Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1919 — LEAGUE OF NATIONS [ARTICLE]

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

~‘ORE AT —ME E~WN& j ***^^^* ? **l .E IE 1 TO ENFORCE PEACE BEING HELD IN CHICAGO. There is now in session in Chicago the Great Lakes Congress for B League of Nations, which is being held under the auspices of the League to Enforce Peace. A series of these meetings is being held in the United States in nine different representative cities. The first was held at New York Feb. 5 and 6, the second at Boston Feb. 1 and 8, the third is now in session in Chicago, the dates assigned to it being Feb. 10 and 11. The other meetings will be held at Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Atlanta. Some of the greatest men in this coutry will be heard at these meetings. At the Chicago meeting the program includes the names of Hon. William Howard Taft, president of the league, Hon. Henry Van Dyke, former minister to the Netherlands, Miss Jane Adams, of Hull House, and Hon. Henry Morganthau, formerly minister to Turkey. It would seem from extracts from a late article written by Frank H. Simonds, who is now in France, that some of the talent in this league might have been used bv the Presiderit, who is now sitting at the peace table in Paris. , No one who knows of the ability and universal fairness of Mr. Simonds will question the statements which we herd quote from his pen.

“Above all else, British policy at the peace conference is based on a new interpretation of the. world by British statesmanship and diplomacy One ought to say at the outset that Britain is incomparably better represented at Paris on the technical and on the diplomatic side than any one of the other great powers. There are more brain» and better brain* in the British delegation than in any other, and these brains are concentrated on a clearly thought out program. • A decisive role in war and in peace belongs to America, for precisely the same reason that Great Britain held is, so often in the past. We have -come relatively fresh on the stricken field. We alone are still strong, fighting as well as otherwise. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize America. British policy has accepted this situatio nskillfully. The keynote of the British policy is that there shall be no break of any kind between America and England; chat every conceivable concession shall be made, targe or small, on the political as contrasted with the economic phase, to the end that Anglo-American relations and Anglo-American friendship may be placed on a solid basis for the future. . ' « In the matter of the league of nations, Hie thing was little more than a vague formula, even after Mr. Wilson had outlined his fourteen points. At the moment when the President came to Europe it became the mission of the British to' work out the President’s ideas and give them form, togive them coherence, and they have done this. Later it will -be for the French to take hold and make them intelligible by translation into the French language. If the British had not accepted Mr. Wilson’s league of nations idea; if they had not undertaken part oif the task of bringing it from the clouds to concrete ideas, there would not have been much chance of success for that scheme at Paris; but the British were keen enough to see, first, that President Wilson desired it; Second, that their own people desired it, and, third, that if they failed to give substantial and necessary aid to bring it off, the# would be criticized at home and suspected abroad.”