The Chickasha daily express. (Chickasha, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1899-current, 1919-07-17
FREEDOM CAN COME
ONLY THROUGH LAW
A Professor Of Law at Harvard Uni
versity Gives His Views
on Ratification


eral hundred years Is the clocklik
regularity with which at the begin
ming Of each century cataclysmi
world wars have broken out AM
threatened the onward march of civ
ilization, in spite Of the contrar.
desires OF the great mass of thu
worlds people. At the beginning O
the seventeenth century 1t was th'
bloody Thirty Years War which de-
vastated Europe like 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
1t was the far-reaching NapoleonjC
Wars which swept Europe like q
consuming fire. At the conclusion OF
every one of these wracking wars
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 cata-
clysmic struggle, recalling all the
savagery of the Thirty Years War
three centuries before.
Cause and effect ar changeless
history truly doubt but that IL We
conclude a peace today, no different
in substance or structure from the
Peace of Munster Of 164S, the Treaty
of Utrecht of 1913, or the Treaty OF
Vienna of 1915, 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 conti1-
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
n measureable period of time we
shall have to face the same 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 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-
pends upon the uninterrupted inter-
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 few
Morally and psychologi-
cally, no less than economically, ma
lions have ceased to be isolated
lnits. The national Prussian theory
1f the State, and the Prussian belief
that might is force Of more prac-
Lical value than right, has borne its
fruitage in the wreckage
If homes all around the world. The
Of Russia is the vital
concern of America on the opposite
hemisphere. Dependency and inter-
LAY of nation upon nation consti-
utes an actual internationalism that
will not be denied; and If we will
lave our law accord with the exist
ng facts which have temporarily out
istanced 1t, we must develop in our
aw as real an internationalism.
Otherwise, our international law
will be and can be only futile theory.
With no power to control actual con-
Iuct; for no law which is out OF
ccord with existing facts can prove
real factor in human development
I therefore there is to be such
hing in the future as international
aw, there must be some legal organ
zation Of international society: in
ONE form or other there must be a
eague of Nations.
Paradoxical as it may seem, free
ON can come only through law.
he absolute individual freedom
Thich the anarchist dreams of in a
1ciety without government is in fact
logical impossibility; because the
emoval of all restraint by the social
'ganization could only mean that the
berty of each would be put at the ,
ercy Of every other individual who
ared 10 rob, or plunder or wreck !
lother's home 1t is only by curb
g the anti social and criminal i'm
llses of all that each member of +
le community can attain that secur
y and freedom from intolerable in
rference which makes possible free
'm Of action and liberty OF life.
n. i