3. Influence of the different Parliaments on the peace-treaty;
4. Avoidance of the dangers engendered by annexation or by transfer of territory against the will of the population;
5. Removal of the obstructions to commerce or at least of difference in treatment of the various nations in colonies and settlements, according to international regulations.
6. New endeavors to promote compulsory arbitration and compulsory inquiry of international differences.
DIFFERENTIAL NEUTRALITY FOR AMERICA
One would prefer to think otherwise, but the truth probably is that the future peace of the world, and the nature of international organization depends a good deal less upon definitely conceived plans like that of the League to Enforce Peace (however admirable and desirable it may be to promote definite projects of that kind) than upon the nature of the foreign policy which each nation individually pursues. Disagreements between nations arise generally in situations in which both sides honestly believe themselves to be in the right. Most nations are honestly in favor of peace in general, and would go to The Hague and assist in drawing up plans to maintain it; yet each may be persisting in a line of conduct which, in its own view entirely defensive and defensible, appears to another unwarrantably aggressive. And when that is the case paper arrangements for avoiding conflict are apt to break down.
So the most practical question for each of us for some time is likely to be this: what will be the effect of our own country’s conduct in its relations with other countries, upon the future peace and international condition of the world? Or, to put the question in another form: What can our country do, irrespective of what others may do, to contribute to a more orderly international condition, saner world politics?
America is of course concerned in the present war whether she will or no. She may, by her material resources in supplies, ammunition, credit, be largely influencing its decision. As part of the problem of protecting her own rights, incidentally menaced by the operations of the war, she has taken very solemnly a certain position in international affairs. She has declared, for instance, that she stands irrevocably for the protection of innocent non-combatant life at sea in war time. She would undoubtedly stand as decisively for certain lesser rights of trade and free communication on the seas as well (in the past she has gone to war in their defense) but for the fact that doing so against one belligerent would aid the cause of the other guilty of still greater offenses.
And if we look beneath diplomatically expressed claims into unofficial, but unmistakably expressed public opinion, we find America standing strongly for certain other rules of life between nations—the right of each nation to national existence for instance—like those violated in the invasion of Belgium.