Page:William Howard Taft - America Can't Quit (1919).djvu/9

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promise; the third is to advise the nations whether their treaties are in accord with the obligations of the League, or not. Those are the three principal functions of the assembly.

Fantastic Objections

Now, I wish to call your attention to that organization in order to take up some of the more fantastic objections to the League, the character of which is such as to indicate a poverty of objection. I do not mean to say there are not sincere arguments against the league—sincerely made—but I do mean to say that the character of a number of objections is such as to indicate an absence of material.

For instance, the first is that we could be called in to help Great Britain suppress an Irish rebellion. Why? Under Article X it is provided that all members shall preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of the members of the League. That means aggression by foreign countries. Therefore, the suppression of a rebellion does not come within Article X, nor within any other article of the League. If a country has a revolution, it can attend to it, itself. If the party which institutes the revolution succeeds, it will be recognized, as other nations who were created thus (who have succeeded) have been recognized by other countries, and then they will be admitted into the League. That objection is made not out of careful and kind consideration for the Irish, but with a view to arousing their votes against the League.

Such a motive leads to the perversion of much logic.

The second objection is one that was discovered and shown by somebody "from Missouri" that there are more brown, black and yellow people in the world than there are whites; and that, as this is a convention of all the nations, a league of all nations, there will be more variegated colored constituents than there are whites ; and that in some way or another, which he does not explain, we are going to have Negro domination; that the Negroes of South Africa will unite with the Negroes of Panama, and then the Yellows, the four hundred million of China, and the three hundred million of India, will all unite, and then we are going to be made brown, black or yellow, or come under that domination. It is not explained how. It is not suggested how that conspiracy is to be formed, or, when formed, how it is to work out under the provisions of the League.

I have told you what the assembly can do. It can elect new mem-

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