Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association

by Intercollegiate Peace Association

The day for deprecating in general terms the evils of war and of extolling the glories of peace is past. Such argument is little needed. International trade requires peace. International finance dictates peace. Even armies and navies are now justified primarily as agents of peace. Yet so wantonly are these agents looting the world's treasuries that they are themselves forcing their own displacement by courts of arbitration. The two hundred and fifty disputes successfully arbitrated in the past century challenge with trumpet-tongued eloquence the support of all men for reason's peaceful rule. To-day no discussion is needed to show that if war is to be abolished, if navies are to dwindle and armies diminish, if there is to be a federation of the world, it must come through treaties of arbitration. In this way alone lies peace; yet in this way lies the present great barrier to further progress—the conception which many nations, especially the United States, hold of "national honor and vital interests." The reservation from arbitration of so-called matters of national honor and vital interests constitutes the weak link in every existing arbitration treaty between the great powers of the world. This reservation furnishes the big-navy men all the argument they need. It destroys the binding power of the treaties by allowing either party to any dispute to refuse arbitration. It was by this reservation that the United States Senate so lately killed the British and the French treaties. And I contend here to-night that the one subject which imperatively demands discussion is national honor and vital interests. That the next important step must be the exposure of the reactionary influence of the United States in excepting these matters from arbitration.

Only fifteen months ago President Taft made his memorable declaration that this barrier ought to be removed from the pathway of peace. He proposed that the United States negotiate new treaties to abide by the adjudication of courts in every international issue which could not be settled by negotiation, whether involving honor or territory or money. The next morning the proposal was heralded by the press throughout the world. A few days later the halls of Parliament resounded with applause when Great Britain's secretary of state for foreign affairs announced that his government would welcome such a treaty with the United States. France soon followed. Then, to the surprise of all, hesitating Germany and cautious Japan showed a like willingness to enter into such agreements. Universal peace seemed all but realized.

The cause was at once borne up on a mighty wave of public opinion. The peace societies were in a frenzy of activity. Mass meetings of indorsement were held in England and America. Editorials of approval appeared in all parts of the world. The movement was now irresistible. Within eight months the British and the French treaties were drafted. Three of the greatest nations of the world were at last to commit themselves unreservedly to the cause of international peace. Even disputes involving national honor should not halt the beneficent work of high courts of law and of reason. The day when the treaties were signed, August 3, 1911, was hailed as a red-letter day in the annals of the civilized world. It was proclaimed the dawn of a new and auspicious era in the affairs of men and of nations.

During all the months preceding the action of the Senate on these treaties the only statesman of any prominence to raise his voice in opposition was ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. The gist of his successive and violent attacks on the treaties is contained in this utterance, which I quote, "It would be not merely foolish but wicked for us as a nation to agree to arbitrate any dispute that affects our vital interests or our independence or our honor." In this spirit, to the surprise and disappointment of the whole nation, the Senate amended the treaties out of their original intent, and placed upon them limitations that defeated their purpose. By the Senate's action the United States is still committed to the pretense that there may be occasion for a just and solemn war, that vital interests and national honor may force us to fight.

What, then, are the vital interests that can be conserved only by saber and bullet? Nothing more, nothing less, according to various acknowledged authorities, than a state's independence and its territorial integrity. Did the keen mind of our former president really foresee the seizure of some of our territory by England or France? Yet he protests it that it would be "not merely foolish but wicked for us as a nation to agree to arbitrate any dispute that affects our vital interests." Did Senator Lodge and his threescore colleagues who amended the treaties actually fear an attempt to overthrow our form of government, to destroy our political institutions, or to take away those individual rights and sacred privileges upon which our government was founded? Yet to save us from such fate they refused unlimited arbitration.

For the United States to except from arbitration her vital interests is obvious pretense. To add thereto her national honor is extreme hypocrisy. What is national honor? No man knows. It is one thing to-day; another, to-morrow. It may involve an indemnity claim, a boundary line, a fisheries dispute. In fact, any controversy may be declared by either party, at will, to be a question of national honor. Thus in the hands of an unskilled or malicious diplomacy, any question which was originally a judicial one may become a question of national honor. What, then, will we arbitrate? Every case in which a favorable award is assured us. If we want Texas, we send an army after it. Every case that does not rouse our anger. Let the Maine blow up and we fight. A treaty with an elastic exception like this is a farcical sham and a delusion.

It is high time the true and humiliating significance of these fearsome phrases should be as familiar to every taxpayer as is the burden of bristling camps and restless navies. Read the record of Great Britain's first offer of unlimited arbitration in the Olney-Pauncefote treaty of 1897. There, too, you will find national honor and vital interests clogging the machinery of universal peace. By these same exceptions the Senate emasculated that treaty and defeated the spirit of the agreement. Is it conceivable that the Senate actually feared that our interests would be imperiled by that treaty? Did it delve out some hidden dangers which escaped the careful scrutiny of both the English and American embassies, some peril unforeseen by the keen judicial mind of President Cleveland, who characterized the defeat of the treaty as "the greatest grief" of his administration.

But this is not all. The American representatives at both Hague Conferences were the first to place these same limitations on all arbitration proposals.

Look at it from what point of view you will, our government's conduct must appear humiliating. Considering the fact that universal arbitration treaties have proved practical, it is well-nigh incredible. Behold our bellicose sister American republics. Argentina and Chile, Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, all have agreements for the arbitration of all questions whatsoever. All the Central American republics are bound by treaty to decide every difference of whatever nature in the Central American Court of Justice. Denmark's three treaties with Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands withhold no cause, however vital, from reason's peaceful sway. Norway and Sweden likewise have an agreement to abide by the decision of the Hague Court in whatever disputes may occur. The very existence of all these treaties is significant, yet even more significant is the fact that they have been triumphantly tested. Norway and Sweden at one extremity of the globe and Argentina and Chile at the other have thus quietly settled disputes in which their honor and interests were seriously involved.

Do you ask further evidence of the hypocrisy with which our Senate parades our national honor and our vital interests to the undoing of a grand work? Search our history and you will find it in abundance. In the great case of the Alabama claims, Charles Francis Adams pronounced the construction of Confederate ships in English ports to be a violation of the international law of neutrality. This certainly was a question of national honor and vital interests, yet he pleaded for arbitration. In reply Lord John Russell said, "That is a question of honor which we will never arbitrate, for England's honor cannot be made the subject of arbitration." The case was debated for six years. Then came England's "Grand Old Man," the mighty Gladstone, with a different view. "It is to the interest," he said, "not only of England and the United States, but of the world, peaceably to settle those claims." He submitted them to a joint high commission. England lost and paid. Thus the honor of both nations was successfully arbitrated. Likewise the Newfoundland fisheries case had been a bone of contention between Great Britain and America from the day our independence was recognized. As late as 1887 it threatened to become the cause of war. No question ever arose which more vitally affected the interests of America, yet the Senate recently accepted a settlement by arbitration. Similarly, the Alaska fur seal dispute, the Alaskan and the Venezuelan boundary disputes, and the northeast boundary controversy all involved both the vital interests and the national honor of England and America, yet all were satisfactorily and permanently arbitrated. So excited were we over our northwest boundary that the principal issue of a political campaign was "The whole of Oregon or none! Fifty-four forty or fight!" Yet we peaceably acquiesced in a treaty that gave us neither.