national, industrial, economic, even revolutionary purposes. Nothing serious can be started with our vast and variegated population without organization, propaganda, advertisement and noise. But if there is any organization or propaganda for the purpose of annexing Canada (or reforming your climate) I have failed to discover it. And now you have removed the chief motive for annexation by adopting prohibition. But many Canadians settle in the states, and they do not cease to be Canadians. They are extremely zealous and recently they have been defending Canada against slanders upon your weather. One newspaper writer facetiously says of some of them that they "continue to take offense every time anybody accuses them of living north of the people who live south of them." The Canadians who come to live with us ought not to be quite so sensitive. We are not always careful to be accurate about the advantages of our neighbor to the north. And we are candid in our criticism and critical in our candor. We don't mean anything serious, and when you settle among us you must take us as we are. The fact is that the Americans have the most intense admiration for the Canadians. Nothing excited their admiration more than the noble way in which Canada contributed to the war its treasure and its men in a proportion far greater than that of any other of the allied nations. You furnished 640,000 men in a population of eight millions, and you sent 500,000 of them abroad. If we had done as much we would have sent over six million men instead of two. Such achievements as yours at Vimy Ridge and other places were a source of admiration to the people of the United States. And as for annexation, we at least are not thinking of it. We have troubles enough of our own. We need no more forts or battleships on our undefended frontiers than we have had for the last hundred years. And this leads me to one serious topic that I have wanted to speak to you about, that is, our relation to the League of Nations. It is a subject on which your distinguished statesman, Sir George Foster, addressed the New York State Bar Association at its annual banquet in January 1920 in a most eloquent manner; and recently I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Rowell, one of your delegates to the Geneva Assembly, who gave a most graphic description of its transactions. No nation on earth has had a greater desire for peace than the United States. No people have believed more in conferences as a means of avoiding war. No nation has contributed more to the establishment of principles of international law. And yet the United States is the only great nation of the world, excepting Germany and Russia, that is not a party to the most enlightened effort ever made in history to avoid the recurrence of war. But the late election clearly shows that the American people are opposed to a league or an association or a combination under any name, which imposes upon them obligations to other nations, of a political or military character. They have clearly refused to assume the moral and legal obligation of Article X to maintain the "territorial integrity and existing political independence" of nations in remote parts of the earth against "external aggression." I was one of the earliest friends of the League in the United States. I would even have accepted Article X. But it was that Article that kept the United States out of the League. We are quite a literal people. We have "some reverence for the laws ourselves have made." And we believed that Article X would impose upon us both a moral and a legal obligation which might involve the use of our military forces for some cause which could not be anticipated. But no sooner has the League become a living organism than it is said that Article X does not mean what it says; and the League itself seems to be acting upon the assumption that the Article is no more than a declaration of lofty purpose. Lord Robert Cecil says that Article X is innocuous because it has no effect except that it "discountenances aggression" and that it does not guarantee perpetually the frontiers of every country as they exist today. A similar opinion has been expressed by Leon Bourgeois, while France evidently did not regard the Article effective as it insisted upon a separate treaty for its protection against German aggression. The deliberations of the League at Geneva and the refusal of some of the constituent nations to furnish military assistance seem to indicate that this view of Article X is the one which in practice will prevail. To me this development has an aspect which is to be deplored. For it was probably that Article that kept us from sharing with the other nations the benefits of the provisions for the maintenance of peace which are contained in Article VIII, providing for the reduction and limitation of armament, in Article XII, XIII and XV, which provide for the settlement of international disputes by arbitration or mediation, with a suspension of a resort to war until three months after a decision, in Article XVI, which provides for an economic boycott as a penalty, and finally, and in Article XVIII and XX prohibiting secret treaties. These Articles of the Covenant are the heart of the League. They embody prin ciples for which the United States has always stood and continues to stand. If Article X had been omitted, probably no responsible politician in the United States could successfully have urged an opposition to the League. But that is not all. We should also have liked to have formulated a plan for the establishment of a Permanent Court of International Justice, which would prepare a code of international law. It comes natural to Anglo-Saxon peoples to adopt any plan which is based on the supremacy of law, even though it is the law governing international rights. But there were difficulties urged by other nations. The selection of judges was an obstacle. Smaller nations thought combinations might injure them. We Anglo-Saxons, while we have a high respect for the law, may not always like our judges when they decide against us, but we relieve our feelings by swearing at the court in full confidence that the law will ultimately prevail. In illustration of this I noticed a clipping from the London Daily News which indicates that even the admirable judiciary of the United Kingdom does not escape the criticism of the bar and the public. It was said that while "Parke settled the law, Pollock unsettled everything." We know they are human. We know they make mistakes and have their prejudices, but in the long run if we have settled principles of law, we will take our chances with the idiosyncrasies of the judges who administer it. And so I believe that no nation on earth will more readily yield its sovereign rights than the United States to the judgment of an international court, if it can be assured that it is to be governed not by considerations of expediency or compromise, but by established principles of law. We are told that the nations. of the earth, particularly some of the smaller ones, are not ready for a compulsory submission of disputed questions to an international court. Even Great Britain has refused to accede to the principle. Perhaps the idea is ahead of the times. But it is a curious circumstance that assent should be given by the members of the League to a surrender of sovereignty by adopting the principle of arbitration and mediation which are based on compromise and expediency, and yet that they should halt at an agreement to submit to the judgment of an impartial international court administering fixed principles of law. But the establishment of a court by the League, without compulsory powers, is a long step forward. And if the obligations of Article X are declared to be innocuous I believe there is no reason why in some form or another we should not become a party to the grandest scheme of history for the preservation of peace among men. We are lawyers; And now one word in conclusion. and we will know how a long negotiation over a contract drifts into a position where mere words assume an undue importance and where pride of opinion checks progress toward a solution. We are Americans and Canadians, and none know better than we how blessed is a state of peace. We are most of us of Anglo-Saxon blood and have fought elbow to elbow for a thousand years to hammer out those rights and to exact those duties through which alone civil liberty can be enjoyed. We |