peace within its borders, and every state must, for purely domestic reasons, have power to raise and support armies and maintain a navy. This power must exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or to define the extent and variety of the national emergencies. No shackles, therefore, can wisely be placed upon the authorities to whom the maintenance of domestic peace is committed. Competitions in armaments do not arise from the presence in the world of the armed forces necessary to maintain domestic peace.

The test of a country's fitness for self-government is its ability to maintain domestic peace. The power that protects a country from outside interference is bound, by the law of nations and its duty to foreign nations, to preserve order within the protected area. To expect England, for instance, to withdraw from India, renouncing all responsibility for the domestic peace of the land, but continuing to protect it from invasion, as so many demand, is an absurdity in thought, which recalls the petition of the Filipino municipality for Philippine independence and an increase in the local garrison of United States soldiers. Self-government is of the nature of a faculty; it should be the privilege of those who are able to develop the faculty.

Any scheme of disarmament which reduces the armed forces of a state below the requirements for domestic tranquillity must provide for intervention of armed forces from abroad - an intolerable contingency for any people possessing the faculty of self-government. The problem of maintaining domestic peace confronts every government on the planet, and it would confront, in an aggravated form, any world-state that might be erected to eliminate international war-a subject which now claims our attention.

II

Periodically some bandit nation runs wild and strikes a league with the Turks, the professional revolutionists, the dis contented, and the ignorant of all nations, and seeks to impose its rule upon the world in the name of liberty and the freedom of the seas. We cannot get rid of these peoples and we cannot get rid of their will to rule us and reform us by violent means; nor can we induce them to subside into inactivity, without the use of force of some kind.

In coming to the rescue of the Allies who were resisting the efforts of Germany, the latest of these bandits, to impose her despotic rule upon the world, the United States was obeying the Law of Mutual Aid, which has impelled threatened nations, throughout recorded history, to aid one another against aggressive powers that menaced their liberties. It is the law that impelled the nations to unite against Cyrus, Darius, Philip of Macedon, Alexander, Republican Rome, England under the Plantagenets, Charles V, Philip II, Ferdinand II, Louis XIV, the French Republic, Napoleon, and, finally, Imperial Germany. It is a law of nature, which persists unaffected by the wrecks of republics and empires and the change of creeds, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. It is beyond the power of fate, and no intellectual revolution can suppress or alter it.

I have taken this term from a suggestion in Vattel, in order to avoid the expression 'Balance of Power,' which signifies the same thing, but is misunderstood and misapplied by nearly all recent popular writers. In common parlance the Balance of Power means the balancing of one power or state against another, or of coalitions of powers against each other. Article X of the League of Nations is an excellent definition of the Balance of Power, or Law of Mutual Aid; but its advocates exclaim loudly against the Balance of Power, and say there must be no more of it. Does this come from ignorance or a willful abuse of language?—THE AUTHOR.

France, in accordance with the principle, recently came to the rescue of Poland when she was apparently in her last agonies. This universal law has been scoffed at by the demagogues of all nations, living and extinct, who have appealed to the opposite principle of neutrality; but when the occasion has come, they have followed the law without knowing it. This law is embodied in our Constitution in the clause which requires that the 'United States . . shall protect each of them [the states] against invasion,' not only from abroad but from each other, as the seceding Confederate States learned at Antietam and Gettysburg; it is embodied in its most gracious and pleasing form in the Monroe Doctrine, whereby the United States virtually guarantees every American nation, regardless of its form of government, against invasion by any non-American state.

...

Germany began the war in 1914, in the belief that the Law of Mutual Aid did not exist, or, as the German Chancellor expressed it in his speech of December 2, 1914, that the 'balance of power had become out of date and was no longer practicable.' She believed that the passionate attachment of the nations to the doctrine of neutrality would enable her to isolate and attack her immediate neighbors without the danger of intervention of other countries. She found to her sorrow that the law did exist, and that nation after nation joined the forces arrayed against hér, until she became an outlaw among nations. If the Germans had realized the inevitable fate that awaited them, when they began their war of aggression in 1914; if Prince Bismarck, who thoroughly understood the law and carefully kept Germany from becoming its victim, had been at the helm, they would not have begun it; nor would they have piled up great armaments in preparation for a great war of aggression.

But how, we may ask, are the statesmen to be enlightened, who are usually at the head of the two or three aggressive nations of the world? The answer to this question will solve the armament competition question therapeutically, armaments being merely a symptom of a disease.

The answer is as old as Demosthenes, and may be found in nearly every one of his orations. Mr. Wilson recognized the malady, diagnosed it correctly, and sought to treat it therapeutically. A correct diagnosis is not always followed by correct treatment, and those who agree least with Mr. Wilson's remedy would do well to examine his diagnosis with care. It was a bold and remarkable confession of error, that the man who appealed to Americans at the beginning of the World War to be neutral in thought and action, publicly stated, when his eyes were opened, that neutrality in such a war is intolerable, and finally signed a treaty designed to abolish neutrality in war, and even sought to deprive his successors in office of the discretionary power which he himself had exercised in the tragic months of July and August, 1914.

The civilized world is a community of free commonwealths. The forcible absorption of any one of these by another is contrary to the interests of the rest, as the state thus aggrandized becomes a menace to its neighbors. The Law of Mutual Aid, founded purely upon self-interest, prompts nations to come to the aid of states threatened with absorption, in whole or in part, by powerful neighbors; the doctrine of neutrality, one of the fundamental bases of modern international law, which is largely designed to favor conquest, bids nations, so long as they are not actually attacked, to sit idly by, neutral in thought and deed, while neighboring states are being crushed by superior might.

Mr. Wilson put his finger upon the disease; neutrality is not the way to peace between free commonwealths; it is the way to the peace which exists under despotism. The world will adopt peaceful habits only when the ambitious aggressor among nations is as certain to encounter overwhelming force as would be the aggressor among the states of the American Union.

How may this certainty be secured? It is not enough that a state should merely avoid aggression. To preserve peace and independence, something further is needed. While it is impossible to rely upon the self-restraint of nations, it is possible to limit their aggressions. A country that aspires to conquest is the most vicious of wild beasts. We cannot exempt ourselves from its attacks by resolving to avoid them. The negative policy of curbing one's own ambition must therefore be supplemented by a positive programme.

Does the Law of Mutual Aid lead to a new Holy Alliance? No, since the Holy Alliance aimed only at preventing revolutions arising within national boundaries, and had nothing in common with the measures designed to prevent one state from attacking another. It is well, of course, to remember that radical revolutionary governments tear up previous treaties. No treaty with the Tsar's government binds the Bolsheviki. Revolutionary governments are invariably aggressive toward other nations. The French Republic, in a single campaign, gained greater successes than all previous monarchs of France. Toward revolutionary governments it is wise to pursue a policy of non-intervention, but nations must be prepared to meet their aggressions.

III

Before we consider what may be done to facilitate the natural operation of the

Law of Mutual Aid, it is well to point out the ways that must be avoided.

A super-state, a government over governments, such as the League of Nations, is, from its nature, doomed to failure. It is a confederation, as opposed to a federation, which is a government over individual human beings. The United States is a federation, and, as a government, is efficient, because it legislates for individuals, has power to tax them and to command their services, and can compel obedience by the process of a court.

A confederation legislates for governments, lives by doles from governments which collect from individuals, and can compel the obedience of the subordinate states only by acts of war. In a confederation every breach of law involves a state of war. When a confederation is under the control of a strong coercing state, as were the Roman Republic and the Assyrian Empire, its history is marked by civil wars. It was such a form of government that Germany intended to give to the world. A confederation which is not under such control such as the United States under the Articles of Confederation and the League of Nations is a mere semblance of government, the shadow without the substance, built of wrong materials, and resting upon no foundations whatsoever.

It is futile to think of forming a super-state by conferring upon it the power to make peace and war, without giving it the power of unlimited taxation directly upon the men and women of the world. Whoever controls the purse controls the sword. This fact is recognized in the rule of unanimity required for important acts in every confederation of the soft-core type. Such a rule is a sure indication of a government based upon unsound principles.

A belief in the efficacy of arbitration as a bloodless substitute for interna

tional war has become a part of the habitual thought of the world; but sensible men must be on their guard against this cup of enchantments. Nations do not go to war over things that can be arbitrated, and arbitration treaties serve only as caustic irritants of the relations between states. The fallacy in arbitration lies in the fact that the causes of war, being political in their nature, can be settled only by political agencies, never by courts of justice. The pretexts upon which nations declare war are a mere covering brought forward to conceal the real political cause, which is invariably the desire for conquest. To arbitrate the pretext is like treating the symptoms in medical practice. International arbitration, as a means of applying the principles of justice to the causes which lead to war, is a farce.

In no known instance could arbitration treaties have averted war. every case the aggressor began hostilities for the purpose of making conquest. He had made up his mind to break treaties, and an arbitration treaty is as easily broken as any other. Moreover, nations are unwilling to impawn their future being and action by binding themselves to abide by the irrevocable decisions of judges who base their opinions upon what they decide is the law; nor are they willing to confer legislative power upon judges by authorizing them to say what shall be the law.

Nations cannot afford to enter into an agreement that will permit other nations to hale them into court, to answer for political acts which may or may not lead to war. To do so is to resign their governments into the hands of the court. Those who advocate such action take no heed of the fixed unwillingness of men to settle political matters, either domestic or international, by judicial

means.

In regard to proposals to postpone

actual hostilities until there can be an investigation as to the merits of a controversy, it may be said at once that there are never any merits in the 'controversy.' The quarrels of nations that are not bent upon conquest begin and end in words, and no elaborate machinery for making investigations is necessary in such cases, The aggressions of the international bandit aiming at the conquest of weaker nations can be stayed only by the known readiness of nations to aid each other in case of attack. Nations that seek protection in treaties of investigation and arbitration are foolish.

IV

We shall now consider the positive measures that may be taken to avert international war.

The nations have been able to preserve their independence against bandit states only by long and bloody wars. How may they preserve their liberty without the necessity of waging these wars? Surely in no other way than by making it unmistakably evident that inevitable defeat awaits the ambitious aggressor. Positive measures for the maintenance of international peace must be based upon the Law of Mutual Aid, and must recognize the fact that the control of the sword cannot be taken from the hands of the great legislative assemblies which now control, and which seem destined to control for all time, the nations' purse-strings.

Two methods, both of which are tried and approved deterrents of war, meet these requirements.

1. The first method is by defensive alliance treaties, of which the treaty long subsisting between England and Portugal is a good example. The objection to such treaties is that one or more of the parties may begin a war of aggression and claim assistance, as when the aggressive French Republic claimed

the assistance of the United States during Washington's administration, and Germany and Austria claimed the assistance of Italy in their war of aggression in 1914. It should be observed that the state whose assistance is claimed under such a treaty is judge of the occasion — a right which the United States and Italy asserted and made good. A general defensive alliance treaty, in which, to copy the language of our Constitution, the United States 'shall protect each of them against invasion,' has much to recommend it. After the treaty of alliance with France lapsed and was declared at an end, the United States did not renew it, and she has carefully avoided such treaties. She has refused upon more than one occasion to embody the principles of the Monroe Doctrine into a defensive al liance treaty with the nations of the American continent. It is therefore idle for us to discuss this phase of the subject.

2. The second method is by legis lative declarations of policy, such as that contained in the preamble of the Annual Mutiny Act prior to 1867, which stated that one of the purposes of the British army was 'the preservation of the balance of power in Europe'; or by executive declarations of policy similar to that enunciated by Mr. Monroe, in which the nation, through its executive, announces that the invasion of one state by another will be regarded as an unfriendly act by the state making the declaration. The Monroe Doctrine is, in effect, a spontaneous offer of assistance, on the part of a nation which refuses to enter into defensive alliances, to all the states of the New World against any nonAmerican state that may attack any

of them. It leaves the nation free to adopt such measures as it may see fit to pursue, and makes it judge of the time and the occasion. It is stronger

than any treaty, and has been a most potent deterrent of war and conquest. However unfriendly an American republic might be, our aid would come to it as promptly as to any other. The Monroe Doctrine is not based upon sentimentality, but upon the more stable and respectable basis of selfinterest, which demands that we avoid the close neighborhood of strong aggressive powers. It is maintained by the United States for purely defensive purposes; but it has been of infinite advantage to the Latin-American states.

The great merit of the Monroe Doctrine is that it has caused the nation to think along correct lines and see its duty clearly; it has given guiding principles that have removed all doubt and hesitation in troublous times; and it has served as a warning to possible trespassers. The maintenance of peace is a problem of education. The Monroe Doctrine has preserved peace by educating our people, our statesmen, and our potential adversaries.

What oceans of blood would have been saved if the nations and their rulers had been educated in their duties in the strenuous days that preceded the German attack on Liége in 1914! Want of education, want of a correct policy, have cost the United States $26,000,000,000, and the nations a world war. Our defect, so far as want of declaration of policy is concerned, has been remedied by Mr. Harding in his Inaugural Address, by the following words, which, let us hope, will be quoted in after times, as are the words of Mr. Monroe:

Our eyes never will be blind to a developing menace, our ears never deaf to the pirations, in seeking practical plans, in call of civilization. . . . In expressing astranslating humanity's new concept of righteousness, justice, and its hatred of war into recommended action, we are ready most heartily to unite; but every commitment