No amount of machinery can avail to heal the industrial strife unless that machinery is operated by men of good will.

Finally, there remains the question of the definitive attitude of the United States toward the League of Nations. In spite of the vote of 1920 and the repeated assurance of the present Republican administration that the case is closed, there is no such consensus of opinion among the American people. Positively, the League has proved itself, in the words of Lloyd George, "an essential part of the machinery of civilization." It has grown stronger every year. It has settled a number of important international disputes, and its activities in the fields of finance, transit, customs, health, repatriations, labor, legal advice, taxation, mandates, armaments, and a host of other questions have been fruitful. Negatively, the "ghosts of 1920" have failed to materialize. There has been no invasion of the sovereignty of the member nations, no sign of a "superstate," no provocation to war. The League has not moved a single soldier. If our government has refused to join, our citizens have not held aloof. More than one hundred Americans have given their services on various commissions and in various consultative capacities. Our citizens show an interest in the meetings of the Assembly at Geneva. American journalists report the proceedings of the League with diligence. More League documents are sold in the United States than in any other country. Moreover, the attitude of our government toward the League has changed notably, for all the protestations to the contrary. Ambassador Harvey's unrebuked statement in the spring of 1921 that the idea of our entering the League "by hook or by crook" was "absurd," and that our government would "not have anything to do with the League, or with any commission or committtee appointed by it or responsible to it, either directly or indirectly, openly or furtively," would not be made today. It has been refuted by the facts. We have taken part "indirectly" and "furtively" in more than thirty activities of the League and have been officially represented on five of its commissions, as well as on an institution of its creation-the Permanent Court of International Justice. We have been drawing closer to the League ever since

its formation. For a time our State Department refused to correspond with the Secretariat of the League; but in the spring of 1924 the department concluded, and the Senate ratified, treaties with France and Belgium on the subject of mandates, a subject wholly within the jurisdiction of the League.

The places in the Council and the Assembly of the League of Nations are waiting for the United States. The invitation is as cordial as ever. We are the only important nation in the world voluntarily remaining outside. We share with the Hejaz the distinction of being the only signatories of the Treaty of Versailles that have not joined the League. The admission of Ireland and Abyssinia at the meeting of the Assembly in September, 1923, brought the number of member states up to fifty-four. All of Europe except Germany, Russia, Turkey, and Iceland, all of Asia except Afghanistan, Tibet, and the Hejaz, all of the Americas except Ecuador, Mexico, Santo Domingo-and the United States, are in the League. If we have been mistaken in our fear of the menace of the League, no false pride of consistency should keep us from confessing our mistake and changing our attitude. If we are still cherishing lingering partisan and personal animosities as the justification for our refusal to cooperate openly and heartily with the federated world in the manifold activities to promote international peace, security, and good will, we show ourselves unworthy of our greatness. "Duncan is in his grave." Secretary Hughes was right when he said in his speech of April 15, 1924, to the New York Republican State Committee, that the dominating principle of our foreign policy has always been a helpful coöperation with the nations of the world for the promotion of international peace and arbitration. He pointed to the fact that we had "signed fifty treaties and international agreements in the past three years," and declared emphatically that "whoever says that America stands aloof and withholds her support from a stricken world is guilty of a reckless slander." Still, the United States withholds her support from the one and only recognized international agency for the promotion of the very objects which she acknowledges as worthy of her own best efforts. We need not decry or minimize

those efforts if we at the same time recall an answer once given to men who thought that they had performed their whole duty: "This ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."

America is strong, rich, powerful, courageous, and hopeful. She need have no fear of foes from without. So long as she is faithful to the ideals which guided the men who founded and preserved her democratic institutions, she will remain a light to the nations. No more inspiring call to the task of a newly awakened America in the newly forming world could be found than the words with which President Coolidge closed his first message to Congress and the American people, on December 6, 1923: "It is one hundred years since our country announced the Monroe Doctrine. . . . This principle must be maintained. But in maintaining it we must not be forgetful that a great change has taken place. We are no longer a weak nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition. We are great and powerful. New powers bring new responsibilities. Our duty then was to protect ourselves. Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world. We want idealism. We want that vision which lifts men above themselves. These are virtues by reason of their own merit. But they must not be cloistered; they must not be impractical; they must not be ineffective.

"The world has had enough of the curse of hatred and selfishness, of destruction and war. It has had enough of the wrongful use of material power. For the healing of the nations there must be good will and charity, confidence and peace. . . . Our authority among the nations must be represented by justice and mercy. . . . The spiritual forces of the world make all its final determinations. It is with these voices that America should speak."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is no work on our history since the Civil War and the reconstruction era to compare in scale and scope with the sets of Channing, McMaster, Schouler, and Rhodes. Professor Channing's latest volume (V) covers the period from 1815 to 1848. Professor McMaster's eighth and closing volume ends with the year 1861. Mr. Schouler brings his history down to the close of the reconstruction period (Vol. VII). Although Mr. Rhodes has published two supplementary volumes to his great work on our history since the Compromise of 1850,-namely, From Hayes to McKinley (1919) and The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations (1922),—they are decidedly inferior in substance and style to the seven original volumes, which bring the story down to the election of Hayes. E. P. Oberholtzer is writing a comprehensive History of the United States since the Civil War "in five volumes" (The Macmillan Company). The first volume (1917) covers the period 1865-1868, and the second volume (1922) reaches the year 1872. On this scale and at this rate of production Mr. Oberholtzer's five volumes would bring the history down only to the middle of President Arthur's administration by 1937.

The student's main dependence for a detailed history of our country since the Civil War will be upon the volumes in Group V of the American Nation series (Harper & Brothers); namely, W. A. Dunning's Reconstruction, Political and Economic (1865-1877), E. E. Sparks's National Development (1877-1885), D. R. Dewey's National Problems (1885-1897), J. H. Latané's America as a World Power (1897-1907), and F. A. Ogg's National Progress (1907-1917). These volumes, edited by A. B. Hart, are based on the sources and are provided with excellent maps and bibliographies. The important maps in the series have been collected in a volume entitled Harper's Atlas of American History and supplemented by valuable "Map Studies" by Dixon Ryan Fox. The Chronicles of America, edited by Allen Johnson (Yale University Press), treats our political history since the Civil War in a rather summary fashion, a dozen of the last nineteen volumes in the series of fifty being devoted to special social and economic topics like education, literature, inventions, immigration, labor, the railroads, and big business. The closing volume (V) of Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People (Harper & Brothers) is a well-written narrative, with illustrations, covering the period 1865-1902 and designed rather for the edu