ceited and brutal nation brought low, no other power will wish soon to brave world opinion by provoking war. If she does, it will be because she is desperate and is deliberate in her determination. According to the third proposal of the platform, she can submit to enquiry and then fight if she wishes or can strike at once. In either case, there is war. The alternative is to accept enquiry, permit the necessary delay and agree to friendly settlement. This is the end desired and if attained the one important purpose of the League is accomplished. This delay enforcement plank is the pith of the whole scheme and is the one feature which is entitled to be regarded as new. For this reason, probably, the author devotes considerable space to it, as has been done by all the proponents of this project.

It is shown that statesmen in this and other countries, as well as many of the foreign offices, have been asked regarding their attitude toward the plans of the League. Several have in a general way committed themselves to the idea of a League of Nations so constituted as to enforce enquiry and delay. Close examination of the responses from foreign correspondents shows that nearly all feel the need of some form of cooperation as a great humanitarian end, but few have given unqualified approval to the third ar

ticle of the platform. In the same way President Wilson, while ardent in his desire for a union of nations for peace, has consistently refrained from committing himself to any particular plan of alinement or procedure. If it is proper here to utter a criticism of the propaganda methods of the League, it may be said that its advocates have often seemed to claim a monopoly of the ideas, hopes and prayers of the last century respecting durable peace. But this criticism does not apply to Mr. Marburg, for the quotations which he presents from foreign sources show that, for the most part, they are either general in their statements or noncommittal. Referring to several foreign countries, it is stated that the ministers. have shown personal interest and sympathy with the plan but express rather their private opinions than the views of their governments.

No one can read this book without appreciating the ability of the author to state things clearly and simply, to meet objections and to deal frankly and fairly with those not fully in accord with the main propositions. It is a public spirited contribution from a student of international affairs and a leader in the movement for judicial settlement and world organization at a time when there is need of calmness and magnanimity.

SECRETARY DANIELS FAVORS
INTERNATIONAL POLICE OF
THE SEAS

From the annual report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1917.

"The immediate hope for a world-wide agreement of the navy-building nations for reduction of armaments through joint action, which I have urged in every previous report, cannot be cherished now that all the world is at war. But if this condition could not

be reached in time of peace, may we not believe that it will be one of the compensations for the terrible tragedy of war? The necessity for naval vessels will continue, but among the policies that will be approved in the peace conference that will follow war there should be incorporated a provision guaranteeing an international navy to enforce international decrees. To this international navy, composed of separate naval establishments of all nations, each nation should contribute in proportion to its wealth and population, or upon some plan to insure that no nation can safely challenge the decrees of the high international court. To such a police of the sea this country will be ready to make full contribution, and to that end the expansion that now crowds all the old and new shipbuilding resources will soon place this country in a position to furnish as many and as powerful ships as will come from any other country. It would be a lasting calamity if, when this war ends, there should linger as a burden upon a people already heavily taxed by wars a competitive program of costly naval construction. This country will, no doubt, take its proper place in bringing about such provisions in the peace treaties as will never again constrain any nation to adapt its naval program to the program of some other nation from which there is the compelling menace of possible and unprovoked attack. Such compulsion is the very negative of natural and orderly naval development. means the tyranny of a program dictated by apprehension rather than the free choice of

It

a standard suggested by national needs and supported by national ideals. An international navy, on the contrary, will make possible such naval development as each nation deems fitting for its own people. It will also serve the 'parliament of man' by providing a naval force ample enough to give validity to international decrees, and strong enough to keep inviolate the peace of the world."

SECRETARY BAKER ON UNIVERSAL
MILITARY SERVICE
From the annual report of the Secretary
of War for 1917.

"The subject of universal military training continues to be discussed in the country. The Department has not sought, and does not now seek, legislation on the subject, chiefly for the reason that the formation of a permanent military policy will inevitably be affected by the arrangement consequent upon the termination of the present war. Civilized men must hope that the future has in store a relief from the burden of armament, and the destruction and waste of war. However vain that hope may appear in the midst of the most devastating and destructive war in the history of the race, it persists-perhaps because we are encouraged by the analogous substitution of courts for force in the settlement of private controversies; perhaps because all the perfections of nature teach us that they are the product of processes which have eliminated waste and substituted constructive for destructive principles.

"When a permanent military policy therefore, comes to be adopted, it will doubtless be conceived in a spirit which will be adequate to preserve against any possible attack those vital principles of liberty upon which democratic institutions are based, and yet be so restrained as in no event to foster the growth of mere militarist ambitions or to excite the apprehension of nations with whom it is our first desire to live in harmonious and just accord."

HE possession of Alsace-Lor

TH

raine was a stimulating cause of the World War. The disposition of these Provinces is a major barrier to the discussion of the terms

of a durable peace. Some nations

and their official leaders want an agreement as to these Provinces before entering the Peace Conference; other governments want to leave the disposition of these Provinces to the debate and determination of the Peace Conference; while a third group of nations, bound by a decent respect for the principles of Democracy, will be impelled to contend that the title to these Provinces shall not be determined before, or wholly within, the Peace Conference. The first two groups represent the imperialistic conception of sovereignty over peoples; the latter nations embody the Democratic conception of the right of the popular will to impose its sovereignty upon a definite area of territory when inhabited by a reasonably homogeneous people.

Our nation is a Democratic, not a dynastic, state. It follows that its policy must be shaped against the permanency of war, and in favor of those things which make for the durability of peace. The disposition of these Provinces, as mere territories, is a solution which will pro

voke war in the future as it has in the past; while the consideration of the title to Alsace-Lorraine, as a portion of the earth inhabited by human beings entitled to human rights, will tend to a determination of the question which will provoke and preserve peace. In the conviction that the time is approaching when the Democratic nations must choose between taking a militant stand in favor of a Democratic and permanent solution of the Problem or acquiesce in a semi-imperialistic and temporary adjustment of this question, I desire to discuss the topic: "The Problem of Alsace-Lorraine; Is There a Democratic Solution?"

The disposition of these Provinces is an acuter question to-day than in the past, but it is not a new problem. The question is brought home to Americans, who are prepared to risk the lives of their sons on European soil to aid in Democratic solutions of this and kindred problems, but not to effect temporary and war renewing compromises. This problem has been the thorn in the historical diplomacy of Europe. An arbitrary and imperialistic adjustment has followed each appeal to the God of Battles; the twentieth century demands a reasonable and Democratic solution devoid of the transi

tory adjustment which force provides.

THE KEYS TO WESTERN EUROPE

These Provinces have been passing from Kings to Emperors, from one nation to the other, for more than ten centuries of history. They are both the keys and doorways to Western Europe, and successive invaders have steeped the soil in blood. Either alone, or together, in whole, or in part, these Provinces have been independent principalities; owed allegiance to Austria, or to the House of Lorraine; subjected to the Holy Roman Empire and in turn bound to portions of the soil now forming the German Empire; then passing to France and later taken back in part by the new German Empire. Space will not permit me to trace the detailed title to these Provinces, but the historical stage setting of recent generations must be kept in mind by those seeking a sound solution. Geographers are agreed that with the exception of a few districts in Alsace-Lorraine, the political boundary between France and Germany in 1914 conformed to the linguistic line between the French and German tongues. This was the result of successive modifications in the French frontier dating from the Treaty of Utrecht in 1714.

The French under Napoleon extended their sway over Belgium and Holland and put their Eastern Frontier along the Rhine. The German People in 1813 united to drive the French across the Rhine; and the Treaty of Vienna restored French boundaries to the lines existing in

1790. It is claimed by Treitschke in his "History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century," (a monumental work now in process of translation and English publication under the direction of William H. Dawson, a coworker of Premier Lloyd-George), that the Allies promised portions of Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia as an inducement to enter the war against Napoleon, but that the covenant was not kept at the Congress of Vienna. The reason which Treitschke gives for this failure, or refusal of the Allies to keep this real or alleged promise to Prussia, is based upon a unique historical and strategic study of the Battle of Waterloo. Treitschke, the most powerful political essayist of his time, treated this promise of the Allies as an established historical fact, and when other German leaders wavered in 1871, he demanded the taking over of Alsace-Lorraine as a fulfillment by force of an agreement made when England, Austria and Russia sought Prussian aid to overthrow Napoleon. These situations are here cited not to stimulate illfeeling between peoples who are now friends, but as illustrating the historical complexity of this problem which developed an international acuteness through the Treaty of Frankfort on May 10, 1871.

THE TREATY OF FRANKFORT

Article I of the Treaty of Frankfort contains these war provoking words: "France renounces in favor of the German Empire, all rights and titles to the territories situated East of the Frontier designated below. The German Empire shall possess

these territories in full sovereignty and ownership." This treaty placed all of Alsace in Germany except Belfort, together with a considerable portion of Lorraine. The maps issued by the American Geographical Society indicate that in addition to taking over the German, or Germanspeaking portions of the two Provinces, the conquerors seized a strip fifteen miles in width and more than twenty-five in length, inhabited by people of French origin and language. This is the strip which has kept the issue alive and which has made the Problem the center of a world war. The treaty passed 1694 communities, 1,500,000 human beings and 5,600 square miles of territory into German hands.

It is difficult to define the causes and delimit the purposes of war. But I am justified in saying that the French people, swayed by the dynastic ambitions of an incompetent Emperor and not in Democratic control of their foreign policy, hoped to extend their border to the Rhine, while Bismarck, over-anxious to find a cause for foreign war as a means of uniting Germany, accommodated and conquered the French in 1870. The appeal was to the God of Battles; the French were promised territory to the Rhine if they won; the Germans were assured of unity and strategic protection if they triumphed. I have not been able during my studies to divide the ethics of this problem as between France and Germany, both engaged in an imperialistic junket but I am inclined to share the view of Thomas

Carlyle, in his ringing letter to the London Times in 1871, in which he asserts that France and Germany, having put their peoples into war to get something from each other, it is no business of England, or other neutral powers, to interfere with the decision of the God of Battles.

THE REAL MORAL ISSUE

But Mr. Carlyle was steeped in the imperialism of Frederick the Great. Mr. Carlyle missed the real moral issue in this problem. The ethical issue was not and is not, between France and Germany; it is between those who believe in Government by force and those who believe in sovereignty by consent of the governed. The question which Democracy puts to imperialism to-day is: Had France a right to cede and Germany a right to seize the Provinces of Alsace-Lorraine without the deliberate and expressed consent of the people of those territories? And then there comes to mind the other phase of the question: Has France a right to take back those territories without the consent of the people? Then there follows the reciprocal proposition: Has Germany a moral right, even at the behest of France, to bargain away the peoples of these Provinces for the purpose of inducing peace and retaining through that peace, an imperialistic title to other peoples and other lands on the Eastern Frontier? You and I, as members of a Democracy, must answer in the negative to all these questions; we must take our stand in the words which President Wilson addressed to Congress on January 22nd, 1917: