PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS -TO THE SENATE.
-WHETHER the world will in the end be grateful for V V President -sp—le-dETelre" Senate remains to be seen; Certainly we are. We could not have Wished for a better example of what we wrote last week as to the dangers andelifficulties of anything in the shape of a new Holy Alliance —in the shape, that is, of a League of the Nations to Enforee Peace. President Wilson told the Senate that it would be impossible for the United States to take the part which she should and ought to take in securing the peace of She world unless the peace agreed upon was a peace in every way satisfactory to her. It is clear from this that President Wilson sees that if you are going to have a League to Enforce Peace, all the Powers who are parties to the treaty will have in effect to guarantee each other's dominions—will have to promise to maintain the status quo. The history of the Holy Allianee and what it led to is absolute proof, as Castlereagh told the Emperor Alexander, that you are obliged, if you go in for Leagues to stop war, to put everybody's house in order and make them all free of offence to abstract principles of right. If you did not do that, you would have to agree that the League must be blind to derelictions among its own members, and must hold that for good or evil the Powers who guarantee peace cannot be interfered with by their colleagues. But Mr. Wilson obviously could not agree to this cynical view. Accordingly he has elected for the first alternative. He asks that the moral configuration of Europe, nay, of the world, shall be made so absolutely satisfactory at the Peace that the United States will:Live no feeling that she is guaranteeing anything which is seriously wrong. Clean yourselves up thoroughly before you ask us to walk out with you." That is what his demand really comes to. Let us see how this demand would work out in practice.
We venture to say in all seriousness that if Mr. Wilson will use his powers of imagination, and project himself into the circumstances that will arise when peace is established, he will find the conditions he has laid down exceedingly arduous, if not indeed impossible. Take his concrete example of Poland. It may be right in the abstract that Poland should be " united, independent, and autonomous," but it is as certain as anything can be that not merely the Russian autocracy but the Russian people and the Russian Duma will refuse to give complete independence to the Polish State. The Tsar has pledged his word, which will not be broken, that a sub-kingdom of Poland shall be created which will he self-governing. But it will be under the suzerainty of Russia—a very different thing, if we mistake not, from the kingdom which is in the mind of Mr. Wilson. This, however, is only one example out of many. If we take the various proposi- tions moral and political, asserted so vehemently by him and apply them to Europe, we shall find that in a very great number et ways they would cause the utmost friction amongst, and -resistance from, the Powers. To carry Mr. Wilson's views into practice would be to raise a legion of demons in every corner of Europe. We venture to say, indeed, that it would take a dozen new wars, lasting for another thirty years, to create the impeccable status quo which he asks for—the peace which shell be " a peace without victory."
If' 6ne did' not know so well that President Wilson is in- capable of such a piece of, Machiavellism, one might almost suppose that he desired to defeat the argument in favour of a League to Enforce Peace by a reductio ad absurdum, and thus bring to the earth the whole fairy palace raised by the Trensatlantic Pacificists. The Wilson doctrine, if there were any possibility of it ever being applied, would not only fill Russia and France with alarm, but also Italy and the oppressed nationalities of the Balkang and of the Turkish Empire, while it would even be a cause of alarm and offence to this country- a nation generally so little ready to take offence, at any rate at action by America. What President Wilson means by the " freedom of the seas " is not stated. Very possibly he only means no more ' Lusitania ' episodes ; but in the present state of peblic feeling what is only too likely to appear to the British people to be meant is the withdrawal of our right to defend our island kingdom from its foes. To sum up his speech to the Semite, President Wilson has stated the reason why you cannot have a League to Enforce Peace, unless you live in Utopia, or else make your League one in which each Power is willing to ignore the wickedneases—or the weaknesses, if you willof other Fewers as long as they will work together on the cynical. priecipie : " You say nothing about my peccadilloes and I will any nothing about yours. As long as we all agree to mind our own business, to help each other, and to stop busybodies from making trouble at home. no one will dare to break the peace. But that is, just what we want. Full steam ahead ' then with the good ship Dove in the Eagle's NeSt.' " But though in our opinion President Wilson, by the conditions he has laid dein, has absolutely barred the way to the establishment of a League to Enforce Peace, has built a granite wall across the only road which he could travel towards such a League, it must not be supposed that we are entirely without hope that anything can be done to secure the peace of the world, and to give us a certain hope that in the future men will make war less easily or less viciously than they have done in the case of the present war. There is, we are convinced, a possible way out, but to win the way requires laboe r and patience. Our plan must, however, be set forth in an article to itself.
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