Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/112

 Taft, Colonel House, and Wilson. A League of Nations Society was set up on a small scale in 1915 by Lord Parmoor, Lord Courtney, and a few others, afterwards to be merged with the League of Free Nations Association founded early in 1918, so as to form “The League of Nations Union” with Grey as its first President. But the Bryce scheme, published in the spring of 1915, as a result of a long series of discussions, was the first formal draft of the League as brought into political life by the efforts of President Wilson and General Smuts. Service on this Bryce Committee, with my friends Graham Wallas, Hobhouse, and Lowes Dickinson, was my first initiation into the mysteries and delicacies of internationalism as a practical policy.

Though it is not possible here to set forth the full proposals in the Bryce Report, its character is faithfully indicated in the following passage from the “Introduction“:

“The members, then, of our proposed Union would bind themselves by treaty

(1) To refer all disputes that might arise between them, if diplomatic methods of adjustment had failed, either to an arbitral tribunal for judicial decision, or to a council of conciliation and report.

(2) Not to declare war or begin hostilities or hostile