One remark about sovereignty. It is said that we part with our sovereignty when we promise to make war, promise to go into a boycott, promise to limit our army. Well, I venture to dispute that proposition. Of course the making of war is an evidence of sovereignty. Of course the making of a law is. But to promise to do one thing which does not sum up the faculties of sovereignty-to do one thing in the future is not to part with sovereignty. The truth is that a sovereign that cannot agree with other nations to do something is not a sovereign at all. It is a nation that ought to go into a guardianship. (Applause). A minor who cannot contract a debt that will bind him is not ordinarily regarded as of full power. Now I do not mean to say that you might not promise to do so many things that you really do interfere with and obstruct your sovereignty. If the promise covers a great many subjects, then it becomes a matter of degree. But all nations promise to do things. All nations must promise to do things, in order that there shall be any international relations at all.

Take the analogy of a free man. Does he lose his liberty when he promises to render service of a month or a year to another? He binds himself. The law will not specifically enforce it. One element of sovereignty is power to break a contract as well as to make it. Now you cannot enforce a year's contract of service against a free man. I do not mean that there are not some exceptions in this respect, but generally in law a man who makes a contract of service can break it and your only remedy is damages. If you could keep him going by force for a year, you have transgressed the line that ordinarily determines freedom and liberty and you have introduced an element of slavery. Certainly we have said so in our country, under the thirteenth amendment, that where you have a statute by which you can compel a man and punish him for not performing his contract of service, you have violated the thirteenth amendment against slavery. And so a sovereign may make a contract to do what its sovereignty enables it to break. It is a little like foreordination and free will. The power to do right or to do wrong is the element of sovereignty, as it is the element of liberty, and creates responsibility and the sense of it. It is not correct, therefore, to say that this takes away our sovereignty because we agree to do something in the future with reference to war, with reference to armament.

Then it is said it changes our form of government. Why? It is said the power to make war is vested by the constitution in Congress; Congress may declare war, Congress may carry it on; therefore, when the treaty-making power agrees that the Government shall make war, it is taking away the power of Congress to determine in its discretion, when the occasion arises, whether that war shall be made.

Well, what is the answer'? The answer is that it does not take away the power. It merely imposes the obligation, so that the action of Congress in not making war is a breach of its contract, but it does not take away the power of Congress either to make or not to make war.

In other words, gentlemen, the treaty-making power is the promising power of the government; and when we make a promise of that sort, the treaty-making power is the government. Congress is the performing power of the government, and, therefore, when we come to perform, Congress is the government; and if Congress does not perform the promises made by the government, when it makes them through its constitutional agency to promise, then it breaks its promise, that is all. And there is nothing in the promise that in any way curtails or cuts down the discretion vested in Congress by the constitution to declare .or make war.

It is the same way with reference to declaring an embargo necessary to enforce the universal boycott that under the sixteenth article of the League is the penalty visited against those who fail to keep their covenants to submit differences and to delay war until three months after the recommendation or decision is made.

The point has been made a good many times, and been urged, that by promising to make war or not to make war, the treaty-making power is taking away something from Congress. Now, I say there is nothing in it whatever, and that when you see the distinction between the government in promising, and the government through a different agency performing, you can see that the government is the same; the government has made the promise and the government has the power, though not the moral or indeed the legal right, to violate that promise. Nevertheless, it has the power, and that is what makes sovereignty, and that is what constitutes the actual functioning power of a branch of the government.

This is proven by the construction put upon that power for a number of years, ever since the beginning. Why, the argument has gone so far as to assert that we cannot agree to arbitrate anything which shall result in an obligation on the part of Congress to perform what the award of that arbitration requires because it takes away the power of Congress. Now, is it necessary to answer an argument like that? I do not want to take away from the credit of Great Britain or of Canada in the matter of arbitrations, but I venture to say we more than any other country in the world have resorted to arbitration and sought arbitration whenever we could. And for a hundred years. Why, the first treaty that we made with Great Britain, the Jay Treaty contains a provision for arbitration and we have had it in all our

treaties ever since. Now, if it be true that to arbitrate is to submit something that may control Congress and therefore take away from its power to act, then we would have no right to arbitrate anything. And so to make war; so to guarantee independence.

We have now a treaty made with Panama by which we guarantee her independence and the integrity of her territory. That is nothing but the same obligation entered into in Article X. Nobody has ever said that that treaty was wrong. We had got something for it. We got our treaty with Panama, which enabled us to build the Panama Canal. And can we back out of that on the ground that it ousted the power of Congress with reference to the making of war?

When you come to resort to precedent you find not only that, but the Bryan treaties, of which there were some twenty, I think, or twenty-three-I don't know how many-which provide that no nation under those treaties shall go to war until a year after the event leading to the war and until after investigation and report shall be made. Now that limits the power of Congress to declare war, for a year; and if it does, it ousts its power to declare war-if that be true-if that is the theory. So that precedent is entirely at variance with any such proposition.

See the reductio ad absurdum that you have. Congress is the only power under the constitution that can pay money out of the Treasury of the United States. If that be true, if this view be true that we cannot agree to do anything that Congress is the constitutional agency in doing, then we of the United States cannot agree to pay another nation any money in the future. We can back out of every contract. We did agree to pay twenty millions for the Phillippines and we paid it. We agreed to pay such an award as might be made in the Fisheries Arbitration; and you found that we had taken fish-or the arbitration found that we had taken fish to the extent of five millions. We did not like it, we made grimaces, just as you did over the Geneva arbitration, but we paid the money, and we did not attempt to get out of it on the theory that it took away the power of Congress to use its independent discretion in paying money. It did not do any such thing. It only left to Congress the power to decide whether we ought to pay our debts, or ought not to-that is all.

In this way it seems to me I have covered the chief objecttions on any constitutional ground to the entry of the United States into such a treaty as that proposed. The constitutional decisions as to the character of our government written by Chief Justice Marshall are illuminating and convincing as to the character of the nation which was created by the constitu

tion. Whatever the merits of this particular League may be, it would be a great interference with the usefulness of the government of the United States for the people of the United States, on the one hand, and for the neighbours of the United States, and the world-for all the world is her neighbour now-if the United States might not enter into obligations of an affirmative character to do certain things in consideration of other nations doing either the same thing or a thing of some other nature. And I do not think those people who contend against the power of the United States to make such a contract fully realize how completely such a construction would relegate our great nation and our great government, the power of which Marshall and the whole court have always exalted, would relegate that government and nation to the disability of infants and of persons irresponsible, so that they may not make obligations that shall be binding on them. (Great applause).

ADDRESS BY RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR AUCKLAND GEDDES, K.C.B.

BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES

OTTAWA, SEPTEMBER 2ND, 1920

Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, My Lord, Ladies and Gentle

men:

I do not think it would be easy for me to find words to express my deep appreciation of the kindness which you have just done me. I am glad to be here among you. I regard this opportunity of speaking to you as a rare and a real privilege; for to one placed as I am, watching from day to day the doings of the nations of the world, there is one great phenomenon which is of outstanding interest and, as I believe, of vast importance. It is a problem which is discussed wherever men meet togetherthe problem which we shortly summarize under the two words, "World Unrest."

I hear many opinions expressed as to the cause of this great questioning which has seized upon the mind of humanity. I hear it ascribed to the workings of some widespread conspiracy in the international underworld. I do not think that that gives us any real explanation. We may take it as proved that there are agitators, that there are individuals who are spending their time in trying to stir up trouble. There is no doubt that such individuals do harm. There is no doubt that such individuals add to the unrest which exists. But they always seem to me more like mosquitoes, carriers of fever, whom it is of very little use to regard as the causes of the disease; and although there is a human pleasure to be got from "swatting" the mosquito, you won't get rid of him until the slimy pools are drained and the places from which he draws his poison are cleaned.

I hear other people say world unrest is to be regarded as the aftermath of war. Some people love a phrase like that. I agree most fully that the war has created disturbances, has produced conditions in the life of all the nations that were engaged in it, and of those that were not, which have added to the discomfort and therefore to the dissatisfaction of mary men and many women. Some of those who say that the unrest is to be regarded as the aftermath of war point especially to economic conditions, and satisfy themselves that they have found therein a complete and adequate explanation.