The United States and the League of Nations

Mr. President, My Lords and Gentlemen,--In my address to you, I shall make no attempt to pleasenot running for anything, I am not looking for votes. What I shall say is what I believe to be the exact truth--and it will be said without regard for your views, preconceived or mature and with the frankness with which the Creator has endowed me. I may be wrong in my conclusionshumanism errare -but I have taken every pains to be right.

Anyone approaching the matter with a knowledge of the history of the official attitude of the United States from the beginning of its national career, would expect that people of that nation to be the first to grasp the opportunity of joining an association of the nations of the earth, having for its object the preservation of peace and the reign of justice.

One of the ablest and wisest men in the United States, whom I am proud to call my friend, a statesman who was once the candidate of his party for the Vice-Presidential Chair and may yet be a candidate for the higher office--I mean Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University--says in a paper intended for general circulation, from which I freely quote:

"From the very beginning the covenant of the League "of Nations which forms Part I of the Treaty of Verseilles, "has been gravely misunderstood by a large portion of "the population of the United States, and misinterpreted "by them. It is expressly set out that the subscribing "States agree to the covenant of the League of Nations 11 'in order to promote international co-operation and to "achieve international peace and security.'

"This had been a boasted and eagerly pursued aim of the "Government of the United States from the very beginning "of the nation's history. Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, "the Adamses, Madison, Clay, Webster, Seward, Fish, "Blaine, McKinley, Hay, Roosevelt, Root and Taft had "each in turn been engaged in advancing this noble cause "in official capacity. In our State documents and in the "correspondence of our public men are to be found illustrations by the hundred of our profound interest in these "matters, and, time and again, formal declarations by the "Congress of the United States have given definite and "specific support to them."

I may perhaps be allowed to relate a personal experience.

When the American Society for the Judicial settlement of International Disputes was formed, Mr. Taft was President of the United States. At the Banquet of this Society at its first meeting in Washington, December 17, 1910, I was sitting a few feet away from Mr. President Taft. I had been saying, (perhaps boasting) that Canada was the first people to pass in Parliament a Resolution urging the proper authorities to do their utmost to make a permanent treaty of peace between the English-speaking peoples, "so that every dispute between them, not may or perhaps can, but shall be disposed of by an international tribunal."

Bearing in mind the "big stick" methods of his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, and his fulminations against the proposition that anything involving what he called its "national honor" could possibly be submitted by the United States to, arbitration or disposed of by any person or body of persons, nation or group of nations but the United States itself, you may imagine my delight when the President spoke in favor of a positive agreement "to abide the adjudication of an international arbitral Court in every issue which cannot be settled by negotiation, no matter what it involves, whether honor, territory or money."

And there seemed scarcely a dissenting note through the Republic.

The spectacle, nothing short of extraordinary, displayed not a decade later, of this nation, one of the nations-one of the most important of nations--and one which has always advocated peaceful methods, actually spurning the most promising means ever suggested to have peaceful methods prevail, is as startling as it was unexpected.

Almost as I write comes the latest volume of Walter Hines Page's communications-he thought "it will be ours to save civilization" "ours, of course, is the future of the world: when the world recovers its sanity-its first remark will be "Thank God for the United States." A general war "set the day forward for American leadership." It is true that he had the vision which enabled him to say "The inevitable result as regards our relations with the English will be that they and we will in time become the League to enforce Peace"; but throughout that clear-eyed man saw the United States leading the nations in the ways of peace after the war. But the war over, peace came, and came as a levin stroke from a clear sky the Great Refusal, the abdication by that nation of world leadership. What was the cause?

The answer is based not only on history and geography but also on personality.

I propose to give my own interpretation-it is not that generally held or at least generally expressed, but it is based upon a considerable knowledge of the American character and history.

While in the American system there is not the means of taking the views of the electorate at any time and on any subject provided by our more elastic Constitution, public sentiment is always made manifest in one way or the other, and public sentiment is all powerful there as here.

The weight of public sentiment has shifted its centre almost in our own time from the East to the Mid and Far West--I am, of course, speaking of the United States. We have yet to learn of our own West; perhaps, the next Session of Parliament will make the matter clear, perhaps it will not. But to continue-the most effective public sentiment in the United States is to be found in the enormous farming communities west of the Mississippi and in the small towns and cities which are supported by them. The population there is mixed---many of German descent-Scandinavians, not few, and others. These just named have little if any influence in creating public opinion-that is the effect of the native American, perhaps of American descent for three or four generations. These people of the MidWest--speaking generally--have no world consciousness, no International mind, as Dr. Butler calls it-they are Americans, and for them the United States of America is the whole world-any part of the broad leagues of the globe outside that favored land is negligible. Everything tends to confirm them in that creed-there is little foreign travel, no foreign aggression, diplomacy is far removed and their own land furnishes all their hearts' desire.

Before we criticize or condemn, let us ask ourselves if we have none such in Canada, East or West.

Since the Civil War, there had been peace-the trifling Spanish War hardly provoked a ripple-the troubles of other people did not trouble them "Babbitts" were the rule and the approved pattern.

On the outbreak of the Great War, those of this type could see no difference between this War and the wars in Europe which had preceded it-it concerned Europe and Europeans alone; and what had America and Americans to do with it or it with them?

Let me be pardoned another personal statement:

The year before the United States went into the war, I was in two Universities in New England and two in the Mid-West-in New England, the people were almost as much interested in the war as Canadians, their sympathy was open, their approbation of Canada's action unfeigned and many were the expressions of hope that the United States would not continue to stand aloof. In the West, I heard almost no word of the war--inter-collegiate sports were far more interesting and important, the only sympathy for Canada was pity for her loss in gallant sons and in treasure-the United States had no reason to enter the war, for no gun yet invented could carry a shell from the sea to the Mississippi.

As the war went on, matters did not improve.

We blamed Woodrow Wilson for keeping the United States so long out of the war-and the letters of Walter Hines Page now being published must tend to confirm that opinion

Before the United States went to war at all, I was told the following by a gentlemen of the strictest integrity, incapable of deceit and having no end to gain by saying aught but the absolute truth. I shall not mention his name-some of you may know him, all of you have heard him and were I to tell his name all would recognize the justice of my description of him.

His words as nearly as I can recall I shall give, assuring you of the accuracy of the substance of them. He said: "Woodrow Wilson, whom I know intimately, sent for me to come and see him at the White House: when I went there, he locked the door and we spent hours alone together: he walked up and down the room, in anguish, and said more than once to me, 'many blame me for preventing America from entering the war-if I were President of the Eastern States only we should have been in the war long ago; but I am President of all the United States and I must bear in mind the sentiment of the Middle States and the States of the West-they are not ready to go to war and it would be disastrous to go to war with a divided country. There is my typewriter, no one but myself knows the many messages I have written on that typewriter to bring us into the war and torn them up because the West is not ready -I must wait.'" My friend assured me that, in his opinion, Wilson was perfectly sincere in what he said.

Wilson's Attorney-General, T. W. Gregory, in a letter in January of this year, which appeared in the New York Times, truly says: "During the first two years of the war undoubtedly a large majority of our people and of Congress favored our keeping out, and this was the overwhelming sentiment of the people of the Middle and Western portion of the country." Let me give you an illustration of the feeling of the Middle West:

Martin Glynn, Governor of the State of New York, was selected to make the speech nominating Wilson for re-election in the Democratic National Convention of 1916-in his own home he told me that he went to the Convention in rather an apologetic mood-his speech was intended to be explanatory and consequently somewhat apologetic: in his speech he detailed the various instances in the past in which which the United States had received provocation from other nations, ending each instance with the statement: "And we did not go to war." Before many instances had been detailed, the Convention took up the refrain before the speaker arrived at it-and the hall resounded with "And we did not go to war." It speedily became obvious that what Glynn thought was rather to be apologized for, was in the view of the delegates a matter of pride--that Wilson was not to be blamed but to be glorified for keeping the United States out of the war.

It is common knowledge that it was the Middle West with the cry, "He kept us out of the war," which elected Wilson in 1916 and defeated Hughes, even with the powerful assistance of Roosevelt. The fear of this part of the voters is, you may think, also shown by the cautious way in which the Republican candidate handled the question, in contrast with the raucous shouts of his Progressive ally.

Well, Wilson was elected, the idiotic Zimmerman letter was captured by the despised British Secret service and broadcast over the United States--it was seen that there were other ways whereby shells could reach the Mississippi than from guns on the Atlantic, the complacency of the West received a rude shock, their Zion was troubled-and when Wilson, seeing the day had come and the opportunity, called upon the Senate on that epochal second day of April, 191?, to declare war against Germany, there was scarcely a dissenting voice.

It was the repudiation by Germany of her pledge as to submarine warfare which furnished the pretext for the declaration of war: it was the publication of the Zimmerman letter which made it possible.

When on the Zimmerman letter may I be permitted to digress a little? It amuses me to hear Englishmen tell how England "muddles through"--that is always the expression--England never muddles through and there was no country better prepared without showing it than Britain at the beginning of the Great War. Amongst other things, she had the finest Secret Service the world ever saw; compared with it the much belauded and much feared German Secret Service was a child's rattle. The British Secret Service discovered the Zimmerman letter in several ways and sent it to the United States with information of how the United States could itself discover it.

This idiotic letter, which could not be repudiated and was acknowledged, convinced the nation at large and most in the Mid and Far West that the United States must needs no to war for its own protection from German aggression.

But all were not convinced--no few of those who voted for Wilson because "he kept us out of the war" were scandalized when he used the power they had given him to bring them into the war. The President was never forgiven by these: he is not forgiven today. The best known, and most widely read editorial writer of this district, I mean my friend Ed. Howe, of Atkinson, Kansas, never wearies of girding at the war in his monthly Journal of Indignation.

And there are thousands like him--when you succeed in convincing them that Canada did not go into the war at the bidding of England but of her own free will, they look at us as a lot of fools mixing up with what did not concerti us and losing valuable money and more valuable men in another's quarrel.

I say "once you succeed in convincing them that Canada did not go into the war at the bidding of England" but that is generally no easy task: the American is now the only person who speaks of Canada as a Colony-even so well informed a man as President Butler uses that terminology. I have yet to meet an American who understands our Constitution: and the average American thinks that we are governed by what he calls "England" and have no more freedom than had the American Colonies before the Revolution. All the world else, including British Statesmen, for twenty years have ceased to speak of Canada and Canadians as a Colony and Colonials, but the American who should know us best clings to the traditional terminology. It may be that we have a few in Canada more loyal than the King, more British than the Lord Chancellor, who would fain have our country in her old Colonial status-but we are not going back.

The large section of the community who were dissatisfied with what they regarded a betrayal of his trust, never forgave Wilson. Another large section of the Community of quite a different kind, chiefly but not wholly in the East, blamed Wilson for keeping the country out of the war-and never forgave him either. Both sections mistrusted him, and their feeling was not far removed from-I know that in some instances it amounted to-actual personal hatred.

Then there was a whole political party which for political if for no other reasons wished to discredit him.

The stage being all set, the drama proceeds: Wilson the real author of the League of Nations did not invite Republican co-operation or advice, a very serious error but almost inevitable from his character and trend of mind. He came home in an atmosphere of glory, having accomplished what many of his predecessors had longed for in vain. But his success meant the increase in reputation of himself and the Democratic Party.

And now appears a tragic character, perhaps the most striking and pathetic character in the whole marvellour drama, Henry Cabot Lodge, of an old and illustrious family of Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard, a historian of note, a man of means, a scholar, and a gentleman (as that word is generally understood), had 1-ng been in favor of some plan for world peace: the League of Nations was along the lines of what lip approved, and had it not been the work of Wilson, there can I think be no doubt that he would have done his best to have it approved.

But between the men there was a deep seated antagonism, intuitively and subconsciously they hated each other: and both from party and personal reasons, Lodge set himself to humiliate Wilson. How he did it, he has himself disclosed in his recent volume, published since his Path, which written as an Apologia pro Vita Sua, is an amazing disclosure of pettiness and spite-his post obit attack upon the dead is as unsuccessful as it is malignant: he has destroyed his own fame and has brought discredit on "the Scholar in politics."

An extraordinary struggle took place in the Senate--reservation after reservation was passed only to be rejected by the President who self-willed, self-centred, self-advised, demanded the whole Treaty as it stood without amendment or reservation. It is not unlikely that had he been more conciliatory and tactful, the Treaty might have been accepted without substantial modification.

As a Canadian I have no hesitation in saying that I infinitely prefer the rejection of the Treaty to its acceptance with one of the proposed Reservations,-that known as the Lenroot Reservation. Senator Lenroot of Michigan who poses as a friend and admirer of Canada proposed a Reservation that the United States should have six votes instead of one as all other nations had. "Why?" do you ask? Because "England" had six votes, meaning thereby that "England" would cast the votes allotted to the Dominions including Canada: and degrading Canada, remitting her to her ancient condition of having no control over her relations with the world outside. The rest of the world were content to let Canada have one vote like themselves-France, Italy, Belgium, but the United States was to have six.

Dr. Butler says that "in 1919 . . . the United States was on the very verge of accepting the covenant of the League of Nations with a few carefully drawn reservations"; such a reservation could never have been accepted by Britain or by Canada: and the last state would have been worse than the first.

The opposition to the League of Nations increased and ultimately by means disclosed by Lodge and others less creditable the covenant was refused.

This was the Great Refusal, the Great Abdication of the United Stags of its proud position as leader in the ways of peace.

Wilson's influence, never very great, was practically gone: his appeal to the Grand Assize of the people failed: his health was shattered and the glory of his life departed.

How stands the case today?

The American people are not content--they take pride in the fact that Americans are co-operating with the League--that the Librarian is an American, that many of those selected by the League for important work are Americans as the Commission General in charge of the financial reconstruction of Hungary, in all about a score of Americans "working in the various departments at Geneva that have to do with public health, with the mandates, with the protection of minorities, with the problems of transportation and with matters relating to safety at sea." They are jealous of the reputation of their country and are not satisfied with the inconsiderable part taken in world affairs by it. Few of these will go far as a well-known Republican Senator from Pennsylvania who, speaking of the Locarno Conference the other day at Chicago said of the framers of the Locarno treaties that "having borrowed our money, killed our sons, and turned the world upside down, they are now making the additional blunder of trying to irritate President Coolidge and force the hand of the United States." This was said partly in view of the report that a sort of European Coalition might grow out of the Locarno agreements, strong enough to get along without America.

But such feeling is wide spread--the United States is taking a back seat, is negligible in world affairs--it is no longer the glorious saviour of democracy and civilization which it was in 1916 and 1917, but an object of scarcely concealed contempt as in 1915.

The invented bogey of the Superstate is still occasionally brought out, but it now no longer affrights many; the real difficulty is that party and politicians may "save their face." I am wholly confident that could some way be found to effect that, the League would be accepted without delay.

But the United States still stands with Turkey and Hayti out of the circle into which Germany is soon to enter.

But what have we to do about it?

Nothing.

Every nation has the right to determine its own course without interference or criticism by outsiders: intelligent self interest will continue to govern the conduct of all civilized states-and no outsider has the right to complain or interfere. As we would resent interference with our national conduct by an American, so he will and should resent our interference. It is none of our business, how his country is run; and we must keep our hands off and tongues out.

My remarks have been historical, telling the historical facts as I understand them and not critical as finding fault with the past or missionary as advising for the future.

And not by way of adverse criticism or of advice do I cite their own poet-who knowing that "without vision the people perish" sings:--

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the Strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand and the sheep upon the right;

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong,

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

And no one will misjudge me if I quote our own

British poet (with a slight change):

To every land there openeth A Way and Ways and a Way, And the high soul climbs the High Way And the low soul gropes the Low; While in between on the misty flats The rest drift to and fro. But to every land there openeth A High Way and a Low, And every land decideth Which way its soul shall go.

The United States is drifting on the misty flats if

she has not yet chosen the High Way; she has not, thank God, gone to the Low; her soul must find her rightful wayand may that be soon for billions of treasure, millions of precious lives await the decision. When by the side of our resplendent British Commonwealth of Nations, heroine France, marvellous Italy, virile Japan, starr-eyed Columbia takes her stand, wars shall cease, the world and civilization be secure.

THE HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICES MASTEN, LATCH

FORD and MIDDLETON expressed the thanks of the Club to the speaker.