Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/185

 capital. It squares with the international finance of the future.

Last but not least, we Americans have it in our power to abolish that secret diplomacy which, everyone agrees, makes toward wars. We cannot have much secret diplomacy ourselves, since all our international agreements must be thrashed out and ratified in the Senate, and so published. The trend of the period, fortunately, is against the gum-shoe method of arriving at national understandings which become in due time misunderstandings. Really, monarchs before the great war had not nearly so much irresponsible power as diplomats; and the right to conceal their agreements from their people was their best tool. That is changing. Great Britain, once as much a sinner as the rest, has but lately registered and published with the League of Nations the twenty-one treaties and agreements which she has made since the war, has given her national word of honor that she is holding nothing back. Even before we enter some kind of association of nations, we have probably the power to end much of the secret diplomacy. We need merely announce that we will not recognize any treaty which has not been published to the world.

Yet—returning to the kernel of the matter—we, the citizens of the world, shall not find that the organization of law between nations is enough in itself