The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-07-14
FREEDOM CAN COME
ONLY THROUGH LAW
A Professor of Law at Harvard Uni
Versity Gives His Views
on Ratification

W
One of the striking facts about the
International history Of the past sew
eral hundred years is the cloclllike
regularity with which at the begin
ming of each century cataclysmic
world wars have broken out and
threatened the onward march Of civ
ilzation, in spite of the contrary
desires of the great mass OF the
worlds people. At the beginning Of
the seventeenth century it was tie
bloody Thirty Years War which de-
vastated Europe like a plague; at the
beginning of the eighteenth century
it was the long struggle between Louis
XIV and the Allied States of Europe;
at the beginning Of the nineteenth
it was the far-rcaChing Napoleonic
Wars which swept Europe like a
consuming fire. AT the conclusion OF
every one of these wracking walls
the statesmen of an exhausted
Europe, sincerely anxious to guar
antee and secure the future peace
of the world, concluded epoch making
treaties, by which the map Of Europe
was substantially remade. in the full
belief that the formula had at last
been found for a permanent and en-
during peace. Yet each peace proved
as transitory as the one which pre-
ceded it; and at the beginning Of
the twentieth century we have found
ourselves once again plunged, quite
against the wishes of the great
majority of mankind, into a cata-
clysmic struggle, recalling all the
savagory of the Thirty Years War
three centuries before.
Cause and effect arr dhangeless
and eternal can any one who reads
history truly doubt but that if we
conclude a peace today, no different
in substance or structure from the
Peace of Munster of 1648, the Treaty
of Utrecht of 1913. or the Treaty Of
Vienna of 1916 it will be only a
question of time till we are once
again engulfed in an even more ter
rible 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 it allows the contin-
uaton of the old international law
lessness, and fails to organize inter
national society into an ordered
community of states, there can be
no mistaking the fact that all the
agony of the past four years will
have been largely in vain; for as
surely as night follows day, within
a measurable period of time VIC
shall have to face the same agony
again.
International 1awlessness may have
suited well enough at a time when
states were in fact self sufIicing and
insulated units. But that time has
passed Whether we like it 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-
ponds upon the uninterrupted inter
national exchange of their manu-
featured goods for raw products and
foodstuffs If England were cut off
from international intercourse today
she would starve inside Of a few
months. Morally and psychologist
cally, no less than economically, ma
tons have ceased to be isolated
units. The national PrusSian theory
of the State, and the Prussian belief
that might is a force of more prac-
tcal value than right has borne its
International fruitage in the wreckage
of homes all around the world. The
Bolshevism of Russia is the vital
concern of America on the opposite
hemisphere. Dependency and inter-
play of nation upon nation consti-
tutes an actual internationalism that
will not be denied; and if we will
have our law accord with the exist
ing facts which have temporarily out
distanced it, we must develop in our
law as real an internationalism.
Otherwise, our international law
will be and can be only futile theory,
with no power to control actual con-
duct; for no law which is out of
accord with existing facts can prove
a real factor in human development |
If therefore there is to be such a
thing in the future as international
law, there must be some legal organ
ization of international society; in |
some form or other there must be
League of Nations.
Paradoxical as it may seem, free
dom can come only through law.
The absolute individual freedom
which the anarchist dreams of in
society without government is in fact
logical impossibility; because the
removal 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 plumber or wreck
another's home. 1t is only by curb
ing the anti-sociaI and criminal i'm
pulses of all that each member of
the community can attain that secur-
ity and freedom from intOlerable in
reference which makes possible free