The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1919-07-14
FREEDOM CAN COME
ONLY THROUGH LAW"
A Professor of Law at Harvard Uni
versity Gives His Views
on Ratification

regularity WIN WHICH at the DeSlu-
ming of each century cataclysnic
world wars have broken out and
threatened the onward march of civ
ilization, 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 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 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
savagery of the Thirty Years War
three centuries before.
Cause and effect are changeless
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 1913, the Treaty
of Utrecht of 1913. or the Treaty of
Vienna of 1915. it will be only
question Of time till we are once
rble 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
uation of the old international law
/ lessness, and fails to organize inter-
national society into an order ed
community Of states. there can be
no mistaking the fact that all the
! agony of the past four years will
I have ben largely in vain: for as
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 well enough at a time when
states were in fact self sufiicing and
! insulatedi 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
/ foodstufTs If England We're cut off
| from international intercourse today
/ she would starve inside of a few
months Morally and psychology
/ cal1y, 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-
teal value than right, has borne its
international fruitage in the wreckage
of homes all around the world. The
1 Bolshevism of Russia is the vital
concern of America on the opposite
hemisphere. Dependency and inter
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 il, we must develop in our
law as real an internationalism
Otherwise, cur international law
VIII 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
real factor in human development
II therefore there is to be such q
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
The absolute individual freedom
which the anarchist dreams of in &
society without government is in fac
a Logical impossibility; because the
removal of all restraint by the socia
organization could only mean that zths
liberty of each would. be put at The
i. mercy of every other Individual .whe
cared to rob, or plumber or wrecl
anothers home. Itefs only by curb
ing the anti -sociaf and criminal i'm
pulses of all thai each member o
the community can attain that secur
9 ity and freedom from intolerable in