MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
4
Conversations With Six Hundred Thousand
IS THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS ALL IN THE AIR?
and profits to go to war, no matter what the offense.
Nobody then thought that the United States was giving up its birthright or ignoring the words of George Washington or abandoning its national policy. We were proud of the weight and power of the United States in these councils of great nations. That was really a League of Nations, which put heart into the despairing and laid low the enemies of mankind.
The League of Peace
Of course that was far short of a permanent League of Nations which would continue in time of •peace, and in which the United States would promise beforehand to take part in keeping the world in order. We are glad to be out of the war league because we only fought to put an end to the war. If the world has gone back to permanent love and brotherhood and disarmament and acres of happiness for everybody, what is the use of setting up a new machinery and agreeing beforehand that we will do this or will not do that?
Very nice and pleasant, provided the world were not at peace or were likely henceforth to walk the ,daisy path of innocence and international love. In fact, a year after the armistice, armies are on foot and either fighting each other or watching a good opportunity to jump in. In Letvia, in Poland, in Russia, in Czecho-Slovakia, in Hungary, in Rou-mania, in Servia, in Dalmaitia, in Albania, and in Turkey war is raging today. Without some kind of world machinery the little powers in central Europe will just go on tearing each other to pieces. Europe will divide again into two groups; only this time it will be Germany plus Poland and Russia, and possibly Japan, and that is a more dangerous proposition than the Central Powers of the recent war.
How does all that concern the United States? If Europeans want war why should we deprive them of that pleasure for the simple reason that European war means a world war. It means that again our cargoes will be captured, our ships will be sunk, our peaceful citizens will be blown up by submarines on the high seas. Why did we go to war in 1917 ? Because war had already come to us. The United States, with all its wealth and power is not big enough to avoid the difficulties and dangers that come from a great war among other people.
Suppose we sit still and wait till the crisis comes, as we did last time, and then by a kind of rule of thumb, going into war again without an army or a complete navy or the modern means of fighting. Of course we could get through all right, as we have done this time! Could we? That is the real question before the American people today. Could we choose the time and manner of joining in such a war? If we wish to know whether a League of Nations is necessary in order to limit wars, and so far as possible to prevent them, look up into the air, for that is the place where wars will henceforth be decided.
Do we realize that in ease of war the winner will be the power that can let loose the biggest fleet of air warships, with the boldest and best trained pilots, guiding the most powerful engines, and carrying the heaviest load of explosives? If an enemy gets control of the air above our beloved land for forty-eight hours in the next war, we shall be doomed? Not a train can run, not a regiment march, not a division entranch itself, not a motor train move on the roads, not a city can exist, if by any failure or ignorance or inefficianey we lose that precious command of the air.
What good will the ocean do us as a protection? Of what avail is three thousand miles distance? A foreign air ship has already flown from Europe to America in about seventy hours. Suppose ten thousand such craft should skate on the cloud banks, and dive f”jm the top of the sky, and empty out their exrLsive cargoes above 1'■'ew York and Wilmingt■',! and Washing׳'me great and im-medietc; advantage 1״ a League of Nations is that it creates machinery that will have the right at all times to inquire into the conditions of the nations and to warm the world if some ungodly power shows signs of preparing itself for an air war.
New dangers require new remedies. The danger from airships has grown so terrible that we must be prepared to give up something, for the sake of creating a world watchman. The United States ought to enter some kind of League of Peace because even the greatest nations need that protection. Also, because the United States can contribute more than any other nation to peace, both for the League and for the world.
By PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Harvard University------Mooseheart Governor
African Confederation for customs. To cover this busy movement of people and of goods, general treaties have been made to which sometimes thirty or forty nations have agreed, especially on the use of international roads, canals, ships, mails and telegraphs.
You cannot cross the boundry into Canada, take passage on a ship to France or send a cablegram to Japan, without making use of the facilities provided by these unions. One of the objects of these treaties is to protect the rights and privileges of foreigners, to permit the entry and departure of foreign ships. The United States is like all other nations: we intend to share in this immense international trade, and to take part in the necessary treaties and other international agreements.
This loose voluntary good will kind of international understanding, works well in time of peace but goes to smash when there is a great war. The United States was unable to protect its citizens in some of the warring countries. It could not prevent the destruction of its ships and cargoes and people by submarines on the sea. Evidently this unwritten league needs tightening up.
The War League
It was, tightened up in 1917 when the United States went to war. Notwithstanding our wealth, our immense materials, our enormous number of strong young men, the United States never dreamed of fighting a campaign of its own. From the first moment it was clear that the only way to save the world was to join in heart and soul with the other nations that were fighting for the same purpose. The United States therefor, without making any formal treaty, entered into the closest relationship with the eight European powers that were already united. American officers were detailed to sit on the general War Council; American statesmen shared in great questions of _ financial aid. The President, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, joined in the agreement that all the troops on the Western Front should be placed under the supreme command of Marshal Foch; and that was the way the war was won.
If there had been anything like this closeness of understanding beforehand there would have been no war. A League would have been a boon to mankind; it would have saved hundred thousand lives of American soldiers; for if there had been a Union which could say to Austria when things grew squally: “Stop your aggressions on little Serbia or we will boycott your trade and cut off your intercourse with other nations,” neither Austria or Germany would have run the risk. They took the chance that the United States would not join with the Western Powers. They believed to the last that the Americans were too fond of money
Isn’t it a grand and glorious feeling to be one of more than 550,000 men in the Loyal Order of Moose who are making a home, caring for and educating the MOOSEHEART children!
JUST THINK
On November 24th, just a few days before Thanksgiving, 21 children ranging in ages from one to twelve years, arrived here to make Mooseheart their HOME.
All in one day this happened. It does not take into consideration the other days of November, and all the rest of the months of the year, but, really 21 in one day is a record and calls our attention more forcibly to the fact that we are performing a real service.
EVERBODY loves a dinner and everybody loves to cook, — provided other people buy the materials, put them together, stand over che hot stove and take the responsibility for their being good. Hence the country has been greatly interested over a camping party down in Washington and its attempt to prepare and serve a League of Nations. First we had it plain boiled, and neat-ly handed out by the Peace JT	Commission; then we had it
fL	fried into a revision at Paris;
|§>	next it was warmed over with
amendment sauce; then all the Jn39r '	amendments were scraped off,
gathered together and put back again under the name of reser-wtFvations, which proved to be a W IjCJE; 3■ good deal of a broil; the lack of the two-thirds majority com-pel led the cooks to sot it out to cool, and now we are watching to see whether the “revised ׳— unamended — reservated” treaty can be warmed up again and made fit for the table.
The singular thing about all the debates in Congress is that, with the exception of a small number of senators who do not want any treaty dinner and feel sure that Leagues of Nations are bad things for the digestion, everybody desires some kind of a League. The reservationists have always been in favor of any League of Nations except the League of Nations that happened to be under discussion. The anti-reservationists stand by the treaty as it is and they have no conscientious objections to “reasonable reservations”.
Few people deny that there is work in the world, which can only be carried out by some kind of combination of nations. One side wants a loose kind of League that will not hamper the United States. The other side urges a close League in which the United States, while reserving a free hand for its own internal affairs and the Monroe Doctrine, will pledge itself to cooperate with other nations in a vigorous way. Some like theirs weak, some like theirs strong; but they can finally get together on a document which will be a good thing for all concerned.
Fundamentals of a League
Notwithstanding all the talk and dispute, people are still puzzled as to what is the immediate question down in Washington. Two documents are involved: the “Covenant of the League of Nations” and the general treaty of peace with Germany. The two things, however, are parts of each other. The League is bassed on the idea that the Treaty will be ratified and the Treaty abounds in references to the League. Perhaps it would have been better to draw them up and submit them separately; but that can no longer be done.
The organization of the League is something like our Congress where the House often marks time while the smaller Senate makes the decisions. So in the League, the Assembly, in which every nation has one vote, is a talking body; and the Council, in which the great nations practically have the say, is the working body. In the Council, anything on which the five great Allies in the recent war agree will probably go through; and the will of the United States is more likely to prevail than that of any other country.
The proprietor of a great patent medicine years ago used to advertise that he did not claim that it would cure “every ill that flesh is heir to”; he frankly admitted that it would not cure “Thunder Humor”. So millions of buyers said “What an honest man! I am sure that I am not sick with Thunder Humor so his bottle ought to cure me.” The same difficulty applies to the League of Nations. Nobody will guarantee that it will cure thunder humor, but thunder humor is a disease that has just killed ten million patients on the battle fields and in the hospitals of Europe. No League can guarantee to prevent war. All that it can do is to prevent some wars and to give a reasonable assurance against any one or two nations breaking loose again and compelling the rest of the world to fight them for the world’s salvation, as they did in 1914.
The Unwritten League
In making the choice between a loose league and a tight league, the first thing is to face the fact that we have for years been in an unofficial loose league. Immigrants pass by millions from one country to another; tourists crane their necks and pick up bogus curios everywhere; business men comb out Siberia, Turkestan and the South