The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-08-23
FREEDOM COMES ONLY THRU LAW SAYS PROFESSOR Harvard Law Instructor Gives His Views on
 Ratification. REAL LIBERTY BY
 NATIONS LEAGUE International Society Must Make Future Peace
 Guarantees.

' ming of each century cataclysmfc world wars have broken out ana threatened the onward march of civ iIizatlon. in spite of the contrary de- sires of the great mass of the worlds neople. At the beginning of the 17th century 1t was the bloody Thirty Yearsr War which devastated Europe like n plague; at the beginning of the 18th century it was the long struggle between Louis XIV. and the Allied States of Europe at the be- ginning of the 18th it was the far reaching Napoleonic Wars which swept Europe Nike a consuming fire. At the conclusion of every one or these wrecking wars the statesmen of an exh hGusted Europe, sincerely anxious to guarantee and secure the future peace of the world, concluded epoch-rnaking treaties, by which the map of Europe was substantially re- made in the full belief that the for mula had at last been found for permanent and enduring peace. Yet each peace proved as transitory as the one which preceded it; and at the beginning of the goth century we have found ourselves once again plunged, quite against the wishes of the great majority of mankind, into a cataclysmic struggle, recalling all the savagery of the Thirty Years War three centuries before.
 Cause and effect are changeiess and terenal; can any one who reads history truly doubt but that if we conclude n peace today, no different in substance or structure from the Pence of Munster of 164s, the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, or the Treaty of 70 rr~f1I I.a Tr1.1Nr l question of time till we are once again enguIfed in an even more ter T .N.a world war than that through which we have just passed? If the Treaty of 1919 does no more than to rearrange boundaries and impose indemnities, If 1t allows the continu- ation of the old international law 1essness. and fails to organize inter- national society into an ordered com munity of states, there can be no 1nistaking the fact that all the agony of tho past four years will have been largely in vain; for as surely as night follows day. within a measureable period of time we shall have to face the came agony again.
 International lawlessness may have suited well enough at a time when states were in fact self -sufficing and insulated units. But that time has passed Whether we like 1t or no, internationalism has come in fact. Since the Industrial Revolution some great nations have transformed themselves from agricultural into great industrial communities; the very existence of these nations de- per $ upon the uninterrupted inter national exchange of their manufac- tured goods for raw products and foodstuffsI If England were cut off from international intercourse today she would starve inside of a few months Morally and psychologically, no less than economically, nations have ceased to be isolated units The national Prussian theory of the state, and the Prussian belief that might is a force of more practical value than right, has borne its international fruitage in the wreckage of homes all around the world. The Bolshevism of Russaa is the vital concern of America on the opposite hemis- phere. Dependency and interplay of nation upon nation constitutes an actual internationatfsm that will not be denied; and if we will have our law accord with the existing facts which have temporarily outdistanced it, we must develop in our law as real as fnternatfonalisrn. Otherwise, our international law will be and can be only futile theory. with no power to control actunl conduct; for no law which Is out of accord with existing facts can prove a real factor in hu- man development. If therefore there is to be such a thing in the future as international law, there must be some legal organization of international society; in some form or other there must be a League of Nations.
 Paradoxbcal as it may seem, free- dom can come only through law. The absolute individual freedom which the anarchist dreams of in a society without governru ent is in fact a log tcal impossibility; because the re- moval of all restraint by the social organization could only mean that the liberty of each would be put at the mercy of every other individual who cared to rob. or plunder or wreck another's home. It is only bD. curbinG the anti-sociaI and criminal impulses of all that each member of the community can attain that se- curfty and freedom from intolerable interference which makes possible freedom of action and liberty of life
 This self-cvtdont principle is clearly true of international. no less than of national life. If within the family of nations there fs no method of re- straining or keeping in check the criminal stste, 1T every nation Is free to follow fits unbrtdIod and chauvIn- hstio arn6ftions. no people can bc free to follow its own chosen destiny and desires. Under tho system of international lawlessness which has prevailed fin tho past thero has been in fact no real freedom or national Indspsndence. Prussia complained that she dare not diSarm because she feared tho French war of re- vanchs: France was forced against her will to adopt 6 burdensome sys- tenn of military conscription because of Prusaia's army. Nations which wanted peace were compelled to buid huge navies and burden their populations with heavy tasHs in prep aratfcu for war, No nation was mas ter even within fts own house. The fn0rease in the miAtary budget of q nsighnor seafs foreed sa inoresss in