of Europe over the simplest and most necessary forms of cooperative action, and asks: "How can these idealists talk airily about the establishment of an international army or the dispatch of an international expedition to deal with an aggressor against the 'League of Nations', when they see how long it has taken Japan and the United States to come to an understanding on the subject of joint action in Siberia? Every hour was of priceless value Yet days and weeks were suffered to slip by for political reasons which are perfectly well known and thoroughly understood. Will it be any different when there is a 'League of Nations'?"

A passage as instructive to Americans as it is characteristic of English thought is found in the October number of The English Review, in which its editor, Austin Harrison, illustrates what he conceives to be a general principle by what he regards as a conspicuous example. "There is and can be no such thing ", he says, "as democratic government, as loosely understood; for every democracy is controlled by an oligarchy, whether of intellect, of interest, or of mere popularity, and the purer the democracy the greater would seem to be the authority of its oligarchy, as we have all seen in the astonishing singleness, discipline, and elasticity of the heterogeneous masses of America at war under what is nothing less than the sovereign will of the President. It is this acceptance of oligarchical authority in America that differentiates the democracy of the New World from that of the Old, as particularly exemplified in Britain. Take the case of conscription, which in America became law overnight, though three thousand miles of sea divided America from the theatre of the war, and in no case was any motive put forward for war but that of principle. Here it took us two years, because our democracy does not accept its oligarchy, does not recognize acquiescence, is intellectually and traditionally antagonized by the very idea of authority, whether of government or opportunity."

It is true that the people of the United States have been singularly united and singularly obedient to leadership, but the comment fails to find a true interpretation of the fact. This nation has never bowed to "the sovereign will of the President". It has respected the voice of individual conscience. It beheld in the conduct of Germany an inexpressible wrong of gigantic proportions. It shuddered, but it did not hesitate to judge or condemn. Millions, tens of mil

lions, of men in America wanted to fight Germany when the will of the President was not yet for war, and chafed under the neutrality of their Government. Thousands of our young men went to Canada and to France, in order to help in defeating Germany before any "sovereign will" had expressed itself in the United States. Here was a peaceful nation that did not want peace, but victory; a nation that would have accused and cursed itself if it had not been allowed to fight. The oligarchy", if there be one, responded to the "sovereign will" of an aroused people, not to the leadership of a President. It adhered to him in war, not because he commanded it, but because it had commanded him. There is the explanation of conscription. It was, indeed, based on a " principle "; but the principle was not a governmental enunciation, it was a deep-seated and almost universal declaration of the national mind.

It took England, Mr. Harrison says, "two years to adopt conscription, because English democracy does not accept its oligarchy". In the result the advantage is with England. It took us much more than two years to prepare for war, because our oligarchy did not appeal to its democracy.

The error of this brilliant writer regarding our "oligarchy" and its influence has led him more seriously astray on some other points. Without our intervention, he thinks, the Great War would have had to be settled on the principle of "the balance of power ",-a peace without a victory; and from this he argues that "the message of America is democracy, her mission is union". America is thus held responsible for proposing a "League of Nations". We have been fighting, he thinks, “not Germany; not, in the historical sense, the Germans; but the German idea of mastery, the German feudal system, the Kultur of imperial and dynastic ambition. America is thus fighting against the attitude of the balance of power".

This is a total misapprehension, which proves how inadequately British perception has comprehended our real motives as a people, and how insufficiently we have thus far expressed them. It assumes that we have been fighting for "fourteen points" of European and world reconstruction; and that the success of those, including a League of Nations", was what we have had in mind. There is probably not one soldier or even one officer in the American Army, either in the field or at home, who ever thought for a moment

that he, or his country, was carrying on this war "against the attitude of the balance of power", or to establish a League of Nations". Not one in a hundred thousand ever dreamed that the war had anything to do with "the balance of power"; and few would have known what it meant if it were suggested to them. They were fighting the Germans, because the Germans were brutalizing mankind, violating international law, and destroying people's homes. And there is not a man of them who would not fight again for the same

reason.

We do not wish to be misunderstood in Europe by the representation that we went into this war with the purpose, or for the end, of creating a "League of Nations." We have not, as a people, studied the project. We do not all even know what it is. There are many full-fledged and very ingenious schemes for a "League of Nations" which palpably contradict one another, and no "oligarchy " has yet informed us which one it prefers. Of one thing some of us are sure, we do not wish, or intend, to be bound in the dark, or to be controlled by abstract terms that would make us shrink from keeping our obligations in a concrete way; and we know that nothing is more illusive than the requirements of a treaty, unless it is very precise and treats of matters clearly and definitely known. We, as a people, went into this war to prevent Germany from throttling the world, as she had done to Belgium, and Serbia, and whoever else opposed or did not aid her. It was not to secure for her a place of equality in a society whose laws and whose material interests she had deliberately planned to destroy, that two million peaceful American citizens put on their uniforms and went to Europe over seas in whose waters torpedoes lurked and mines floated. It was to render this savagery forever impossible.

We have not, however, to read far before we discover that it is not a league in the sense of a mere legal compact, with minutely specified obligations, that Mr. Austin Harrison has in mind. 'The real problem in a League of Nations is, to my mind ", he says, "not the sanction-that the soldiers will see to on their return-not the machinery, not the tribunal, not the immediate dispensation of justice, but the creation of a regularized co-operation capable of the necessary flexibility and progressiveness, which alone can give it the life of durability." In brief, it is not a treaty signed by diplomatists, but a union of consciences in a common cause of justice

that is to save the world. Of this no American soldier, I think, would need to be convinced. It was a consciousness of this in his own understanding that made him accept gladly his marching orders.

In another article in the same Review, Austin Harrison, to illustrate his meaning, cites the words of the President of the United States uttered on September 27th, 1918: “It is the peculiarity of this great war that, while statesmen have seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose and have sometimes seemed to shift their ground and point of view, the thought of the mass of men, whom statesmen are supposed to instruct and lead, has grown more and more unclouded, more and more certain of what it is they are fighting for. National purposes have fallen more and more into the background, and the common purpose of enlightened mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain men have become on all hands more simple and straightforward and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still retain the impression that they are playing a game of power and playing for high stakes. That is why I have said that this is a people's war, not a statesman's. Statesmen must follow the clarified common thought or be broken."

These are words as true as they are nobly spoken. They have given to the man who uttered them an unprecedented prestige. In words equally true and noble, Mr. Harrison expresses the expectations which they inspire. "In place of diplomacy acting in secrecy for purely selfish or national motives, Europe is bidden to regard the opportunity of the whole, bidden to the law of a commonwealth." This is assumed to be the message of America that is to save Europe.

Unfortunately, this message is enveloped in a nebula shot through with seeming contradictions. "It is not ", Mr. Harrison continues, " a question of juridical form and formula. Its sanction must be inborn, induced-the evolution of harmony. Peace can never be established on a durable basis through the organization of international councils of control; by police machinery; still less by penal or constrictive impositions. That is the old-the Napoleonic, the German-way. All must go to the table of peace ready to give and to give up; to found a charter of international rights based not on force, but on the sanction of free peoples."

This might well be the message of America. It sounds well, and may be true; though perhaps rather puzzling to the

members of the League to Enforce Peace. But what is the authority for it? Who has been charged to deliver America's message? Who has formulated it? Who has explained it?

In glowing words, Mr. Harrison reiterates the thought that Europe is to be somehow saved by America. "Either an attempt to restart Europe on some accepted law or morality of co-operative utility instead of competitive force with the object of removing the causes of war, or we shall achieve nothing permanent ", he declares. And it is America that is to give the start. And he tells us in what manner. "I can only repeat," he says, "what I have urged again and again, that national conferences should be convened, charged to offer their concerted advice upon the problems of the subject peoples; that these conferences should consider concurrently a common agenda; that the proceedings of all these conferences should be made public, and that they should be in daily telegraphic communication with one another. Something of the kind has been done in France, but here (in England) we have heard of no such assembly of intellect. A Declaration of Rights can hardly issue from a bureaucracy; it must come from the clash of the best minds of democracy, thinking aloud. . . . For the problems are not only international, they are also national, and the danger to the constitution of the new fabric of laws will be found in their application. That is why the collective wisdom emanating from these National Conferences would seem the indispensable condition of the success of any permanent international law. Now the antecedent condition to such a Law of Nations must be a Declaration of Rights."

What progress have we, the American people, made in this direction? We are assumed to have felt, we are said even to have imparted to Europe,-the impulse toward a better international adjustment; but what channel for its expression, what mechanism for its effective operation, has been deliberately even discussed either by or before the people? "The voice of the people must make itself felt, directing the voice of the Conference", we are told; "for only so can there be any 'demonstration' of the new thought essential to release, or any manifestation of sacrifice." What an opportunity then has been missed, to say openly what sacrifices are expected of us? What obligations are to be incurred by us? What legal forms are to be accepted by us, in the great process of creating an international government