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_.