Evening Post. TUESDAY, MAY 30, 1916. FUTILE

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 127, 30 May 1916, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MAY 30, 1916. FUTILE

President Wilson is to the fore again. On this occasion he is not terrifying Wall-street with the possibility that, after spending more than a year in the patient exchange of Notes with thePower that has murdered American citizens and is still unrepentant, he' would at last show a stiff back. Now he is gratifying the hyphenated patriotism of German-Americans by being much ruder to his friends in Great Britain over their interference with American cargoes _and American mails than he really : means. No, the long-suffering President has now exchanged the thin ice over which his diplomacy has skated for all these months without , falling through or even scratching the surface for really safe ground. He has been addressing the League to Enforce Peace, and has found in its propaganda a congenial field for his eloquence. Whether the League to Enforce Peace has anything to do with Mr., Henry Ford and tho shipload of. doves that lie carried with him on that gallant but futile journey across the Atlantic, or how much German blood it has in its veins, are questions which we are unable to answer. There is indued one word in the title of the League that savours rather of a German than a Fordian origin. It is a "League to Enforce Peace." By what means is the League going to impress upon the warring nations the folly and the wickedness of settlingtheir difference and to enforce their adoption of some less forcible process ? The peaceful bombardment by tracts and resolutions, which has hitherto represented the limit of the tactics of the friends of peace, hardly justifies the suggestion of an appeal to force. On the other hand, the mailed fist and the shining armour and the other instruments of hatred and terrorism by which the Germans are seeking to thrash 'the whole world into brotherly kindness are hardly suggestive of peace. President Wilson, however, solved the problem presented by the title of the League by simply ignoring the question of the methods of enforcement. He talked freely about the millennium of peace, and all the good things associated with "the Parliament of man, the federation of the world." Academic abstractions about the rights of small St-ates are safer than concrete efforts on behalf of Belgium or Servia. Nearly all that President Wilson had to say might have come straight ,from the copy-book, and nearly all of it might just as well have stayed there. "Reading good books of morality," says Bacon, "is a little flat and dead." Reading the admirable moral sentiments of the President certainly does not act as either a stimulus or a. tonic.

"America," says President Wilson, "is ready to join any feasible association of the nations to preserve the peace of the world '.against political ambition and selfish hostility." It is in that word "feasible" that the difficulty arises. To talk peace and brotherhood is so easy and so safe. The painting of ideal pictures of the future • is, in the same category. In this matter, as in other human affairs, the selection of the first practical and effective step towards the good is a much more serious business. It is this test that deducts a heavy discount from the present value of the President's pious aspirations. He told the Peace League that a universal association of nations should "prevent any war beginning, either contrary to treaty or covenants, or without warning and full submission of the causes to» the opinion of the world." President Wilson also said that "the small States of the world should have the right to enjoy the same respect ■ for sovereignty and for territorial dignity that the great and powerful nations expect and insist upon;" and that "the world has a right to be free front a disturbance which originates in aggression and the disregard of the rights of others," During two years of! war President Wilson has been the executive head of the greatest of the neutral nations. How much has he done in all that time towards realising the ideals that he now so eloquently expounds? Granted that he is right in declaring that "our interest is only in peace and its future guarantees," and that he was therefore right in avoiding vra.r, has ho done all that might reason#Mj,' -Hrvb been ffs.ns in Mis iiifcei-eulß' of 'PBace.nQw_and_ia i .th.? future? ffhere are

many ways i". which he could have asserted himself without a declaration of war, but he has certainly missed most of his opportunities. From the time when the Kaiser invited his opinion on the German performances in Belgium down to the loss of the last American citizen by submarine assassination, President Wilson has been missing chances' of contributing to the opinion and sentiment to which even German brutality and arrogance are not entirely immune. The weakness of the President's attitude is seen not in his keeping America out of the war, but in her grievous decline as a moral force. Nobody could eulogise peace and international morahty in more glowing terms than those employed by President Wilson, but the ideal statesman will surely do a little more for these causes on the practical side.