ederal courts and the federal officials have no power to interfere
to protect the lives or property of aliens in any part of the union
outside the district of Columbia. The state governments still see to
that. The federal government has the legal right perhaps to intervene,
but it is still chary of such intervention. And these states of the
American Union were at the outset so independent-spirited that they
would not even adopt a common name. To this day they have no common
name. We have to call them Americans, which is a ridiculous name when we
consider that Canada, Mexico, Peru, Brazil are all of them also in
America. Or else we have to call them Virginians, Californians, New
Englanders, and so forth. Their legal and nominal separateness weighs
nothing against the real fusion that their great league has now made
possible.

Now, that clearly is a precedent of the utmost value in our schemes for
this council of the League of Nations. We must begin by delegating, as
the States began by delegating. It is a far cry to the time when we
shall talk and think of the Sovereign People of the Earth. That council
of the League of Nations will be a tie as strong, we hope, but certainly
not so close and multiplex as the early tie of the States at Washington.
It will begin by having certain delegated powers and no others. It will
be an "_ad hoc_" body. Later its powers may grow as mankind becomes
accustomed to it. But at first it will have, directly or mediately, all
the powers that seem necessary to restrain the world from war--and
unless I know nothing of patriotic jealousies it will have not a scrap
of power more. The danger is much more that its powers will be
insufficient than that they will be excessive. Of that later. What I
want to discuss here now is the constitution of this delegated body. I
want to discuss that first in order to set aside out of the discussion
certain fantastic notions that will otherwise get very seriously in our
way. Fantastic as they are, they have played a large part in reducing
the Hague Tribunal to an ineffective squeak amidst the thunders of this
war.

A number of gentlemen scheming out world unity in studies have begun
their proposals with the simple suggestion that each sovereign power
should send one member to the projected parliament of mankind. This has
a pleasant democratic air; one sovereign state, one vote. Now let us run
over a list of sovereign states and see to what this leads us. We fin