pledge is absolute, and whether it desires to act or not, wholly regardless of the provocation that may cause the aggression which it is pledged to repel, the obligation must be fulfilled.

It would be futile to assume that the fulfillment of this obligation will never involve war. Such a contention would leave the pledge without any value. Its whole force and significance lie in the assumption that every signatory of the Covenant will be obliged to engage in war whenever the conditions of the agreement demand it.

This involves surrendering to the operation of a mere inechanism of control the most important power any government possesses, the power to determine when and why it will engage in war. Such a surrender involves the creation of a super-government in the form of a blind, unconscious mechanism which, though animated by no human feelings and endowed with no intelligent foresight, may involve millions of men in sanguinary strife over questions remote from their interests; for this Article X of the League of Nations, according to the President of the United States, as we shall presently see, is not a provision, intended specifically to avoid war, but to preserve boundaries that have never yet been settled on any definite principles of right.

In the Conference at the White House with the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, on August 19th, 1919, the President made the extraordinary statement that the "invasion" of the territory of a member of the League is not forbidden by Article X. He said: "I understand that Article to mean that no nation is at liberty to invade the territorial integrity of another. That does not mean to invade for the purposes of warfare, but to impair the territorial integrity of another nation. Its territorial integrity is not destroyed by armed intervention. It is destroyed by retention, by taking territory away from it, that impairs its territorial integrity." When Senator Brandegee suggested that the words are not "territorial aggression," but external aggression," the President, to support his interpretation, insisted, "But it says the preservation of its territorial integrity against external aggression."

Under this Article of the Covenant, according to the President's interpretation, invasion " for purposes of warfare" is not forbidden. An enemy might invade any coun

try, so far as this provision for its protection is concerned, take possession of its resources, carry away its portable property, desolate its fields, destroy its mines, and even exterminate its population; but the President declares the obligation of Article X would not be brought into operation until it came to a diplomatic settlement! Then, and only then, would the obligation to preserve territorial integrity and political independence" come into operation! It is difficult to be patient with such an evasion as this, to which no government could resort in practice without losing the respect of mankind, including that of its own people. If this were the true meaning of Article X, it would be a mockery to call it "the heart of the Covenant." If such an interpretation were inserted in the act of ratification, it would undoubtedly be rejected.

The purpose of the President in trying to limit the application of Article X to the ultimate settlement of boundary disputes is obvious. It was to diminish the extent of the obligation assumed under it. The wide extent of that obligation is, however, distinctly revealed in the second sentence of that Article, which reads: "In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled." And if we turn to Article XI, which immediately follows, we read: "Any war or threat of war whether immediately affecting any of the members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations;" and yet the President insists that the obligation under Article X would not become operative until an invading nation had completed its conquest and decided to annex territory and impose its own rule!

Article X undoubtedly means what it says, and so does Article XI. The preservation of territorial integrity and political independence against external aggression is an explicit obligation, and that obligation is nowhere limited in the manner maintained in the President's interpretation. Any war or threat of war" is "a matter of concern to the whole League," and "the League is to take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations." "In case any such emergency should arise, the

Secretary-General shall, on the request of any member of the League, forthwith summon a meeting of the Council." The Council once called, the duty of every member is plain. It is to fulfil and enforce the obligations of the Covenant. "The League is to take action." That is a part of the contract. What action must it take? "Any action that may be deemed wise and effectual." It cannot abrogate or modify any Covenant obligation of the League. That is where the super-government becomes automatically absolute. The "whole League "-for it is a corporate unit and not a mere aggregation of separate States-and every member of the League must act in a manner to fulfil its obligations. If war is necessary, then war must follow, or the Covenant is broken and the defaulters are not only delinquent in performance, they are also subject to discipline. They may not then freely withdraw from the League (Article I), or they may be expelled from it (Article XVI).

The function of the Council is clearly defined in the second sentence of Article X: "The Council shall advise upon the means by which the obligation shall be fulfilled." "Advise upon means that the members of the Council shall advise or take counsel together; not that, as a body, they shall merely give advice to the separate governments regarding the "means" they must employ in fulfilling the obligation. Under Article XI it is explicitly prescribed that "the League shall take action." It is clearly the function of the Council to decide what action will be "wise and effectual," and then the League is to take that particular action. It may be any action, including war by the entire League; but from the nature of the case it must be a specific action and it is action by the League.

It seems a perversion of language to say, that, because the expression "advise upon" is employed, the Council acts only in an advisory" manner. The League as such. is authorized to "take action," not merely to advise its members to take action. No referendum is provided for; nor is it necessary, since unanimity is required in the Council. Every member will have had an opportunity of vetoing the action proposed under the instruction of his Government, before any decision is reached. No revision or confirmation of the decision is anywhere prescribed or even referred to. The implication is plain that the Covenant is

automatic here also, to the extent that the obligation to act upon a decision thus unanimously arrived at is fixed by the terms of the Covenant.

In saying this, I do not overlook the fact that the President has declared that all the obligations of the Covenant are only "moral" and not "legal," and that a moral obligation involves a personal "judgment" when it comes to execution, and that such a separate judgment may justify a refusal to fulfil the obligation! But I shall not attempt to enter into the casuistry in which this singular distinction takes refuge. I assume that, whatever the distinction between a moral" and a "legal" obligation may be, it cannot be invoked in international agreements, in which all obligations are fundamentally moral, because they are based entirely upon national honor.

What I am more concerned about is, who has the right to pledge the national honor, and who under our Constitution must fulfil the pledge; and I assume that no one has the right-either moral or legal-to pledge the honor of the nation in a manner that may conflict with the fundamental law, or that may render disputable the obligation to fulfil the pledge after it has been made.

I draw attention, therefore, to the fact that, while the Covenant of the League of Nations, if respected, would predetermine the occasion for the United States going to war or refusing to go to war, and is to that extent a supergovernment controlling the constitutional right of Congress freely to decide these questions, it virtually places the entire control of foreign policy, so far as any independent national control is left, in the hands of the Chief Executive, who is at the same time the Commander-in-Chief of the military and naval forces of the United States. The moment war is automatically called for by the obligations of the Covenant, at that moment the President might claim the right to act by the authority of a treaty, and a decision regarding his right to act under the treaty could be reached only by a long and difficult process, if at all. It is probable that other nations would consider him bound to act, since his own decision that he should do so had already been expressed in the Council when action was "advised upon."

It has, I am aware, been intimated, that any proposed action by the League of a character objectionable to the Government of the United States could be prevented by

instructing the representative of this country in the Council to vote against it. Since unanimity is necessary to any decision of the Council, such action could be prevented by that single vote.

This is true, and it is also true that any other action, and all action, could be prevented by any one of the members of the Council, except that rendered necessary by the obligations of the Covenant, which all the members together could not change.

It is, therefore, evident that the President, having previously instructed the American representative in the Council how to vote on a particular issue, would be already bound by its decision, and would be honorably bound also to carry it into execution. If it be held that the Council does not determine action but merely gives advice, such advice would of necessity be in effect the President's advice, since no recommendation could be made without it.

In order that the full force of this statement may be appreciated, it is necessary to note that it is the Council of the League that "advises upon" the action to be taken whenever the machinery of the League calls for action. There is no other provision for it. To reverse it, to propose other action, or to refuse to participate in the action determined upon by the Council would be equivalent to declining to perform the obligation automatically brought into being. To any such course the reply of other nations would be, "You are repudiating the agreement of your own Government, which has already approved this action in the Council. You are already bound by it."

We come here to the most fundamental of all the questions relating not only to this Covenant but to the whole future policy of the United States in its relation to other countries and the issues of war and peace, namely: "Who is authorized to bind the United States in an international agreement?"

We know the answer of President Wilson. In his letter addressed to Senator Hitchcock on November 19, 1919, he declared that changes in the Treaty of Versailles which had been proposed in the Senate would be in effect a "nullification of the treaty," and he had previously intimated that, if the treaty were in any essential respect modified, he would himself suppress the act of ratification. In his address in Denver, on September 25 he said: