During the month of June “A League of Peace” was organized in Philadelphia. The tentative proposals of the originators of the movement, as reported in articles in the daily papers, is to obtain “an agreement from the various nations of the world to submit all differences to adjudication or arbitration, to use their military forces to prevent any one of their number from going to war before all questions in dispute shall have been submitted to an international court or council; and that the powers in the agreement codify rules of international law by which they shall abide.” In order to give the movement an appearance of solid backing a formidable list was published of the names of prominent men who had been invited to the Philadelphia conference.
Any careful and intelligent student of the world situation must recognize the fact that an effective agreement of this character among nations is impossible before the conclusion of the great war in Europe and Asia. The most powerful nations of the world are engaged in this Titanic struggle, and it is not supposable that they will enter into an arbitration agreement before the terms of peace are concluded. Any agreement made by any number of nations omitting the now belligerent nations would be futile, for the nations at war command vast armies and navies and stores of war material and military organization against which the now peaceful nations would contend in vain.
The proposition of the Cleveland World Court Congress was practicable and feasible. It was to formulate a plan and have it ready to submit to a world conference after the present war is over, if possible with the moral support of the United States and the other American nations.
Our government could well afford to support a movement of that kind after the war, but it could not afford to join an arbitration league before the war ends, which proposes to back up its demands by military force.
It will be remembered that in signing The Hague Convention the American delegates made the reservation that no provision should be so construed as to require the United States of America to depart from its traditional policy of not intruding upon or interfering with, or entangling itself in the political questions or policy of internal administration of any European state. This was in accordance with the traditional policy of the United States, embodied in Washington’s Farewell Address, which was under no circumstances to interfere in the affairs of Europe. We certainly could not be a party to an agreement to lend our military forces, in combination with the military forces of other nations, to prevent one European nation from going to war with another. We might, after the war, become a party to an agreement to organize a World Court for Judicial Settlement and to contribute our contingent to the posse comitatus of such world court, on the invitation of all the powerful nations of both hemispheres.
The negative part of our Monroe Doctrine is the restraining injunction of Washington’s Farewell Address. We do not propose to meddle in the affairs of Europe, and President Monroe warned the European nations that we would not permit them to meddle in the political affairs of this hemisphere or to attempt to impose their political systems upon any of the American nations. If we start in to interfere now, in accordance with the so-called “League of Peace” proposition, what becomes of our Monroe doctrine? The war in Europe will have to be fought out to some definite conclusion before any effective and compelling League of Peace is possible.
As indicating the attitude of a portion of the press toward this movement we reproduce the following editorial from the Detroit Free Press.
THE LEAGUE OF PEACE
The new scheme for a League of Peace can make very little appeal to practical minds that give it real attention. Like all such plans it is largely visionary and based upon assumptions and premises which have no basis in fact because they fail to take into account the fundamentally static selfishness of human nature. The leaders of this movement strike ground only at one point and then impotently. They recognize the fact that anything done in the way of working for permanent peace must be accomplished through force and not by moral suasion.
Their scheme is to gather together the powers of the earth into a peace league, the members of which will pool their military and naval strength for the common good. No country will thereafter be permitted to make war upon another until certain measures of prevention have been taken and certain formalities observed, all with a view to settling the trouble in a peaceful way. If a government transgresses, the whole world will immediately jump on its back.