The power of the American impulse toward a world peace is undeniable. It has produced in succession the great dream of a League of Nations and now this second great dream of a gradually developing Association of Nations arising out of a series of such conferences as this one. No other nation could have raised such hopes and no other political system has the freedom of action needed to give these projects the substance and dignity which the initiative of the head of the state involves.

But if these projects are to carry through into the world of accomplished realities, if in a lifetime or so this glorious dream of a world peace—going on, as a world at peace must now inevitably do, from achievement to achievement—if that dream is to be realized, certain peculiarities of the American people and the American situation have at no very distant date to be faced.

All such gatherings and conferences as this are haunted by a peculiar foggy ghost called “Tact,” which is constantly seeking to cover up and conceal and obliterate some vitally important but rather troublesome reality in the matter. “Tact” is apparently a modern survival of the ancient “Tabu.” For example, a pleasant Indian gentleman sits among the British delegates at the conference; “Tact” demands that no one shall ever ask him or of him, “What do you conceive will be the place of India in that great World Association half a century ahead? Will it still be a British appendix?” And “Tact” becomes hysterical at the slightest whisper of the word “Senegalese,” or any inquiry about the possible uses of the French submarine. And a third question, hitherto veiled by “Tact” under the very thickest wrappings of fog, to which, greatly daring, I propose to address myself now, is: “How far is America really prepared to fix and adhere to any wide schemes for the permanent adjustment of the world’s affairs that may be arrived at by this conference or its successors?”

The other day a friend of mine in New York made a profoundly wise remark to me. “I have found,” she said, “that one can have nothing and do nothing without paying for it. If you do well or if you do ill, just the same you have to pay for it. If a mother wants to do her best by her children, she must pay for it, in giving up personal ambitions, dreams of writing or art, throughout the best years of life. If a man wants to do his best in business or politics, he must sacrifice dreams of travel and adventure.” And whatever America does with herself in the next few years, she too must be prepared to pay.

If she desires isolation, moral exaltation, irresponsibility and self-sufficiency, “America for the Americans and never mind the consequences,” she must be prepared to witness the decline and fall of the white civilization in Europe and the consolidation of a profoundly alien system across the Pacific. If, on the other hand, she now takes up this task for which she seems so inclined, as the leader and helper of white civilization, the task of organizing the permanent peace of the world upon the lines of the system of civilization to which she belongs, then for that nobler role also there is a price to be paid. She has to assume not only the dignity but the responsibilities of leadership. She has not merely to express noble sentiments, but to lay hold upon the difficulties and intricacies of the problem before her. She has not merely to criticise but to consider and sympathize and help, and she has to make decisions and abide by them.

When America really makes decisions, she abides by them—vigorously. The Monroe Doctrine was such a decision. It has saved South America for South Americans; it has saved Europe from a ruinous scramble for the Spanish inheritance. It was the first great feat of Americanism in world politics. The exponents of “Tact” will, I know, be outraged by the reminder that for a long time tacit approval of Britain and the existence of the British fleet provided a support and shield to the Monroe Doctrine, and also by the further reminder that the one serious attack upon it was made by Napoleon III. during the American Civil War—at which time, I admit, the attitude of Great Britain to the disunited States was also far from impeccable. But helped or assailed, the Monroe Doctrine held good.

The Washington Conference has developed a position with regard to the Pacific that calls for an American decision of equal vigor. It is as plain as daylight that Japanese liberal tendencies can be supported and the aggressive ambitions of Japanese imperialism can be restrained, that China can be saved for the Chinese and Eastern Siberia from foreign conquest, provided America places herself unequivocally side by side with Great Britain and France in framing and sustaining a definite system of guarantees and prohibitions in Eastern Asia. The Anglo-Japanese agreement could be ended in favor of such a new peace-pact and an enormous step forward toward world peace be made. It would mark an epoch in world statecraft.

But this means an agreement of the nature of a treaty; a mere Presidential declaration, which means some later President might set aside or some newly elected Senate reverse, is not enough. If the reader will study the position of Australia and of the British commitments in Eastern Asia, he will see why it is not enough. Britain is not strong enough to risk being left alone as the chivalrous protector of a weak, if renascent, China. She has her own people in Australia to consider. And besides, Britain alone—as the protector of China—after all that has happened in the past.... It is moral as well as material help in sustaining the new understanding that the British will require.

The plain fact of the Pacific situation is that there are only three courses before the world—either unchallenged Japanese domination in Eastern Asia from now on, or a war to prevent it soon, or an alliance of America, Britain and Japan, with whatever government China may develop, and with the other powers concerned, though perhaps less urgently concerned—an alliance of all these, for mutual restraint and mutual protection. And it is an equally plain fact, though “Tact” cries “Hush!” at the words, that the tradition of America for a hundred years, a tradition which was sustained in her refusal to come into the League of Nations, has been against any such alliance.

George Washington’s advice to his countrymen to avoid “permanent alliances” for the balance of power and suchlike ends, and Jefferson’s reiterated council to his countrymen to avoid “entangling alliances” have been interpreted too long as injunctions to avoid any alliances whatever, entangling or disentangling. The habit of avoiding association in balance-of-power schemes and the like has broadened out into a general habit of non-association. But alliances which are not aimed at a common enemy but only at a common end were not, I submit, within the intention of George Washington.

At any rate, I do not see how the disarmament proposals of Mr. Secretary Hughes can possibly he accepted without a Pacific settlement, nor how that settlement can be sustained except by some sort of alliance, meeting periodically in conference to apply or adapt the settlement to such particular issues as may arise. If America is not prepared to go as far as that, then I do not understand the enthusiasm of America for the Washington Conference. I do not understand the mentality that can contemplate world disarmament without at least that much provision for the prevention of future conflicts.

And similarly, I do not see how any effectual disarmament is possible in Europe or how any dealing with the economic and financial situation there can be possible unless America is prepared to bind itself in an alliance of mutual protection and accommodation with at least France, Germany, Britain and Italy to sustain a similar series of conferences and adjustments. At the back of the French refusal to disarm there is a suppressed demand for a protective alliance. That is an entirely reasonable demand. The form of this alliance that the French have demanded hitherto is an entangling alliance, an alliance of America and Britain and France against, at least, Germany and Russia. The necessary alliance to which France and Britain will presently assent, and which America will come to recognize as the only way to its peacemaking aims, will be against no one; it is an alliance of an entirely beneficial character, an alliance not to entangle but to release.

The disposition of the European delegations and of the British and foreign writers at Washington to treat the idea of America making treaties of alliance as outside the range of possibility, as indeed an idea tabu, seems to me a profoundly mistaken one. It is “Tact” in its extremest form. I have heard talk of the “immense inertia” of political dogmas held for a hundred years. For “immense inertia” I would rather write “expiring impulse.” The policy of non-interference in affairs outside America was an excellent thing, no doubt, for a young Republic in the self-protective state; it is a policy entirely unworthy of a Republic which has now become the predominant state in the world.