that as an illustration of what might happen between reasonable nations to avoid war. We were proud of it.
Now these objectors to the treaty, digging around underground, have made the awful disclosure that we were unconstitutional when we adopted that treaty and we have been unconstitutional during the century of its existence in maintaining it. Now, my understanding is that precedent in construing the Constitution should have great influence. Here we have a precedent of one hundred and two years establishing the right of the treaty-making power to include the limitation of armament in the treaties it makes with other countries. I ask you how serious that objection is to the limitation of armament for constitutional reasons.
Article X
So much for the first step forward towards peace in the treaty. The second is in Article X. What is Article X? By that, the members of the League undertake to respect and preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and the existing political independence of all the members of the League. What is it in effect? It is a union that forces the world to maintain inviolate the international commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." That is all it is. It is the embodiment of the declaration with which we went into this war, that the war was to make the world safe for democracy; it was to destroy the militarism of Germany and to produce a condition in which democracies might pursue the happiness of their people without exhausting their energies in making preparations to resist robber nations who would carry out the principle that Might makes Right. I know this is denied, but that was the purpose of the war and that is the basis on which we went into it. At least that was the whole tone of every argument and address in every patriotic meeting that I attended or ever heard of. That is what carried the soldiers to the other side. That is what spurred them up to their grand record on the other side and this Article X is nothing but the embodiment of that principle and it is a refutation of the principle of conquest on the part of Germany.
Senator Beveridge thinks we ought not to give up the power of conquest because we have improved the world so much by conquest heretofore. We took Mexican territory and substituted Americans for Mexicans and that improved the world. Well, I do not say that war has not advanced civilization incidentally and in a way. It has. But I am going to say that we have reached a stage in the history of the world when we
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