(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