AMERICA AND THE PEACE CONFERENCE.
WE cannot believe that there is any real justification for the pessimism with which many pee& regard the Allied Peace Conference. At the moment the Con- ference is having "a bad Press." Doleful reports come from Paris ; gloomy prognostications are cabled from America. The Council of Ten, which sits in secret, is said by those- who collect gossip to be a prey to dissensions, the precise nature of which varies with each i-curer of ill
tidings. As for America, it is asserted by some and denied by others, with equal assurance, that the Senate will have nothing to do with the scheme for a League of Nations which President Wilson has adopted, and which the Allies, at his instance, propose to incorporate in the Treaty of Peace. These contradictory rumours, together with the undeniable fact that there has been great delay in the work of the Conference, are bound to cause depression. More- over, traders and manufacturers, eager to carry out their plans for a resumption of their normal industry, are exasperated at the apparent tardiness of the Governments in bnngang the state of war to an end. The working people, naturally restless after four strenuous and exciting years, find it hard to endure the slow transition to peace condi- tions, with the temporary unemployment that it involves through no fault of the employers. Yet if we disregard rumours and make allowance for the plain man's excusable impatience, we may fairly say that the Conference has not done so badly after all. Its latest bulletins, though not very communicative, suggest that the work of the Com- mittees on many important matters is nearly finished Moreover, President Wilson, M. Clemenceau, and Signor Orlando, in their remarkable letter begging Mr. Lloyd George to subordinate even a possible coal crisis to the peace of the world, say most positively that the main work of the Conference should be done within a fortnight— that is, by the end of this month. They are engaged in drafting the preliminary Peace Treaty which is to be im- posed on Germany. When that Treaty has been accepted by the enemy—as it will be despite the truculent language that is being used by the German Socialist Press and by Herr Erzberger—the Conference will be free to deal with the other numerous problems of the Peace. The Allies, as every one knows, have deliberately taken a circuitous route towards Peace by deciding to embody in the Peace Treaty a scheme for a League of Nations. The French Government would have preferred to take a short cut, by concluding Peace preliminaries with the enemy in December or January, and leaving the League and all other questions to be debated later. For good or ill, the insistent desire of President Wilson for the inclusion of the League in the Treaty prevailed, and this involved a long pause while a practicable draft of a League of Nations was being prepared by the Allied Ministers. The President's visit to America took another month, so that only now are the Allies at the stage where the French would have had them three months ago. Meanwhile a new but by no means unexpected difficulty has arisen out of the American Con- stitution. President Wilson states that he has the American people behind him in his determination to make the League of Nations part and parcel of the Peace Treaty. But the leaders of the Republican majority in the Senate declare informally but emphatically that they will not vote for a Peace Treaty containing the League scheme as drafted in Paris. They point to the clause of the Constitution empower- ing the President, "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur," and they say that two- thirds of the Senators will not concur in the proposed League of Nations. It is certainly not for us to intrude upon American domestic controversies. When the Allies deal with America, they deal with the President. What he says is for us a complete and final expression of the American view on any point. If the Federal Convention of 1787 had, as it first thought of doing, assigned the whole business of Treaty-making to the Senate, or if Washington had found it possible to associate the Senate with himself in the negotiation of Treaties and had thus set an extra-Constitu- tional precedent, the Allies could and would approach the Senate directly. As it is, the Allies are unable to take official cognizance of any American authority except President Wilson. If he tells us that America will enter the League of Nations and pledge herself to support the coming Peace with the whole weight of her naval, military, and economic powers, we are bound to take him at his word. But will he do so ? The President and the Allies are said to be drafting the Peace preliminaries, and not only the final Treaty, in such a way that the League of Nations is made an integral part of the instrument, although Germany is deliberately excluded from the League until she shows signs of repentance. The Allied Governments must assume officially that America's acceptance of auch preliminaries is assured. Nevertheless the consequences oi any mistake on this point would be so grave that there may well be a great deal of unofficial uneasiness. We are all counting on the American guarantee of the Peace. With America's moral and material influence to back it, the Peace Treaty would be a durable settlement, and the League of Nations would make a promising start. But if America, having made Peace, were to decline any further responsibility for the affairs of Europe and the Near East, the value of the settlement would be greatly reduced. Indeed,. if there were any prospect of such a calamity, the Allies would have to reconsider the terms of Peace. France, above all, who requires security, would have to seek it in a far more drastic solution of the Rhine frontier question than she could reasonably accept under a Peace guaranteed by America.
Our chief -external interest as a nation and an Empire is, as we have often said, and shall say again, to cultivate the closest friendship with America. So long as the English-speaking peoples can work together, the progress of civilization is assured. We are glad to know that, while America was never so popular in Great Britain as she is now, the American people on their part are showing a keener sympathy for us than ever before. As straws show how the wind is blowing, so the little episode in New York last week, when the run of splay by Mr. Shaw had to be stopped because the public and the critics thought it an insulting caricature of British officers, illustrates the friendly feeling for this country which animates Americans. We must confess to having been profoundly touched by this incident—a spontaneous outburst of kindly sentiment which was apparently unexampled in American theatrical annals. It confirms us in the belief that the British and American peoples really understand one another and are •capable of co-operating in great international affairs, provided always that their- politicians do not blunder into needless controversies. If this guiding principle is steadily borne in mind, the difficulties con- fronting us in Paris and Washington may be resolved- We could have wished that President Wilson had found it possible to make certain beforehand of the support of the Senate for his Treaty and his League by nominating a leading Republican like Mr. Taft as one of the Peace delegates, if not by reviving the precedent set by President Polk, who in 1846 sent to the Senate the draft of a Treaty that he proposed to make with us in regard to Oregon, and who explained that in consulting the Senate he was following in the footsteps of Washington. The President has preferred to take the ordinary course, and to exercise his unquestioned right to make the Treaty, lea`ving it to the Senate hereafter to concur or not. In deciding to embody the League of Nations in the Peace Treaty, despite the opposition which the League excites, the President has had recourse to the old Parliamentary expedient of "tacking," in which Mr. Lloyd George is an adept. Our experience goes to show that " tacking " usually succeeds, though it provokes much grumbling. There is a possible alternative. We have no great lovefor preambles. The Prime Minister and his old chief, Mr. Asquith, set a thoroughly bad precedent of this kind in the notorious preamble to their Parliament Act. Yet the device might conceivably be used in the case of the Peace preliminaries to surmount the political obstacle which faces the Allies. They might, that is to say, commence : "Whereas a League of Nations is to be established to uphold the sanctity of Treaties and to prevent wars, and whereas any questions as to the interpretation of the following articles are to be referred to the Executive Council of the League for decision, it is hereby agreed," and so on. It is imaginable that such a preamble might commend itself to all parties among the Allies, while binding Germany to recognize the existence, present or future, of a League of Nations to whir& she may be admitted hereafter. For our own part, we should be well content if the great principle of the sanctity of Treaties were recognized as a part of international law by the Allies and America; and the Governments may, after all, have to be satisfied with that. Such a declaration by the Allies and by America would be a long step towards an enduring Peace. Indeed, if the British nation and the American nation together were to announce that Treaties must no longer be regarded as " scraps of paper," we should open a new era for this suffering world.
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