416 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



The question relating to that are complicated beyond description. New 

 boundaries have got to be laid down and new access to the sea given to 

 nations. New questions of self-determination have got to come up, and 

 with it the twisted and cbmplicated question of preventing causes of 

 conflict. 



As I thought that over, it seemed to me that the farmers of this coun- 

 try would not be misled into thinking the phrase, "self-determination of 

 peoples," was a cure-all, the same as no annexations and no indemnities. 

 I thought that the farmers of the north at least remember what their 

 fathers fought for and many died for, to prevent self-determination of 

 peoples from splitting this nation in two, and that therefore our farmers 

 did not believe this thing was a cure-all, because it does not always work. 



Then as to the League of Nations. We have got a league now — the 

 most powerful organization of nations which ever existed; so powerful 

 that it was able to crush the military strength of the greatest single mili- 

 tary power; so united that it was able to put all the power under a single 

 command. This single body had not only been dealing in arms, but it 

 had pooled its food, and the whole economic structure was being conducted 

 under joint control. The war brought this about. I thought it would be 

 a shame — I thought the farmers of America would think it the same way — 

 not to take immediate advantage of the existence of this league, and to 

 build on that a structure which will eventually have some control over 

 the peace of the world. I thought the farmers of America would see to it 

 that this body ought to be controlled by those nations that can be trusted 

 So I thought the League of Nations we are going to have ought to be built 

 up from that, with the hope that gradually it could come to do the things 

 that some of its most enthusiastic promoters believed it can do from the 

 start. Human affairs move only about so fast. After the policemen 

 were invented, it was many centuries before the individual stopped carry- 

 ing arms for his individual protection. Even today many persons in this 

 country carry arms. 



I do not want to be misunderstood. I am for the League of Nations, 

 very strongly. I think if this war ended without a League of Nations, 

 it would be a world-wide calamity. But that does not prevent me from 

 figuring out what can practically and actually be done with a League of 

 Nations, instead of adopting the plans of dreamers, and that we might 

 lay the foundation for the kind of unity in the public sentiment and re- 

 sources, and finally in the arms of the world, which eventually, when it 

 had been tried out, tested and found good, would be able to do the thing 

 which at first I did not believe could be done. It seemed to me altogether 

 impossible, for example, that France, with its ruined and invaded prov- 

 ince, would be justified in leaving her safety in the future at the mercy of 

 the signatures of a few plenipotentiaries, on a piece of paper. But France 

 has got to have material guaranties. In other words, we have got to fence 

 in this bull as well as put a ring in his nose. 



So I thought this League of Nations, not a new-world state, but an 

 organization that would, for example, leave each nation composing it to 

 handle its own affairs, just as in the past; that the League of Nations 

 would not say. There shall be no more tariffs by the United States against 



