763.72119/1562a
The Secretary of State to Colonel E. M. House
My Dear Colonel: Mr. Auchincloss gave me your invitation for luncheon on Friday next and I am sorry I cannot accept it. I concluded from what he said that the purpose was to discuss the American and British differences as to the League of Nations, and particularly the attitude of Lloyd-George as expressed in his public address about a month ago.
As you probably know Mr. Page wrote a long letter to the President on the subject. He sent a similar one to me,84 which I found very interesting in its dissection of British opinion.
To be entirely frank I am not disposed to quarrel too severely with the Prime Minister’s opinion in regard to the League to Enforce Peace, because I am not at all sure he is not in a measure justified. The movement has been for several years very industriously and, I may say, very ably advocated in this country; but, doubting its efficiency as a means to insure international peace, I have, as you know, never affirmatively given it my personal support.
[Page 119]The practical element, in my opinion, in any league of nations is the good faith of the members. If they are untrustworthy, an agreement to unite in the forcible maintenance of peace would be worthless. If this is the true view, the character of the membership of the league should be of first consideration, and I do not understand this to be in the scheme of Mr. Taft and others advocating a League to Enforce Peace.
Briefly let me recall to you my line of thought, which I discussed with you a year and a quarter ago: No people on earth desire war, particularly an aggressive war. If the people can exercise their will, they will remain at peace. If a nation possesses democratic institutions, the popular will will be exercised. Consequently, if the principle of democracy prevails in a nation, it can be counted upon to preserve peace and oppose war.
Applying these truths (if they are truths and I think they are), I have reached the conclusion that the only certain guarantor of international peace is a League of Democracies since they alone possess the trustworthy character which makes their word inviolate. A League, on the other hand which numbers among its members autocratic governments, possesses the elements of personal ambition, of intrigue and discord, which are the seeds of future wars.
A League, composed of both democratic and autocratic governments and pledged to maintain peace by force, would be unreliable; but a League, composed solely of democracies, would by reason of the character of its membership be an efficient surety of peace.
To my mind it comes down to this, that the acceptance of the principle of democracy by all the chief powers of the world and the maintenance of genuine democratic governments would result in permanent peace. If this view is correct, then the effort should be to make democracy universal. With that accomplished I do not care a rap whether there is a treaty to preserve peace or not. I am willing to rely on the pacific spirit of democracies to accomplish the desirable relation between nations, and I do not believe that any League relying upon force or the menace of force can accomplish that purpose, at least for any length of time.
Until Autocracy is entirely discredited and Democracy becomes not only the dominant but the practically universal principle in the political systems of the world, I fear a League of Nations, particularly one purposing to employ force, would not function.
It seems to me that the proper course, the one which will really count in the end, is to exert all our efforts toward the establishment of the democratic principle in every country of sufficient power to be a menace to world peace in the event it should be in the hands of [Page 120] ambitious rulers instead of the people. Unless we can accomplish this this war will, in my opinion, have been fought in vain.
We must crush Prussianism so completely that it can never rise again, and we must end Autocracy in every other nation as well. A compromise with this principle of government, and an attempt to form a League of Nations with autocratic governments as members will lack permanency. Let us uproot the whole miserable system and have done with it.
In reading over this letter it impresses me as a little too oratorical, but I am sure you will pardon that in view of the strong convictions which I have on the subject. I simply cannot think with complacency of temporizing or compromising with the ruffians who brought on this horror, because to do so will get us nowhere, and some future generation will have to complete the work which we left unfinished.
Faithfully yours,
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