Note 498 — BOOK VIII THE AGE OF THE GREAT POWERS (continued 7)

An unfriendly critic might denounce the treaty-making power of the United States, and the machinery by which it operates, as complicated and cumbersome, ill adapted to the complex demands of international intercourse, slow in action and uncertain in outcome. The requirement of a two-thirds rather than a majority vote in the Senate he might criticize not unjustly as a dubious excess of caution.... Believe me, the American people are like for many years to accomplish through this means their compacts with mankind. The checks and balances by which it is surrounded, the free and full debate which it allows, are in their eyes virtues rather than defects. They rejoice in the fact that all engagements which affect their destinies must be spread upon the public records, and that there is not, and there never can be, a secret treaty binding them either in law or in morals. Looking back upon a diplomatic history which is not without its chapters of success, they feel that on the whole the scheme the fathers builded has served the children well. With a conservatism in matters of government as great perhaps as that of any people in the world, they will suffer much inconvenience and run the risk of occasional misunderstanding before they make a change.—J. W. Davis (U. S. A. Ambassador to Britain), The Treaty Making Power of the United States. (Oxf. Univ. Brit. Am. Club. Paper No. 1.)