We are here to-night in sight of a league of peace, of what I have ever regarded as the “Promised Land.” Such a war as the last is a hideous blot on our Christian civilization. The inconsistency is as foul as was slavery under the Declaration of Independence. If Christian nations cannot now be brought into a united effort to suppress a recurrence of such a contest it will be a shame to modern society.

During my administration I attempted to secure treaties of universal arbitration between this country and France and England, by which all issues depending for their settlement upon legal principles were to be submitted to an international court for final decision. These treaties were emasculated by the senate, yielding to the spirit which proceeds, unconsciously doubtless, but truly, from the conviction that the only thing that will secure to a nation the justice it wishes to secure is force; that agreements between nations to settle controversies justly and peaceably should never be given any weight in national policy; that in dealing between civilized nations we must assume that each nation is conspiring to deprive us of our independence and our prosperity; that there is no impartial tribunal to which we can entrust the decision of any question vitally affecting our interests or our honor, and that we can afford to make no agreement from which we may not immediately withdraw, and whose temporary operation to our detriment may not be expressly a ground for ending it.

The great war developed many new weapons—the submarine, the aeroplane, the long range gun, the tank, the deadly gas; but one of the most novel and deadly was the propaganda—the psychological working on the war will of the enemy. It was developed first and effectually used by the Central Powers against France, England, the United States, and with terrible results in Russia and Italy. But the Allies were not far behind, and by the close of the war had caught up with their foes and probably surpassed them. In the summer of 1918, the German press complained of the relative weakness of their propaganda, and declared the enemy's pen and propaganda were worse than his sword.

After the work of the Committee on Public Information, under Mr. George Creel, had been under way for a number of months in the United States, it was deemed advisable to establish branch offices of the committee in many European countries for the purpose of explaining the war aims and preparations of our country. Such offices were established in England, France, Italy, and eventually in some thirty-two foreign countries, in charge of Mr. Will Irwin and later of Mr. Edward Lisson. For the purpose of organizing the work in Italy, the writer was sent over by the committee, arriving in Rome about March, 1918, and returning in October.

The revolution in Germany strikes the observer as different in essential respects from revolutions which have taken place in other countries. One looks, in such events, for a few short days of blood and battle; for power wrested by force from the grip of those who have held it; for popular turmoil, the citizenry waging conflict behind street barricades against the disciplined but gradually disintegrating and increasingly disaffected troops of the established government—in short, for a journée in which the overturn is speedily accomplished and the new régime quickly set up. But the German revolution affords no such spectacle. There has been, to be sure, street-fighting and bloodshed, but they have been incident to the attempt of the extremists to overthrow the revolutionary government or to compel it to undertake a more radical program. The revolution itself was bloodless, and the establishment of the provisional government under Ebert was only the last step in a crumbling process which had been evident during the latter part of the administration of Count von Hertling and the whole of that of Prince Max.

Reconstruction of things, of men, and especially of ideals was demanded as soon as the world awoke to the magnitude of the destruction being wrought by the great war. As time went on and more and more peoples were drawn in, with ever widening ruin to property and institutions, the need for devising far-reaching plans for rebuilding became more pressing. While every possible effort was being made to win the war quickly, yet at the same time certain far seeing men recognized that if peace came without having adequate plans for reconstruction much of the fruit of victory might be lost. Thus it was that many of the nations, even during the height of the war, created organizations whose duty it was to prepare plans and especially to conduct researches into those matters which, with the reëstablishment of peace, would have prime importance.

Many a statesman of Europe and each propagandist the world over has seen the opportunity. He has had his vision of what may be accomplished at the golden moment in the world's history when so much that is old and bad has been weakened and so much that is idealistic may become real if only this opportunity is grasped.

The difficulty of threading one's way through the intricacies of the organization of the Peace Conference is due chiefly to the fact that the conference is from one point of view a continuation of various interallied conferences and councils created for the prosecution of the war. In some cases the functions of these bodies have apparently been taken over by the conference, and in other cases the preëxisting councils and commissions have continued in operation as interallied agencies distinct from the organization of the conference. A brief review of the most important of these agencies will be of assistance, therefore, in making clear the origin and special functions of the conference.

The Supreme War Council was created by an agreement between Great Britain, France and Italy at a meeting held at Rapallo, Italy, in the first week of November, 1917. It was composed of the prime ministers and a member of the governments of each of the great powers fighting on the western front. Its purpose was to watch over the general conduct of the war and prepare recommendations for the decision of the governments. It was to be assisted by a permanent central military committee, consisting of Generals Foch, Wilson and Cadorna, but the decisions of these technical advisers were merely to be the basis of recommendations from the War Council to the several governments, leaving the general staffs and military commands of each power responsible to their individual governments. The United States subsequently adhered to the Rapallo agreement, and participated in the meeting of the council at Versailles on December 1, 1917.

The embargo upon commerce which Congress at the suggestion of President Jefferson decreed in 1807 was more than an experiment in practical politics. It was the test on a magnificent scale of a theory of international law long maturing in the President's mind, and the fitting contribution of a new nation to a body of doctrine which owed its revival, if not its inception, to the need of curbing the international anarchy which accompanied the rise of modern states. The law of nations was a new development. Less than two centuries had passed since Grotius put forth the pioneer work De jure belli ac pacis (1625). The interval between the publication of Grotius' book and the issuance of the embargo decree was, in fact, the classical period in international law. The labors of Leibnitz, Wolff, Vattel, and Bynkershoek built up a system popular, not only with doctrinaires and philosophers, but even with enlightened despots in their more subjective moments. By the close of the eighteenth century, the law of nations had acquired as much prestige as it could ever hope to secure without the support of its own guns and navies. It was the highest political expression of an age which believed in the perfectability of human relations through sheer intellect. And if its dicta sometimes failed to govern the actions of courts and cabinets, its infringement was not a matter of indifference. Nations broke treaties, to be sure, but they did not call them “scraps of paper.”

The League of Nations covenant is designed to “promote international coöperation and to achieve international peace and security.” To accomplish the first it provides organs of conference and recommendation and coördinates the numerous international unions already existing with some new ones. To accomplish the second, the members of the league covenant to refrain from acting or to act in a specified manner, in specified circumstances. “Scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations” is emphasized; thus in relation to the treaty of peace of which it is a part, the covenant is comparable to the various forms of oaths, hostages, and guaranties of previous peace treaties.

No intention of modifying international law is expressed. On the contrary “the understandings of international law” are to be firmly established “as the actual rules of conduct among governments.” In fact, however, the character of law is dependent upon the character of its sanction. Law and organization are interdependent, and the covenant when put in operation will modify international law, though less in its specific rules than in certain assumptions upon which they have heretofore been supposed to rest.

For some years prior to the outbreak of the great war the proposed reorganization of the administrative system of France occupied a leading place among the questions of French internal politics. It provoked a flood of discussion in parliament; it was the subject of investigation and report by various parliamentary, extra-parliamentary and inter-ministerial commissions; it was dwelt upon regularly in the annual reports on the budget; it was a standing subject of discussion by the functionaries in their associations and by the political parties in their annual congresses; it was responsible for a vast output of literature in the form of books, brochures and articles; and it occupied a conspicuous place in the declaration of each incoming ministry upon taking office. In the parliamentary election campaign of 1910 no other question, except proportional representation, was so widely discussed by the candidates.

Within recent years there has been a tendency to give more careful attention to the technique of legislation. In the past proposed laws have often been prepared by legislators who knew what they wanted, but were not able to express their wishes in scientifically constructed form. It is desirable of course that representatives of the people should determine legislative policy; and yet it is not counter to any intelligent principle of democracy that the drafting of bills should be done by experts who can put in brief though adequate phrases the essence of what the technically unskilled representative may want. It should be their task to use political machinery intelligently, and to warn the overzealous advocate against using it in a vain attempt to achieve an end which mayhap cannot be secured through political machinery at all. It is right that the people, through democratic channels of popular assemblies, should determine what they want; but it is no less proper that use should be made of those with special training to formulate ways and means.

Some states have already established legislative reference bureaus which do the work of bill drafting. The individual legislator goes to the bureau with a general outline of a law he has in mind. The bureau renders expert advice on the subject matter of the bill, if such advice is wanted, and proceeds to draft a measure embracing the subject in hand. The staff connected with the bureau should be prepared to offer advice as to the constitutionality of the proposed law, to cite precedents in other states if such can be found, and to express an opinion as to the probable attitude of the courts when interpreting it. Information should be at hand regarding the experience of other states, or indeed other countries, with similar legislation.

The federal Child Labor Law was declared unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart by a vote of five to four. It forbade the transportation in interstate or foreign commerce of the product of any mine or quarry “in which within thirty days prior to the time of the removal of such product therefrom children under the age of sixteen years have been employed or permitted to work,” with similar prohibitions covering the products of mills and factories in which children under fourteen were employed or children under sixteen were employed more than eight hours a day. The majority opinion misinterpreted the statute and assumed that it permitted goods “to be freely shipped after thirty days from the time of their removal from the factory,” whereas it permitted only the shipment of stock on hand thirty days after children had ceased to be employed. The law was so framed as to avoid the necessity of proof that children coöperated in the making of specific articles produced in a factory in which children were employed, and yet to remove any ban on shipment from an establishment which for thirty days had employed only adult labor.

The pathology of political parties is illustrated under especially illuminating circumstances during time of war. The internal political conditions of every important nation are influenced to some extent by its external relations. War on a world-wide scale is the external relation which has the most profound influence upon the internal political conditions of every participating nation. This influence varies in different cases, depending upon the proximity of the particular nation to the scene of the conflict, the extent of its participation, the relative danger of invasion by its enemies, the character of the internal governmental organization, the length of the conflict, and other factors. In normal times, it has been found by experience in nations operating under the two-party system that oscillations in the fortunes of the two principal parties occur with a surprising degree of regularity. This see-saw of party politics may have an injurious effect upon the continuity and constructiveness of the nation's foreign policy even in normal times; its continuation in time of war when the nation's fate may be hanging in the balance would be a serious, if not intolerable, danger. One effect of war upon the party system, therefore, is to bring about, at least for a time, a relatively greater stability of party control, if not complete quiescence of partisanship, either through coalition or through cessation of party opposition, or both.

The conception of “external” sovereignty was well established in the Hindu philosophy of the state. The Hindu thinkers not only analyzed sovereignty with regard to the constituent elements in a single state. They realized also that sovereignty is not complete unless it is external as well as internal, that is, unless the state can exercise its internal authority unobstructed by, and independently of, other states.

“Great misery,” says Shookra, “comes of dependence on others. There is no greater happiness than that from self-rule.” This is one of the maxims of the Shookra-neeti bearing on the freedom of the rastra, or the land and the people in a state. Kautilya also in his remarks on “foreign rule” expresses the same idea in a negative manner. Under it, we are told in his Artha-shastra, the country is not treated as one's own land, it is impoverished, its wealth carried off, or it is treated “as a commercial article.” The description is suggestive of John Stuart Mill's metaphor of the “cattle farm” applied to the “government of one people by another.”

When the American government decided for the first time to try the experiment of colonial government in the Philippine Islands, they had no light to guide them save the experience of other European nations which had colonies in Far Eastern Asia. Ignorant of Philippine conditions, the American statesmen at first thought that the problem of governing the Islands was similar to the task of the European powers in governing our neighbors, Java, the Malay States, and India. Their first idea was, therefore, to study the colonial systems of these countries. One of the first public documents printed by the American Congress, in 1899, accompanying the Treaty of Paris, was devoted to the study of the colonial systems of the Orient with a view to their application in the Philippines. But upon a closer observation of Philippine conditions they found that the principles of European colonization would not work in the Islands, not only because American aims were more altruistic but because political conditions were entirely different. Roughly, colonial government in the neighboring countries is based on the existence of native rulers, rajahs or princes, whose authority has been for centuries recognized by the natives themselves. Apparently and ceremoniously the native princes still rule, but in reality it is their respective European “advisers” or “resident-generals” who are the actual rulers. Instead of establishing a new form of government, abolishing the rajahs and native rulers, the Dutch and the English simply improved the native institutions, using these same rulers as instrumentalities through which to impose their own governments.

Constitutional objections to many of the provisions of the civil service laws have been raised in several of the jurisdictions in which such legislation has been enacted. In addition to the national government there are today ten states which have provided for the application of the merit system to the appointment of all or a portion of the administrative officers and employees. These ten states with the dates of the adoption of the law are as follows: New York, 1883; Massachusetts, 1884; Wisconsin, 1905; New Jersey, 1908; Illinois, 1911; Colorado, 1912; Ohio, California and Connecticut, 1913; and Kansas, 1915. In Illinois and Colorado the employees in the state institutions had been under the merit system for several years prior to the adoption of the general civil service laws.

In four of these jurisdictions—California, Colorado, Connecticut and Kansas—there have been no cases involving the constitutionality of civil service legislation. In Colorado there have been at least two bitter controversies in the courts as to the interpretation of the law but in neither case did the parties who fought the law contend that it was unconstitutional. The question of the legality of the adoption of the Colorado law has also been before the courts; but the constitutionality of the provisions of the law has not been attacked. In New Jersey the only case of importance touching the matter of constitutionality is that of the Attorney-General v. McGuinness, but here the decision dealt entirely with the constitutionality of one of the methods prescribed for extending the operation of the law to municipalities.

There is little or no homogeneity to the questions to be considered under the head of retroactive legislation. A dispute whether a state has passed a law impairing the obligation of contracts may turn on a question as to the proper interpretation or application of language, or on opposing views of what is sufficient consideration or what agreements are against public policy. It was under the obligation-of-contracts clause that the Pennsylvania Hospital case decided that the power of governmental authorities to exercise eminent domain could not be bargained away. The crucial question is more often whether alleged rights existed than whether undoubted rights have been impaired. The Fourteenth Amendment and the doctrine of vested rights combine to make the obligation-of-contracts clause almost superfluous, as it is difficult to think of any impairment of the obligation of contracts which that clause inhibits which could not equally well be held deprivations of liberty or property without due process of law.

This is apparent from the fact that retroactive legislation by Congress is questioned under the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, a contract being regarded as a property right that can be interfered with only when there is sufficient justification for what is done.

On March 4,1917, when the senate filibuster killed the armed neutrality bill, President Wilson issued a statement in which he said that the situation was “unparalleled in the history of the country, perhaps unparalleled in the history of any modern government…‥ The explanation is incredible. The senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

The revision of the Philadelphia city charter and of the constitution of Pennsylvania is now being actively discussed. The Committee of Seventy, a local civic organization, has called a general conference on the city charter. A wide participation by leaders in civic life is promised. Public attention is directed towards the desirability of a smaller city council with a single body to supplant the larger bicameral councils that have persisted in Philadelphia despite changes elsewhere.

United States v. Hill by a vote of seven to two sustained the so-called Reed Amendment by which Congress prohibited the introduction of liquor into any state which forbade the sale or manufacture of liquor within its borders. West Virginia, though interdicting manufacture and sale, allowed any person to bring into the state for personal use a quart of liquor each month. Since Mr. Hill did only what West Virginia sanctioned, Mr Justice McReynolds for himself and Mr. Justice Clarke insisted that “the Reed Amendment in no proper sense regulates interstate commerce, but is a direct intermeddling with the state's internal affairs.” He inquired rhetorically: “If Congress may deny liquor to those who live in a state simply because its manufacture is not permitted there, why may not this be done for any suggested reason, e.g. because the roads are bad or men are hanged for murder or coals are dug. Where is the limit?” For the majority Mr. Justice Day answered that the control of Congress over interstate commerce is not limited by state laws and that “the policy of Congress acting independently of the states may induce legislation without reference to the particular policy or law of any given state.”