cts might still be very
influential. In your country, where the Government of the day is subject
to immediate dismissal for want of confidence, such power over foreign
relations can be safely entrusted to a few men, but in the United
States, with its fixed tenures of office, a President could pledge the
faith and involve his nation in war against the interests and will of
the people. Suppose the President had unlimited power over our foreign
relations and that within the next ten years an American, whose parents
were born in any European nation, was elected on purely domestic issues,
he could, with his assured four years of power, bring about a new
alignment of nations and shake the political equilibrium of the world.
The Constitution wisely refused to grant such a power. Hence the
provision for the concurrence of the legislative representatives of the
nation. At all events, it constitutes a system which, as the last
presidential election showed, the American people will not willingly
forgo. It is true that this system makes it difficult for the United
States to participate effectively in the main purpose of the League of
Nations to enforce peace by joint action at Geneva, but to ask the
United States to surrender a vital part of its constitutional system,
upon which its domestic peace so largely depends, in order to promote
the League, seems to me as unreasonable as it would be to ask your
country to abolish the Crown, to which it is sincerely attached as a
vital part of its system, as a contribution towards international
co-operation. You would not surrender such an integral part of your
system, and therefore it is not reasonable to expect a similar sacrifice
on our part, even though the meritorious purposes of the League be
freely recognized.

I have thus summarized briefly and most inadequately some of the
essential principles of the Constitution. I have only been able to
suggest very impressionistically what they are and the lessons to be
drawn from them. If I were able to deliver a dozen addresses on the
subject in this historic Hall and with this indulgent audience I would
not scratch even the surface. To understand the Constitution of the
United States you must not only read the text but the thousands of
opinions rendered in the last 130 years by the Supreme Court in its
great task of interpreting this wonderful document. Few documents have
been the subject of more extended commentaries. The four thousand words