SETTLING THE TERMS OF PEACE

The Constitution of the United States does not vest the chief executive with the exclusive function of determining terms of peace in any war declared by Congress, and which can only be terminated by Congress in the ratification of a treaty of peace. This matter, therefore, is one upon which every citizen of the republic has a right to think and to speak.

That responsibility for the determination of declarations of war and treaties of peace does not rest in any one quarter is indicated by President Wilson himself when he lays down as one of the conditions of peace, the destruction of every arbitrary power that can separately, secretly or of its own choice disturb the peace of the world, or if it cannot be destroyed that such power be at least greatly contracted. Undoubtedly the power of the Kaiser to declare war without consulting the German people or other branches of the German government had much to do with precipitating the present war. The lesson is that everywhere throughout the world power exercised in the name of government should be subjected to checks and limitations. No branch of the government should be permitted to fall into contempt. It should be understood that those who seek to degrade Congress, for instance, to a state of impotence, are not true friends of genuine democracy. It should be understood that those who, like Senator Owen, would take from the Supreme Court the power to place its decree between Congress or the executive and the violation of any of the fundamental guarantees or principles of the Constitution, are trying to save the world for an autocracy quite as dangerous as that which flourishes in Germany, Austria and Turkey.

With President Wilson's declaration that hereafter nations should be governed in their relationships by the common law of civilized society, and that there should be established after the war some organization of peace which will make binding upon the world the decisions of some definite tribunal of justice, free and enlightened people everywhere will agree. Upon the details of such an arrangement there may be wide differences of opinion. A league of some nations to compel other nations to be guided by their principles of justice might become as subversive of its original purpose as the Holy Alliance. A league of all nations consenting to certain settled principles of international justice, with power to enforce the decisions of a tribunal in which all nations shall be represented, might be a solution of this problem of world justice

and world peace. As in our Constitution, however, there would have to be certain reservations, such as the recognition of the Monroe Doctrine, and the right of this republic, for instance, to regulate its own economic relations in conformity with long established American policies.

The second condition of peace laid down by President Wilson reads:

"The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery."

As a generality this will meet approval, but there will be considerable difficulty in practically applying the principle in the settlement of issues which figure in the present war, and of some which existed before the war in nations not originally involved in the struggle. The settlement of all territorial and economic and political questions at the end of this war to the mutual satisfaction of France and Germany would be some job, even for a master mind like that of Colonel Edwin M. House, of Texas. The settlement of the question of economic relationship between rival commercial powers, heretofore left to the decision of the nation which makes the laws affecting trade relations, would present some difficulties. For instance, it might be a bit difficult to enact a tariff law for the United States which would get the approval of a referendum in Europe. It might be difficult to pass an immigration law in the United States which would secure free acceptance in China and Japan. Under such a system Great Britain might be stripped of her colonies, in most instances with detrimental effect to the people of these dependencies. Russia under the plan of local self determination would dissolve into a mass of petty principalities.

It is impossible to believe that a settlement of the war can be arrived at which will be satisfactory to everybody concerned. The first condition of a just settlement is the defeat of the central empires and their allies. Until that end is accomplished it is idle to talk definitely of peace terms. The United States will not be the only nation at the council table; on the contrary it will be one of many nations; doubtless the most influential of all, but with no final voice upon the matters that will be there determined. The American people seek no selfish advantage as to the result of their participation in this war; neither do they seek the sacrifice of their own interests and their own welfare in the peace bargaining; desiring to attain no selfish end, they do not intend, for instance, to be sacrificed to the selfish demands of any foreign power which may be looking to the exploitation of American markets as a means of

recouping itself for the losses incident to a war for world mastery, military and economic.

The thing to be thought of now is fighting the war to a victorious finish. Thereafter the people who have borne the burdens and made the sacrifices of war may be depended upon to assert themselves in the day of settlement. As Lincoln said at Indianapolis on his way to take up the Presidency, the future rests not with Presidents, or politicians, or office seekers, but with the people of the republic, who have at heart no purpose other than that of making the world safe for this republic, and making the republic safe for its people and for the world.

--July 13, 1918.

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her (America's) heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.-John Quincy Adams.

The first object of a free people is the preservation of their liberty, and liberty is only to be preserved by maintaining constitutional restraints and just divisions of political power. Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government.

The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and many qualified rights. In other words, they must be subject to rule and regulation. This is the very essence of free political institutions.

This is the nature of constitutional liberty, and this is OUR lib

erty, if we will rightly understand and preserve it. Every free government is necessarily complicated, because all such governments establish restraints, as well on the power of government itself as on that of individuals. If we will abolish the distinction of branches, and have but one branch; if we will abolish jury trials, and leave all to the judge; if we shall then ordain that the legislator shall be that judge; and if we place the executive power in the same hands, we may readily simplify government. We may easily bring it to the simplest of all possible forms, a pure despotism. But a separation of departments, so far as practicable, and the preservation of clear lines of distinction between them, is the fundamental idea in the creation of all our constitutions; and, doubtless, the continuance of regulated liberty depends on maintaining these boundaries.-Daniel Webster.

In the American state, the legislature is not supreme, but has limits to its authority prescribed by a written document known as the Constitution; and if the legislature happens to pass a law which violates the Constitution, then whenever a specified case happens to arise in which this statute is involved, it can be brought before the court, and the decision of the court, if adverse to the statute, annuls it, and renders it of no effect. The importance of this feature of civil government in the United States can hardly be overrated. It marks a momentous advance in civilization, and it is especially interesting as being peculiarly American. Almost everything else in our fundamental institutions was brought by our forefathers in a more or less highly developed condition from England; but the development of the written constitution, with the consequent relation of the courts to the law-making power, has gone on entirely on American soil.-John Fiske.

"Separated by a wide ocean from the nations of Europe and from the political interests which entangle them together, with productions and wants which render our commerce and friendship useful to them and theirs to us, it can not be the interest of any to assail us, nor ours to disturb them. We should be most unwise, indeed, were we to cast away the singular blessings of the position in which nature has placed us, the opportunity she has endowed us with of pursuing, at a distance from foreign contentions, the paths of industry, peace and happiness, of cultivating general friendship, and of bringing collisions of interest to the umpirage of reason than of force."-Thomas Jefferson.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.--Abraham Lincoln.

AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS ARE WORTH FIGHTING

TO PRESERVE

September seventeenth, perhaps the most important anniversary in the calendar of American patriotism, passes by each year almost without notice. It is the date of the adoption of the American Constitution by the Philadelphia convention over which George Washington presided, twelve years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The adoption of the Declaration was a great event; the achievement of national independence in a struggle of eight years against the mightiest nation of the time an even greater one; but greatest of all achievements of our Revolutionary forefathers was the adoption of a frame of government, "the greatest work," as Gladstone said, "ever struck off at a given time by the hand and brain of man," which has so well stood the test of time that under it there has been developed upon this continent the freest and mightiest people of all time.

So much is said in deprecation of our form of government by demagogues and doctrinaires, so little in its defense, that the supreme merit of our national Constitution is not generally understood even by the American people. The framers of the Constitution did not throw together a plan of government in haphazard fashion. It represented the most conscientious research into every governmental experiment in history by the greatest group of publicists that ever appeared in one group in the life of a nation. In these later days critics of the American Constitution have appeared who complain that it does not provide a pure democracy. The framers of our Constitution knew, from the study of history, the dangers of pure democracy, a form of government which, even in little Greece, banished wise men for being called just, and courageous men for speaking the truth. They knew that unrestrained rule by a majority was just as much of an autocracy as unrestrained rule by a monarch. They devised the great plan of checks and balances, of responsibilities and restraints, of divided prerogative and supervision, which has given us that liberty safeguarded by law that is the glory of our civilization.

We are pointed, too, in these days, to the virtues of the exaggerated state under which the citizen is the creature, rather than the master, of government. This form of state is not progressive, but reactionary. It had an early example in Sparta, and under it developed nothing but slave spirits and stoic deeds. The modern