The New Europe/Volume 5/The American League to Enforce Peace; Enforced Peace; The Framework of a Lasting Peace

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The New Europe, vol. V, no. 62 (1917)
The American League to Enforce Peace; Enforced Peace; The Framework of a Lasting Peace by G. G.
4041097The New Europe, vol. V, no. 62 — The American League to Enforce Peace; Enforced Peace; The Framework of a Lasting Peace1917G. G.

Review

If there is one solid hope to which most men cling, in their horror of the existing international anarchy, it is that out of it there may emerge something like a practical League of Peace, which will co-ordinate and fructify the various dispersed motives and tendencies which make for peace, but which, for want of such co-ordination, have hitherto spent themselves fruitlessly. There are men, of course, to whom life without war suggests, in the words of one of them, “one damned long Sunday afternoon’s walk,” but they are, fortunately, a minority. To be a success, even to be a possibility, a League of Peace demands an immense amount of work and thought. The difficulties are well enough indicated in Mr. Young’s article in the present number; and they are illustrated by the conflicting and often confused sentiments lately expressed upon the subject by leading Allied statesmen. It is well, therefore, that the public mind should be constantly exercised in this direction. In The American League to Enforce Peace (Allen & Unwin, pp. 92, 2s. 6d. net) Mr. C. R. Ashbee gives a good account of the American movement, having been present at its actual inauguration at Independence Hall on 17 June, 1915, and he contributes some sound thinking of his own to the subject. In Enforced Peace (League to Enforce Peace, 70, Fifth Avenue, New York, pp. 204), a full account is given of the League’s first annual meeting, held in Washington on 26 May, 1916, with full reports of the many speeches delivered by the delegates. We here find worked out in greater detail how it is proposed to translate the American postulate of a change of heart in international relationships into terms of practical politics. Especially interesting are the contributions of Mr. Theodore Marburg, former Minister to Belgium, and of President Wilson. In another volume, The Framework of a Lasting Peace (Allen & Unwin, pp. 154, 48. 6d. net). Mr. Leonard S. Woolf presents, in a collected form, the more important schemes for a League of Nations that have been put forward, whether in America, Britain, or on the Continent; and in an interesting introduction he indicates the main lines of agreement between them. If the reader is left with a healthy sense of the work that lies ahead, the volume will not have been in vain, for a roused public opinion is the best guarantee of success, and, as General Smuts said last May, “if one hundredth part of the consideration and the thought that has been given to this war is given to schemes of peace, then you will never see war again.”G. G.

This work was published in 1917 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 106 years or less since publication.

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