as justice and self-determination to dependent and oppressed states. To federate upon anything less is to invite and to perpetuate social chaos. Nothing less will establish a true world democracy, or make the degree of democracy we now possess in reality safe.

T

HE time has not yet arrived to write a history of the origin of the League of Nations, nor of the source of its many world programs. It is sufficient to say that on the outbreak of the war thoughtful minds everywhere began to question how a like calamity in the future might be avoided. The formation of a League of Nations to prevent war was so logical, so inevitable a step in the evolution of nations that programs for a League began to spring up spontaneously in many countries and places. It is possible to indicate here only a few of these American and European outlines, giving the programs themselves in an appendix at the end of the chapters.

As the United States for three years was not in the war and consequently was not absorbed, as were France and Great Britain, in war problems, it was possible for this country to take immediate steps towards organization for propaganda in behalf of world peace. The best known American organization for this purpose is the League to

Enforce Peace. This society took form in Independence Hall in Philadelphia in June 1915, Mr. William Howard Taft being chosen as President, and about three hundred statesmen, professors and international lawyers being present.

In commenting on the origin of the Platform of the League to Enforce Peace, Mr. William H. Short, Secretary of the League says: "It is not the proposal of a single man or company of men. Representative groups of statesmen and publicists, here and abroad, held conferences on the subject through periods covering many months, the conclusions of which, when made public, were in practical agreement. This spontaneity gives it an inevitable character and significance which guarantee its wisdom and timeliness." In the fall of 1918 the League to Enforce Peace adopted a Victory Program endorsing President Wilson's plan.

The first annual conference of the new League was held in Washington in May, 1916. It was at a dinner of this convention that President Wilson made his first public utterance of sympathy with the idea of a universal association of nations to maintain public order. In speaking of the farreaching effects of the European war he said: "We are not mere disconnected onlookers. We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also. We are partners with the rest.

What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia." He then indicated the necessity of the substitution of "conference for force" and added: "It is clear that nations must in the future be governed by the same high code of honor that we demand of individuals."

President Wilson then formulated the three fundamentals of government that should unite nations in a common cause. They were "first, that every people has the right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations."

The effect of this speech made before an American association founded to promote world peace, was electric especially among small and oppressed nationalities in Europe, and by virtue of his position as President of the American Democracy, Mr. Wilson from that time on became the chief exponent of the League of Nations idea.

With the entrance of President Wilson into the arena of world politics something new was contributed to the realm of international thinking. It is to be noted in the fact that the President dwells

lightly on the idea of international armies forming a common police force. President Wilson has seen deeper into the problem of federated peace, and has shown us how futile any machinery of enforcement will be that does not rest primarily upon international righteousness and good will. Not all the machinery law can create, not all the judges nations may summon, can keep the world peace between nations that do not trust each other. And the way to cultivate mutual trust is not by an appeal to common interest, since "interests separate and do not unite," but by an appeal to devotion to duty and to the right. President Wilson, in short, has appealed to the common conscience of mankind, and by the wideness of that appeal has awakened the international conscience. Backed by this common conscience, Mr. Wilson has formulated a new code of group ethics, of group morality between states, and his name will stand or fall in history according to his power to compel nations to accept his vision of collective morality, his statutes of a new world creed founded upon international justice rather than upon material power.

His own Fourteen Points were formulated in an address to Congress stating the War Aims and Peace Terms of the United States, delivered on January 8th, 1918.

In speaking of the President's Program, Walter Lippmann, Secretary to the Special Committee of