LEAGUE OF NATIONS LEGALISM
ignoble folly we have shown during the last four years
we may not find allies to do what France and England
and Italy have done for us. They have protected us with
their navies and armies, their blood and their treasure,
while we first refused to do anything and then slowly
and reluctantly began to harden and make ready our
giant but soft and lazy strength. (1918.) Mem. Ed. XXI,
351; Nat. Ed. XIX, 320.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND NATIONAL
DUTIES. The vital military need of this country as
regards its future international relations is the
immediate adoption of the policy of permanent
preparedness based on universal training. This is its
prime duty from the standpoint of American
nationalism and patriotism. Then, as an addition or
supplement to, but under no conditions as substitute for,
the policy of permanent preparedness, we can afford
cautiously to enter into and try out the policy of a
league of nations. There is no difficulty whatever in
prattling cheerfully about such a league or in winning
applause by rhetoric concerning it prior to the effort to
make it work in practice; but there will be much
difficulty in making it work at all when any serious
strain comes, and it will prove entirely unworkable if
the effort is made to unload upon it, in the name of
internationalism, duties which in the present state of the
world will be efficiently performed by the free nations
only if they perform them as national duties. (October
15, 1918.) Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 229.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND NATIONAL
RIGHTS. [There are] certain matters of such vital
national interest that they cannot be put before any
international tribunal. This country must settle its own
tariff and industrial polices, and the question of
admitting immigrants to work or to citizenship, and all
similar matters, the exercise of which was claimed as a
right when in 1776 we became an independent Nation.
We will not surrender our independence to a league of
nations any more than to a single nation. Moreover, no
international court must be intrusted with the decision
of what is and what is not justiciable.
In the articles of agreement the non-justiciable
matters should be as sharply defined as possible, and
until some better plan can be devised, the nation itself
must reserve to itself the right, as each case arises, to
say what these matters are. (December 2, 1918.)
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 279.
LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE. It is mere
hypocrisy to promise to put a stop to wrongdoing in the
future unless we are willing to undergo the labor and
peril necessary to stop wrongdoing in the present. In
our own country nothing but harm was done by the
worthy persons who, a couple of years ago, formed a
league to enforce peace in the future, while at the same
time they nervously declared that they would have
nothing to do with enforcing peace by stopping
international wrong in the present. (December 2, 1917.)
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 61.
LEARNING. See KNOWLEDGE; SCHOLARSHIP ;
UNIVERSITY.
LEE, ROBERT E. General Lee has left us the
memory, not merely of his extraordinary skill as a
general, his dauntless courage and high leadership in
campaign and battle, but also of that serene greatness of
soul characteristic of those who most readily recognize
the obligations of civic duty. Once the war was over he
instantly undertook the task of healing and binding up
the wounds of his countrymen, in the true spirit of those
who feel malice toward none and charity toward all; in
that spirit which from the throes of the Civil War
brought forth the real and indissoluble Union of to-day.
It was eminently fitting that this great man, this war-
worn veteran of a mighty struggle, who, at its close,
simply and quietly undertook his duty as a plain, every-
day citizen, bent only upon helping his people in the
paths of peace and tranquillity, should turn his attention
toward educational work; toward bringing up in fit
fashion the younger generation, the sons of those who
had proved their faith by their endeavor in the heroic
days. (To Committee of Arrangement for celebration of
100th anniversary of birth of Robert E. Lee; January 16,
1907.) Mem. Ed. XII, 472-473; Nat. Ed. XI, 217-218.
LEGALISM. The stick-in-the-bark legalism, the
legalism that subordinates equity to technicalities,
should be recognized as a potent enemy of justice.
Outlook , August 17, 1912, p. 855.
____________. The stickler for technicalities, the man
who treats precedents, however outrageous, as always
binding, instead of as signposts put up for his
consideration, will often do as much harm as the other
man who permits himself to be swayed either by special
sympathy for or special antipathy toward a certain class
of his fellow men, Whether those who possess much
property or those who do not—
LEAGUE OF NATIONS. See also FOURTEEN POINTS;
NEUTRALITY; WORLD WAR.
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