Thus it was that instant upon the appearance of the proposed League of Nations I made bold to challenge it, as but a pretty conceit having no real value, a serious assault upon our national sovereignty.

Its argument seemed to me full of copybook maxims, easier recited than applied. As what I wrote preceded the debates and events of the last six months, I may not improperly make the following quotation from a screed of mine appearing in The Courier-Journal of the 5th of March, 1919:

"The League of Nations is a fad. Politics, like society and letters, has its fads. In society they call them fashion and in literature originality. Politics gives the name of 'issues' to its fads. A taking issue is as a stunning gown, or 'a best seller.' The President's mind wears a coat of many colors, and he can change it at will, his mood being the objective point, not always too far ahead, or clear of vision. Carl Schurz was wont to speak of Gratz Brown as 'a man of thoughts rather than of ideas.' I wonder if that can be justly said of the President? 'Gentlemen will please not shoot at the pianiste,' adjured the superscription over the music stand in the Dakota dive; 'she is doing the best that she knows how.'

"Already it is being proclaimed that Woodrow Wilson can have a third nomination for the presidency if he wants it, and nobody seems shocked by it, which proves that the people grow degenerate and foreshadows that one of these nights some fool with a spyglass will break into Mars and let loose the myriads of warlike gyascutes who inhabit that freak luminary, thence to slide down the willing moonbeam and swallow us every one!

"In a sense the Monroe Doctrine was a fad. Oblivious to Canada, and British Columbia and the Spanish provinces, it warned the despots of Europe off the grass in America. We actually went to war with Mexico, having enjoyed two wars with England, and again and again we threatened to annex the Dominion. Everything betwixt hell and Halifax was Yankee preËmpted.

"Truth to say, your Uncle Samuel was ever a jingo. But your Cousin Woodrow, enlarging on the original plan, would stretch our spiritual boundaries to the ends of the earth and make of us the moral custodian of the universe. This much, no less, he got of the school of sweetness and light in which he grew up.

"I am a jingo myself. But a wicked material jingo, who wants facts, not theories. If I thought it possible and that it would pay, I would annex the North Pole and colonize the Equator. It is, after the manner of the lady in the play, that the President 'doth protest too much,' which displeases me and where, in point of fact, I 'get off the reservation.'

"That, being a politician and maybe a candidate, he is keenly alive to votes goes without saying. On the surface this League of Nations having the word 'peace' in big letters emblazoned both upon its forehead and the seat of its trousers--or, should I say, woven into the hem of its petticoat?--seems an appeal for votes. I do not believe it will bear discussion. In a way, it tickles the ear without convincing the sense. There is nothing sentimental about the actualities of Government, much as public men seek to profit by arousing the passions of the people. Government is a hard and fast and dry reality. At best statesmanship can only half do the things it would. Its aims are most assured when tending a little landward; its footing safest on its native heath. We have plenty to do on our own continent without seeking to right things on other continents. Too many of us--the President among the rest, I fear--miscalculate the distance between contingency and desire.

"'We figure to ourselves
The thing we like: and then we build it up:
As chance will have it on the rock or sand--
When thought grows tired of wandering o'er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.'"

I am sorry to see the New York World fly off at a tangent about this latest of the Wilsonian hobbies. Frank Irving Cobb, the editor of the World, is, as I have often said, the strongest writer on the New York press since Horace Greeley. But he can hardly be called a sentimentalist, as Greeley was, and there is nothing but sentiment--gush and gammon--in the proposed League of Nations.

It may be all right for England. There are certainly no flies on it for France. But we don't need it. Its effects can only be to tie our hands, not keep the dogs away, and even at the worst, in stress of weather, we are strong enough to keep the dogs away ourselves.

We should say to Europe: "Shinny on your own side of the water and we will shinny on our side." It may be that Napoleon's opinion will come true that ultimately Europe will be "all Cossack or all republican." Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the United States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities of democracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage by Federal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and constitutional amendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and then!--Lord, how glad I feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and shall not live to see it!

Chapter the Thirty-First

The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional Shortcomings