James Beck

My principal purpose in these lectures is to deepen the interest of this great nation in one of the very greatest and far-reaching achievements of our common race.

If England and America are to act together in the coming time--and the destinies of the world are, to a very large extent, in their keeping, then they must know each other better, and, to this end, they must take a greater interest in each…

In any study of a World Constitution, the example of those who framed the American Constitution can be studied with profit.

Those Americans who, for the reasons stated, are not in sympathy with the structural form and political objectives of the League, are not lacking in sympathy for its admirable administrative work in co-ordinating the activities of…

The men who framed the Covenant of the League tried to do, under more difficult, but not dissimilar, conditions, what the framers of the American Constitution did in 1787.

Other nations may not take it so literally, but with our life-long adherence to a written Constitution as a solemn contractual obligation, we do.

Are we prepared to say that in the event of a war or threatened danger of war, the Supreme Council of the League may take any action it deems wise and effectual to maintain peace?

We have been trained for nearly a century and a half to measure the validity and obligations of laws and executive acts in Courts of Justice and to apply the plain import of the Constitution.

I only mention the subject to suggest that the reader of these lectures will better understand why the American people take the written obligations of the League so seriously and literally.

It discusses a great malaise of our age, for which, I fear, no written Constitution, however wise, is an adequate remedy.

I do so, because it has a direct bearing on the decay of the spirit of constitutionalism both in America and elsewhere.

The consequence is that again and again we are running the risk of perpetrating the most grotesque errors of judgment, of committing the most serious political blunders, in defiance of American public opinion.

Even such masters of classical prose as Francis Parkman, perhaps the greatest historian who has used the English language as his vehicle, are almost unknown to the average reader.

It is indeed passing strange that in these days of cheap books and free education, America should be almost a 'terra incognita,' that we should know next to nothing of American history, of the American Constitution, of American practical…

To remove those causes of estrangement, to avoid a fateful catastrophe, in other words, to bring about a cordial understanding with America, the first condition must be an understanding of America.

This is as it should be, for--for better or worse--England and America will play together a great part in the future history of the world.

This experience has convinced me that now, more than ever before, there is in England a deep interest in American institutions and their history.

James Beck profoundly influenced the judgment of the neutral world and vindicated, by his masterly and sympathetic argument, the justice of our cause.

Plato records a saying of Socrates that the dog is a true philosopher because philosophy is love of knowledge, and a dog, while growling at strangers, always welcomes the friends that he knows.

Beck lectures on this subject to us, our interest and our sympathy are redoubled by the thought that whatever differences there may be between the Old World and the New, citizens of the United States and ourselves are the Sons of a Common…

But all three spring from one root; all three are carried out by men of like political ideals; all three are destined to promote the cause of ordered liberty throughout the world.