NAKO

1519

VOL. XXXI.

No. 8

The Senate of the United States adjourned November 19. The vote on the ratification of the peace treaty with the Lodge reservations resulted in 39 votes for ratification and 55 votes against ratification. Thirty-five Republicans and four Democrats voted for ratification, and thirteen Republicans and forty-two Democrats voted against ratification.

Thus the long fight over the peace treaty and the covenant of the league of nations ended in the defeat of the treaty. Defeat of the treaty, unless amendments or reservations to the league covenant were accepted, has been for some time a foregone conclusion. The treaty as submitted by the President was obnoxious to a great body of American citizens. It violated not only the traditions and principles of America, it violated the Constitution of the United States. It outraged, not American pride, but the American sense of fairness and justice in the provision for six votes for the British Empire and one vote for the United States. It surrendered sovereign powers of America to an alien and foreign body. It pledged the youth of our land to armed defence of the territorial integrity and political independence of the member states of the League. Its provisions involved obligations and respon

sibilities of undreamed of magnitude and incalculable extent.

It was evident from the first that the President intended to force this compact without change upon the American people. It was also evident from the first that the American people would not accept the compact unless their responsibilities were clearly defined, American rights protected and American sovereignty safeguarded.

The end of an un-American treaty has come, but the way is still open for an Americanized treaty.

In the great task of world construction America is ready to take its part.

We have never shirked our obligations to humanity or to civilization. America has been the friend and benefactor of mankind. We threw our might and our treasure into the great conflict and saved the world for liberty. American idealism is not dead; but it will remain American idealism, and not a confused internationalism.

We entered the great adventure without thought of gain or reward. In every great enterprise for world good America can be counted upon to do her part, but if we are to be true to our obligations to the world we must first be true to ourselves.

There is a powerful and, indeed, a commanding reason why I shall record my vote against this treaty. It imperils what I conceive to be the underlying, the very first principles of this republic. It is in conflict with the right of our people to govern themselves free from any legal or moral restraint of foreign Powers. It challenges every tenet of my political faith. If this faith was one of my own contriving, if I stood here to assert principles of government of my own evolving, I might well be charged with intolerable presumption, for we recognize the ability of those who urge a different course. But I offer in justification of my course nothing of my own-save the deep and abiding reverence I have for those whose policies I humbly but most ardently support. I claim no merit save fidelity to American principles and devotion to American ideals as they were wrought out from time to time by those who built the republic and as they have been extended and maintained throughout these years. In opposing the treaty I do nothing more than decline to renounce and tear out of my life the sacred traditions which throughout fifty years have been translated into my whole intellectual and moral being. I will not, I cannot, give up my belief that America must, not alone for the happiness of her own people, but for the moral guidance and greater contentment of the world, be permitted to live her own life. Next to the

tie which binds a man to his God, is the tie which binds a man to his country, and all schemes, all plans, however ambitious and fascinating they seem in their proposal, but which would embarrass or entangle and impede or shackle her sovereign will, which would compromise her freedom of action I unhesitatingly put behind me.

Since the debate opened months ago those of us who have stood against this proposition have been taunted many times with being little Americans. Leave us the word American, keep that in your presumptuous impeachment, and no taunt can disturb us, no gibe discompose our purposes. Call us little Americans if you will, but leave us the consolation and the pride which the term American, however modified, still imparts. Take away that term and though you should coin in telling phrase your highest eulogy we would hurl it back as common slander. We have been ridiculed because, forsooth, of our limited vision; possibly that charge may be true. Who is there here that can read the future? Time, unerring and remorseless, will give us each our proper place in the affections of our countrymen and in the esteem and commendation of those who are to come after us. We neither fear nor court her favor. But if our vision has been circumscribed it has been within its compass clear and steady. We have sought nothing save the tranquil

lity of our own people and the honor and independence of our own republic. No foreign flattery, no possible world glory and power have disturbed our poise or come between us and our devotion to the traditions which have made us a people or the policies which have made us a nation, unselfish and commanding. If we have erred we have erred out of too much love for those things which from childhood you and we together have been taught to revere—yes, to defend even at the cost of limb and life. we have erred it is because we have placed too high an estimate upon the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson, too exalted an opinion upon the patriotism of the sainted Lincoln. And blame us not, therefore, if we have, in our limited vision, seemed sometimes bitter and at all times uncompromising for the things which we have spoken. The things which we have endeavored to defend have been the things for which your fathers and our fathers have been willing to die.

Senators, even in an hour so big with expectancy we should not close our eyes to the fact that democracy is something more, vastly more, than a nere form of government by which society is restrained into free and orlerly life. It is a moral entity, a spiritual force as well. And these are hings which live only and alone in the atmosphere of liberty. The foundaion upon which democracy rests is faith in the moral instincts of the peoole. Its ballot boxes, the franchise, ts laws and constitutions are but the outward manifestations of the deeper and more essential thing-a continung trust in the moral purposes of the

average man and woman. When this is lost or forfeited your outward forms, however democratic in terms, are a mockery. Force may find expression through institutions democratic in structure equal with the simple and more direct processes of a single supreme ruler. These distinguishing virtues of a real republic you cannot commingle with the discordant and destructive forces of the Old World and still preserve them, you cannot yoke a government whose fundamental maxim is that of liberty to a government whose first law is that of force and hope to preserve the former. These things are in eternal war, and one must ultimately destroy the other. You may still keep for a time the outword forms. You may still delude yourself, as others have done in the past, with appearances and symbols, but when you shall have committed this republic to a scheme of world control based upon force, upon the combined military force of the four great nations of the world, you will have soon destroyed the atmosphere of freedom, of confidence in the self-governing capacity of the masses, in which alone a democracy may thrive. We may become one of the four dictators of the world, but we shall not longer be master of our own spirit. And what shall it profit us. as a nation if we shall go forth to the dominion of the earth, and share with others the glory of world control and lose that fine sense of confidence in the people, the soul of democracy.

Look upon the scene as it is now represented. Behold the task we are to assume, and then contemplate the method by which we are to deal with this task. Is the method such as to

address itself to a government "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propositon that all men are created equal?" When this League, this combination, is formed, four great Powers representing the dominant people will rule one-half of the inhabitants of the globe as subject peoples-rule by force, and we will be a party to the rule of force. There is no other way by which you can keep people in subjection. You must either give them independence, recognize their rights as nations to live their own life and to set up their own form of government, or you must deny them those things by force. That is the scheme. We will in time become inured to its inhuman precepts and its soulless methods, strange as this doctrine now seems to a free people. If we stay with our contract, we will come in time to declare with our associates that force-force, the creed of the Prussian oligarchy-is after all the true foundation upon which must rest all stable governments. Korea, despoiled and bleeding at every pore; India, sweltering in ignorance and burdened with taxes after more than a hundred years of dominant rule; Egypt, trapped and robbed of her birthright; Ireland, with 700 years of sacrifice for independence-this is the task, this is the atmosphere, and this is the creed in and under which we are to keep alive our belief in the moral purposes and self-governing capacity of the people, a belief without which the republic must disintegrate and die. The maxim of liberty will soon give way to the rule of blood and iron. We have been pleading here for our Constitution. Conform this League, it

has been said, to the technical terms of our charter and all will be well. But I declare to you that we must go farther and conform to those sentiments and passions for justice and freedom which are essential to the existence of democrary. You must respect not territorial boundaries, not territorial integrity, but must respect and preserve the sentiments and passions for justice and for freedom which God in His infinite wisdom has planted deep in the human heart and which no force of tyranny, no persecution, can wholly uproot and kill. Respect nationality, respect justice, respect freedom, and you may have some hope of peace, but not so if you make your standard the standard of tyrants and despots, the protection of real estate regardless of how it is obtained.

We are told that this treaty means peace. Even so I would not pay the price. Would you purchase peace at the cost of our independence? We could have had peace in 1776. The price was high, but we could have had it. James Otis, Sam Adams, Hancock, and Warren were surrounded by those who urged peace and British rule. All through that long and trying struggle, particularly when the clouds of adversity lowered upon the cause, there was a cry of peace-Let us have peace. We could have had peace in 1860: Lincoln was counseled by men of great influence and accredited wisdom to let our brothers—and, thank heaven, they are brothers-depart in peace. But the tender, loving Lincoln, bending under the fearful weight of impending civil war, an apostle of peace, refused to pay the

price, and a reunited country will praise his name forever more-bless it because he refused peace at the price of national honor and national integrity, which is fit only for slaves, and, when purchased at such a price, is a delusion, for it cannot last.

But your treaty does not mean peace-far, very far from it. If we are to judge the future by the past, it means war. Is there any guaranty of peace other than the guaranty which comes of the control of the war-making power by the people? Yet what great rule of democracy does the treaty leave unassailed. The people, in whose keeping alone you can safely lodge the power of peace or war, nowhere, at no time, and in no place, have any voice in this scheme for world peace. Autocracy, which has bathed the world in blood for centuries, reigns supreme. Democracy is everywhere excluded. This, you say, means peace.

Can you hope for peace when love of country is disregarded in your scheme, when the spirit of nationality is scoffed at, even rejected? Yet what law of that moving and mysterious force does your treaty not deny? With a ruthlessness unparalleled your treaty runs counter to the divine law of nationality. People who speak the same language, kneel at the same ancestral tombs, moved by the same traditions, animated by a common hope, are torn asunder, broken in pieces, divided and parceled out to antagonistic nations, and this you call justice. This, you cry, means peace. Peoples who have dreamed of independence, struggled and been patient, sacrificed and been hopeful; peoples who were told that through this Peace Conference they should realize the aspira

tions of centuries, have again had their hopes dashed to earth. One of the most striking and commanding figures in this war, a soldier and a statesman, turned away from the peace table at Versailles, declaring to the world, "The promise of the new life, the victory of the great humane ideals for which the peoples have shed their blood and their treasure without stint, the fulfilment of their aspirations toward a new international order and a fairer and better world are not written into the treaty."

No, your treaty means injustice. It means slavery. It means war. And to all this you ask this republic to become a party. You ask it to abandon the creed under which it has grown to power and accept the creed of autocracy, the creed of repression and force.

I turn from this scheme based upon force to another scheme planned 148 years ago in old Independence Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, based upon liberty. I like it better. I have become so accustomed to believe in it, that it is difficult for me to reject it out of hand. I have difficulty in subscribing to the new creed of oppression, the creed of dominant and subject peoples. I feel a reluctance to give up the belief that all men are created equal-the eternal principle in government that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. I cannot get my consent to exchange the doctrine of George Washington for the doctrine of Frederick the Great translated into mendacious phrases of peace. I go back to that serene and masterful soul who pointed the way to power and glory for the new and then weak republic and whose teachings and ad