Middletown transcript., 1919-09-27
FREEDOM CAN COME
ONLY THROUGH Law"
Professor Of Law at Harvard Uni.
verosty Gives His Views
on Ratification !.

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International history of the past sew
eral hundred years is the clocklike
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 the
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
it was the far-reaching Napoleonic
Wars which swept Europe like a
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
and eternal; can any one who reads
history truly doubt but that If We
conclude peace today, no different
in substance or structure from the
Peace Of Munster of 164S, the Treaty
Of Utrecht Of 1713. or the Treaty Of
Vienna Of 1915, it will be only
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-
nation of the old international law
lessness, and fails to organize inter-.
national society into an ordered
community of states, there can be
no mistahng the fact that all the
agony of the past four years will
have been largely in vain; for asi
surely as night follows day. within.
a measurable period of time we
shall have to face the same agony
again.
International lawlessness may have
suited we'll enough at 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 haYe transformed
themselves from agricultural into
great Industrial communities; the
very existence of these nations de-
pends upon the uninterrupted inter-
national exchange of their manu-
factured goods for raw products and
foodstuffs. If England were cut of
from International intercourse today
she would starve inside of few
months. Morally and psychologist
cally, no less than economically, ma
tions have ceased to be isolated
units. The national Prussian theory
of the State, and the Prussian belief
that might is force Of more prac-
teal 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 win
have our law accord with the exist
ing facts which have temporarily out
distanced it, we must develop in our
law as real an fnternationalism.
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
II 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 q
League of Nations.
Paradoxical as it may seem, free
dom can come only through law. ]
he absolute individual freedom