THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE
December 2, 1918
Ex-Ambassador Harry White is a capital appointee for the Peace Commission. He is not a Republican, but an independent in politics who has worked as closely withMr.Cleveland andMr.Olney as withMr.McKinley andMr.Root.
It is a good thing to have him on in view of the exceedingly loose talk about the League of Nations or League to Enforce Peace. FortunatelyMr.Taft has set forth the proposal for such a league under existing conditions with such wisdom in refusing to let adherence to the principle be clouded by insistence upon improper or unimportant methods of enforcement that we can speak of the League as a practical matter. I think that most of our people arein favor of the establishment of the principle of such a league under common-sense conditions which will not attempt too much and thereby expose the movement to the absolute certainty of ridicule and failure. There must be an honest effort to eliminate some of the causes that may produce future wars and to minimize the area of such wars.
Mr.Taft explicitly admits and insists that the League is to be a supplement to, and in no sense a substitute for, the duty of our Nation to prepare its own strength for its own defense. He also explicitly provides that, among the various peoples who would not be admitted to the League on an equality with the others, there shall be different spheres of interest assumed by the different powers who have entered into the League. For example, the affairs of hither Asia, the Balkan Peninsula, and of North Africa are of prime concern to the powers of Europe, and the United States should be under no covenant to go to war about matters in which its people have no concern and probably no intelligent interest. On the other hand, the Monroe Doctrine—at least for all America between the equator and the southern boundary of the United States—is a vital point of American policy, and must in no shape or way be interfered with. We do not interfere with existing conditions, but aside from these no European or Asiatic power is to have any say-so in the future of Mexico, Central America, and the lands whose coasts are washed by the Caribbean Sea. The Panama Canal must not be internationalized. It isour canal; we built it; we fortified it, and we will protect it, and we will not permit our enemies to use it in war. In time of peace all nations shall use it alike, but in time of war our interest at once becomes dominant.
Most wiselyMr.Taft’s plan reserves for each nation certain matters of such vital national interest that they cannot be put before any international tribunal. This country must settle its own tariff and industrial policies, and the question of admitting immigrants to work or to citizenship, and all similar matters, the exercise of which was claimed as a right when in 1776 we became an independent Nation. We will not surrender our independence to a league of nations any more than to a single nation. Moreover, no international court must be entrusted with the decision of what is and what is not justiciable.
In the articles of agreement the non-justiciable matters should be as sharply defined as possible, and until some better plan can be devised, the Nation itself must reserve to itself the right, as each case arises, to say what these matters are.
But let us steadily remember that before dealing with schemes such as the League of Nations, which are necessarily more or less visionary, we must join in good faith with our allies in securing practical right and justice at the Peace Conference. We should treat as an enemy to this country every man who at this time seeks directly or indirectly to stir up dissension between us and England or France, or any other of our allies. Side by side we have foughtagainst the hideous twin terrors of Bolshevism and Kaiserism and we must stand undivided at the Peace Conference. What the distant future may hold no man can say, and this is the very reason why I insist that America must prepare its own strength for its own defense. But our duty at the moment is clear. We have fought the war through beside the Allies and we must stand with them with hearty loyalty throughout the peace negotiations. There must be no division in the face of our enemies. At the very close of the war we played an honorable and probably decisive part, but we were enabled to do so only because for the four preceding years England and France and their associates in defending their own rights had also saved us from destruction. Our sacrifice is infinitesimal compared to theirs. We have had a quarter of a million men killed and wounded; England has had over three million, France nearly four million, and the other Allies during their time of warfare against the common foe suffered in proportion. Our loss has been no more than one or two per cent of the entire loss suffered by the Allied armies and navies.
The immediate cause of bringing the war to an end was the forcing of unconditional surrender upon Bulgaria and Turkey, with whom we had shamefully refused to go to war at all. The English navy protected us exactly as it protected Britain. Under such circumstances it behooves us to remember that while we at the very end did our duty, yet that our comrades in arms for over four years performed incalculablefeats and suffered incalculable losses and won the right of gratitude of all mankind. The American envoys must not sit at the peace table as umpires between the Allies and the conquered Central Powers, but as loyal brothers of the Allies, as loyal members of the league of free peoples, which has brought about peace by overthrowing Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria, and beating Germany to her knees.