Welsh Journals

THE WELSH OUTLOOK The Editor does not necessarily identify himself with the opinions of contributors to "The Welsh Outlook." Editorial responsibility is limited to the views expressed in the Notes of the Month," and in the unsigned article immediately following. NOTES OF THE MONTH The Case for When President Wilson speaks he makes America serious contributions both to literature and to history. His speech presenting the Peace Treaty to the American Senate was noble in its truth and in its utterance. It is a speech to be read aloud in the schools and in the public places. It explains and it uplifts. It uplifts not only by reason of its periods and its idealism and sense of virtue, but also by its chronicle of action taken and to be taken. It leaves the austere impression upon us that the war was an immense moral struggle, and it effectively reminds us that America took sides in it because it was essentially a matter of the spirit and not of the body. The President, speaking of the arrival of the American Army in France, said They were recognised as Crusaders." It is true. Those of us who met them and introduced some of them to the trenches can vouch for the truth of their leader's words Everyone who saw them realized that something had happened that was much more than a mere incident in the fighting, some- thing very different from the mere arrival of fresh troops. A great moral force had flung itself into the struggle. America came into the war as the champion of rights which she was glad to share with free men and lovers of justice everywhere. And America sat at the Peace table with the knowledge only that it was her duty to do every- thing that was within her power to make the triumph of freedom and right a lasting triumph in the assurance of which men might everywhere live without fear. Britishers should gladly accept the President's interpretation of the war, and of America's participation in it. It is Britain's case as well as America's. The Truth The most interesting and the most about the valuable part of the President's address League is that which deals with the evolution of the League of Nations Covenant. The great contribution it makes to our stock of ideas on the AUGUST, 1919. point is the simple one that the League of Nations was completely recognised at the Peace Conference, not as a counsel of perfection, but as a practical necessity. More than half the world still thinks that the Covenant slipped into the Peace Treaty as an ideal and a dream. So many of us have yet to realise that it is the essence of the Peace Treaty, and that it is likely that, without it, we should not yet at any rate have had a peace treaty at all. The delegates of the nations were sent to the Peace Conference because they were practical men, and in the end it was the most practical and the least visionary of them that realized the impotence of a Peace Treaty without the League Covenant as its foundation. The League of Nations was the practical statesman's hope of success in many of the most difficult things he was attempting. The task of the Conference was to arrange an all but universal adjust- ment of the world's affairs," and it became evident to the delegates that what they were seeking would be little more than something written upon paper, if they did not create a permanent authority whose decisions would be recog- nised and whose decisions all must respect. The League had come to seem a plain counsel of necessity. The aim of the Peace Treaty was to set up a new order in the world. The simple object of the Covenant is to maintain it. New States are to be set up. Small nations and religious minorities are to be safeguarded. Military establishments are to be limited and regulated. The normal channels of commerce are to be cleared of unfair obstruction of law and privilege. Labour is to be given the opportunity to secure the concerted protection of definite international pledges of principle and practice. The Peace Treaty only decides these vital world matters. The League of Nations is the Peace Treaty in action. What is wise and true in it will be maintained by the League. Its follies and its expediences it will in time remove. Paris found the Covenant at the first convenient; afterwards, indis-