Americans United

Now That it is no longer open to any doubt that the United Nations will win the war—and perhaps sooner than anybody had dared to hope—the question that bulks biggest is bound to be the one relating to the maintenance of peace after the war is over. It has to be admitted that the opportunity was muffed after World War I, and it is bound to be hoped that this time the world will be wiser.

There are two familiar suggestions for the insurance of peace. One is the ancient theory of balanced powers with overmastering force the sole effective factor. The other is world organization somewhat after the manner of Mr. Wilson's' League of Nations, but hopefully eliminating what proved to be fatal defects in that plan. Manifestly this will be a complicated problem, requiring not only the best brains the world can assemble for its solution, but also a readiness, reluctant though it be, for each to surrender a portion of what is generally called sovereignty. That always comes hard; for nationalism, much as we may deplore it, is terribly real and terribly strong among all nations, big and little.

Above all, it will be necessary to implement any such world organization with force sufficient to make its decisions effective; and further it will be necessary to be ready and willing to use that force whenever occasion arises. Squeamishness in that regard is perhaps more surely responsible than any other one thing for the breakdown of the League of Nations. It enabled Japan to prey unchecked on China. It afforded Mussolini his opportunity to prey on Ethiopia without any outside interference. It gave Hitler his chance little by little to disregard the obligations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles until at last he felt it to be expedient for him to bathe the world in blood. In fine, if there is to be world organization to insure future peace, the members of it must mean what they say, and stand ready to give effect to their promises by deeds, instead of inventing reasons for evading that responsibility.

As a beginning to that end, there is forming an organization which has assumed the name of Americans United—a consolidation of a dozen or more of already exist ent patriotic organizations—devoted to the idea of a sane solution of this world's differences. And what makes this a matter of special significance to Dartmouth College is the acceptance by President Hopkins of the chairmanship of this new board. As he states the general object in view, it is the conduct of a campaign "to elect a Congress intelligent enough and forceful enough to give expression to the popular will for the organization of peace, and to insure full public exposure of those individuals and agencies among us whose acquisitiveness for power, pride of position, or glorification of race lead them to efforts which head straight for fascism and all the hideous attributes of that cult."

Of the nine vice-chairmen it may be noted in passing that two of them are William W. Grant, a Dartmouth Trustee, and Walter Wanger, the present head of the college's General Alumni Association, which further stresses the lead which Dartmouth is taking in the discussion of this problem.

Naturally any such problem must be approached in a non-partisan spirit. The whole idea is to canalize the zeal o£ patriotic Americans of all parties, all races and all creeds to produce the power for making really efficient the massed decency of mankind, which hitherto has dispersed itself so widely as to make it ineffective against the powers of evil. One great, comprehensive and determined organization, acting intelligently toward a definite end, will be worth a score of disunited movements. Men and women will have to forget that they are Democrats or Republicans, New Dealers or anti-New Dealers, and remember only that they are decent Americans anxious to make this a decent world. To those who know and appreciate the solid common sense of President Hopkins, his acceptance of the chairmanship of this budding peace-insurance organization will give new heart and fresh courage, as promising something genuinely practical, rather than something ecstatically visionary but unworkable in a world of imperfect men and mutually distrustful nations.

V-12 TRAINEES FROM THE FLEET CONTINUE THE CUSTOM OF WASHING THEIR OWN