“The spirit has gone out of it. It was born without a soul. I believe now that the future welfare of the world depends upon a change of heart among the peoples, inspired by individuals in all nations who will work for good and give a call to humanity, indifferent to statesmen, treaties and Governments.”
“The International League of Good-will?”
He nodded and smiled.
“Something like that.”
I remembered a dinner-party in New York after the armistice. I had been lecturing on the League of Nations at a time when the Peace Treaty was still unsigned, but when already there was a growing hostility against President Wilson, startling in its intensity. The people of the United States were still moved by the emotion and idealism with which they had roused great armies and sent them to the fields of France. Some of the men were returning home again. I stood outside a club in New York when a darkie regiment returned its colours, and I heard the roars of cheering that followed the march of the negro troops. I saw Fifth Avenue filled with triumphal arches, strung across with jewelled chains, festooned with flags and trophies of the home-coming of the New York Division. The heart of the American people was stirred by the pride of its achievement on the way to victory and by a new sense of power over the destiny of mankind. But already there was a sense of anxiety about the responsibilities to which Wilson in Europe was pledging them without their full and free consent. They were conscious that their old isolation was being broken down, and that by ignorance or rash promise they might be drawn into other European adventures which were no concern of theirs. They knew how little was their knowledge of European peoples, with their rivalries, and racial hatreds, and secret intrigues. Their own destiny as a free people might be thwarted by being dragged into the jungle of that unknown world. In any case Wilson was playing a lone hand, pledging them without their advice or agreement, subordinating them, it seemed, to the British Empire, with six votes on the Council of the League to their poor one. What did he mean? By what right did he do so?
At every dinner-table these questions were asked before the soup was drunk; at the coffee end of the meal every dinner-party was a debating club, and the women joined with the men in hot discussion; until some tactful soul laughed loudly, and some hostess led the way to music or a dance.
The ladies had just gone after one of these debates, leaving us to our cigars and coffee, when “Daddy” Small made a proposition which startled me at the time.
“See here,” he said to his host and the other men. “Out of this discussion one thing stands clear and straight. It is that in this room, now, at this table, are men of intellect—American and English—men of goodwill towards mankind, men of power in one way or another, who agree that whatever happens there must be eternal friendship between England and the United States.”
“Sure!” said a chorus of voices.
“In other countries there are men with the same ideals as, ourselves—peace, justice between men and nations, a hatred of cruelty, pity for women and children, charity and truth. Is that agreed?”