League of Nations, in its original form, had committed suicide,. victim of the irreconcilable aspirations and disheartening greed of its directing members. And yet, public sentiment the world over, and certainly not less in the United States than in other countries, still clamors for some sort of an international association that will lessen the chances of wars and, as a corollary, the burden of armaments.

But is an international association possible on any other basis than that of the principle of "fifty-fifty"? Unless human nature has changed overnight, our answer must be an emphatic negative. We cannot attribute the failure of the League of Nations to the sole cause of a cooling of our idealistic ardor, which could have been kept aglow had there been an international moral sense. Coming down from moral sense to common sense, may we not advance the explanation that the determination of statesmen to maintain the supremacy of their own nation over all other nations, friend and foe alike, shipwrecked our dream of "the parliament of man"?

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS AND NAVAL DISARMAMENT

The "naval holiday" propaganda in the United States showed how muddled many leading Americans were in their thinking on the vital problem of disarmament. Our naval building program of 1916 was an answer to Great Britain's repeated violations of maritime international law in the early years of the

war.

We did not come into open conflict with the British for the simple reason that American public opinion was on the whole sympathetic to the Allied cause. But who could help seeing how disastrous British interference with our trade would have proved after a hundred years of peace with the British Empire, had not the issues of the war been as clear to us as they were?

The British justified their naval activity by successive orders in council, which were unilateral decrees to the enforcement of which our consent was not asked, and which nullified the rules of maritime warfare arranged by international agreement from the Treaty of Paris to the Declaration of London. The British

Government did not attempt to argue with us on the basis of a fair interpretation of international law. We were told that Germany had done this and that, and that the Entente powers were fighting our battle, the battle of civilization. This argumentum ad hominem we accepted because Germany had done unspeakable things which we held in abhorrence.

But suppose Germany had not invaded Belgium and had done nothing to anger us, or suppose France or Russia, instead of Germany, had been the enemy of Great Britain. We should still have had to tolerate the British disregard of our rights at sea because our navy was not as strong as the British Navy. Had our navy in 1914 been as strong as the British Navy, London would have consulted Washington before issuing the orders in council.

Statesmen must take into consideration hypotheses of this sort. Less than fifteen years before 1914 Great Britain was on the verge of war with France, and scarcely more than a decade before 1914 with Russia. From 1914 to 1917 we had little international shipping, and most of our foreign trade was with the Entente powers.

The situation has changed. In 1921 we have a large mercantile marine, and our agricultural and industrial production has increased so rapidly that uninterrupted foreign trade is essential to the prosperity of the United States.

One may be an ardent admirer of Great Britain, and yet be able to see that our nation will never again allow any other nation to interpret maritime rules of war according to its own interests, with no thought of our interests. By excluding the freedom of the seas from the scope of the peace conference, the British Government made inevitable the continuation of our ship-building program. The one way to cause a postponement or suspension of this program is for the British Government to assure Mr. Harding of its willingness to discuss with us the freedom of the seas. There is nothing unreasonable in this. It is the application of the principle of "fifty-fifty." I doubt if any American cares about having the biggest navy afloat. We do not want to spend money

on ships if we can avoid it. But dare we continue to be a minority stockholder in the matter of sea-power unless the present majority stockholder gives us definite pledges to respect to the full our interests on the seas in war as well as in peace?

The disingenuousness of the arguments of our British cousins is touching. They tell us that our naval program arouses suspicion and ill feeling in England, and that they are sorely puzzled over our plans to have a big navy. They ask us whom we are arming against, pointing out that we never need to fear them, whose friendship is immutable, while Japan is far behind us. But should not sentiments of trust and affection be mutual? If we build a big navy, they have no need to fear us. We have no more aggressive intentions than they have, and they have no cause to be disturbed if we build up to their naval strength. Fifty-fifty again!

The true protagonist of Anglo-American friendship will seek to demonstrate to our British friends that the best way to avoid misunderstanding and to maintain undiminished the mutual respect and affection of the two great Englishspeaking nations is in each one admitting the other's right to equal power and authority on the high seas. Why not? What argument can be advanced against this? At the recent Pilgrim luncheon in his honor in London the American Admiral Niblack frankly told his hosts that American maritime competition with other nations was now a fact they had to reckon with. Answering the British Admiral Grant, who deplored our greater navy as a cause of suspicion and distrust on both sides of the Atlantic, Admiral Niblack said that there was none of this on the American side, and that we were simply following the example of the British in increasing our navy to protect our shipping and our foreign trade according to the age-old British method.

HOLDING TO OUR TRADITIONS

Since 1914 the good old-fashioned Americanism has been undermined by different forms of hysteria. Internationalism and "hyphenism" arose. We lost our heads completely. We forgot the

horse-sense significance of "America first." The hysteria has not altogether subsided. subsided. Despite my long residence in France, which is truly my second country and the birthplace of my children, despite my pride in my English ancestry, the war, and especially its aftermath, taught me the imperative necessity of not dividing my loyalty.

From our foreign policy, "permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others should be excluded," according to George Washington. For, as he explained it, "excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike for another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. . . . It is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another."

The crying need of the day in America is the study of American history. When unthinking Americans tell us that the freedom of the seas is "pro-German propaganda," we ought to be able to oppose to their foolish words the teachings of Franklin and Hamilton, Washington and Jefferson, the two Adams, Madison and Monroe, Jay and Cass, Lincoln and John Hay. This nation was founded by men who loved it passionately and served it exclusively. It has become great and strong through the devotion of men who knew how to respect and keep alive and follow the traditions of their fathers.

FOREIGN POLICY HAS TWO

OBJECTS,

SECURITY AND PROSPERITY

To listen to some people talk, to read what some people write, the rôle of the United States in world politics is that of a redeemer and regenerator. The call to service is a potent one, and it is to our credit that we respond to it. However, we must realize that ability to serve depends upon power to control. Influence in the world is in proportion to strength. The word philanthropist has two meanings, and it proves our thesis that the commonly accepted meaning defines a man who is able to bestow largess upon humanity because he or his immediate forebears have been monumentally selfish.

Nations are like persons. They look after their security and work for their prosperity. By this means, and by this means alone, they may come to a position of moral leadership of the world. But while helping others they do not forget to bestow the first attention upon themselves. Why are we able to respond to Mr. Hoover's call? Because we are prosperous. Why are we prosperous?

Because of our unprecedented foreign trade since 1914. If we do not keep the trade, we shall lose our prosperity, ergo, our ability to help others. We shall keep the trade only by protecting it on the high seas and by insisting upon equality for our commerce in world markets.

We are putting the cart before the horse when we bewail the fact that the United States, outside the League of Nations, is deprived of influence in world affairs. I never met a British statesman or publicist, or a French statesman or publicist, who thought that the influence of his nation in the world was due to membership in the League of Nations, or, in fact, to an alliance of any kind.

If this be true of the United States, the time has come for us to be worried about our ability to survive as a nation. Entering into a League of Nations for the purpose of making us secure and prosperous would be a confession of our approaching disintegration. No nation ever assured its security against external aggression in any other way than by making itself strong. If we are in a position, principally by naval strength, to look after our interests in all parts of the world and to protect our two coasts against any other nation, then the moral leadership of the world will be ours without our having to claim it. And we shall have no need for worry about our security or our prosperity.

the League of Nations? Canceling the indebtedness of other nations to us? Consenting to the French and British interpretation of mandates? Recognition of new extensions of European eminent domain? Sponsoring the cause of small nations? Refusing to become reconciled with Germany and other former enemy states? Our attitude toward Russia? Our intervention in Far-Eastern and Near-Eastern questions? Upholding the Monroe Doctrine? Joining or abstaining from alliances?

INTOLERANT IDEALISM VERSUS LIBERAL REALISM

American idealism has suffered from the intolerance and arrogance of its leadership. Like theology, when it became dogmatic, it lost the purity and fire of the inspiration. The conception of saving the world, born of the enthusiasm and inexperience of the neophyte, led us into the peril of forgetting what was needed for the salvation of our own country.

We do not need to become cynics. One may be a realist and still remain a liberal. In international relations we cannot disregard realities. As the proposition of entering a world association comes before the American people once more, the liberal realist says to the intolerant idealist: "By all means we shall enter not with the abstract notion of helping the world, but with the concrete idea of helping ourselves. Hence we dare not afford to remain a minority stockholder."

This may sound like crass materialism, but has it not the ring of common sense? And the liberal realist, because he is a liberal and a realist, feels that there is hope for all humanity in an America jealous of her sovereignty and her prerogatives. He has faith in the heart and vision of the United States, and faith in her power to influence the world for good. He knows that when his beloved country comes back from the tangent and starts again along the traditional path, power and prosperity will not be abused in dealing with other nations. Our past is our guide for the future; we say with pride that it is also our warrant for the future.

A NEW INDUSTRIAL WANDERLUST

T

HERE is going on in the United States to-day a picturesque and significant folk-migration, exodus, hejira,-whatever one may please to call it, that has not, at the moment of writing, broken into the headlines, nor received adequate attention at the hands of alert interpreters of social and economic drifts. The goal of this migration is the Southwest. It smacks of the old pioneering adventures westward, but in this instance the pioneer is a skilled mechanic instead of a farmer, and his prairie-schooner is an automobile. An early issue of THE CENTURY will carry a rich and colorful story of this migration, but I cannot resist the temptation to capture your interest for it by editorial comment at this time.

Many books have been written about the passing of the pioneer in America. We assume too readily that the passing of the pioneer marked the passing of poetry. We fall too easily into the notion that when the prosaic transcontinental train took the place of the picturesque prairie-schooner, American life became drably unromantic. We do not expect to hear of stirring folk-migrations in the America of 1921. Even the

frontier atmosphere of the rush for new lands in the Indian Territory is receding into the dimmer backgrounds of memory. All such things we regard as part of a remembered world, of a time when there was more of the nomad in our blood, a time when we were less strongly tethered to residence.

H. G. Wells wrote an essay a few years ago to prove that the race is becoming nomadic again, that we should not think of our world as a static place denuded of the romance of migrations. I think I have quoted from this essay before in these columns, but the following paragraphs fit essentially into this comment.

The history of man's progress from savagery to civilization is essentially a story of settling down. It began in caves and shelters; it culminates in a wide spectacle of farms and peasant villages, and little towns among the farms. . . . The enormous majority of human beings stayed at home at last; from the cradle to the grave they lived, married, died in the same district, usually in the same village; and to that condition, law, custom, habits, morals have adapted themselves. .

There have been gipsies, wanderers, knaves, knights-errant, and adventurers, no doubt, but the settled permanent rustic home and the tenure of land about it, and the hens and the cows, have constituted the fundamental reality of the whole scene.