claptrap, and the President, who is a man of brains and profound scholarship, knows it. It is not the duty of the Senate to "put up," nor is it the duty of the Senate to "shut up."

For the very reason that the Treaty of Versailles is said by the President to be "one of the greatest documents of human history," is it not the duty of the Senate to examine the treaty in detail, get all the criticism and advice and light it can, and study and discuss the consequences of the treaty from every angle? Denouncing the Senate for performing its duty under the Constitution; imputing unworthy motives to every senator who does not show an inclination to accept the treaty without examination, discussion, and investigation; ridiculing the members of our Upper House; threatening or attempting to influence them by an appeal to their constituents; insinuating that opponents of immediate and unqualified ratification are pro-Germans-all this campaign of passion detracts singularly from the solemnity and spirit of earnestness that should surround the decision of the people of the United States to abandon unbroken traditions that have held ever since the birth of the republic.

In making up his mind about the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, the thoughtful man must get away from questions of parties and persons, and consider four phases of the treaty: the terms as they affect Germany, the terms as they affect our principal allies, the terms as they affect secondary states and subject peoples whose hopes have been aroused by the proclamation of what Mr. Wilson rightly calls "the American principles," and the League of Nations covenant.

The storm of protest and denunciation that met Senator Knox's criticism of the treaty on the ground that it was too hard on Germany is a significant warning to the publicist or statesman who attempts to sound this note. The whole world wants to see the German people severely punished, and Americans are plus royalistes que le roi on this subject. And yet, ungrateful as the task certainly is, the student of European politics is compelled to agree

with Senator Knox. The contention of our former secretary of state is sound and statesmanlike. We pretend to be building for the future. We cannot allow our natural resentment against Germany to close our eyes to the grave danger of giving blind assent to terms of peace that are impracticable. The powers that dictated the Treaty of Versailles used force to secure the assent of Germany to terms that, if carried out, would mean the permanent economic servitude of the Germanspeaking inhabitants of central Europe in their own countries and the permanent exclusion of Germans from business or other relations with the rest of Europe and the rest of the world. They cannot maintain the force necessary to carry out the terms imposed upon Germany. To be specific, here are certain stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles that we cannot enforce: separation of German Austria from Germany; the frontiers of Poland as laid down in the treaty; the unilateral limitation of armaments; the unilateral internationalization of waterways and granting right of way to steam-drawn traffic; the unilateral privileges of aërial navigation; renunciation of economic and other privileges in Russia and former Allied states; and the clauses in toto having to do with the delivery of Germans to Entente courts martial for judgment. Let us

put to one side the question of the justice and merit of punishing Germany and the entire German race. In ratifying the Treaty of Versailles our problem is not whether the Germans deserve what we mete out to them, but whether we are in a position to enforce our decrees. We are not in such a position. And if we were, we should enter upon a period of bloodshed and suffering throughout Europe that would make the war just ended seem but a prelude. Surely it is not pleading for Germany, but for ourselves, to sound the note of warning that enforcement to the letter of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles means for the United States a military effort far greater than we have yet made and extending over a far longer period. No economic pressure that we could bring to bear upon Germany now

would have any other result than the bankruptcy of Europe.

This does not mean that the United States Senate should amend any of the clauses relating to Germany. We have suffered so little at the hands of the Germans, and our allies have suffered so much, that the only course open to us is to agree to the terms imposed upon Germany by the Paris conference. President Wilson was right in yielding to the insistent voice of European public opinion in which American public opinion concurred. But it does mean that we should take into full consideration the possible aftermath in Europe of the attempt to keep Germany down when we are asked to guarantee without reservation the settlement arrived at. From the strictly American point of view Senator Knox was logical in calling attention to the harshness and impracticability of the clauses affecting Germany because other clauses bind us, and pledge our armed forces, to the status quo as conceived in the Versailles document.

The second consideration for the American Senate is the terms as they affect our principal allies. The treaty gives Great Britain and France and Japan enormous material advantages, financial, economic, colonial, territorial. The Treaty of St.-Germain will do as much for Italy. Great Britain, France, and Italy are determined to reap rich rewards in the treaty with Turkey. Instead of scolding our senators for disappointing the "heart of the world," we should expect of them, as we had the right to expect of our negotiators at Paris, championship of the material interests of the United States. When President Wilson returned from Paris in March he declared that we were called upon to make "a supreme sacrifice" in the treaty that was being drawn up. In his recent September speeches he makes it clear that the concessions such as the Shan-tung settlement were due to the threats of our allies, who supported one another in securing the rewards promised by secret treaties. The President went so far as to say that refusal to yield on Shan-tung would have meant our having to fight Japan, with the backing of Great Britain

and France. The United States went to the Paris conference with high purpose and wholly disinterested. The American nation was solidly behind President Wilson in desiring the kind of settlement the President had outlined in half a dozen memorable speeches. But Mr. Wilson failed to put through his program of world-wide readjustment on the basis of impartial justice. He failed even to secure the triumph of his "fourteen points" in regard to the settlement within the narrow limits of questions relating to Germany. France got Morocco, Great Britain got Egypt, and Japan got Shan-tung. The victors divided up the German colonies without waiting for mandates from the League of Nations. They are engaged to-day in a mad scramble with one another in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. They provided for a settlement of Danish frontier readjustment, against the protest of the Danish Government, in the way they thought would advance their own particular interests. From beginning to end the recreation of Poland was envisaged not from the point of view of what was best for Poland, but from the point of view of political considerations affecting the great powers. American public opinion must realize this, and not be misled by such statements as the opening paragraph of the President's Kansas City speech, quoted above. The President now seems to be suffering from an amazing lapse of memory.

The third consideration for the American Senate is the terms as they affect secondary states and subject peoples whose hopes were aroused by the proclamation of what Mr. Wilson rightly calls "the American principles." Here we cannot get away from certain unwelcome facts. In his war speeches, which were heartily concurred in by the entire nation, Mr. Wilson did not limit the world-wide readjustment we went to war to obtain to the questions affecting the territories ruled over by our enemies. The reason was plain. We were assured that this was to be a war to end wars, and that its object was a world-wide, just, and durable peace. The conception of a league of nations, in

fact, was conceivable and feasible only on this basis. If the United States was to make "a supreme sacrifice" to attain this object, "supreme sacrifices" were to be expected of our allies also. No sane man, with a knowledge of history and especially of contemporary moot questions, is able to maintain that the causes of international strife, the powder-magazines liable to set the world aflame, were confined to the territories under the political control of enemy nations. Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, the Trevelyan brothers, Lord Robert Cecil, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Bryce, and other eminent Englishmen did not hesitate to drive home this truth in the midst of the struggle. Frenchmen like Anatole France, Italians like Guglielmo Ferrero, and Americans like Woodrow Wilson were equally John the Baptists crying in the wilderness for repentance and renunciation as preliminary sine qua non of the formation of a society of nations.

It was, then, within the province of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs to hear the representatives of secondary states and subject races before ratifying the Treaty of Versailles. The accusation of giving offense to our allies, of fishing in troubled waters, is silly. We chose our senators to safeguard the honor and the interests of the United States. Their electors do not expect them to buy a pig in the poke or to involve this country in treaties contrary to our ideals and traditions and compromising our interests. What did we lead China to expect when we invited her to take part in the World War? Is it to our interest to abandon the "open door" policy in the far East? Why do the British claim that Egypt is outside of the war settlement when the status of Egypt as an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, internationally guaranteed with treaty and capitulatory privileges enjoyed by the United States as well as other nations, was unquestioned when the war broke out? Did not a generation of British statesmen officially and unofficially keep assuring the Egyptians and the capitulatory powers that Great Britain would never establish a protectorate over Egypt? In view of the American assurance that

no territory would change masters without the consent of the inhabitants, why was the Egyptian delegation refused a hearing at the Paris conference? Is it certain that France will not close Morocco to American trade as she closed Algeria and Tunis? If Article 22 concerning mandatories has any meaning at all, why were the German colonies divided up in a secret session of the Big Four, and why did Lord Milner, representing the British Government, feel himself authorized, without waiting for the constitution of the League of Nations, to treat directly with Foreign Minister Huysmans of Belgium concerning the division of the spoils in German East Africa? And why, when the Treaty of Versailles stipulates that "the wishes of these communities (of the Ottoman Empire) must be a principal consideration in the selection of the mandatory," are the American delegates at Paris given clearly to understand that the partition of the Ottoman Empire is already provided for by secret treaties which must be respected?

If the Senate were to insist on amending the treaty to substitute China for Japan in the Shan-tung clauses and to strike out the clause requiring recognition of the British protectorate over Egypt against which all Egyptians, without distinction of class or creed, protest as vigorously as the Chinese protest against the Shan-tung deal, it is probable that neither Japan nor Great Britain would now yield. We have President Wilson's word for it that our allies, if they do not have their own way in matters affecting their particular interests, threaten to withdraw from his League of Nations. Are not experiences of this sort, before the birth of the league, a pretty sure indication that what the powers associated with us in the war intend the league to be is a sort of trust in which they hold the colonies and we hold the bag. Perhaps it is up to us to accept the "arrangements" agreed upon at Paris, if that is the best our allies and ourselves can do to fulfil the war promises we all made; but it is certainly not up to us to guarantee these iniquitous "arrangements" that dishonor our high purpose of fighting, besmirch the supreme sacri

fice of our dead who fell to emancipate and not enslave peoples, and involve us in inglorious wars of oppression. Among the states invited to accede to the covenant of the League of Nations (see Annex after Article 26) is Persia. Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Versailles, the British Minister at Teheran induced the Persian Prime Minister to sell his country's independence against the protest of the Persian Cabinet and the Persian people and is now protecting the traitor and upholding the validity of the signature by British bayonets.

The Treaty of Versailles contains four hundred and forty articles. From Article 27 on to the end, although we may disapprove of the treaty in many particulars, we have no choice but ratification without amendment or reservation. It is the kind of treaty that our allies want. Amendment or reservation would jeopardize the whole structure of peace, and mean going through the weary business once more. We are sorry about a lot of things. Shan-tung humiliates us and gives us concern for the future. We are doubtful about boundary-lines and economic clauses. We know that we have treated the Egyptians shamefully and that the mandatory plan for Africa and the Ottoman Empire is pure bunk unless we assume larger responsibilities overseas than the American people would be willing to stand for. But we do not want to get into quarrels with our allies. We do not care to negotiate anew with Germany. Above all, we cannot accept the responsibility of protracting the state of war and unrest in Europe, where peace and a return to normal conditions are absolutely essential before winter. It is imperative for our senators to hold their noses and ratify Articles 27-440 inclusive. The considerations that led General Smuts to sign the treaty are more potent as an argument for ratification than they were as an argument for signing. Said the representative of South Africa at the moment he signed the treaty:

The months since the armistice have been as upsetting, unsettling and ruinous to Europe as the previous four years of

war, perhaps. I look upon the Peace Treaty as the close of these two chapters of war and armistice, and only on that ground do I agree with it. I feel that in the

treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace to which our peoples were looking and that the real work of making peace will begin only after the treaty has been signed and a definite halt has thereby been called to the destructive passions that have been desolating Europe for nearly five years. This treaty is simply a liquidation of the war situation in the world. There are guarantees laid down which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new peaceful temper and unarmed state of our former enemies. There are punishments foreshadowed, over most of which a calmer mood may yet prefer to pass the sponge of oblivion. There are indemnities stipulated which cannot be exacted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe, and which it will be in the interests of all to render more tolerable and moderate.

Failure to ratify the main body of the treaty, however objectionable we may find many of its stipulations, would throw upon the American Senate the onus of having prolonged the economic and social unrest of the state of war. Not only in Europe, but also in America, it will be impossible to continue much longer the discussion, internally or internationally, of the Treaty of Versailles. And when the Treaty of St.Germain and the Bulgarian and Turkish treaties come along, we must swallow them, too, without long delay. The world is crying for peace, and those who obstruct the conclusion of peace, no matter what the cause, are going to be decidedly unpopular.

But it is asking too much of the Senate to demand the acceptance without serious reservations of Articles 1 to 26 of the treaty, which are assembled under the heading, "The Covenant of the League of Nations." At the time of this writing I have been in America only a few days. Although I realize how powerful are the forces working for ratification without reservations, I have faith in the common sense and patriotism of our senators. There must be Democrats who put the interest of

their country above the interest of their party leader.

An editorial in "The New York Times" of September 10, headed "Peace or War," is an illustration of the effort that is being made in some circles to influence "the man in the street" against the Senate by specious arguments. The "Times" editorial writer draws a logical conclusion from his premises, but the premises are false. Is it necessary to assume that the League of Nations covenant is an integral part of the treaty of peace with Germany, and that reservations in our acceptance of the covenant entail negotiating a new treaty with Germany? Germany has no part in the covenant of the League of Nations. One searches in vain throughout the Treaty of Versailles to find a single phrase relating to Germany that would have to be modified or altered if the United States makes reservations concerning America's entrance into the league. As the treaty is framed, the League of Nations does not regard Germany either now or in the future. Is it necessary to assume that our allies will refuse to accept whatever reservations we see fit to make in the League of Nations covenant, thus putting the treaty back again into the melting-pot? None who has been with the treaty-makers from the beginning, as I have been, believes this. The truth is that the League of Nations covenant was inserted in the Treaty of Versailles because President Wilson insisted upon it and made it America's one unalterable demand. We wanted no colonies, no material advantages. If our allies would yield and give us the covenant in the treaty, they could divide up the world as they pleased, violating every principle of the covenant before it was born. Public opinion in France and Italy and Belgium and in the secondary European states is decidedly against the League of Nations. The few voices that wanted a League of Nations in January have virtually all been silent since June.

Moreover, it does not follow that advocates of reservations in the League of Nations covenant, as it is set forth in the Treaty of Versailles, are opponents of the League of Nations idea,

or that they unreasonably expect the building of Rome in a day. The yearning of the world for a new international order, which will tend to make wars less frequent and diminish the burden of armaments, is as unmistakable as the yearning for the reëstablishment of peace; but the conception is so tremendous and so revolutionary that we must make haste slowly. All who participated in the work of the conference of Paris were bitterly disappointed, and I know many in high places who are frankly pessimistic. The struggle for peace, following the struggle for victory, was too much for them. They confess that they are not the men to lead the world in new paths. And they rightly attribute the failure of the conference of Paris to the atmosphere of intense hatred, of fear, of suspicion, and, above all, of the realization of a victory beyond their wildest dreams. Premier Clemenceau, before the conference opened, took issue with President Wilson and the "internationalists" of France and other Allied countries, when he said to the Chamber of Deputies that he was going into the conference to get as much for France as he could, with a maximum and minimum program as a basis of bargaining. However imbued with idealism and internationalism we Americans may be, it would be folly for us to enter blindly and unreservedly under these conditions a League of Nations which is simply a coalition of victorious powers, presided over by diplomats of the old school.

Let us support the Senate in its determination to accompany the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles with reservations in clear language that will preserve our independence of action in international affairs. It is not to be feared that these reservations will be rejected by our allies or our late enemies. They will not delay the reestablishment of peace. On the other hand we shall be in a better position to continue our championship of American principles and to fulfil the high mission of the United States to bring together the nations of the world into an international organization to prevent wars and reduce armaments,