vision of America than this implies, and what do they see? A country violently critical of Europeans, from whom it sprang. A country great-in size. A country intolerant of foreigners and extravagantly patriotic. A country needlessly cruel to the weak, vilely unfair to the immigrant, ferociously competitive and wasteful. A country that bullies Mexico, burns negroes, defends child labor, and invented the 'water cure.' In other words, a country that has all the faults of a gigantic youth, and yet, when it slips into its adolescent idealism, forgets that it ever had a fault."

"Adolescence does n't justify such rancorous criticism," I said.

"No," he said, "adolescence does n't, but crass idealism in America provokes counter-idealism in Europe. The thing that most unfits America for the league is its ready-made idealism. America does n't comprehend.

"It does n't see the league as it is. What has happened to pragmatism? When that dazzling, refreshing philosophy first came over from America, I shouted, "The real thing!' I thought America had found a key that would unlock its own soul. But America is not pragmatic about the league.

"I wish that Americans would approach the league saying, 'Does it work?' More nonsense is talked about it than about any other organization on earth. Some of it must be perverse, springing from anger and hate. Some of it surely comes from ignorance. Let's clear the ground of ignorance, at any rate. Why not tell the Americans the truth? Grant that imperialism, capitalism, nationalism, and the rest are at work in the nations that compose the league and do seriously influence their conduct inside the league.

Grant that it is a fallible body. Still, it works. It does something that otherwise would be left undone, and it has unheard-of possibilities. When I think of them, I am sorry I have only one life, one career. The league could spend its whole yearly revenue on any one of its departments, and still not perform all the service in that one department it is fitted to perform. The league could be kolossal. And it will be, America or no America."

& 3

"The church peace people are all with you in America," I said.

He laughed brutally.

"I know," he said, "the same old uplift. But I decline to represent the league exclusively as a method of uplift. Do you see anywhere one wicked Continental power, and a number of good Continental powers pleading with her for justice and peace? That is the formula you meet with all the time, but it is a false emphasis. Let's go back a few years. We all know how the good Christian powers, like England, France, and Italy, plus the good Christian power of czarist Russia, agreed during the war to carve up the Turkish Empire and each help themselves to a slice of Turkey and a share of the stuffing. You remember how the tragedies of Armenia were disclosed afresh and exploited afresh. The most respectable and reputable of Englishmen were utilized to prepare propaganda, and the wickedness of the Turk gave a grand excuse for a settlement according to gross self-interest. Idealists became directors of oil companies, and Turks became sub-men. What happened, then, to the precious conception of Turkish sovereignty? It was mislaid. The wicked Turks,

however, did not wait till the good Continental powers had outlawed war. They paid no attention to Article Ten. They went after the Allies, they whipped the Allies, and got back some of their own. Now, in the midst of protestations of moral uplift and the sacred cause of oil, I refuse to put forward the league as a holy league, or to argue that it exists for the morally superior, especially the morally superior American.

"Americans are so confoundedly moral about the whole business. They see the league as an international nursemaid, keeping the children playing in the sand-box without hitting one another over the heads. Outlawing war, the nursemaid is, and wiping their noses. Bad little European chil

dren!

"I come across Americans who say to me, as a spokesman of the nursemaid, 'You did n't keep order in the Ruhr.' 'You did n't behave well in the Saar.' 'You did n't keep the mark from rushing over the precipice into the sea.' And before I can answer, some American apologist of the league rushes out to shout, ‘Ah, but did n't the good nursemaid keep Finland from hitting Sweden on the nose? We settled that terrible dispute about the Aaland Islands. And we almost settled a dispute about the Poland-Lithuanian boundary. And the Albanians -well, some one said that a league commission 'was greatly impressed by the great moral authority and prestige enjoyed by the league in Albania!'

"Now, these things impress me not at all. I remember far enough back to the days of the Dogger Bank and a row between French and Germans somewhere near Casablanca. When these disputes were settled, the peace advo

cates went around rejoicing. They said that it 'proved the progress of peace,' like Mr. Bryan's peace treaties later on.

"No, this deludes people. Make it clear that the league is not really an independent body which lays down just and fair decisions on its own account. count. Make it painfully evident it is not an independent body. Show it does not exist as a leviathan. Then perhaps you can show that, as a cooperative body, it does exist 'to extend, develop, and regularize the method of conciliation.' It is not the nursemaid who does the trick. It is the brats themselves, in the heart of a self-government league. They don't outlaw war so much as outlaw the misunderstanding or the will-to-grab which makes for war.

"But the league is n't leviathan. If it could act as leviathan, with strong power in its own body, it might be a much greater force for good in the world. But force, you know, is force. It might also be a great force for evil. The point is, the league is not an independent body at present. That being the case, it cannot swing enormous power in outlawing the enemies of society or enforcing its own decisions. Neither can it swing enormous power in crushing the states and unions and associations that are feared by the people now on top. It is limited, even in the verdict force of its own tribunal. And it cannot take on the tone of the autocratic, the dictatorial, the supreme, or the Almighty.

"Perhaps it would be quicker if the league had more power. Americans like action. But the league was conceived in an unhealthy period, and the present distribution of power in the world is not so ideal that every one

§ 4

"Of course it will be said to Americans that they ought to come into the league for humanitarian reasons and on humanitarian lines. This is sheer cant. The only argument for the league is that it creates an equalitarian community of states. If America wants community of the widest possible kind, if it wants the fullness of life and to facilitate deep living, it cannot stay out of the league. The league is really one technical improvement in the fight for survival on humane terms. It is the pooling of international effort to extend the margin that permits enjoyment. That margin, both for Americans and Europeans, cannot be secured in seclusion. It must be secured in coöperation."

"But America is more powerful than any nation on earth. It is strong enough to stand alone."

"Is it? Suppose some great state, France, for example, proves to have endangered, to be endangering, the world's peace, is America strong enough to exert decisive pressure on it?"

"Is the league?" I asked.

"No!" he shouted. "The league is not strong enough to do anything without an access of general consent. It is not strong enough to consider any vital question-the question of monopolies, for instance so long as it does not enlist enough public opinion. It does not to-day care to vindicate public right, except possibly by scheming for a balance against France.

"But the league provides a process by which official opinion can immediately count. If that official opinion were radical, it would count just the

Senate, and joins the league, it will automatically put a communist on the Council of the League. If Russia sends a czarist to the Council, he must be seated. The league is not of itself radical or conservative. It keeps tune with existing governments, and reacts to them. It does not assemble idealists who have no home opinion behind them.

"But what it does is to indicate very precisely the balance of decent international opinion that is on deposit in the current governments of the nations that are members. If the balance is too small to meet a heavy draft like the question of disarmament or raw materials or the Ruhr, then it is the fault of existing governments. My feeling about America at present is that its official balance of decent internationalism is too low to make it an asset to the league.

"But if the league could do nothing more than register the will of existing governments, it would be bankrupt," I declared.

"I accept that," he answered. "It has, despite its being merely coöperative, something positive to claim for itself. It brings into the diplomatic process a way of remembering and of pursuing public objects of international concern. In those offices it has created-directors and chiefs and secretary-general and so on—it has created officials who wear the antiseptic gloves of internationalism. That alone is a great advance.

"Besides, it makes for association. It substitutes contact for imagination. It creates friendships. It brings us together."

"And it provides an ambulance and an intern in case of international collision," I said.

"Yes," he assented. "If America would come in to do its share of the intern work, to do its share of the associating, I'd welcome it. But I am in no hurry to have an America which thinks on conventionally superior lines."

"But," I got in, "you have Americans now. America may say the league is dead, but the secretary of state appoints Miss Grace Abbott to deal with the league. I see a Harvard I see a Harvard

professor in the secretariat. A very prominent member of the publicity department is a pronounced American, an American is a member of the Court of Justice, an American is connected with arranging the Greek loan and is

doing business with the council in the most direct way, an American is on the health committee appointed by the council-he is a United States government employee. I am told that an American is to come to the labor office in place of Royal Meeker, who has retired. I know an American runs the library, Miss Wilson, and I know Mr. Huston of North Dakota superintends the whole plant."

"My dear fellow," he said, smiling like a trained seal, "the Americans are personally all right. But have they nothing to say about their cabinet and the fossilized State Department and the United States Senate?"

WAS fourteen years of age when Howard and Margaret Blake became our nearest neighbors. They built a house about a quarter of a mile from ours. Up to that time the nearest house had been two miles away. It seemed to me that the country was actually becoming crowded. Howard was about twenty-two years old, and Margaret, his wife, was about eighteen. It interested me to learn that they were going to try to make a living on six hundred and forty acres of ground or, as we then called such a tract in Texas, a section. My own parents had settled there in the days of no fences and had bought ten sections, probably for about twenty-five cents or less an acre. Even that much land was a farm; ranches would contain not fewer than twenty thousand acres.

Ours had always been a farming community. It was settled largely by Southern people and was as different from ranch country as though we had been people of a different race and nationality. The ranch country was uncouth, saloons flourished in the towns, and there were very few women. Our community had never permitted a saloon; we had a puritanical rigidity in our social customs that could scarcely have been excelled by any New England community. Our tiny little town of not more than eight hundred population had five or

on

six pine church houses with the paint peeling off their clapboard steeples, blistered by a merciless summer sun the outside and scorched by sulphur and brimstone sermons on the inside. In that time and place people took their religion with a thrill of terror. A man who said he loved God meant that his vertebræ rattled from panic fear when he contemplated the fate of the sinner.

Howard Blake was a hard-working man, as every pioneer had to be, but he knew how to work and he liked it. Maggie-in a rural community Margaret would inevitably become Maggie-was usually with him. She helped him build the house, the barns, sheds, fences, chairs; she even helped him skin a calf when it had been killed. Meat had no commercial value then, but hides could be sold. As they worked they talked. It was evident they were very much in love with each other. In all my life I have never known another woman who so easily and naturally entered into the thoughts as well as the work of a man. I was always delighted to be with them. Sometimes when it rained, or on Sunday afternoons, they would lie down together on a pallet of wolfhides on the front porch, and Howard would laugh almost continuously for two or three hours, a pleasant sort of chuckle.