Page:William Howard Taft - America Can't Quit (1919).djvu/17



Then it is said to be unconstitutional. Why? I don't know. One of the embarrassments in court when you say a thing is unconstitutional is that you have to point out the verse and line of the Constitution that is violated; but you don't have to do that either on the stump or in the Senate.

Now is it within the treaty-making power to limit armament? Well, what is the scope of the treaty-making power? The Supreme Court of the United States is fairly good authority on that subject, and it has held that the treaty-making power is one of very wide scope. It may even suspend state statutes and thus transcend stations between congressional action and that of state legislatures. It may cover, as Mr. Justice Field said in Geoffroy vs. Riggs, it may cover the usual subject matter of treaties between nations except that it may not change the form of government, it may not agree to do things forbidden by the Constitution and it may not cede land belonging to a state without the consent of the state.

The limitation of armament is one of the most frequent subject matters of peace treaties. Indeed, this very peace treaty, that does not seem to be objected to by the objectors in the Senate, contains a very lengthy chapter on the limitation of the armament of Germany, showing that it is a frequent subject matter of peace treaties. Therefore, according to the definition of the Supreme Court, the limitation of our armament comes directly within the treaty-making power. More than that, in 1817, we made a treaty with Great Britain in which we agreed not to put naval armament on the Great Lakes if Great Britain agreed not to do so, and she did. I see the same gentleman objects to that as a treaty because he says it did not amount to much. Well, it was an agreement with another nation signed by the executive and confirmed by two thirds of the Senate and my recollection is that that makes a treaty. That provided, as I say, a limitation of armament, and it provided that we might withdraw from it on notice, but that doesn't prevent it being a treaty, and if you can make a treaty for two years, you can make it for ten. As a matter of fact, we have kept that treaty for one hundred years or more; we were glad when we made it and we have been glad ever since. We celebrated the centenary of peace in 1914 and the oratorical periods—I remember, I made some of them myself—referred to the wonderful fact that under an agreement made at that time we had allowed that border of four thousand miles, and especially the Great Lakes, to be utterly undefended; and we pointed to