-5- 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 |