Page:William Howard Taft - America Can't Quit (1919).djvu/28

 ward ever taken by the world in the interest of mankind to avoid the scourge of war.

It is said that we ought to make the treaty of peace and then separate the League and consider that at our leisure. I don’t know whether you have followed—I have no doubt you have—the arguments against the League. If you have and have seen the manifestation of any sense of responsibility of those who have objected to the League for the execution and carrying out of the treaty of peace, you have seen more than I have. I have not seen a single argument based on the view that the peace treaty presented any trouble or any problem at all. Now let me suggest some difficulties.

The first one is that we are said to have overthrown Germany. We have destroyed her military power, it is said. Yes, but we have not destroyed Germany and we have not destroyed her spirit—at least if we can judge by circumstances, she is still in many regards unrepentant.

We have limited her armament to two hundred thousand men, to be reduced in a short time to one hundred thousand; the destruction of certain fortifications; restriction upon her manufacture of ammunition and arms, of submarine and aeroplanes. She is forbidden to resort to conscription and there are a number of other restraining provisions, and their effect must last for ten or fifteen years.

Do you think that if we went away and left our treaty and trusted only to M. Clemenceau to write a note to President Ebert, inviting his attention to the obligations of Germany under the treaty and asking Germany politely to comply with them, that we could enforce that treaty? Do you think Germany is in that condition of mind? If you do, you are greener than the fields of corn that we like to look on now. You have got to enforce that treaty by power and power behind it, the same power that won the war, or the treaty won't be enforced. How are you going to get the power? You are going to get it only from the League of Nations that dictated that treaty, who are the nations that declared war against Germany and many of them carried it on. That is the only way. And when you have the foundation of a League of Nations brought about by the force of circumstances, you have got the beginning of a new institution in the world.

Leagues do not grow out of conventions of college professors. I have attended those conventions. I am a college professor. I know. You go and discuss such a plan and the discussions are valuable; you print your