operations. Only once after the war did the United States reassume the headship which it had wielded in 1919: this was when Mr. C. E. Hughes, Secretary of State, proposed the meeting of a Naval Conference at Washington. This Conference accomplished the only solid work in co-operative international disarmament which has been done since the war. The success of the Washington Conference proves the difference which lies between the United States acting as principal and the United States acting as observer and external well-wisher.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in this post-war re-orientation of world-leadership is that it has associated Latin-America and Europe together, and has left the United States in isolation. Professor Garner, after referring to causes of discord with regard to Mexico, Porto Rico, and other places, writes:

More recent events still indicate a Latin-American drift away from us. When the United States declared war against Germany, eight of their governments followed our example and five others severed diplomatic relations with Germany, on the principle of the solidarity of the American republics and their desire to share in the maintenance of the high ideals which animated the great Republic of the North; but they were keenly disappointed at the rejection by the United States of the League of Nations; and, instead of following our leadership in isolation, they chose that of Europe, and eighteen of them-all except two-became members of the League; they have furnished three Presidents of the Assembly and three Judges of the Permanent Court; they have been continuously represented on the Council; and Latin-Americans are not lacking who assert that the sovereignty and dignity of their countries have received greater recognition and respect from members of the League than they have received from the North American dominated Pan-American sisterhood.1

Although many of the most thoughtful citizens of the United States may regret their country's determination not to involve itself in the affairs of Europe (that is, in effect, in the affairs of the world outside the American continent), nevertheless this must be recognised to be a long-standing and consistently followed principle of policy. The warnings of the Fathers of the country-of Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Monroe against entanglement with Europe are impressed upon every citizen and schoolboy in the United States and have been justified by nearly a century and a half of prosperous domestic development.

Yet the isolation of the United States has not saved it from having prolonged and violent experiences of war; and in this respect its history runs curiously parallel to that of Europe. In

1 American Foreign Policies, by James Wilford Garner (New York University Press, 1928).

Europe there was a period of war in the early years of the nineteenth century. Then there followed a long period of peace— from 1815 to the year of revolutions, 1848. Then came a series of wars, down to the Franco-German War of 1870. From 1871, except for conflicts in the Balkan Peninsula, Europe was at peace until the year 1914.

In the history of the United States peace and war have proceeded according to the same cycles as in the history of Europe. The United States had a war with Great Britain in 1812-14. Next, there came the peace and economical development, from 1815 to 1846. At the end of the thirty peaceful years came the Mexican War (1846-47), and-fourteen years later the great Civil War (1861-65). After the Civil War the United States, like the European Powers after 1870, was at peace, except that it fought a war with Spain in 1898. In 1914 the long peace ended for Europe; and, in spite of resolute efforts to remain outside the conflict, the United States joined in the struggle two and a half years later. Therefore it cannot be argued that the policy of isolation has saved the United States from war, any more than it can be argued that the international commitments of the States of Europe have made wars inevitable.

A second reason which has caused many citizens of the United States to reconsider the advisability of adherence to the traditional isolation policy is the change in the conditions of modern life. America was physically far apart, almost in another world, from Europe in the days of sailing-ships; but now, relatively to the improved means of locomotion, the world has shrunk; the two hemispheres have become almost continuous and indistinguishable. The whole world has moved, almost out of all recognition, since Washington and Jefferson made their statements of policy.

Although the conditions, national and international, which prevailed at the time they were made, and our own position as a member of the family of nations, have been completely transformed, there has been a disposition to regard them as equally applicable to every stage and condition of the changing world; and no argument against the adoption of a particular foreign policy to-day carries so much weight as the fact that it would involve, actually or in appearance, a departure from the admonitions of the Fathers a century and a quarter ago. With some it matters little that the world in which we live is as different from that of Washington's day as the stage-coach was from the automobile or the pony-express from the radio telegraph, that the unorganised world in which they lived has been transformed into an international society of states constituting a vast network of interdependent relationships, and that there is more intercourse to-day between China and the United States than there was in Washington's day between North Carolina and South Carolina.a

• Garner, American Foreign Policies, p. 7.

But what has changed most swiftly and dramatically is the United States' own relation with the Old World. In Washington's time there was little or no investment of European capital in North America. During the next 120 years the citizens of the United States borrowed steadily and heavily from Europe. With the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the economic situation changed almost in the twinkling of an eye. The great debtor nation became the great creditor. Before the war the United States owed to Europe between three billion and four billion dollars. To-day Europe owes to the United States about twentyfive billion dollars. It is impossible to deny that this vast investment of United States capital in the Old World constitutes an ' involvement' which no amount of assertion of isolation can in any way diminish.

Actually the history of the United States in the 100 years before 1919 was not one of isolation. The United States had widespread international relations in which it took a legitimate pride, for they were animated by honourable principles. The United States was party to eighty-five arbitrations. For sixty years it co-operated like any other important State in international affairs. It was represented in the international Postal Conference at Paris in 1863, and in all the subsequent meetings which dealt with the formation and conduct of the International Postal Union; in 1878 it was represented at the Conference of Paris on the regulation of weights and measures. In 1884 the United States took part in the Conference of Berlin to regulate the affairs of the Congo basin. In 1889 it sent representatives to the Conference of Madrid relative to the affairs of Morocco, and it ratified the resulting General Act or Treaty. It took part in the Conference of Brussels in 1890 on the affairs of tropical Africa, and was one of the leading Powers at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. It was not merely represented at the Conference of Algeciras on Morocco in 1906, but in the official biography of Roosevelt it is claimed that he himself brought about the meeting of the Conference. It took part in the international Naval Conference at London in 1908-1909. The summoning of the Washington Conference in 1921 on Armaments and the Pacific was not a new departure. Indeed, the old tradition of isolation has been so often departed from that it has long lost its binding force. Professor Garner writes:

The usual reservations of the Senate disclaiming any intention of departing from the tradition have served to reconcile the objectors and save their faces, although the disclaimers hardly altered the fact that in most cases the tradition had been set aside.

The position of the Senate distinguishes the conduct of the

foreign policy of the United States from that of every other country. According to the Constitution, no treaty to which the United States is a party is valid unless it has been approved by two-thirds of the Senate. A simple majority is not sufficient; it must be a majority of not less than two-thirds of the full number of Senators. In most other countries a treaty can be validly negotiated and concluded by the Executive Government of the day. If provision is made in a treaty that it should be submitted to the ratification of the Legislature, a bare majority is sufficient; and the Executive Government which negotiates the treaty can normally be assured of a majority because it only holds office as representing a majority party or union of parliamentary groups. In the United States the President may be without any majority party in Congress; and even if he has a majority in the Senate, a minority of more than one-third of the number of senators can prevent his treaties from becoming law This control exercised by the Senate, or even by a part of it, obviously has the approval of the general body of United States citizens, otherwise it would have been altered by an amendment of the Constitution. Defenders of the Senate point to the long list of treaties which have been ratified. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind not merely that a large number of treaties which the President and his Secretary of State have negotiated have been killed in the Senate, but that probably every treaty ultimately ratified has been either greatly changed in its passage through the Senate or before it reached the Senate in view of the opposition which the President and Secretary of State saw that it would meet there.

No Secretary of State can help feeling nervous about the fate of his treaties in the Senate. John Hay wrote: A treaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena; no one can say just how or when the blow will fall-but one thing is certain, it will never leave the arena alive.' Since about the year 1909 the control of the Senate has become much closer than before. An arbitration treaty, whether general, like the Root treaties, or ad hoc, dealing with a particular issue, like the treaty concerning the Alabama arbitration, has, of course, to pass the Senate. But often the adjudication of pecuniary claims between the United States and other countries has been decided upon in a compromisthat is, a special agreement made between the President of the United States and the Foreign Office of the opposite contracting party. A compromis, not being technically a treaty, does not require to be submitted to the Senate for advice and consent; it is, however, no longer used in the international relations of the United States. General arbitration treaties, made for an unknown future, necessarily require that the particular issue which

is to be submitted to arbitration shall, when it occurs, be defined by a compromis or special agreement. The Hay arbitration treaties, negotiated during the presidency of Roosevelt, each contained a clause to the effect that, before an appeal could be made to the Court of Arbitration, a special agreement should be concluded defining the matter in dispute, the powers of the arbiters and other preliminaries. In the Senate, however, the word 'treaty' was substituted throughout in place of agree'so as to make sure that any agreement to arbitrate would have to be submitted to the Senate for its approval.' President Roosevelt, when he saw that all the special agreements made under the general arbitration treaties would require in every case a two-thirds majority of the Senate, abandoned the whole scheme.

As amended, [he wrote] we would have a treaty of arbitration which, in effect, will do nothing but recite that this government will, when it deems it wise, hereafter enter into treaties of arbitration. Inasmuch as we, of course, now have the power to enter into any treaties of arbitration, and inasmuch as to pass these amended treaties does not in the smallest degree facilitate settlements by arbitration, to make them would in no way further the cause of international peace.

The Root arbitration treaties, however, made with twenty-five different countries in 1908-1909 did contain the principle that every special agreement must be submitted to the Senate, and they were so accepted by President Taft. Perhaps this explains why these treaties have had little effect, and why more than half their number have been allowed simply to lapse.

As against this somewhat disappointing achievement in respect of general arbitration treaties, the Government of the United States can set the remarkable, although little known, conciliation instruments called the Bryan treaties. These were negotiated (1913) in the presidency of Wilson by W. J. Bryan, Secretary of State, and were approved by the Senate. All the Bryan treaties are, mutatis mutandis, identical with each other, and were concluded with most of the important States of the world except Germany. Each 'Bryan Treaty' provides that every dispute which arises between the United States and the other contracting party, and which cannot be settled by diplomacy, shall be submitted to an international commission of inquiry; and during the investigation of the commission and until the report has been received (a period of time which in no case must be less than a year) the two parties shall not go to war. When the report has been received the parties are not bound to accept it; their obligation not to go to war ceases, and they may proceed to fight each other. The essence of the Bryan treaties is that