PUBLIC

THERE seems to be nothing with

which to compare President Wilson's appeal to public opinion in Europe in connection with the Peace Conference. The circumstances are unprecedented. Peace Conferences have been called and held before. Sovereigns have exchanged official visits and propagated sentimental ties to bind alliances. But now, for the first time, a President of the United States, not only goes to Europe to take a leading part in the Peace Conference, but is given the freedom of France, England and Italy to speak openly from the American standpoint to all classes of their people as well as to the heads of those nations about the kind of peace to be secured. Thus both European and American precedents give way to a new species of public diplomacy.

How far the President may have

counteracted the "slump in idealism" which liberal journals in Europe noted with regret since the armistice took effect, we have no means of knowing yet. But Mr. Wilson has again demonstrated his own faith in the power of direct appeal to the moral sense of men and to their capacity for loyalty to ideals of justice and right above material interests. Of this faith there is a very characteristic expression in the few words Mr. Wilson spoke to a delegation of editors in Italy, where territorial claims on the Adriatic are large:

"If I had known that this important delegation was coming to see me I would have tried to say something worthy of the occasion. As it is, I can only say that my purpose and the purpose of those associated with us at Paris is a common purpose. Justice and right are big things, and in these circumstances they are big with difficulty. Understand, I am not foolish enough to suppose that our decisions will be easy to arrive at, but the principles upon which they are to be arrived at ought to be

indisputable, and I have the conviction that if we do not rise to the expectation of the world and satisfy the souls of great peoples like the people of Italy, we shall have the most unenviable distinction in history. Because what is happening now is that the soul of one people is crying to the soul of another, and no people in the world with whose sentiments I am acquainted want a bargaining settlement. They all want settlements based upon right."

Correspondents of papers opposed to Mr. Wilson's whole procedure agree with other observers in Europe, in saying that the popular reception of the President and his message in the name of the United States of America has been incomparably enthusiastic. The press of France, England and Italy has reflected this enthusiasm and spread the Wilson gospel of international salvation. "He brings to Europe what it lacks -namely, confidence in the justice of the future," shrewdly observes Senator d'Estournelles de Constant.

Mr. Wilson was certainly at his best on this missionary tour. (A collection of the speeches is reproduced on following pages of THE World COURT MAGAZINE.) Americans may well take pride in such spokesmanship. One has the delightful feeling that in these addresses the President speaks for us at our best, not our worst, as a nation. But never is the attitude of super-righteousness assumed. Yet the urge of duty is clear; the principles for which we went into the war are those that peace must maintain among nations. It was the President's serious thought as he reviewed the victorious United States troops in France, on Christmas day, that as in war they had done their duty, so in making peace must he and we do no less.

Constantly

President Wilson pleads for the establishment of eternal principles of right and justice by means of a League of Nations. What kind of a League? One that shall operate as the organized moral force of men throughout the world, he said at the Sorbonne. It is the great moral tide now running in the world which is to be reckoned with, he said in the response to King George. Peoples want peace now not merely by conquest but by agreement of mind, ran the Guildhall speech. At church in Carlisle he referred to the league as a combination of moral force, irresistible. In the Italian Chamber of Deputies at Rome he spoke of a League to organize the friendship of the world, the moral forces that make for right and justice and liberty. Again, in Italy, he asserted that force can always be conquered; the spirit of liberty never-its champions have always shown the power of self-sacrifice.

It was at the Guildhall in London that Mr. Wilson declared that the war had been fought to do away with the old order of balance of power and establish a new order, a single, overwhelming group, trustees of the peace of the world. Two days later, at Manchester, after Premier Clemenceau had reiterated his belief in the value of balance of power, President Wilson said:

"If the future had nothing for us but a new attempt to keep the world at a right poise by a balance of power, the United States would take no interest, because she will join no combination of power which is not a combination of all of us. She is not interested merely in the peace of Europe but in the peace of the world."

IN

discussion of the League of Nations to be born of the Peace Conference the immediate question of averting famine and pestilence in Europe forces the actual organization of a Food League. Relief for the populations of liberated countries, neutral and enemy, investigation shows to be imperative. Unity of direction is as necessary as it was for war operations on land and sea respectively. The Allied governments asked that the United States take the lead in the organization and administration of this relief. Two representatives each of Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States already form the Inter-Allied Commission to secure cooperation of food, shipping and financial resources sufficient to solve the relief problem. Mr. Herbert C. Hoover is made director-general of the undertaking. The size of the job in the liberated regions, to say nothing of the neighboring neutrals or Germany, is indicated by an estimated population of 125,000,000 persons whose lands have been devastated and where food from the last harvest will soon be exhausted. It is further estimated that only 40,000,000 out of 420,000,000 Europeans have food enough without imports.

The details of such a problem are appalling. The necessity for international control beyond the emergency of this year of 1919 is clearly indicated. Academic, political and nationalistic objections to league theories must here yield to international cooperation. Mr. Clynes, British Food Controller, says that govern

ment control of the bare necessities of life must continue in view of constantly rising prices. Dr. Crespi, Italian Food Minister, reports that Austrian and German shipping will ultimately be divided between the associated powers for relief transportation on the seas, and that the Allied Maritime Council has authorized a new joint shipping flag "of three horizontal stripes, with top and bottom white and centre blue." Mr. Hoover points out the all-important necessity of providing credit for the financial operations in this enormous relief work: "The outstanding fact in the physical, moral and political salvation of the liberated peoples is credit." President Wilson has asked Congress for a relief appropriation of $100,000,000, urging that the westward advance of Bolshevism "cannot be stopped by force, but it can be stopped by food."

During the war machinery of international cooperation by the Allies was gradually established, which headed up in the Supreme War Council. It is not clear that the Food Control had the right of way among Councils on War Purchases, the Allied Maritime Transportation Control, or the System of International Credit Exchange. But readjustment to the demands of relief following the war will doubtless be achieved. And the development of a League of Nations through functions necessary to the preservation of life and anything like civilization in Europe must strike the Peace Conference as of first importance.