessary or proper to reduce armaments somebody 
 or some commission must be selected to study the situation of 
 the several countries and to ascertain and present what would be 
 an equitable find proportionate reduction. The situation of each 
 of the nations of the world differs widely from that of others. 
 Some are great in territorial extent and small in population; 
 some great in population and small in area ; some blessed with 
 every natural resource necessary to sustain their populations; 
 some dependent almost wholly on imports from every other 
 corner of the earth ; some almost immune from threatened at- 
 tack by reason of their isolation or geogra'phical situation ; some 
 so vulnerable that the very lives of their people depend upon 
 their ability to meet immediately any threatened invasion; some 
 contiguous to hostile and greedy nations ever ready to devour 
 them ; some within zones of peace and tranquillity, and some ad- 
 jacent to restless and discordant peoples whose turmoils are 
 as threatening as an active volcano. Unwise and unjust would 
 be any international agreement which should not take into con- 
 sideration the peculiar necessities of these several nations in 
 determining what should be a just and fair military or naval 
 strength. And so provision is made that the council shall formu- 
 late a general plan which can only become binding when each 
 and every nation has agreed thereto. 
 
 To-day, after one of the most sanguinary and far-reaching 
 wars, where national life has been saved only through past prep- 
 aration and the Herculean efforts of present preparation, it is 
 jnost natural that no nation would dare render itself totally 
 helpless as against even a possible failure of a peace agreement. 
 National life is too precious to be allowed to hang by that 
 thread alone. Time and the beneficial results of such a compact 
 can alone banish the spirit of fear and install the spirit of trust. 
 But each nation can and should now reduce its armament, can 
 and should lower its threatening arm. 
 
 Mr. President, we have preached the reduction of armaments 
 for years. Now, present to me, if you can, a better or a safer 
 plan than that provided in this treaty, or else acknowledge 
 frankly that we never intended to conform our acts to our 
 declarations. 
 
 VOTING POWER OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 But it is complained that in this league of nations Great Brit- 
 ain has a voting power far superior to our own, because some of 
 her self-governing colonies are allowed a vote, not in the coun- 
 cil, which will undoubtedly settle all of the great international 
 questions, but in the assembly to which some international ques- 
 tion might by some possibility be referred. 
 
 Let us first consider the fairness or unfairness of such a 
 declaration. I have never heard, either on the floor of the Senate 
 or in any of the addresses which have been made in opposition to 
 this league outside of the Senate, a full, fair statement of its 
 provisions relating to this subject. None of these opponents 
 have told their audiences that in -the council the British Empire 
 has, in fact, but one vote. 
 
 121C90 I'.o42
 
 21 
 
 Article 4 declares: 
 
 The council shall consist of representatives of the United States of 
 America, of the British Empire, of France, of Italy, of Japan, together 
 with the representatives of four other members of the league. 
 At the meetings of the council each member of the league shall haye 
 one vote. 
 
 As at first organized, the other four shall consist of Belgium, 
 Brazil, Greece, and Spain. Whether these other four shall be 
 continued or whether they shall be replaced with other na 
 tions, or whether the number shall be increased all of which 
 must be accomplished by unanimous vote, and on all matters 
 considered the British Empire has but one vote. 
 
 With the approval of the majority of the assembly the council may 
 name additional members of the league whose representatives shall 
 always be members of the council. 
 
 Thereby they may add to the membership of the council. 
 But, Mr. President, let us not forget that the council can only 
 do that by a unanimous vote. Therefore it is in the power of 
 the United States delegates to veto any attempt to add a single 
 other member to the council. In this council Canada has no 
 vote, Australia has no vote, New Zealand has no vote, and none 
 of those can become a member of the council without the con- 
 sent of the United States. 
 
 But, answer the opponents of a league of nations and espe- 
 cially those opponents who wish to incite a hyphenated American 
 opposition the disputes may be removed to the assembly, where 
 each member of the league, including colonies, would have a vote. 
 But that would never be done unless we ourselves should 
 desire it. First, because it would require a unanimous vote for 
 removal, and, second, even if it did not require such a vote, it is 
 almost inconceivable that the wishes of the most powerful 
 nation, the one upon which the league must principally depend 
 for its success, would be vetoed, not by a mere majority but 
 by each and every other member of that council. To rny mind 
 it is unthinkable. But, first, as to the requirement of a unani- 
 mous vote for removal. That paragraph admittedly lacks clear- 
 ness. But, applying the first rule of construction, that effect 
 shall be given if possible to each and every provision, the fol- 
 lowing acts are necessary to secure the removal of any matter 
 from the council to the assembly : 
 
 1 The application must come from one of the disputants ; 
 
 2. It must come within 14 days after the submission of the 
 dispute to the council; and 
 
 3. The council may, not must or shall, then refer the dispute to 
 the assembly. And, Mr. President, if the council has any discre- 
 tion in the matter of removal, which discretion is certainly re- 
 served by the use of the word "may," it would require unanimous 
 vote for removal, because the removal of a dispute is not among 
 the exceptions to the requirement for unanimous vote provided in 
 article 5. It is only on the merits of the question under dispute 
 that the votes of the disputants are eliminated by article 15, 
 and the unanimous verdict of all other members is required to 
 indicate even the judgment of the council. 
 
 To give force and effect to both clauses the word " shall, in 
 the second clause must be construed as directory, meaning 
 that the matter of removal shall be initiated only at the request 
 of one of the parties, rather than mandatory, meaning that one 
 party to the dispute could overrule the judgment of all the other 
 
 124390 19542
 
 22 
 
 parties, a construction tbut would not only eliminate bodily the 
 first clause, " the council may in any case under this article 
 refer the dispute to the assembly," but would be grossly an- 
 tagonistic to and violatlve of the whole spirit of the instrument 
 requiring unanimity of action on all matters except those of 
 procedure. 
 
 I maintain, therefore, that giving a meaning to both clauses 
 of that paragraph, it would require a unanimous vote in order 
 to relieve the council of its jurisdiction to consider the inter- 
 national dispute. Neither we nor any other nation would change 
 the jurisdiction unless we felt perfectly justified in doing so. 
 But even if we should take the other view and do such violence 
 to the law of construction as to entirely destroy the clause, 
 " The council may in any case under this article refer the dis- 
 pute to the assembly," what would be the danger to us of having 
 Canada and Australia and New Zealand and, I believe, South 
 Africa, blood of our blood and bone of our bone peoples 
 of the same inheritance, the same ideals, the same aspira- 
 tions; peoples between whom there is as great and close 
 a friendship and .sympathy as between them and the 
 mother country, members of this assembly? What would 
 we have to fear from them? Take Canada, for example. The 
 relation between Canada and Great Britain is similar to that 
 between a grown daughter, who has married and is maintaining 
 her own household far from the home of the mother, toward 
 that mother. Canada says to Great Britain, " The old affection 
 and kindly feeling still exist, but I am mistress of my own home, 
 and whatever I do of kindness or of loyalty must come of my 
 own volition." No treaties made by Great Britain are binding 
 upon Canada unless Canada acquiesces. Were Canada to set 
 up an independent nation to-day, I do not believe for an instant 
 that Great Britain would challenge her right to do so, though she 
 might think it wrong or unjust. Canadians, Americans, Brit- 
 ishers fought side by side in this Great War, suffered and died 
 together, and I have no fear of any combination against the 
 interests of the Western Hemisphere in which Canada would be 
 found siding against any just claim of the United States. Every 
 dispute that we have ever had has been amicably settled, and 
 I can imagine nothing worse in this world than a war between 
 the English-speaking peoples. And what I say of Canada can 
 be said with almost equal emphasis with reference to Australia 
 and New Zealand. 
 
 But let us look at the matter from another standpoint that of 
 fairness to Canada. There are included in the present league of 
 nations 32 separate, independent countries. Canada is the eighth 
 in population and the first in territory. Canada has 8.3(51,000 
 population and an area of 3,729,065 square miles, a little larger 
 than the United States. We give Iledjax, with a population of 
 300,000; and Panama, with a population of 427,000; Honduras, 
 with a population of .192,000; Uruguay, with a population of 
 (589,000, each a vote on the great international questions that must 
 arise in the assembly. But you say that Canada, with 8,301,000 
 population and with a territory thirty times as great as all these 
 countries together, should have no separate voice. Would that 
 be just to Canada, that self-governing country whose blood and 
 whose wealth have been so freely expended in defense of human 
 civilization? 
 
 ll>4.>90 19542
 
 23 
 
 You give China a vote and she has 320,000,000 population, 
 and yet China is far more under the control of the great powers 
 of the eastern world than is Canada under the control of Great 
 Britain. You give black Haiti a vote, you give black Liberia a 
 vote, you give each of these little nations of whatever color 
 a vote. But you would deny the great, independent Common- 
 wealth of Canada a right, not in the upper house, not in the 
 council, but in this assembly, where the only power that will in 
 any probability be exercised, will be the power of discussion, the 
 right either to raise her voice or to give it an effectiveness equal 
 to Hedjaz or Honduras or Panama. To my mind Canada has a 
 far greater right to be heard in that assembly than any of these 
 dozens of small nations which I have mentioned. 
 
 In addition to those 32 countries, we have invited and they 
 will undoubtedly accept 13 other nations, and 10 out of those 
 13 have a far less population than Canada. 
 
 And so I say most frankly, Mr. President, that to deny Canada, 
 Australia, and New Zealand, whose sons suffered through four 
 long years of this war, a voice not in the council but in the 
 assembly, which can only be called together when some great 
 question arises, while we give to Salvador and Paraguay and 
 Hedjaz and Panama and 20 other such countries a full voting 
 power in this assembly, would be so repellant to a world sense 
 of justice that no league of nations bottomed upon such an in- 
 equitable foundation could ever fulfill its mission. 
 
 Therefore, from every principle of fairness, there should be 
 one forum in which Canada can have a voice, Australia a voice, 
 and New Zealand can be heard. That right has been granted, 
 so far as the assembly is concerned, but in the higher tribunal, 
 the permanent tribunal, which under this system will decide 
 practically every question of international dispute, Canada and 
 Australia, as separate entities, have no vote. Great Britain, which 
 includes them in her empire, will have one vote, the same as 
 the United States, the same as Belgium and Brazil and Greece 
 110 greater power, no greater strength than the smallest nations 
 whose representatives constitute this council. 
 
 DOMESTIC MATTERS NOT SUBJECT TO JURISDICTION OF LEAGUE. 
 
 Mr. President, it has been declared on this floor that under the 
 provisions of this covenant the United States would be compelled 
 to submit for determination the question of immigration and 
 other domestic policies. This claim is based upon the second 
 clause of article 11, which reads : 
 
 It is also declared to be the fundamental right of each member of 
 the league to bring to the attention of the assembly or the council any 
 circumstances whatever affecting international relations which threaten 
 to disturb either the peace or good understanding between nations upon 
 which peace depends. 
 
 And it is urged that as Japan or China might declare that 
 an exclusion law by the United States would threaten to disturb 
 the good understanding and amity between either of these 
 countries and the United States, the question of whether such 
 laws should remain or whether they constitute a breach of the 
 international compact could be passed upon by the council or 
 the assembly. There is no foundation whatever for such a 
 claim. It is true that under the provisions of this covenant any 
 matter which any nation claims will disturb or tend to disturb 
 international comity and good will may be presented by any 
 124^9019542
 
 24 
 
 nation to either the council or the assembly, but It is not true 
 that either the council or the assembly has the right to pass 
 upon or decide every question which any nation might think 
 engendered international hostility. It is true that the door is 
 wide open for the presentation of any circumstance affecting 
 international relations, no matter how trivial or how foolish. 
 And, Mr. President, it would be impossible to close this door 
 even partially if we expect to inculcate a spirit of friendship 
 and trust. We can not in the instrument itself differentiate be- 
 tween all classes of cases which might affect international 
 amity more clearly than has been done by placing the domestic 
 questions entirely outside the pale of international interference. 
 This covenant guards and confines the questions which may be 
 acted upon by either of these bodies to those questions that are 
 not domestic in character. 
 The seventh paragraph of article 15 declares: 
 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 jurisdiction of that party, the council shall so re- 
 port, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement. 
 
 What could be more clear and definite? Certainly no Senator 
 would ask that a list of all the domestic questions should be 
 enumerated. Their number is legion. There are, however, a 
 large number of purely domestic questions which naturally 
 awaken international opposition or resentment. Great Britain, 
 being a great manufacturing country, might feel aggrieved that 
 we erect a tariff wall against everything which she produces, 
 while she allows the importation of everything we produce into 
 her territory free from any tariff levy. But neither Great 
 Britain nor any other country has ever denied our national 
 right to do so. So China might complain of the Chinese exclu- 
 sion law, a law which excludes Chinese from our country, while 
 we enjoy perfect freedom of settlement in China. But no China- 
 man, no matter how wise or ignorant, has ever questioned the 
 fact that the subject is purely a domestic one. 
 
 Mr. President, we have 4,000 years of recorded history from 
 which to draw our precedents to determine what subjects are 
 clearly within the domain of sovereign or domestic powers of 
 an independent State. It would be foolish to attempt to set 
 them out in detail. They are evidenced by the yearly legisla- 
 tion turned out in thousands of tons from the legislative halls 
 of every free and independent country- There is probably no 
 subject in the world on which great nations would be so fully 
 in accord as on the question of what is a domestic question and 
 within the exclusive power of an independent State. Of course, 
 it would be within the right of Japan to present the claim that 
 our exclusion law was distasteful to her people, and, therefore, 
 affected our good relations with her. But no intelligent states- 
 man of Japan or any other country in the world would ever 
 suggest that the exercise of such a power was not the exercise 
 of a purely domestic right. 
 
 Mr. POMERENE. Has the Senator from North Dakota ever 
 heard it even suggested by anyone, except those who are con- 
 juring up objections to the league, that the subject of immigra- 
 tion was not a domestic question? 
 
 Mr. McCUMBER. Never in the world. It never has been, 
 and it never will be. The right of petition is guaranteed 
 124390 19o42
 
 25 
 
 by our Constitution. Would any Senator claim that this sacred 
 edifice of our national safety would be jeopardized by allowing 
 a petition to be filed which might by a possibility ask us to do 
 what we could not constitutionally do? Why, Mr. President, a 
 large proportion of the thousands of petitions coming here 
 yearly request us to pass Federal statutes that would contra- 
 vene the rights reserved to the States. But we do not shut the 
 door against them. We simply lay them aside as being with- 
 out our Federal jurisdiction. 
 
 But you say that the question of whether the matter com- 
 plained of is a domestic one must be decided by the council, 
 and, therefore, an awful danger confronts us. Well, Mr. 
 President, naturally some one must decide that question, and 
 what better source could there be? But just remember that 
 the verdict must receive the affirmative vote of every State 
 represented in the council, outside the parties to the dispute, 
 and that all the others must wickedly, contrary to and in 
 defiance of the provisions of the compact, conspire against the 
 United States. And to carry out such conspiracy each nation 
 would commit an act of suicide by establishing a precedent that 
 would compel it to surrender its own purely domestic powers to 
 this council. To my mind it is simply unthinkable and not 
 worthy of serious consideration. There is no danger on earth 
 that Great Britain, or France, or the United States, or any 
 other of the nine nations would vote a precedent which would 
 destroy the independence of each of them. 
 
 But' on the other hand, Mr. President, there might be in- 
 stances in which some irresponsible nation might claim that a 
 matter clearly international in character was one of domestic 
 concern only' and, therefore, not subject to consideration by 
 either the council or the assembly, and it would not do to leave 
 the matter in such shape that the mere claim of its being a 
 domestic concern only could eliminate from the consideration 
 of the council that which was unquestionably international, 
 and hence the provision that not only the claim must be made 
 that it is domestic but that it must be found by the council 
 to arise out of a matter solely within" the jurisdiction of one 
 party. And, as I have suggested, if there is any one question 
 certain and easy of solution it is the question of what is purely 
 a domestic matter. 
 
 MONROE DOCTRINE. 
 
 A word about the Monroe doctrine. When opponents to 
 the league of nations can not find support for a construc- 
 tion within the instrument itself, they sometimes go out- 
 side and accept some declaration from some outside source 
 as to the meaning of a phrase. When this matter came before 
 us in its original form it did not mention specifically the Mon- 
 roe doctrine. There was no question but that the Monroe 
 doctrine as it is generally understood by the world, namely, 
 that no South or Central American Republic should be subject 
 to conquest or domination by any European power, was merged 
 into the broader world doctrine that no independent nation, 
 whether in South America or elsewhere, should be subject to a 
 war of conquest or domination by any other nation. What a 
 German may say to his constituency as to his understanding of 
 the Monroe doctrine, or what some British subject may say to his 
 
 124390 19542
 
 26 
 
 constituency as to his idea of what the Monroe doctrine means, 
 can have little weight with us, especially as we evidently do 
 not always agree ourselves as to what it means. But what- 
 ever It does mean we are protected in it, and as we alone pro- 
 mulgated the doctrine we shall undoubtedly give It a con- 
 struction in accordance with the consensus of the American 
 view. While I deny that the Monroe doctrine ever meant any- 
 thing more than is clearly included within the declaration of 
 President Monroe, I would not have this international compact 
 itself attempt to define it. The framers of the league of na- 
 tions in the amendment have sought to meet the objections 
 made in this country, that the Monroe doctrine was not recog- 
 nized by specially recognizing it. Other nations have regional 
 policies which such nations feel are necessary also for their 
 own protection as we feel that the Monroe doctrine is necessary 
 for our protection. We could not consistently ask on this side 
 of the ocean a policy for our protection while we deny similar 
 policies which other nations regard In Europe or Asia or Africa 
 as necessary for their protection. 
 
 And so there was written into this now agreement these 
 words : 
 
 Nothing in this document shall be deemed to affect the validity of 
 international engagements such as treaty obligations or regional under- 
 standings like the Monroe doctrine for securing the maintenance of 
 peace. 
 
 No one questions that the Monroe doctrine is an engagement 
 on our part for securing the maintenance of peace. The docu- 
 ment itself so declares. We, therefore, do not need to go out- 
 side the records to ascertain the opinion of anyone else as to 
 whether the Monroe doctrine is recognized. The instrument 
 says it is. That ought to be satisfactory to a reasonable man. 
 Certainly Senators would not ask that it go further and de- 
 fine .lust what the Monroe doctrine may mean under every 
 possible contingency. Let us get down to the very heart of the 
 objection made. It is clearly indicated, though not quite specifi- 
 cally declared, in the address of the Senator from Pennsylvania 
 of yesterday. He says : 
 
 Never before has the Monroe doctrine been a mere measure of spineless 
 pacifism. 
 
 And again : 
 
 If we embody this provision in the league, the Monroe doctrine will 
 cease to be a policy ; it will become in truth a formal agreement. 
 
 And that, he does; not want. And again: 
 
 auu nj i iiv^ * .v n. 11 L *> : IICT;II * * -i- *M 1 1 v uu u\.' u\j iiu 
 
 our requirements, our will, and our force of arms. 
 
 Mr. President, if that is the true construction of the Monroe 
 doctrine and I am not questioning that view, although I am not 
 admitting, and I do not think that I shall ever admit, that our 
 Monroe doctrine gives us an unlimited control over everything 
 in this hemisphere I will admit, so far as he claims, that what 
 we have done in the past, what the Monroe doctrine declared to 
 be the doctrine, is the doctrine. Then, by recognizing the Mon- 
 
 124^-9019042
 
 27 
 
 roe doctrine specifically, all nations have recognized that con- 
 struction. The Senator says that it becomes an agreement a 
 mutual world agreement, and not an American doctrine or policy. 
 That, Mr. President, is not a just construction of the provision. 
 The provision says: 
 
 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. 
 
 When these nations thus recognize the Monroe doctrine, they 
 recognize an American Monroe doctrine, because there is no 
 other, and never has been any other Monroe doctrine, and there- 
 fore they are not making it a doctrine by agreement but a doc- 
 trine by acquiescence. 
 
 In the same language, you will observe, by which they recognize 
 the Monroe doctrine, they also recognize treaties of arbitration 
 and other understandings between nations. Would you for a 
 moment contend that by recognizing a treaty between nations A 
 and B by the nations C, D, and E, the latter three nations become 
 parties to the treaty between A and B? Why, Mr. President, the 
 subject of the treaty between A and B might have no possible ap- 
 plication or relation to any other nation, and it would be most 
 improper to say that by recogrizing a compact between A and B, 
 which might provide any moans for its enforcement between 
 those two nations, such contract becomes a mutual agreement 
 between all five of these parties. 
 
 That is not the true construction. I am forced to the con- 
 clusion that what these Senators really want is not that all 
 nations shall agree to our Monroe doctrine, but that they should 
 not agree, so that our pride, our vanity, may be satisfied in 
 asserting it as a policy of defiance rather than a policy in which 
 other countries acquiesce. It is a rather strange position for a 
 great nation to take. 
 
 I shall not at this time discuss what the Monroe doctrine 
 does mean in all its possibilities, but I will take the time here 
 to dissent from the view indicated at least by the Senator from 
 Pennsylvania, that we have any right to say to a South Ameri- 
 can Republic that it shall not permit whomsoever it may see 
 fit to accept to settle in its territory as immigrants. We have 
 no right to say to Brazil, " You shall not allow Germans to 
 settle in your country " ; or to Argentina, " You shall not allow 
 Chinese to enter your domains." Our Monroe doctrine does 
 not go that far, and ought not to go that fur. Whenever the 
 conduct of any country, Germany or Japan or China, is such as 
 to indicate that their purpose is not settlement, but is conquest 
 or the acquirement of territory for the home country, then our 
 right of interference is unquestionable under the Monroe doc- 
 
 I agree that the Monroe doctrine does include our right to 
 determine that not an inch of American territory can be bar- 
 gained, sold, or given away to any European power. And as 
 that principle is recognized in recognizing the Monroe doctrine, 
 there can be no possibility that this would not be a subject for 
 international dispute, and I am equally certain that if this 
 league provision should be adopted the Senator from Pennsyl- 
 vania would be among the last to say that we had surrendered 
 that right. 
 
 12439010542
 
 28 
 
 ItEASONS FOR CREATING DOTII A COUNCIL AND AN ASSEMBLY. 
 
 It might be well asked right hero, why two distinct bodies of 
 representatives of the several world states are provided for? I 
 can not answer (his from any inside information. I can not 
 attempt to state what, arguments were presented in its favor. 
 I can, however, see reasons for it. We may very properly divide 
 the nations of the world into two general classes: First, the 
 great and powerful nations ; second, the weak and less powerful 
 nations. We may reclassify them again into the stable and 
 reliable and the unstable and unreliable nations. And when 
 we have so classified the second time we will find that for the 
 most part the great and powerful are also the stable and reliable 
 nations. These nations, therefore, must be the very backbone 
 of this league. The erratic, quarrelsome, though more numer- 
 ous small states of Europe on the Asiatic borderlands and the 
 revolutionary republics of South and Central America, where- 
 one autocrat succeeds another as regularly as the ebb and flow 
 of the tides, must not exercise such a preponderating influence 
 or voting power as shall overrule the saner policies of the truly 
 self-governing nations on whose power and judgment the world 
 must rely for any advancement toward the goal of world peace. 
 And so these nine grout nations are specifically named as mem- 
 ber nations of the council. 
 
 Had there been no war the framers of this instrument would 
 undoubtedly have limited the membership in the council to the 
 powerful and stable governments only. But the heroism dis- 
 played and awful sufferings endured by some of the smaller 
 nations, like Belgium and Greece, together with the fact that 
 they were parties to this war, seemed to those who drafted the 
 league to entitle them to a membership in the council. These 
 framers were compelled to conform the instrument to meet the 
 very many conditions which faced them. They could not be 
 expected to be more logical than were the framers of our Con- 
 stitution when they gave the tiny Colonies the same power in 
 tiie Government as the mighty and destined-to-become-more- 
 mighty States of the Union. All that we can be sure of is that 
 the instrument comes to us as a compromise, and in it is the 
 soul of a future world freedom. It is within our power to 
 strangle the body but the soul will live and ever .seek reembodi- 
 ment in some future international organization. 
 
 But as the council could only embrace these nine nations, 
 It was most proper that there should be some forum where the 
 voice of each and every other nation could be heard, and to 
 meet that requirement the assembly as a distinct body was 
 provided for. In its chamber the small and the great meet 
 on equal footing and the woes and wrongs of any country, no 
 matter how backward or unstable its people, may receive con- 
 sideration. 
 
 LINE OF I>KMAI1KATIO.V HETWEEX JURISDICTION' OF COUNCIL AND ASSEMBLY 
 NUT CLKAKI.Y DEFINED. 
 
 Mr. President, I regret that there is not a more definite line 
 of demarkation between the powers ;md duties of these two 
 bodies, the council and assembly. Much confusion, I think, has 
 arisen because of that weakness and much opportunity afforded 
 to misrepresent the voting power of each nation. Article 15 of 
 the proposed compact creates the assembly, a body in which all 
 the nations constituting the league arc represented.
 
 29 
 
 Article 4 creates the council, in which the nine leading na- 
 tions of the world are represented. The third paragraph of 
 article 3 declares: 
 
 The assembly may deal in its meetings with any matter within the 
 sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of the world. 
 
 The fourth paragraph of article 4 declares : 
 
 The council may deal at its meetings with any matter within the 
 sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of the world. 
 
 The wording is the same in each case. It is well to under- 
 stand, however, that the word " deal " as used in each para- 
 graph does not carry with it the right to make binding judg- 
 ment by either the council or the assembly. How either party 
 may " deal " with the question is limited and denned in other 
 sections of the instrument itself. 
 
 COUNCIL AND NOT ASSEMBLY HAS ORIGIN-AL JURISDICTION OF DISPUTES. 
 
 Let us not forget that the council and not the assembly has 
 original jurisdiction in the matter of international disputes. 
 Article 12 declares : 
 
 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 arbitration or an inquiry by the council. 
 
 Not by the assembly. Therefore, while the assembly may dis- 
 cuss any matter brought before it, any dispute likely to lead to 
 war and that is all the word " dead " means so far as the as- 
 sembly is concerned the submission of the dispute must in the 
 first instance be to the council and not to the assembly. It may 
 be removed to the assembly under certain conditions under an- 
 other provision of the instrument which I shall consider in a 
 moment. 
 
 It will next be observed that each nation under the provisions 
 of article 32 has the unquestioned right to determine whether it 
 will submit the matter to arbitration or simply for inquiry. 
 Of course, no nation will submit to arbitration any matter 
 which affects its authority over its domestic relations. There- 
 fore if there was nothing more in the instrument said about 
 domestic questions there is no possible way by which the council 
 could obtain jurisdiction over the domestic affairs of any coun- 
 try except through the consent of that country. But to make it 
 doubly clear that purely domestic questions are not subject to 
 its jurisdiction, provision is made that the council shall make 
 no recommendation as to such questions. Therefore no non- 
 justiciable questions will ever come before either the council 
 or the assembly for any final decision without the free and full 
 consent of the nation itself. If a nation, however, submits a 
 justiciable dispute that is, a dispute that does not involve its 
 sovereignty or domestic right it is, of course, in honor bound 
 to conform to the decision. 
 
 But under article 13 each member of the league agrees that 
 where diplomacy fails it will submit a question which it recog- 
 nizes to be justifiable to arbitration and others to inquiry. 
 Of course, therefore, it must itself recognize the question to 
 be justifiable. If it does not, it is only submitted for inquiry. 
 What then happens in case the question is submitted to inquiry 
 only? Well, the first thing the council does is to endeavor to 
 12439019542
 
 30 
 
 effect a settlement of such dispute. And if Its efforts are suc- 
 cessful it will make a public statement giving such facts ami 
 explanations regarding the dispute and the terms of settlement 
 as the council may deem appropriate. 
 
 If the dispute is not settled the council rfiall 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 to it That is the extent of Its power. If the award Is 
 unanimously agreed to by the members of the council other 
 than the representatives of the disputing parties, these dis- 
 putants agree by entering the league that they will not go to 
 war with any party to the dispute which complies with the 
 recommendation of the council. But this is only binding upon 
 them in case the report is unanimously agreed to by all the mem- 
 bers of the council except the disputants. 
 
 If the report is not unanimously agreed to by the members 
 other than the disputants, then the members of the league and 
 here we get back to the members of the league, and not the coun- 
 cilreserve to themselves the right to take such action as they 
 shall consider necessary for the maintenance of right and justice. 
 What is the meaning of that? It simply means that in such case 
 the council has failed to bring about the reconciliation, and all 
 members of the league, not the council or the assembly, but 
 members of the league, may consider the matter and attempt a 
 reconciliation outside the council. 
 
 Mr President, most jealously has each nation guarded against 
 the possibility of any real danger to its independence and sov- 
 erei<"iity But those who are fearful of some hidden danger in 
 the & possible removal of the question from the council to the 
 assembly should read the ninth paragraph of article 15, which 
 provides : 
 
 111 anv case referred 1o the assembly all the provisions of this article 
 and of article 12 relating to the action and powers of the council shall 
 apply to the action and powers of the assembly. 
 
 Now what are the provisions of article 12 which shall apply? 
 Simply those I have enumerated, that they will submit either 
 to arbitration or inquiry any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, 
 and that they will in no case resort to war until three months 
 after the award by the arbitrators or the report of the council, 
 and that under article 15 the endeavor to secure a settlement 
 will be as just stated. The only modification is this : 
 
 Provided That a report made by the assembly, if concurred in by the 
 representatives of those members of the league represented on the 
 council ami a majority of the other members of the loapiio, exclusive 
 in each case of the representatives of the parties to the dispute sha 
 tone the same force as a report by the council concurred m by all 
 meml-e's tb.Teof other than the representative* of one or more of the 
 parties to the dispute. 
 
 Nothing is granted in the action of the assembly that 
 Is not granted and circumscribed in the. provision relating 
 to the settlement of disputes by the council. In other words, 
 when the mutter goes to the assembly, all the nations agree 
 to do is either to submit their matter to arbitration or 
 to inquiry. If they submit it to -arbitration, it is of then- 
 own volition: if they submit it to inquiry only, a report of the 
 facts is made, and it is assumed that the report will bring about 
 a reconciliation. If it does not bring about a reconcmati 
 124300 10542
 
 31 
 
 the assembly, then, as suggested, it must hark back to the league 
 itself. When the council or the assembly fails the several mem- 
 bers of the league reserve to themselves the right to take such 
 action as they shall consider necessary for the maintenance of 
 right and justice. (Art. 15, par. 6.) 
 
 I am not here attempting to say that this is the best scheme, 
 because I do not think that in any case these final important 
 decisions should be removed from the council. But I am simply 
 trying to ascertain what the scheme means. 
 
 Mr. President, in 20 years' service in the Senate I have known 
 but one instrument whose terms have been so willfully misin- 
 terpreted and so grossly misrepresented as the covenant for a 
 league of nations. That some of it is vague I know, and some 
 portions objectionable from particular viewpoints may be 
 freely admitted, but that it discriminates against us. is unfair 
 in its treatment of our country, or that it imposes upon us any 
 obligation or burden that is not equally borne by every other 
 nation, I most emphatically deny. It is regrettable that the 
 mighty power of eloquence, a power that often overthrows rea- 
 son and sets the emotions afloat upon painted wings that dazzle 
 and mislead, is used to defame and distort the true meaning of 
 an instrument, the most important that ever appealed to the 
 heart or the soul of man. 
 
 EFFECT OF REFUSAL TO JOIN. 
 
 Suppose we now refuse to join with the rest of the world in 
 some scheme to prevent war, what will happen? Mr. President, 
 as surely as the sun shall rise every great nation of the world 
 will proceed to devise means for the wholesale destruction of 
 nations. The nation which is most learned, most thorough, and 
 assiduous will take the lead in this nefarious design to manu- 
 facture gas bombs that will wipe out of existence in a single 
 night raid New York or London or Paris or Berlin. The science 
 of both aircraft and chemistry for war purposes is at present 
 only in its experimental stage. The old glory of noble and 
 honorable battle will give way to the evil necromancy of chem- 
 istry, to insidious germ-producing poisons. Even since the date 
 of the signing of the armistice last November we have perfected 
 Hying machines ten times more powerful than those used during 
 the greater part of this war. I am credibly informed that we 
 now have in fair prospect of completion bombs which, if dropped 
 by a single lleet over a great city like New York or London, 
 would, not by mere explosions or fire but by poisonous and 
 insidious gases, destroy all life in such city. The nations first 
 and foremost in the invention of such satanic methods will be 
 triumphant over the nations whose hearts rebel against such 
 hideous purposes. Though the civilized world was against Ger- 
 many in this war that country, through her preparedness and 
 her plodding study of death-dealing devices, destroyed two lives 
 to offset every German killed in battle. Her development of the 
 U-boat enabled her to sink 50 tons of enemy shipping for every 
 ton sunk by all of her enemies. It enabled her to send to the 
 bottom of the ocean 404 warships with a loss of only 216 of her 
 own warships. It enabled her to destroy the property of civilians 
 of the value of fully $25,000,000,000 without the loss'of a dollar's 
 worth of her own property. 
 124:i<)0 10542
 
 So desperate will be the next war that all the hate and all the 
 venom created by this struggle will be infinitesimal compared 
 with the next. Nations now wounded and bleeding, struggling 
 with desperate effort to build up their industries, must so live 
 and so slave as to be able to devote the greater part of their 
 energies in creating implements of war for their own safety. 
 
 And against what races will all these weapons of death be 
 used? Against the great white race. We talk about the yellow 
 peril. Mr. President, the greatest peril to the white race of 
 the world is the peril of internecine war. If there is to be no 
 check to wrong or crime by nations, all the yellow race need to 
 do is to wait in patience and bide its time ; the white race will 
 accomplish its own extinction. 
 
 Mr. President, some of the policies of the present administra- 
 tion followed during this war have grated most harshly upon my 
 ideas of national policies, and I have opposed some of the meas- 
 ures recommended by the President. But, partisan as I admit 
 I am, strong as my conviction of party fealty, I hope I shall 
 never be so hidebound by partisanship or so governed by party 
 exigency as to fail to recognize a just position taken or a truth 
 declared by a member of any opposing party. In supporting a 
 league of nations after this war, a league recommended by Re- 
 publican leaders before this great death struggle and by Repub- 
 lican statesmen since, President Wilson has but followed the 
 pathway blazed by the greatest American counsellors, Republican 
 as well as Democratic ; and no matter how earnestly or how 
 jTistly we may disagree with the domestic policies of his ad- 
 ministration, no words were ever more truly spoken by any 
 President than that sentence in President Wilson's address on 
 Decoration Day in France when he said : 
 
 It is for us, particularly for us who are civilized, to use our proper 
 weapons of counsel and agreement, that there never is such a war again. 
 
 Mr. President, I am not the moldcr of my brother's convic- 
 tions nor the keeper of his conscience, but speaking for myself 
 as just one American citizen, I could not cast my vote against 
 any reasonable agreement to secure future world peace without 
 a conviction that would follow me to the grave, that I had com- 
 mitted an unpardonable offense against all future generations. 
 
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 SF.P07 1990 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
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