Page:William Howard Taft - America Can't Quit (1919).djvu/7

 of all the nations of the world to prevent war as far as possible, and they are willing to undertake the experiment.

The League is a part of a treaty. Its constitutional validity, so far as we are especially concerned, depends on the question, What is the scope of the treaty-making power?

Now whether the League be constitutional, or not, depends upon the construction that should be put upon it. The objectors to the League, many of them, say that it creates a super-sovereignty, an over-government, a managing directorate to which are delegated powers that can only be exercised under our constitution by Congress. There might be such a league; there might be a league such as France desired to have in which there should be a managing directorate with a chief of police, so to speak, under that directorate, with a million men in the police force, so that Chief of Police Foch, hearing of a disturbance in one part of the globe, could send word by cable to his superintendent there, "Take twenty thousand men, go over and suppress that disturbance, and put out the fire."

France was anxious to have it, because France wanted an arrangement by which Foch could order to the German frontier at once, on any threat of German attack upon France, half a million men, and her delegates argued strenuously before the Conference in favor of such an arrangement.

But the other nations declined, and our representatives declined, because they said, "Not only do we object on the ground of expediency to parting with sovereignty such as that would be, but we have not the power under our constitution."

The league which I have described is not the League that is now presented for our consideration and adoption. What is it? It is only a partnership agreement. It is an agreement in which the partners agree to coöperate. It is written in the covenant what they shall do under the obligations so described. The circumstances under which those obligations arose are stated in the covenant; and it is for each member of the League necessarily to construe its own obligation, to determine how that obligation shall be performed, and then to perform it, itself, and not through any agency except its constitutional and normal agency to do the thing which it has agreed to do. I think if you will study the League, you will find that that is the condition. It