A World League to Enforce Peace

By William Howard Taft, ex-President of the United States.

President Wilson on June 15 denied the statement, cabled from Europe, that the United States was the only great neutral Government that had not encouraged the movement among neutral nations looking to a conference of neutrals to end the European conflict. To this Government, said the President, answering a direct inquiry, had been given no more opportunity than everybody knew in furthering a neutral movement for peace. He stated that this Government had supported everything of the sort as far as it could legitimately. It had done everything that was for peace and accommodation, he added. But the great drawback has been that none of the warring Governments has directly, that is officially, indicated that it would respond sympathetically to any suggestion that it become a party to a movement to end the war. The idea of a league of neutral nations, having for its object a concerted effort to bring about peace, is reported to be in the back of the President's mind, and members of the Cabinet have given some thought to the suggestion, which might contemplate the firm maintenance of neutral rights if peace could not be obtained, but the situation has not developed to a point where the American Government is ready to make a definite move.

Meanwhile, as the outgrowth of a series of meetings held in the Century Club, New York, terminating in a call for a conference signed by a National Provisional Committee of 109 members headed by ex-President Taft, an organization known as the League to Enforce Peace, American Branch, was formed on June 17, 1915, in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. The purpose of the conference was explained by Mr. Taft in his address as President, which appears in full below.

MY fellow-seekers after peace, we thank you for your cordial greeting. In calling this meeting my associates and I have not been unaware that we might be likened to the tailors of Tooley Street, who mistook themselves for the people of England. We wish first to say that we do not represent anybody but ourselves. We are not national legislators, nor do we control the foreign policy of this Government. A number of us were invited to dinner at the Century Club (New York) by four generous hosts, who were deeply interested in devising a plan for an international agreement by which, when this present war shall cease, a recurrence of such a war will be made less probable.

We are not here to suggest a means of bringing this war to an end; much as that is to be desired and much as we would be willing to do to obtain peace, that is not within the project of the present meeting.

We hope and pray for peace, and our hope of its coming in the near future is sufficient to make us think that the present is a good time to discuss and formulate a series of proposals to which the assent of a number of the great powers could be secured. We think a League of Peace could be formed that would enable nations to avoid war by furnishing a practical means of settling international quarrels, or suspending them until the blinding heat of passion had cooled.

When the World Conference is held our country will have its official representatives to speak for us. "We, Tailors of Tooley Street," will not be there, but if, in our sartorial leisure, we shall have discussed and framed a practical plan for a league of peace, our official representatives will be aided and may in their discretion accept it and present it to the conference as their own.

There are Tooley Streets in every nation today and the minds of earnest men are being stirred with the same thought and the same purpose. We have heard from them through various channels. The denizens of those Tooley Streets will have their influence upon their respective official representatives. No man can measure the effect upon the peoples of the belligerent countries and upon the peoples of the neutral countries—the horrors and exhaustion that this unprecedented war is going to have. It is certain they all will look with much more favorable eye to leagues for the preservation of peace than ever before.

In no war has the direct interest that neutrals have in preventing a war between neighbors been so closely made known.

This interest of neutrals has been so forced upon them that it would require only a slight development and growth in the law of international relations to develop that interest into a right to be consulted before such a war among neighbors can be begun. This step we hope to have taken by the formation of a Peace League of the Great Powers, whose primary and fundamental principle shall be that no war can take place between any two members of the league until they have resorted to the machinery that the league proposes to furnish to settle the controversy likely to lead to war.

If any member refuses to use this machinery and attacks another member of the league in breach of his league obligation, all members of the league agree to defend the members attacked by force.

We do not think the ultimate resort to force can be safely omitted from an effective League of Peace. We sincerely hope that it may never become necessary, and that the deterrent effect of its inevitable use in case of a breach of the league obligation will help materially to give sanction to the laws of the league and to render a resort to force avoidable.

We are not peace-at-any-price men, because we do not think we have reached the time when a plan based on the complete abolition of war is impracticable. So long as nations partake of the frailties of men who compose them, war is a possibility, and that possibility should not be ignored in any League of Peace that is to be useful. We do not think it necessary to call peace-at-any-price men cowards or apply other epithets to them. We have known in history the most noble characters who adhered to such a view and yet whose physical and moral courage is a heritage of mankind.

To those who differ with us in our view of the necessity for this feature of possible force in our plan, we say we respect your attitude. We admit your claim to sincere patriotism to be as just as ours. We do not ascribe your desire to avoid war to be a fear of death to yourselves or your sons; but rather to your sense of the horrors, injustice, and ineffectiveness of settling any international issue by such a brutal arbitrament. Nevertheless, we differ with you in judgment that, in the world of nations as they are, war can be completely avoided.

We believe it is still necessary to use a threat of overwhelming force of a great league with a willingness to make the threat good in order to frighten nations into a use of rational and peaceful means to settle their issues with their associates of the league. Nor are we militarists or jingoes. We are trying to follow a middle path.

Now what is the machinery, a resort to which we wish to force an intending belligerent of the league—it consists of two tribunals, to one of which every issue must be submitted. Issues between nations are of two classes:

First—Issues that can be decided on principles of international law and equity, called justiciable.

Second—Issues that cannot be decided on such principles of law and equity, but which might be quite as irritating and provocative of war, called non-justiciable.

The questions of the Alaskan boundary, of the Bering Sea seal fishing, and of the Alabama Claims were justiciable issues that could be settled by a court, exactly as the Supreme Court would settle claims between States. The questions whether the Japanese should be naturalized, whether all American citizens should be admitted to Russia as merchants without regard to religious faith, are capable of causing great irritation against the nation denying the privilege, and yet such nations, in the absence of a treaty on the subject, are completely within their international right, and the real essence of the trouble cannot be aided by a resort to a court. The trouble is non-justiciable.

We propose that for justiciable questions we shall have an impartial court to which all questions arising between members of the league shall be submitted. If the court finds the question justiciable, it shall decide it. If it does not, it shall refer it to a Commission of Conciliation to investigate, confer, hear argument, and recommend a compromise.

We do not propose to enforce compliance either with the court's judgment or the Conciliation Commission's recommendations. We feel that we ought not to attempt too much—we believe that the forced submission and the truce taken to investigate the judicial decision or the conciliatory compromise recommended will form a material inducement to peace. It will cool the heat of passion, and will give the men of peace in each nation time to still the jingoes.

The League of Peace will furnish a great opportunity for more definite formulation of the principles of international law. The arbitral court will amplify it and enrich it in their application of its general principles to particular cases. They will create a body of Judge-made law of the highest value. Then the existence of the league will lead to ever-recurring congresses of the league, which, acting in a quasi-legislative capacity, may widen the scope of international law in a way that a court may not feel able or competent to do.

This is our plan. It is not so complicated—at least, in statement. In its practical application difficulties now unforeseen may arise, but we believe it offers a working hypothesis upon which a successful arrangement can be made.

We are greeted first by the objection that no treaties can prevent war. We are not called upon to deny this in order to justify or vindicate our proposals as useful. We realize that nations sometimes are utterly immoral in breaking treaties and shamelessly bold in avowing their right to do so on the ground of necessity; but this is not always the case. We cannot give up treaties because sometimes they are broken any more than we can give up commercial contracts because men sometimes dishonor themselves in breaking them. We decline to assume that all nations always are dishonorable, or that a solemn treaty obligation will not have some deterrent effect upon a nation that has plighted its faith to prevent its breach. When we add to this the sanction of an agreement by a number of powerful nations to enforce the obligation of the recalcitrant and faithless member, we think we have a treaty that is much more than a "scrap of paper"—and we base our faith in this on a common-sense view of human nature.

It is objected that we propose only to include the more powerful nations. We'll gladly include them all. But we don't propose to have the constitution of our court complicated by a demand for equal representation of the many smaller nations. We believe that when we have a league of larger powers the smaller powers will be glad to come in and enjoy the protection that the league will afford against the unjust aggression of the strong against the weak.

It is suggested that we invite a conference of neutral nations to bring about measures for present peace and to formulate demands as to the protection of neutral rights. This may be a good plan, but, as Kipling says, that is another story.