In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) | Page 9

are not elected. This, I think, is one of the considerations for
which many people's minds are still unprepared. But unless we are to
have over again after all this bloodshed and effort some such "Peace
with Honour" foolery as we had performed by "Dizzy" and Salisbury at
that fatal Berlin Conference in which this present war was begotten, we
must sit up to this novel proposal of electoral representation in the
peace negotiations. Something more than common sense binds our
statesmen to this idea. They are morally pledged to it. President Wilson
and our British and French spokesmen alike have said over and over
again that they want to deal not with the Hohenzollerns but with the
German people. In other words, we have demanded elected
representatives from the German people with whom we may deal, and
how can we make a demand of that sort unless we on our part are
already prepared to send our own elected representatives to meet them?
It is up to us to indicate by our own practice how we on our side,
professing as we do to act for democracies, to make democracy safe on
the earth, and so on, intend to meet this new occasion.
Yet it has to be remarked that, so far, not one of the League of Nations
projects I have seen have included any practicable proposals for the
appointment of delegates either to that ultimate body or to its two
necessary predecessors, the Council of the Allies and the Peace
Congress. It is evident that here, again, we are neglecting to get on with
something of very urgent importance. I will venture, therefore, to say a
word or two here about the possible way in which a modern community
may appoint its international representatives.
And here, again, I turn from any European precedents to that political
outcome of the British mind, the Constitution of the United States.
(Because we must always remember that while our political institutions
in Britain are a patch-up of feudalism, Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian
monarchist traditions and urgent merely European necessities, a
patch-up that has been made quasi-democratic in a series of

after-thoughts, the American Constitution is a real, deliberate creation
of the English-speaking intelligence.) The President of the United
States, then, we have to note, is elected in a most extraordinary way,
and in a way that has now the justification of very great successes
indeed. On several occasions the United States has achieved
indisputable greatness in its Presidents, and very rarely has it failed to
set up very leaderly and distinguished men. It is worth while, therefore,
to inquire how this President is elected. He is neither elected directly by
the people nor appointed by any legislative body. He is chosen by a
special college elected by the people. This college exists to elect him; it
meets, elects him, and disperses. (I will not here go into the preliminary
complications that makes the election of a President follow upon a
preliminary election of two Presidential Candidates. The point I am
making here is that he is a specially selected man chosen ad hoc.) Is
there any reason why we should, not adopt this method in this new
necessity we are under of sending representatives, first, to the long
overdue and necessary Allied Council, then to the Peace Congress, and
then to the hoped-for Council of the League of Nations?
I am anxious here only to start for discussion the idea of an electoral
representation of the nations upon these three bodies that must in
succession set themselves to define, organize, and maintain the peace
of the world. I do not wish to complicate the question by any too
explicit advocacy of methods of election or the like. In the United
States this college which elects the President is elected on the same
register of voters as that which elects the Senate and Congress, and at
the same time. But I suppose if we are to give a popular mandate to the
three or five or twelve or twenty (or whatever number it is) men to
whom we are going to entrust our Empire's share in this great task of
the peace negotiations, it will be more decisive of the will of the whole
nation if the college that had to appoint them is elected at a special
election. I suppose that the great British common-weals over-seas, at
present not represented in Parliament, would also and separately at the
same time elect colleges to appoint their representatives. I suppose
there would be at least one Indian representative elected, perhaps by
some special electoral conference of Indian princes and leading men.
The chief defect of the American Presidential election is that as the old
single vote method of election is employed it has to