page_title: League to Enforce Peace
section_title: League formed
hierarchical_section_title: League to Enforce Peace / History / League formed
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE. GROUP. WILLIAM H. TAFT IN CENTER Abstract/medium: 1 negative&#160;: glass&#160;; 5 x 7 in. or smaller
context_page_description: The League to Enforce Peace was a non-state American organization established in 1915 to promote the formation of an international body for world peace. It was formed in Philadelphia by American citizens concerned by the outbreak of World War I in Europe. Support for the league dissolved and it ceased operations by 1923.
context_section_description: Roosevelt denounced Wilson's approach but died before it was adopted at Paris. However, Lodge was willing to accept it with serious reservations. In the end, on March 19, 1920, Wilson had Democratic Senators vote against the League with the Lodge Reservations, while Republicans opposed Wilson's plan to join the League without reservations, and the United States never joined the League of Nations.
  Advocates worked to distinguish their efforts from antiwar efforts aimed at preventing American participation in the war and to counter misimpression that they were trying to end the war in Europe. Hamilton Holt published an editorial in his New York City weekly magazine The Independent titled "The Way to Disarm: A Practical Proposal" on September 28, 1914. It called for an international organization to agree upon the arbitration of disputes and to guarantee the territorial integrity of its members by maintaining military forces sufficient to defeat those of any non-member. The ensuing debate among prominent internationalists modified Holt's plan to align it more closely with proposals offered in Great Britain by Viscount James Bryce, a former ambassador from the U.K. to the U.S.
  At a convention in Philadelphia's Independence Hall on June 17, 1915, with the first president of the League of Peace, former U.S. President William Howard Taft, presiding, one hundred noteworthy Americans formally announced the formation of the League to Enforce Peace. They proposed an international agreement in which participating nations would agree to "jointly use their economic and military force against any one of their number that goes to war or commits acts of hostility against another." The founders included Elihu Root, Alexander Graham Bell, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, and Edward Filene on behalf of the recently founded U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Elected to the Executive Committee were Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, former Cabinet member and diplomat Oscar S. Straus, magazine editor Hamilton Holt, Taft, and a dozen others
  Pacifists rejected the league's notion of collective security and nationalists rejected the idea of America submitting to arbitration. The founders, on the other hand, though varied in their outlooks, expressed a long established ideal of the civilizing influence of the British Empire and American democracy. The initial efforts of the League to Enforce Peace aimed at creating public awareness through magazine articles and speeches. S. Harrison White, Justice and Chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, lectured across the United States on behalf of the League to Enforce Peace.
  The League of Peace combined enthusiastic support for the American war effort with its proposals for a new international order to follow the defeat of Germany. It presented its plans for an international organization to respond to any nation that would follow a course like that of German militarism.
  President Wilson's specific proposal for the League of Nations met resistance from the Republican-controlled Senate and the opposition led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. The high-minded debate deteriorated until the ideal of international cooperation was, writes one historian, "sacrificed to party intrigue, personal antipathy, and pride of authorship." The League to Enforce Peace believed American participation was more important than the exact nature of the organization, but found itself defending Wilson's plan against attempts to restrict American participation in it. When the U.S. Senate debated the treaty with Germany, the League of Peace opposed attempts in the Senate to restrict American participation in international arbitration.
  In February 1919, the League held a series of public meetings in more than half-a-dozen American cities in support of Wilson's League proposal. President Wilson thanked the League for its support.
  In the summer of 1919, the League of Peace published a book of essays modeled on The Federalist Papers called The Covenanter: An American Exposition of the Covenant of th
caption: Group of people of the League to Enforce Peace, William H. Taft is in the center of the photograph, 1916, Harris & Ewing
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