The Congressional committee on March 3, 1919, filed a report arraigningthe Security League, calling it “a menace to representative government,” “conceived in London,” “nursed to power by foreign interests,” “used in elections by same interests,” and revealing “the hands of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, du Pont, suggesting steel, oil, money bags, Russian bonds, rifles and radicals.”
In regard to Frederic C. Coudert, a prominent New York lawyer, one of the league’s leading lights, Mr. Menken testified that he represented Great Britain, France and Russia in international matters and is counsel for the British ambassador.
The originator of the league was S. Stanwood Menken, who testified that he conceived the idea while listening to a debate in the House of Commons on August 5, 1914. He is a member of the firm of Beekman, Menken & Griscom, New York lawyers, who represent a large number of corporations controlling railways and public utilities; also the Liverpool, London and Globe insurance companies, which proceeded early in the war to force the German insurance companies out of business. The firm also represents “some sugar companies and also the Penn-Seaboard Steel Company.”
Charles D. Orth is a member of a New York firm dealing in sisal, from which farmers’ binding twine is made, and testified before a Senate investigating committee that he had been engaged in forming a combination to increase the price of this product. His firm had an office in London and he traveled all over Europe in the interest of his sisal business.
All the heavy subscribers were shown to be men making millions in war profits and interested in silencing every voice raised to criticise the conduct of the war. Through the activity of this organization, pacifists everywhere were denounced and cast into jail. What baneful influence it was able to exercise is apparent. The Carnegie Corporation—Andrew Carnegie, president; Elihu Root, vice-president, holdings in United States Steel Corporation, with income over $6,000,000—contributed $150,000 to the league. The investigation showed that the organization had expended the following sums:
| July 8, 1915, to December 31, 1915 | $38,191.59 |
| January 1, 1916, to December 31, 1916 | 94,840.43 |
| January 1, 1917, to December 31, 1917 | 111,324.59 |
| January 1, 1918, to December 31, 1918 | 235,667.56 |
| $480,014.17 |
Neutrality—“The Best Practices of Nations.”
Neutrality—“The Best Practices of Nations.”—President Wilson’s message to Congress in August, 1913:
“For the rest I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side of the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from thisside of the border. I shall follow the best practise of nations in the matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms and munitions of war of any kind from the United States—a policy suggested by several interesting precedents, and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency. We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them.”