Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-04-11
HITCHCOCK AND
PEPPER DEBATE
NATIONS LEAGUE
Big Audience Jams Metropoli-
tan Opera House,
Philadelphia
By associated Press.

Philadelphia, April II. - United
States Senator Hitchcock, of Nebras-
ka. chairman of the foreign relations
committee of the last Senate. and
George Wharton Pepper, Phila-
delphia lawyer and executive man
ager of the League for Preservation
of American Independence recently
organized in Washington, last night
debated the constitution of the
League of Nations as made pubic
by the Paris Peace Conference, be-
fore an audience that jammed the
Metropolitan Opera House. Chiet
Justice j. Hay Brown. OF the Su-
preme Court of Pennsylvania, pre-
sided and under the conditions OF the
debate no decision was mae.
Senator Hitchcock opened with
45-minute speech along the general
lines of his former addresses IN inns
city and other parts of the country.
He said the present is the pest TIME
to take steps to prevent war; thaI
the proposed League of Nations Is
the best instrument that mas Set
been devised to prevent war; that
the constitution of the league is Il
compromise: that you can't get any
thing better, and that you must ac-
cept il or there will be no league. 1t
is n contract. covenant, treaty
and not a super nation and not
super government, as some crltlcS
have declared. 1t is nonsense TO
say. Mr.. Hitchcock added. that IL
takes away sovereignty.
Mr.. Pepper suggested that the
league should contain provision
for the establishment of a hiSh court
of justice. He characterized the
proposed executive councll as
political body" to which no Justicla-
BILE questions should be referred:
The jurisdiction of the court should
be carefully defined, he suggested.
and that questions arising between
nations that are within its jurisdic-
ton should he submitted to 1t as
matter of CompulSion. Among those
questions would be Interpretation OF
n treaty, application of any rule OF
law, ascertainment of any fact nee
essary to be known before it can be
decided whether the position or a
nation is right or wrong and. where
there is an admitted wrong. the DAM
ages to be assessed.
Three classes of nonjusticiable
questions that cannot be submitted
Iuc HtllNlNdl b'NN' -'4' ffNN
said. are the questions of immigra-
ton and labor conditions; the tradi-
tional policies of the country, in
Guiding the Monroe doctrine, and the
question of the self-preservation OF
the nation. Article ten of the pro-
posed constitution relating to the
preservation of territorial integrity,
Mr.. Pepper said, should be eliminat-
ed and placed in the treaty of peace.
Mr.. Pepper spoke fifty minutes
and Senator Hitchcock made ten
minute reply. The Senator again
made the statement that the con-
stitution of the league was a COM
promise as was the constitution of
the United States when it was draft
ed and that, like the Federal consti-
tuition. the league law might also be
amended one hundred years after it
has been adopted. What higher
court of justice would any one want
than the court that is now sitting in
Paris. Senator Hitchcock asked. He
wanted to know if the President and
the premiers of the associated ma
tions could not be trusted. To wipe
out article ten. said the Senator,
would be to give license to any ma
ton that so desired to wipe out the
territorial integrity of any other ma
ton. if it were physically able to
do so.