The Leadership of the United States in the Postwar World

It is now more than one hundred years since the substance of the Connally Resolution was first adopted by a legislative body in the United States; it is almost fifty years since the United States, at the Hague Conferences, took the lead in pressing for an international court with much more power than the Court we have since failed to join; it is about thirty-five years since Congress itself, by a unanimous vote in both houses, adopted a resolution urging that the United States Navy be combined with other navies into an international police force for the preservation of peace; it is not quite thirty years ago that the political parties, without any of the present hullabaloo on the point, and at a time when the United States was not itself at war, achieved such a unity of position in their stand for effective American participation in world order as to make debate between them on that issue virtually nil; and it is not quite thirty years ago that the man soon to become the Republican leader in the Senate joined from the same platform with the Democratic President in an appeal for a League of Nations, and a League with force, both economic and military, at its command.