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a world league to enforce peace. Under Wilson, most
 
Democrats had come to the same view, and the Euro-
 
peans, in spite of their animosities, accepted the 
 
League of Nations constitution. Wilson also urged 
 
lower tariffs in order to avoid economic depression 
 
and to enable Europe to pay her debts. No one who 
 
knows our history or European behavior over the 
 
last three decades can doubt that Wilson's policy 
 
was the one promise of a better era.
 
 
The Senate minority defeated the League
 
idea; Congress (under minority business pressure)
 
raised tariffs to heights never before contemplated; 
 
and our people lost their loans to the outside 
 
world and then made other loans to help get exports
 
over tariff walls- and lost those too. And hence 
 
we have the existing status, the worst known to all 
 
history- and everybody returning to the mediaeval 
 
folly of 1914, including ourselves. If anyoody 
 
wishes to get the true picture of Senate conduct
 
in 1918-2O, D. F. Fleming in the 
United States and
 
the League of Nations
 gives it. Nobody has replied 
 
to this able book or tried to refute any part of it.
 
Since our country is so deeply involved and
 
has made such terrible blunders, I would endeavor
 
in some way to retrace our steps. If we had entered 
 
the League in 1919, Mussolini and Hitler would not 
 
be in existence today; if we had realized the mean-
 
ing of freer commerce, our billions would not have 
 
been lost; and the wider commerce and partial pay-
 
ment of debts would have saved us half of the 
 
depression- the other half being due to Europe and
 
false industrial policy long followed.
 
This is my appraisal of things. Whether it is
 
too late for so great a people to exert decisive in-
 
fluence I cannot say; but I believe if English-speaking 
 
peoples cooperated, without imperialistic practices 
 
anywhere, we could save modern civilization another 
 
world war.
 
 
Sincerely yours,
 
 
William E. Dodd