282. There is a tradition in England that if a person goes into Hyde Park, London (a large open space in the center of the city), he may gather a crowd around him and say anything he pleases, subject only to the chance that he may be roughly handled if his hearers do not like what he says. For this reason, Hyde Park is sometimes referred to as the “safety valve” of the English government. Anyone who has a grievance, real or imaginary, can go there and blow off steam. Having had his say, without let or hindrance, the speaker feels better about it. Somewhere in this country we ought to have a Hyde Park.

We must be careful not to judge the liberties of the citizen and the severity of a government by what may happen in war-time or in time of civil insurrection. War inflames popular passion and impels both the officers of government and the people to do unwise things, sometimes to violate the laws of the land in the name of patriotism. An excited nation, like an excited man, is entitled to some allowance. Nevertheless, it is the duty of all who understand the meaning of free government to stand firmly against the wrongful curtailment of personal rights at any time; for the true interests of free government are never promoted by resort to injustice or oppression.

283. This is a great and fundamental weakness of international law, that there is no executive authority to apply it and there are no courts to enforce its rules when nations disobey. During the World War the rules of international law were violated on many occasions, for example, in the use of poison gas, the bombing of hospitals, the sinking of hospital ships, the forcing of prisoners to labor on military works, and the illegal detention of neutral ships. Yet in spite of these violations international law emerged from the war stronger than it was before. The nations which violated international law most shamelessly were the ones that lost the war, and their defeat was due in no small measure to the resentment which was aroused throughout the world by reason of these violations.

284. Illustrations are too fresh in everyone’s mind to require any extended comment. In 1918 President Wilson took with him to the peace negotiations at Paris no member of the Senate. He did not keep in touch with the leaders of the majority party in this body. But in 1921 when President Harding appointed the four American delegates to the Washington Conference he named two of them from the Senate.

285. In addition to regular envoys, it is sometimes customary for a country to send an unofficial representative to conduct negotiations informally. During the years before the United States entered the war, Colonel Edward M. House, of Texas, was sent to Europe by President Wilson on at least two occasions in order that certain confidential discussions might be carried on without using the regular diplomatic channels. When unofficial representatives are sent in this way no public announcement is made.

286. Communications between diplomats and their own governments are not usually sent by mail if the matters dealt with are of great importance. They are sent by special couriers or messengers. When diplomatic communications are sent by telegraph or cable they are transmitted in cipher, that is, in a secret code of words which no outsider can read. Nations occasionally get hold of one another’s diplomatic codes and decipher communications which they are not supposed to read. For example, the German government in the spring of 1917, before the United States declared war, sent a wireless message to its official representative in Mexico, telling him in substance that if America entered the war, he was to stir up Mexico against the United States by promising that when the war was over Mexico would be rewarded with some American territory. This message was in secret code; but the American officials caught it from the air, deciphered it, and at the appropriate time put the German government in an embarrassing situation by publishing the message in plain English to the whole world.

287. When two countries go to war they at once withdraw their diplomatic representatives from one another’s capitals. The embassy or legation and its archives are put under the care of some neutral ambassador until the war is over. During the years 1914-1917 the American ambassador in Berlin and the American minister in Brussels looked after the interests of Great Britain at these two capitals. The work of Mr. Brand Whitlock at Brussels was notable, and the services which he rendered to the Belgian people during the years of their country’s captivity will long be remembered in that heroic little land.

288. In 1915, for example, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to the United States, Dr. Dumba, endeavored to stir up trouble among certain Hungarian immigrants who were working in American munition factories, making weapons and military supplies for sale to Great Britain and France. When the United States government discovered these intrigues, Dr. Dumba was dismissed from the country.

289. The making of secret treaties continued, in fact, after the war began. By secret treaties France and Great Britain promised that Italy should have certain territories which were held by Austria and that Russia should have Constantinople. When the war was over the new government at Vienna permitted the publication of a whole volume of secret treaties that had been made during the preceding fifty years. The Bolsheviks in Russia also published all the secret treaties of the Czar that they could find.

In the covenant of the League of Nations it is provided that every treaty between nations which become members of the League must be registered and published.

290. There are some cases in which the approval of the House of Representatives is also needed before a treaty can go into effect. In the treaty which provided for the purchase of Alaska in 1867 and in the treaty which closed the war with Spain in 1898, provision was made for the payment of money by the United States. Now no money can be appropriated from the treasury without action on the part of the House, and if the House had declined to appropriate the money, the conditions of these treaties could not have been fulfilled. In both cases, however, the House did actually vote the necessary funds.

291. In 1870, for example, President Grant concluded with the government of San Domingo a treaty which provided for the annexation of that island to the United States. The Senate, after a hard fight, rejected the treaty altogether. Even more notable, of course, was the Senate’s action in declining to ratify the treaty which President Wilson signed at Paris in 1919.

292. The English government proposed that the United States and Great Britain should issue the declaration jointly, but President Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, thought it better that the United States should make the declaration alone.

293. At the Peace Conference in 1919 the European countries were willing to concede what was virtually a recognition of the Monroe Doctrine, and the covenant of the League of Nations contains a provision that nothing in that document shall affect the validity of “regional understandings, like the Monroe Doctrine, for securing the maintenance of peace” (Article XXI).

294. Hiram Bingham, The Monroe Doctrine: An Obsolete Shibboleth (New Haven, 1913).

295. No one knows exactly what it means today because its scope has been rather indefinitely extended at various times. No doubt it would be further extended if the occasion should arise. For example, the original doctrine was directed against European powers only. But if Japan should attempt to acquire territory in Central or South America, the Monroe Doctrine would unquestionably be invoked as applicable to an Asiatic power as well.

296. Washington was well aware that the United States might have to take a hand in European quarrels if they should assume an extraordinary importance. Notice the exact wording of the passage in his Farewell Address. “It would be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her (Europe’s) politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.” Washington was not in the habit of wasting words, and he did not twice insert the limitation “ordinary” without good reason. By the way, he did not use the phrase “entangling alliances”. That expression was first used by Jefferson in his inaugural address (March 4, 1801).

297. From 1815 to 1914 all the great wars were localized. The Crimean War (1854-1855), although five nations took part in it, was confined to the territories around the Black Sea; the War of 1859, in which the French and Italians on the one side fought the Austrians on the other, was settled in Northern Italy. The other important wars were, for the most part, individual duels between two nations or between two sections of a single nation.

298. The total amount loaned to European governments by the United States during the war was about ten billion dollars, of which nearly half was loaned to Great Britain.

299. The payments made by Germany to Great Britain, France, and Italy, as well as the payments made by these countries to the United States, must inevitably take the form of payment in goods. There is not enough gold in Europe to make payment in gold. All this means that so long as the reparations and loans are being liquidated large imports of goods from Europe are likely to come into this country.

300. By the terms of a supplementary treaty, this does not include the main Japanese islands themselves.

301. It is said that the Thirty Years’ War reduced the population in some sections of the warring states to one-half or one-third of what it had been when the struggle began. The losses of all the countries engaged in the World War have been estimated to be almost ten millions, more than the entire population of Canada from ocean to ocean. Millions more died from famine and under-nourishment at home. Is it not strange that nations should work for years with might and main to increase the size and prosperity of their populations, then turn around and undo a large part of what they have been able to accomplish? In peace nations labor to alleviate each others’ distress; in war they labor to cause it. Patiently through the decades men of science wrestle with the problem of relieving pain and suffering; then, in an instant, all their skill is devoted to killing, maiming, and suffocating men by the million! There is no wisdom like the wisdom of man, and no folly like it either.

302. The covenant was made an integral part of the peace treaty, largely at President Wilson’s insistence, for two reasons: First, because it was believed that this would be a surer way of obtaining the assent of all the great nations to the provisions of the covenant; second, because many of the terms of the treaty (for example, those relating to boundaries and mandates) were framed on the assumption that a League of Nations would be in existence to carry them into effect. Taken together, the treaty and the covenant make the longest international document ever framed, a printed book of 87,000 words—about half the size of this text-book. Nearly a thousand diplomats, experts, and clerks spent more than three months in drafting it.

303. Invitations were not extended to Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, or Mexico. Austria, however, has since been admitted to membership.

304. When, for example, a typhus epidemic broke out in Poland, and the Polish authorities found themselves unable to control it, the League sent a commission of health experts to assist them.

305. This is because not only Great Britain herself but India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are members of the League. It was assumed that the six British votes in the Assembly would always be cast together; but, as a matter of fact, the various British dominions insisted upon having separate votes in order that they might vote according to their own particular interests. In most international matters the interests of Canada, Australia, and South Africa are not at all certain to coincide with those of England.

306. Since the treaty and the covenant were joined together, the objections to one applied to the other. Concerning Shantung, see also p. 620.

307. The term “soviet” means council or meeting. The constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic may be found in Frank Comerford, The New World, pp. 281-305.

308. Nikalai Lenin is now the head of this Council; Leon Trotzky is Minister of War in it. Each member of the Council is head of a department.

309. The breakdown was due in part, no doubt, to the disorganization wrought by the war and the internal revolts which broke out in Russia after the war. To make matters worse there were crop failures, with resulting famines, in some of Russia’s best grain-producing regions.

310. It is quite true that some men and women work because they like to work and dislike to be idle, or because they feel that what they do is of value to the community, or for some other reason not directly connected with their pay. They form, however, a very small fraction of the total body of wage-earners.

311. Voters.

312. Annulled by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

313. Superseded by the Seventeenth Amendment.

314. See Seventeenth Amendment.

315. See Sixteenth Amendment.

316. Superseded by the Twelfth Amendment.

317. Modified by the Eleventh Amendment.

318. Compare Fourteenth Amendment.

319. The first ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were adopted in 1791.

320. See Amendment XIV, Sec. 1, which extends part of this restriction to the States.

321. Adopted in 1798 to protect the sovereignty of the States.

322. Adopted in 1804, superseding Article II, Sec. 1.

323. Adopted in 1865.

324. Adopted in 1868.

325. Adopted in 1870.

326. Adopted in 1913.

327. Adopted in 1913.

328. Adopted in 1919.

329. Adopted in 1920.