compels us to recognize that beyond a certain degree the economic and the
national factor are not commensurable. Here is an essential imperfection
in the best settlement we can possibly devise.
The fact that these minorities require a guarantee reveals a deficiency
still more grave than the other, inasmuch as it is not environmental
but psychological. It means that hardly a single national society in
Europe has yet become capable of national toleration. Just as people
were persecuted for their religious beliefs in the sixteenth century and
for their political opinions in the nineteenth, so they are still in the
twentieth century almost universally exposed to persecution for their
national individuality. In this sphere the social evolution of Europe
is exceptionally backward, and the problem of nationality will never be
solved till this psychological incongruity is removed.
[Sidenote: But elastic guarantees will further racial toleration.]
This at once reduces to their proper proportion both the immediate
geographical settlement of the problem which we have elaborated in this
book and that guarantee of alien minorities which we have found to be
its necessary supplement. In this light, the contracts in which such
guarantees are enshrined appear as the transitory scaffolding they are.
Weakened by the morbid hypertrophy of nationalism which has been preying
upon her for years, exhausted by the convulsion of war in which the
malady has culminated, Europe must walk on crutches now or else collapse;
yet she will not be a cripple forever. Relieved by these guarantees from
the immediate strain of unmitigated national friction, she will be able
to concentrate all her energy upon her spiritual convalescence. As soon
as she has trained herself to national toleration, she will discard the
guarantees and walk unaided.
So far from constituting a “permanent settlement,” our third type of
guarantee is an intimation that the problem still remains unsettled. The
work will not be complete until we can dispense with the instrument, but
the instrument will not accomplish the work unless it is wielded by a
craftsman’s hand. Not only are guarantees of our third type merely the
means to an end beyond themselves: the contract in which it is embodied
is in this case the least important part of the guarantee.
When we guarantee a national minority we have of course to define certain
liberties which it is to enjoy—liberties, for instance, of religion,
education, local self-government—and all the parties to the Conference
must contract responsibility for the observance of such stipulations; yet
when we have done this, we cannot simply deposit our document in some
international “Ark of the Covenant” and go our ways. The essence of the
guarantee is its subsequent interpretation.
The relation between the different elements in a country is continually
changing. One church dwindles while another makes converts; one race
advances in culture while another degenerates; man’s indefatigable
struggle to dominate his physical environment alters the natural
boundaries between localities: a barrier that once seemed insurmountable
is pierced, and leaves one formerly insignificant in relative prominence.
Each of these modifications demands an adjustment of the guarantee,
and since they are an infinite series, the guarantee itself requires
ceaseless manipulation if it is to perform its function aright.
[Sidenote: The changing organism needs a new form of international
executive.]
This need cannot be satisfied by the original _fiat_ of the International
Conference: it can only be met by the appointment of a standing
international committee with executive powers, empowered, that is, to
administer and interpret the contracts to which the members of the
Conference have originally subscribed. Our third type of guarantee has
thus presented us with the clue we sought. The letter of international
law has proved ineffective hitherto because it has lacked the inspiration
of a living spirit, and this spirit can only be breathed into it by a
human organ of international authority.
[Sidenote: The executive and the guarantees.]
Supposing that such an organ were called into existence, what kind of
international relations would naturally fall within its scope? We can
analyze its probable sphere of activity into several departments.
(i.) The first branch would of course be those guarantees of national
minorities which have just taught us the necessity for its existence.
(ii.) The second branch would include the two subjects of guarantee
we dealt with first, namely, “Political Independence” and “Rights of
Way.” We can see now that their administration by a representative
international executive would eliminate that defect of rigidity which has
always proved fatal to them heretofore.
Between them these two branches would cover all the machinery we have
suggested for our regenerated European organism. Are there any further
spheres of national interaction over which our international organ
might properly assume control? It would be logical to assign to it, if
possible, all relations between sovereign national States which are
peculiarly subject to change.
Change is a harmonization of two rhythms—Growth and Decay. Some sovereign
units are continually waxing in population, material wealth and spiritual
energy: such are Great Britain and Germany, France and the Russian
Empire. Others, like the Ottoman Empire or Spain, are as continually
waning in respect of the same factors.
This ebb and flow in the current of life causes, and must cause, a
perpetual readjustment of the relations between units in the two
complementary phases. Units in the positive phase inevitably absorb the
fibers and trespass upon the environment of those which have passed over
into the negative rhythm. We cannot arrest this process any more than we
can abolish change itself: what we can do is to regulate it on the lines
of civilization, instead of letting it run riot in a blind struggle for
existence.
The current radiates in an almost infinite variety of interactions. Great
Britain, Germany, and India are discharging surplus population into the
empty lands of the New World; Great Britain and France are applying
surplus wealth to evoke the latent resources of countries with no surplus
of their own; Great Britain and Russia are putting forth spiritual energy
to inspire primitive peoples with the vitality of civilization.
[Sidenote: How this international organ would function.]
Our international organ can handle no more than a fraction of this
world-wide interchange.
(i.) We may exclude at once from its competence every interaction that is
confined within the limits of a single sovereign unit. Within the British
Empire, for example, it is patently impracticable to “internationalize”
the problems of Indian emigration to Vancouver or the Transvaal, of the
closure of the Australian labor-market against labor from the British
Isles, of commercial exploitation in Nigeria or Rhodesia, of autonomy
in Ireland or the Asiatic Dependencies. The Empire may handle its own
problems well or ill, but it will never consent to waive its sovereignty
in respect of them. We should regard the proposition of international
intervention as a menace to the Empire’s existence. We should undoubtedly
fight rather than submit to it, and every other sovereign State would
do the same under similar circumstances. In purely internal affairs
international authority will never obtain a footing at the expense of the
individual unit.
(ii.) We may likewise exclude interactions between two or more
sovereign States in spheres that fall entirely within their respective
sovereignty. The Dominion of Canada or the U. S. A. would never submit
to international regulation the question of Japanese immigration along
their Pacific seaboard. If Russia wished to float a loan, she would never
allow our international organ to decide where and in what proportions
it should be placed: she would insist on keeping her hands free, and
making the best bargain for herself both from the financial and the
political point of view. Italy and the Argentine would never relinquish
their respective sovereign rights over the Italian laborers who cross the
Atlantic every year to reap the South American harvests. International
authority would be flouted as uncompromisingly in these instances as in
the former.
[Sidenote: Control of weak States, and of immigration.]
(iii.) There are some units, however, so raw in their growth or so
deeply sunk in their decay as to lack the attribute of sovereignty
altogether—units which through want of population, wealth, spiritual
energy, or all three together are unable to keep the spark of vitality
aglow. Such dead units are the worst danger that threatens the peace of
the world: each one of them is an arena enticing the living units around
to clash in conflict, a vacuum into which the current of life swirls like
a maelstrom. In these “no-man’s-lands” where no sovereignty exists, our
international organ can and must assert its own sovereignty against the
sovereign States outside.
(_a_) In every such area the standing international executive should
regulate immigration from over-populated sovereign units—German
colonization, for instance, in Anatolia, or Indian settlement on the
alluvium of Irak.
(_b_) It should likewise regulate the inflow of capital....
(_c_) In areas where the pressure of spiritual energy is so low that the
population cannot save itself by its own efforts from political anarchy,
the international executive should be prepared to step in and organize
“strong government.”...
Morocco, the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire—the present war is not really
being waged to settle these problems: it is being waged because they
have been settled already, and settled on such unjust and injudicious
lines that all parties concerned have found it worth while to stake their
existence for the reversal of the settlement. No one need have been
involved by such problems in a struggle for life. They were all problems
of expansion, and their solution ought at worst to have disappointed
the expectation of immoderate gains: it ought never, as it has done, to
have threatened the parties with the loss of what they possessed already
before the problems were probed.
[Sidenote: Such an executive could have prevented the war of diplomacy
and of arms.]
Why has the contrary occurred? Because, just for lack of that
international executive with the sovereign authority we postulate, these
issues that were not vital have been fought out, like issues of life and
death, by war—not by the war of arms which has descended upon us now like
some recurrent plague, into which we relapse at rarer and rarer intervals
as we advance in civilization, but by the unobtrusive, unremittent war of
diplomacy which is being waged year in and year out between the sovereign
States of Europe, and which has increased appallingly in violence during
the last generation.
In this disastrous diplomatic warfare our opponents in the present war
of arms have been uniformly the aggressors. If Austria-Hungary is now
struggling for existence, it is because she deliberately embarked nearly
forty years ago upon a diplomatic campaign of aggrandizement against
South-Slavonic nationality. If Germany is fighting back to back with
her in the same ghastly struggle, it is because Germany has wielded
diplomatic weapons still more ruthlessly against her other European
neighbors.
[Sidenote: The war of diplomacy.]
For the terrible embitterment of the diplomatic contest Germany herself
is entirely responsible, but she has inevitably exposed herself to
reprisals as severe as her own provocative blows. She opened the battle
over Morocco by forcibly intruding upon a sphere where she had no shadow
of claim to expansion: thereby she drew France and Great Britain into
diplomatic alliance against her, and laid herself open to the humiliation
of 1911, when Franco-British diplomacy mobilized its financial forces
and drove her to retreat by cutting off her supplies. In Turkey she
might easily have satisfied her needs without any battle at all. The
untenanted area was vast, the claims staked out on it were singularly
narrow: when German enterprise circumvented the enterprise of Great
Britain and France, and secured all the railway-concessions in the virgin
hinterland of Anatolia, French and British diplomacy grumbled but did
not attempt to open hostilities. Yet instead of reaping her harvest in
peace, Germany again precipitated a diplomatic conflict by extending
her ambitions to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. The moment she aspired to
absorb the whole Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and Russia entered into
diplomatic cooperation, and opposed her purpose with all their might.
Germany’s Arabian venture has jeopardized her Anatolian gains, and if she
is defeated in the present struggle, she will probably be excluded from
the Ottoman area altogether.
The diplomatic warfare over three secondary issues, which ought never
to have been settled by fighting at all, has thus left none of the
combatants unscathed. On the contrary, the wounds inflicted then have
festered till their poison has threatened each combatant with the pains
of dissolution, and made that quack-physician the diplomatist call out in
panic for the knife of that quack-surgeon the war lord.
This diplomatic warfare is the objective of our new international
organization. Upon diplomacy we can and must make a direct attack. If
we can draw this monster’s teeth, we shall no longer be troubled by its
still more monstrous offspring—War.
_Arnold J. Toynbee, “Nationality and the War,” chap. XII._
THE GOVERNMENTAL THEORY
[Sidenote: International politics dominated by a theory.]
The position I intend to put forward and defend is this: War is made—this
war has been made—not by any necessity of nature, any law beyond human
control, any fate to which men must passively bow; it is made because
certain men who have immediate power over other men are possessed by
a certain theory. Sometimes they are fully conscious of this theory.
More often, perhaps, it works in them unconsciously. But it is there,
the dominating influence in international politics. I shall call it the
governmental theory, because it is among governing persons—Emperors,
Kings, Ministers, and their diplomatic and military advisers—that its
influence is most conspicuous and most disastrous. But it is supported
also by historians, journalists, and publicists, and it is only too
readily adopted by the ordinary man, when he turns from the real things
he knows and habitually handles to consider the unknown field of foreign
affairs.
Very briefly, and, therefore, crudely expressed, the theory is this:
“The world is divided, politically, into States. These States are a
kind of abstract beings, distinct from the men, women, and children who
inhabit them. They are in perpetual and inevitable antagonism to one
another; and though they may group themselves in alliances, that can
be only for temporary purposes to meet some other alliance or single
power. For States are bound by a moral or physical obligation to expand
indefinitely, each at the cost of the others. They are natural enemies,
they always have been so, and they always will be; and force is the only
arbiter between them. That being so, war is an eternal necessity. As a
necessity, it should be accepted, if not welcomed, by all sound-thinking
and right-feeling men. Pacifists are men at once weak and dangerous. They
deny a fact as fundamental as any of the facts of the natural world. And
their influence, if they have any, can only be disastrous to their State
in its ceaseless and inevitable contest with other States.”
[Sidenote: Artificiality of the governmental theory.]
Stated thus briefly, and in its most uncompromising terms, this is what I
have called the governmental theory. I propose to criticize it in detail.
But before doing so I will ask the reader to compare with it the ordinary
attitude of the plain men and women who inhabit these States, and who
have to bear the burden of the wars in which the theory involves them.
These ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think
at all in terms of the State. They think about the people they come in
contact with, about their business, their friends, and their families.
When they come across foreigners, as many of them do, in business or in
travel, they may like or dislike them, but they do not regard them as
predestined enemies. On the contrary, if they are intelligent, they know
themselves to be cooperating with them in innumerable complicated ways,
implying mutual advantage. Differences of language and of social habit
make it easier for most people to associate with their fellow-countrymen
than with foreigners. But that is all. There are, of course, among these
men and women real enmities and spontaneous quarrels. But these do not
occur because men belong to different States. They occur because they
really have injured one another, or hate one another; and they occur,
naturally, for the most part, between men of the same State, because it
is these who most often come into direct contact with one another. It is
not, therefore, these enmities of ordinary men that give rise to wars.
[Sidenote: Governments, not peoples, make wars.]
Wars are made by governments, acting under the influence of the
governmental theory. And of this fact—for a fact it is among civilized
Western peoples in modern times—no better example could be given than
the present war. Before it broke out nobody outside governmental and
journalistic circles was expecting it. Nobody desired it. And though,
now that it is being waged, all the nations concerned are passionately
interested in it, and all believe themselves to be fighting in a
righteous cause, yet no ordinary citizen, in the days preceding its
outbreak, would have maintained that there was any good reason for war,
and few even knew what the reasons alleged were or might be. Even now
the different nations have quite opposite views as to which Government
was responsible. We believe it was the German Government; and with equal
conviction Germans believe it was the British. But nobody believes
that it was the mass of the people in any nation. The millions who are
carrying on the war, at the cost of incalculable suffering, would never
have made it if the decision had rested with them. That is the one
indisputable fact. How can such a fact occur? How is it possible for
Governments to drag into war people who did not desire war and who have
no quarrel with one another?
The immediate answer is simple enough. In no country is there any
effective control by the people over foreign policy. That is clear in
the case of the great military empires. But it is true also of France
and of England, where, in other respects, government is more or less
under popular control. The country has no real choice, for it gets its
information only after the decisive action has been taken. That is an
important truth which ought to lead to important changes in our methods
of conducting foreign affairs. But it is only part of the truth. For we
have now to notice this further fact: that in all countries, in Germany
no less than in England and France, no sooner is the war declared than
it is supported by the whole nation. The voice of criticism is silenced,
and every one, whatever his opinion about the origin of the war, gives
his help to see it through. Why is that? The reason is obvious. As soon
as war is made, the people of one country, conscious just before of
no cause of enmity, do really become enemies of the people of another
country; for armed populations are marching on armed populations to
massacre them. Everybody, therefore, is bound to fight in self-defense.
It is too late to ask whether there was any real cause of quarrel; for,
quarrel or no, there is real and imminent danger. To meet that danger
becomes, therefore, the immediate necessity which overbears every
other consideration. And that is the deepest reason why wars made by
governments without, and even against, the will of peoples, will always
be supported by peoples.
[Sidenote: But peoples are also obsessed by the theory.]
But though that is the most powerful reason, it is not the only one.
There is a further fact. The ordinary man, though he does not live under
the obsession of the governmental theory, is not protected against it
by any knowledge or reflection. As far as he is concerned, he knows no
reason for war, and, left to himself, would never make it. But he has a
blank mind open to suggestion; and he has passions and instincts which
it is easy to enlist on the side of the governmental theory. He has been
busy all his life; and he has no education, or one that is worse than
none, about those issues which, in a crisis like that which has come upon
us, suddenly reveal themselves as the issues of life and death. History,
no doubt, should have informed him. But history, for the most part, is
written without intelligence or conviction. It is mere narrative, devoid
of instruction, and seasoned, if at all, by some trivial, habitual, and
second-hand prejudice of the author. History has never been understood,
though it has often been misunderstood. To understand it is perhaps
beyond the power of the human intellect. But the attempt even has hardly
begun to be made.
[Sidenote: Press and government poison the public mind.]
Deprived, then, of this source of enlightenment, the ordinary man falls
back upon the press. But the press is either an agent of the very
governments it should exist to criticize (it is so notoriously and
admittedly on the Continent, and, to an extent which we cannot measure,
also in England), or else it is (with a few honorable exceptions) an
instrument to make money for certain individuals or syndicates. But the
easiest way for the press to make money is to appeal to the most facile
emotions and the most superficial ideas of the reader; and these can
easily be made to respond to the suggestion that this or that foreign
State is our natural and inevitable enemy. The strong instincts of
pugnacity and self-approbation, the nobler sentiment of patriotism, a
vague and unanalyzed impression of the course of history, these and other
factors combine to produce this result. And the irony is that they may
be directed indifferently against any State. In England, for instance, a
hundred years ago, it was France against whom they were marshaled; sixty
years ago it was Russia; thirty years ago it was France again; now it
is Germany; presently, if governments have their way, it will be Russia
again.
The foreign offices and the press do with nations what they like. And
they will continue to do so until ordinary people acquire right ideas and
a machinery to make them effective....
[Sidenote: We must realize that States are unreal abstractions.]
The governmental theory holds that States are the great realities,
and that they are natural enemies. My reply is that States are unreal
abstractions; that the reality is the men and women and children who
are the members of the States; and that as soon as you substitute real
people for the abstract idea that symbolizes them you find that they have
no cause of quarrel, no interests or desires of a kind to justify or
necessitate aggressive war. And, if there were no aggressive war, there
could, of course, be no cause for defensive war....
_G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1915._
THE WAY OUT OF WAR
[Sidenote: No aggrandizement!]
We will to perpetuate European peace. How are we to accomplish it? By
keeping in view and putting into effect certain clear principles.
First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating another
must be set aside. What we are aiming at is, not that this or that group
of States should dominate the others, but that none should in future have
any desire or motive to dominate. With that view, we must leave behind
the fewest possible sores, the least possible sense of grievance, the
least possible humiliation. The defeated States, therefore, must not be
dismembered in the hope of making or keeping them weak; and that means,
in detail, that, if the Allies win, the English and the French must not
take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic Coast, the Balkans,
or Constantinople; and that, if Germany wins, she must not dismember or
subordinate to her system France or England or the neutral powers. That
is the first clear condition of the future peace of Europe.
[Sidenote: No subjugation of small nationalities!]
Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of States—and clearly they must
be rearranged—one point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give
to all peoples suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to
decide whether they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the
political system of some other nation. Thus, for example, the people of
Alsace-Lorraine should be allowed to choose whether they will remain
under Germany, or become an autonomous community, or be included in
France. The same principles shall be applied to the Poles. The same to
Schleswig-Holstein. The same to the Balkan States. The same to the Slav
communities included in Austria-Hungary. There would arise, of course,
difficulties in carrying this principle through. For, in the Balkan
States, in Bohemia, and elsewhere, there is an almost inextricable tangle
of nationalities. But with good-will these difficulties could be at least
partially met.
Even the wholesale transference of peoples of one nationality from one
location to another is a possibility; and, indeed, it is now going on. In
any case the principle itself is clear. Political rule must cease to be
imposed on peoples against their will in the supposed interest of that
great idol, the abstract state. Let the Germans, who belong together,
live together under the same government, pursuing in independence their
national ideal and their national culture. But let them not impose that
ideal and that culture on reluctant Poles and Slavs and Danes. So, too,
let Russia develop her own life over the huge territory where Russians
live. But let her not impose that life on unwilling Poles and Finns. The
English, in history, have been as guilty as other nations of sacrificing
nationality to the supposed exigencies of the State. But of late they
have been learning their lesson. Let them learn it to the end. Let no
community be coerced under British rule that wants to be self-governing.
The British have had the courage, though late, to apply this principle to
South Africa and Ireland. There remains their greatest act of courage and
wisdom—to apply it to India.
[Sidenote: There must be established an international authority.]
A Europe thus rearranged, as it might be at the peace, on a basis of real
nationality instead of on a basis of States, would be a Europe ripe for
a permanent league. And by such a league only, in my judgment, can its
future peace, prosperity, happiness, goodness, and greatness be assured.
There must be an end to the waste upon armaments of resources too scanty,
at the best, to give to all men and women in all countries the material
basis for a good life. But if States are left with the power to arm
against one another they will do so, each asserting, and perhaps with
truth, that it is arming in defense against the imagined aggression of
the others. If all are arming, all will spend progressively more and more
on their armaments, for each will be afraid of being outstripped by the
others. This circle is fatal, as we have seen in the last quarter of a
century.
To secure the peace of Europe the peoples of Europe must hand over their
armaments, and the use of them for any purpose except internal police, to
an international authority. This authority must determine what force is
required for Europe as a whole, acting as a whole in the still possible
case of war against powers not belonging to the league. It must apportion
the quota of armaments between the different nations according to their
wealth, population, resources, and geographical position. And it, and it
alone, must carry on, and carry on in public, negotiations with powers
outside the league. All disputes that may arise between members of the
league must be settled by judicial process. And none of the forces of the
league must be available for purposes of aggression by any member against
any other.
With such a league of Europe constituted, the problem of reduction of
armaments would be automatically solved. Whatever force a united Europe
might suppose itself to require for possible defense would clearly
be far less than the sum of the existing armaments of the separate
States. Immense resources would be set free for the general purposes of
civilization, and especially for those costly social reforms on the
accomplishment of which depends the right of any nation to call itself
civilized at all. And if any one insists on looking at the settlement
from the point of view of material advantage—and that point of view will
and must be taken—it may be urged, without a shadow of doubt, that any
and every nation, the conquerors no less than the conquered, would gain
from a reduction of armaments far more than they could possibly gain by
pecuniary indemnities or cessions of territory which would leave every
nation still arming against the others with a view to future squandering
of resources in another great war. This is sheer common sense of the most
matter-of-fact kind.
A League of Europe is not Utopian. It is sound business.
[Sidenote: And we must prepare public opinion for the idea.]
Such a league, it is true, could hardly come into being immediately at
the peace. There must be preparation of opinion first; and, not less
important, there must be such changes in the government of the monarchic
States as will insure the control of their policy by popular opinion;
otherwise we might get a league in which the preponderating influence
would be with autocratic emperors. But in making peace the future league
must be kept in view. Everything must be done that will further it, and
nothing that will hinder it. And what would hinder it most would be a
peace by which either there should be a return to the conditions before
the war—but of that there is little fear—or by which any one power, or
group of powers, should be given a hegemony over the others. For that
would mean a future war for the rehabilitation of the vanquished.
[Sidenote: View of peoples must supersede view of governments.]
The mood, therefore, which seems to be growing in England, that the
British must “punish” Germany by annihilating her as a political force;
the mood which seems to be growing in Germany, that she must annihilate
the British as the great disturbers of the peace—all such moods must be
resolutely discouraged. For on those lines no permanent peace can be
made. Militarism must be destroyed, not only in Germany but everywhere.
Limitation of armaments must be general, not imposed only on the
vanquished by victors who propose themselves to remain fully armed.
The view of peoples must be substituted once for all for the view of
governments, and the view of peoples is no domination, and, therefore,
no war, but a union of nations developing freely on their own lines, and
settling all disputes by arbitration.
_G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1915._
LOWES DICKINSON’S PLAN
[Sidenote: Mr. Dickinson’s plan lacks hard-headedness.]
Writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Mr. Lowes Dickinson attempts to point
the moral of the war and to offer a way out. His theory is that wars are
made by governments without the consent and against the interest of their
subjects; they are made because the governmental mind is obsessed with
the illusion that States are “natural enemies,” that they have always
been so and always will be, that force is the only arbiter between them.
This fantasy of the governing caste, says Mr. Dickinson, is what rules
the State, and through control of foreign policy and the press drags the
population to slaughter. The remedy is to shatter the illusion, to assert
against the criminal nonsense of the governing mind the humanity and
commonsense of ordinary people....
Now peace will have to be built on a very hard-headed basis or it will
be fragile and illusory. But it is just this hard-headedness which Mr.
Dickinson’s argument seems to lack. In our opinion he himself is building
on an illusion, and if his doctrine prevails among the workers for peace
their passion will be misdirected, and their disappointment will be as
deep as their hopes are high.
[Sidenote: Is political power irrelevant to economic power?]
To prove these assertions, we need not go beyond the example which Mr.
Dickinson uses, the case of Russia and her desire to hold Constantinople.
Mr. Dickinson dismisses this ambition with the statement that “for all
purposes of trade, for all peace purposes, the Dardanelles are open.
And it is the interest of all nations alike that they should remain so.”
What he is assuming here is that it makes no economic difference whether
Constantinople is under one political government or another. This is
the center of Mr. Dickinson’s argument, and it rests on the doctrine of
Norman Angell that “political power is a consideration irrelevant to
economic power.”
Is it irrelevant in a case like that of the Dardanelles? The Black
Sea region is already a great agricultural exporting region; it is
destined most probably to become the industrial center of Russia. But
to carry out goods, Russian ships must pass through a narrow Turkish
strait. Mr. Dickinson says that for all “peace purposes” the passage is
free. Is it? Let us suppose that Mexico held New York harbor, or that
Ecuador held Liverpool. Would these harbors be free to American and
English commerce? They would be free if Mexico and Ecuador were highly
efficient governments imbued with the doctrine of absolute free trade.
Then commerce might pass through easily. But if Mexicans or Ecuadorians
took it into their heads to exercise sovereignty by setting up a tariff
zone around New York or Liverpool, who would regard political power as
irrelevant to economic power? Certainly not the Manchester exporter as he
paid his customs tax to the pleasant official from Ecuador.
Although England is in no danger from Ecuador, there are nations in the
world which suffer just as fantastically. There is the case of Servia,
shut off from a “window on the sea.” Servia exports pigs, when she isn’t
fighting for the privilege of exporting them. But to export anything she
has to run the gauntlet of an Austrian tariff to the north, Albanian and
Greek discrimination to the west and south. Shut off from the sea, she is
like a man trying to get out of a restaurant who has still to tip the
waiter, the headwaiter, the girl who took care of his hat, and the boy
who brushed it.
[Sidenote: No; political power is an instrument for monopolies and
concessions.]
Political power is not in the least irrelevant to economic power. Mr.
Dickinson has no doubt heard of a thing which we Americans call vulgarly
“dollar diplomacy.” European powers do not call it that, but they
practise it. They call it staking out “spheres of influence,” and there
is nothing sentimental or illusory about it. The nation that can secure
political control of an undeveloped country can decide who shall receive
the mining rights and the railroad franchises, can fix railroad rates
to favor its own manufacturers, can use all the methods which Americans
describe as restraint of trade. It may have been dishonest, it certainly
wasn’t a delusion, when capitalists in those dreadful early days of this
republic bought political power to further economic ends. A legislature
or a governor was generally worth the price in this country, and we
presume that they would be worth the price in Asia Minor. If German
bureaucrats governed Morocco, they would, we suppose, be good to their
friends, almost all of whom have at least a nominal residence east of
Belgium, and French capitalists might then be prospecting fresh mines and
pastures new.
Mr. Dickinson ignores these considerations when he speaks of national
antagonisms arising “because a few men of the military and diplomatic
caste have a theory about States, their interests and destinies.” He
ignores the monopolies, the use of tariffs, the special privileges
of which political power is the instrument. He does not face the
fact that in every country there are exporters of goods and capital,
concession-hunters and traders, who stand to gain by the use of
governmental power in half developed territory. To them at least it is
not a matter of indifference whether Germany is politically supreme in
say India or China. Since Germany has brought the doctrine of protection
to its highest point, it would make a very great difference to the
commerce of other nations if Germany developed a world-empire.
How little reality there is in Mr. Dickinson’s contention may be seen
by analyzing his concrete proposals. Apart from the shattering of the
great illusion of the governmental mind by a propaganda, he suggests a
settlement of Europe on the basis of nationality, capped by a League of
Europe to maintain the peace.
[Sidenote: Governmental theory not mere illusion.]
Now there are all sorts of reasons for trying to found States on
nationality, and the only reason against the proposal is the reason on
which Mr. Dickinson’s article is built. He tells us on one page that
“ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think at all
in terms of the state.” Then what difference does it make to people of
the same nationality that they should be under different governments, and
how is the world’s peace to be assured by gathering into one State people
who do not care about the State? Either the people have an interest in
the State or they have not, but surely it is futile for Mr. Dickinson to
argue in one place against the German contention that their emigrants are
“lost,” and in another that the Danes of Schleswig-Holstein should go
back to Denmark. And what does he mean by telling us that in the event
of an Austro-German victory “Italy and the Balkans will be pillaged to
the benefit of Austria, and Russia rolled back—though that would be all
to the good—from her ambition to expand in the West.” Is Mr. Dickinson
also afflicted with the “governmental mind,” that he should talk of
“benefit” to Austria and pronounce it good that “Russia” be rolled back?
What does he mean by telling us that “the English and the French must not
take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic coast, the Balkans,
or Constantinople,” for what difference does it make, except to the
“governmental mind,” who exercises political power!
[Sidenote: Mr. Dickinson ignores crucial problems.]
As for the League of Europe, surely no one here would wish to obstruct
the plan. But if the League is to be based on nothing more realistic than
an absence of governmental thinking, it will be a very precarious league.
Every argument advanced by Mr. Dickinson is based on the assumption of
absolute free trade in the world, yet in his plan of peace he says not
one syllable about how tariffs and discriminations and monopolies are to
be wiped out. The conflict between Germany and England is world-wide, yet
Mr. Dickinson is thinking only of rectified frontiers in Europe.
When he proposes so readily a League of Europe with a police force to
carry out its jurisdiction, has he considered the possibility of civil
war within the League? If Germany and Austria rebelled against the
League, they would presumably be attacked on all sides. But they are
now attacked on all sides. We had on this continent a league of States
with a central government, a Supreme Court, and an army. In 1861 some
of the States seceded, and the struggle which followed, called a Civil
War, was a terrible conflict. Has Mr. Dickinson faced the fact that a
League of Europe would be based on the _status quo_, would be a sort of
legalization of every existing injustice? And how does he propose to
amend peacefully the constitution of Europe if some nation objects too
seriously?
_The New Republic, Jan. 2, 1915._
THE MORROW OF THE WAR
OUR PURPOSE
[Sidenote: In time of war, prepare for peace.]
This country (Great Britain) is at war, and has for the moment one
overwhelming preoccupation: to render safe our national inheritance.
The Union of Democratic Control has been founded for the purpose of
trying to secure for ourselves and the generations that succeed us a
new course of policy which will prevent a similar peril ever again
befalling our Empire. Many men and women have already joined us holding
varying shades of opinion as to the origins of the war. Some think it
was inevitable, some that it could and should have been avoided. _But we
believe that all are in general agreement about two things: First, it is
imperative that the war, once begun, should be prosecuted to a victory
for our country. Secondly, it is equally imperative, while we carry on
the war, to prepare for peace. Hard thinking, free discussion, the open
exchange of opinion and information are the duty of all citizens to-day,
if we are to have any hope that this war will not be what most wars of
the past have been—merely the prelude to other wars._
[Sidenote: The program.]
Our contribution to this necessary discussion are the principles put
forward for consideration by the Union of Democratic Control.
_The Union of Democratic Control has been created to insist that the
following policy shall inspire the actual conditions of peace, and shall
dominate the situation after peace has been declared_:
_1. No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without consent by plébiscite or otherwise of the
population of such Province._
_2. No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created._
_3. The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance
of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a
Concert of the Powers and the setting up of an International
Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public, part
of the labor of such Council to be the creation of definite
Treaties of Arbitration and the establishment of Courts for
their interpretation and enforcement._
_4. Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement
a plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments
of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy
shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of the
manufacture of armaments, and the control of the export of
armaments by one country to another._
It is the purpose of this pamphlet to elaborate and explain the
considerations which underlie the policy outlined above.
I
_No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without the consent of plébiscite of the population of
such Province._
[Sidenote: There must be general recognition of principle of plébiscite.]
This condition has been placed first because if adhered to practically
and in spirit, and if recognized by the European Powers as a principle
that must guide all frontier rearrangements, it would help to put an end
to European war.
If no province were retained under a Government’s power against the
will of its inhabitants, the policy of conquest and the imposition of
political power would lose its _raison d’être_.
The subject as a whole is wrapped up, of course, with the principle of
democratic government and is not merely a problem of international but
of internal politics, and could not be treated briefly in a mere outline
like the present. But any one who reflects carefully on the subject will
see that the peace in Europe ultimately depends upon the acceptance of
this idea.
It is obvious that there are many difficulties of detail in its
application; that a plébiscite may be a mere form and not reflect the
real wishes of the population concerned, and under military control it
can be used as an instrument for obtaining an apparent sanction for
oppression, and that in populations of mixed race it is very difficult
of application. But it should not be impossible to guard against the
defeat of the principle through defects in the working machinery.
Plébiscites, where used at the end of the war, might be carried out under
international supervision. The essential is that the principle involved
should be clearly enunciated.
Fortunately the Government has already given the country a valuable lead
in this matter. For Mr. Churchill, speaking on September 11, said:
“Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make
the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany made when she had
France prostrate at her feet in 1870. [Cheers.] Let us, whatever we do,
fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the European
system, and the first of those principles which we should keep before
us is the principle of nationality—that is to say, not the conquest or
subjugation of any great community, or of any strong race of men, but the
setting free of those races which have been subjugated and conquered; and
if doubt arises about disputed areas of country we should try to settle
their ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe which must
follow from this war with a fair regard to the wishes and feelings of the
people who live in them.”
[Sidenote: One nation must not be allowed to dominate another.]
We agree with Mr. Churchill that the terms of peace should secure that
there shall in the future be no more Alsace-Lorraines to create during
half a century resentment, unrest, and intrigues for a _revanche_.
The power of the victorious parties must not be used for vindictive
oppression and dismemberment of beaten nationalities, but for the
creation, by cooperation with all the belligerents, victors and
vanquished alike, of a true society of nations, banded together for
mutual security. The future relationship of the States of Europe must be
not that of victor and vanquished, domination or subserviency, but of
partnership. The struggle of one nation for domination over another must
be replaced by the association of the people for their common good.
II
_No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created._
[Sidenote: Secret diplomacy must go.]
The peoples of all constitutionally-governed countries are justified
in demanding that diplomatic relations with their neighbors shall be
conducted with the main object of maintaining friendly international
intercourse. The increasing social and economic interdependence, the
ramifications of the credit system, the facility and rapidity of
intercommunication, the developing community of intellectual interest,
the growth of a collective social consciousness, are combining to
minimize the significance of the purely political frontiers which
divide civilized States. For these reasons the world is moving towards
conferences when political difficulties arise as a substitute for war.
The determination to preserve national ideals and traditions offers no
real obstacle. But the common interest of civilized democracies cannot be
advanced by a secret diplomacy out of touch with democratic sentiment.
The anomaly of such practises in a democratic State has only to
be understood to be condemned. All the domestic activities of a
constitutional Government are tested in the crucible of public analysis
and criticism. But the Government department charged with the supervision
of the nation’s intercourse with its neighbors, which if wrongly handled
may react with ruinous effect upon the whole field of its domestic
activities and upon the future of its entire social economy, _not only
escapes efficient public control, but considers itself empowered to
commit the nation to specific courses and to involve it in obligations to
third parties entailing the risk of war, without the nation’s knowledge
of consent_.
[Sidenote: British foreign policy has been autocratic.]
During the past eight years particularly, the management of the Foreign
department has become avowedly and frankly autocratic. Parliamentary
discussion of foreign policy has become so restricted as to be
perfunctory. It is confined to a few hours’ roving debate on one day in
each session. The eliciting of information by means of questions, never
satisfactory, is rendered extremely difficult by the ingenuity employed
in evading the issues it is attempted to raise. Advantage has been taken
of the wholesome desire that discussion of foreign policy should not
partake of mere party recriminations, to burke discussion altogether,
and this process has received the endorsement of both Front Benches.
A claim to “continuity” has been further evolved to stifle debate on
foreign affairs, whereas in point of fact, if one feature more than
another has characterized British foreign policy of recent years, it has
been its bewildering fluctuations. Parliamentary paralysis has had its
counterpart in the country. The present Government’s tenure of office has
been marked by an almost complete abstention from public reference to
foreign affairs. The public has been treated as though foreign affairs
were outside—and properly outside—its ken. And the public has acquiesced.
Every attempt to shake its apathy has been violently assailed by
spokesmen of the Foreign Office in the press. The country has been told
that its affairs were in the wisest hands, and that mystery and silence
are the indispensable attributes to a successful direction of foreign
policy. The caste system which prevails in the diplomatic service, and
which has survived unimpaired the democratizing of the majority of
the public services, facilitates these outworn political dogmatisms.
Appointment is made by nomination and selection. Candidates are required
to possess an income per annum of £400. The natural result is that the
vast bulk of the national intelligence is debarred from the diplomatic
field of employment. A study of the Foreign Office list will disclose the
fact that over 95 per cent. of the British diplomatic staff is composed
of members of the aristocracy and landed gentry.
[Sidenote: Connection between politics and business is ignored.]
Inevitable exile from their country results in our diplomatic
representatives abroad losing touch with the center of affairs and living
in a mental atmosphere remote from the popular and progressive movements
of the time. Another pronounced characteristic of the system is the
indifference displayed by the Foreign Office to the business interests
of the nation. Our vast commercial interests, so intimately affected by
our relations with foreign Powers, are regarded as lying outside the
orbit of diplomatic considerations. The connection between politics
and business—and by business we mean the entire framework of peaceful
commerce upon which the prosperity of this country depends—appears
to be ignored, or, at least, treated with indifference and something
like contempt. The services of our Consuls abroad are not sufficiently
utilized, and the Consular machinery requires complete overhauling. Such
questions as, for instance, the effect upon British commercial interest
of British diplomacy supporting the acquisition of undeveloped areas of
the world’s surface by a Power like France, which imposes differential
tariffs upon British goods, and opposing the acquisition of such areas by
a Power like Germany, which admits British goods on terms of equality,
does not appear to enter into Foreign Office calculations.
[Sidenote: Policy is framed by military experts without Parliamentary
control.]
In the last few years also has been added another institution which
modifies national policy without coming under Parliamentary control,
the Committee of Imperial Defense. Its influence upon the Cabinet is
nominally indirect, and its activities confined to the discussion of
hypothetical events. But no one can doubt that its recommendations
exercise a powerful effect on the executive decisions of the Government.
No criticism of the advice given by the Committee is possible in
Parliament. Momentous military and naval schemes are prepared there on
which hang the issues of peace and war, as in the case of our recent
relations to France. It is an intimate and powerful means of framing
Government policy according to the ideas of military experts, without the
knowledge and control of Parliament.
In the various ways indicated, opportunities of evincing an intelligent
concern in its foreign policy has been increasingly withdrawn from the
nation. The work of the Department escapes all outside control, loses all
sense of contact with national life, and tends more and more to become
an autocratic institution, contemptuous of the efforts of a small group
of members in the House to acquire information, and utilizing a powerful
section of the press to mold public opinion in the direction it considers
public opinion should travel.
The nation awoke with a shock to the evils of this state of affairs in
the summer of 1911, when it suddenly found itself on the very brink of
war with Germany over a Franco-German quarrel about Morocco, and became
cognizant of the existence of diplomatic entanglements of which it had no
previous intimation.
It is obviously impossible to attempt here a full presentment of the
Moroccan crisis of 1911. But the story is inseparably intertwined with
the avowals to the House of Commons on August 3rd, 1914, of the secret
understanding with France which has played so capital a part in bringing
about British intervention in the present war.
[Sidenote: Nation must participate in direction of foreign policy.]
So long as this situation prevails it must be perfectly clear to any
man of ordinary intelligence that the system of government under which
we live is not a democratic system, but its antithesis. It cannot be
too often insisted upon that the domestic concerns of the nation, its
constitutional liberties, its social reforms, all its internal activities
in short, depend upon the preservation of peaceful relations with its
neighbors. War in which this country is involved is certain to prove a
serious check to social progress. Hence it is a matter of absolutely
vital concern to the nation that the machinery of its Foreign Office
should be thoroughly capable of performing its functions, and that the
policy pursued by that department should be pursued with the knowledge
and the consent of the nation. It is imperative not only that a treaty
with a foreign Power should require endorsement by Parliament, but that
no agreement or understanding possessing binding force and postulating
the use of the national military and naval forces should be valid without
the assent of Parliament. The nation should insist upon this essential
reform, and should seriously apply itself to considering what other steps
are needed to ensure some mechanical means whereby a greater national
control of foreign policy can be secured; whether by the establishment of
a permanent Committee of the House of Commons, by the adaptation to suit
our needs of the American system under which a two-thirds majority of one
branch of the Legislature is required for the validity of international
agreements, or other procedure. _But real and permanent reforms will not
be obtained unless the nation is determined to assert its fundamental
right to participate in the formation of its own foreign policy._
III
_The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance
of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a
Concert of Europe and the setting up of an International
Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public._
[Sidenote: The “Balance of Power.”]
What does the “Balance of Power” mean?
It is popularly supposed to mean that no single Power or group of Powers
should, in the interests of international peace, be allowed to acquire a
preponderating position in Europe, and that the policy of Great Britain
should be directed against such a consummation. British policy during
the past few years has been based upon the assumption that Germany had
attained, or was seeking to attain, that position of eminence.
It is that idea which, in the minds of masses of our people, justifies
the present war.
But if this policy has been right in the past, what prospect does the
future hold? The victory of the Allies—which is a vital necessity—must
enormously upset the “balance” by making Russia the dominant military
power of Europe, possibly the dictator both in this Continent and in Asia.
Russia can draw upon vast sources of human military material, only partly
civilized. At present she is governed by a military autocracy which is
largely hostile to Western ideas of political and religious freedom.
There is hope in the minds of Western Liberals that the war may bring
political liberation to Russia. At present that is only a hope. For wars
have as often been a prelude to tyranny as to liberty. It is only too
likely that after a victorious war our national feeling may revert to its
old anti-Russian channel, and we shall again have the “Balance of Power”
invoked to protect Europe and India against a new Russian preeminence.
Speaking generally, the “Balance of Power” is little more than a
diplomatic formula made use of by the mouthpieces of the interests from
whose operations war comes. It signifies nothing more than that, at a
given moment, in a given country, there is an effort to hold up to the
public gaze the Government and the people of another country as being
intent upon the destruction of its neighbors. At one moment it is Russia,
at another France, and at another Germany. The “Balance of Power” was
invoked for several years and down to within a few weeks of the Crimean
War to inflame British public opinion against France. It was invoked
against Russia to justify the Crimean War, and France was chosen as the
ally with which to fight Russia! No sooner had peace been signed than
France became once more the potential threat to the “Balance of Power”;
and again during the period of rivalry in West and Central Africa, and in
the Far East, in the late nineties.
[Sidenote: The power of the press in making war-opinion.]
Once the ball has been set rolling in the required direction, influences
of all kinds are brought to bear for the purpose of permanently fixing
this idea in the public mind. A flood of innuendo, denunciation, and
distorted information is let loose. Every dishonorable motive and the
most sinister of projects are attributed to the Government and the
people selected for attack. The public becomes the sport of private
ambitions and interests, of personal prejudices and obscure passions,
which it can neither detect nor control, and, for the most part, does
not even suspect. The power for mischief wielded by these forces is
to-day immense, owing to a cheap press and to the concentration of a
large number of newspapers, possessing in the aggregate an enormous
circulation, under one directing will. At the present moment the
editorial and news columns of some fifty British newspapers echo the
views of one man, who is thus able to superimpose in permanent fashion
upon public thought the dead weight of his own prejudices or personal
aims and intentions, and to exercise a potent influence upon the
Government of the day.
[Sidenote: How the “Balance of Power” works.]
For the last few years these newspapers have striven with unceasing
pertinacity to create an atmosphere of ill-will and suspicion between
Great Britain and Germany. The effort has been continuous, systematic,
and magnificently organized, and inferential evidence is not lacking that
it has been pursued with the approval and even with the assistance of
certain official influences, and to the satisfaction of certain foreign
Governments. This propaganda has had, needless to say, its counterpart in
Germany. _The net result of the latest recrudescence of the “Balance of
Power” policy with its Alliances and Ententes as the dominating factor in
international relationships is now visible to all men. A quarrel (whose
culminating episode was the murder in a Bosnian town of the heir to the
Austrian throne last June) between Austria and Serbia, to which the
Russian Government determined to become a party, has already involved the
peoples of France, Belgium, Britain, and Germany, the first three of whom
were not even remotely concerned, in a terrible and desolating war._
Japan and Montenegro have also become involved, and the same fate may
overtake Holland, Italy, the other Balkan States, and the Scandinavian
Powers. But for the policy of the “Balance of Power” the results of
the quarrel would almost certainly have been confined to the parties
immediately affected, and an early mediation by the neutral Powers would
have been possible.
Bright’s scathing denunciation of the fetish of the “Balance of Power”
appeals with even greater force to us to-day:
“You cannot comprehend at a thought what is meant by this balance of
power. If the record could be brought before you—but it is not possible
to the eye of humanity to scan the scroll upon which are recorded the
sufferings which the theory of the balance of power has entailed upon
this country. It rises up before me when I think of it as a ghastly
phantom ... which has loaded the nation with debt and with taxes,
has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen, has
desolated the homes of millions of families, and has left us, as the
great result of the profligate expenditure which it has caused, a doubled
peerage at one end of the social scale, and far more than a doubled
pauperism at the other.”
[Sidenote: It must be superseded by a council of nations.]
For a system therefore which carries with it the implication that the
interests of nations are necessarily in constant conflict and which
involves the permanent division of Europe into two hostile competing
groups, we must substitute machinery which will facilitate cooperation
and a reasonable solution of differences between all the peoples of the
world.
The objective should be a real council of the nations with at first
very limited powers, rather an expansion of an alliance of three Powers
against three, into a league of six Powers, designed to act against any
one recalcitrant member which might threaten the peace of the whole.
To this ideal, indeed, the pronouncement of Mr. Asquith in his Dublin
speech has already pointed, while it is noteworthy that Sir Edward Grey
himself seems in a significant passage of one of his despatches to admit
the failure of the balance principle and to indicate that the nations
must “start afresh” on the basis of a general council. This passage is as
follows:
“If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present crisis
safely passed, my own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement to
which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no
aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies
by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have desired
this and worked for it as far as I could through the last Balkan crisis;
and Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly
improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject
of definite proposals, but if this present crisis, so much more acute
than any Europe has gone through for generations, be safely passed, I am
hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible
some more definite _rapprochement_ between the Powers than has been
possible hitherto.”
It is from some such simple beginning, pursued with good will and
perseverance by all parties, that the nations may hope to arrive at a
system of cooperation to replace the system of hostile alliances, the
fruits of which are the present war.
It is essential, of course, if the negotiations of such a council are to
be lifted out of the atmosphere of diplomatic intrigue which the secrecy
of negotiations always involves, that its deliberations be public.
Publicity will at one and the same time be a guarantee of openness, of
good faith, and of democratic control.
IV
_Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement
a plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments
of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy
shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of the
manufacture of armaments, and the control of the export of
armaments by one country to another._
[Sidenote: Armaments, the instrument of diplomacy, must be reduced.]
The theory of the “Balance of Power” and secret diplomacy are two factors
which, in combination, make for war.
Two other factors intimately connected with these ensure its certainty.
They are: a constant progression in expenditure upon armaments, and the
toleration of a private armament interest.
[Sidenote: Competitive armaments mean the bankruptcy of statesmanship.]
It would be labor wasted to endeavor to apportion responsibility
between the various European Governments for the insane competition in
armaments which of recent years has attained incredible proportions.
No government can escape liability. Each government has defended its
policy on the ground that its neighbor’s action compelled it to do so.
Many of the governing statesmen of the world have alternately confessed
their helplessness, attacked their rivals, appealed to public opinion,
and blamed the warlike tendencies inherent in the people whose destinies
they control. Every government, without exception, has proceeded on the
assumption that in order to ensure peace it had to be stronger than its
neighbor, a philosophy which could have but one possible outcome—war. In
pursuance of this phantom, a considerable proportion of the wealth of
the European States has been wasted, and activities have been withdrawn
from the constructive work of the world, to prepare for the world’s
destruction. And with every fresh outburst of expenditure, responding
to some diplomatic check or alarmist propaganda, fresh fagots have been
piled around Europe’s powder magazine. The disaster which has fallen upon
Europe is the fitting sequel to the bankruptcy of statesmanship which
this policy embodies.
_The more extensive the armaments, the greater the temptation to seize
an opportunity for testing their efficiency; the greater the nervousness
and irritation of Governments when negotiating; the greater the pressure
upon those Governments of the powerful professional and other interests
concerned in armament construction._
The policy of gigantic armaments cannot in the very nature of things
ensure any final settlement of disputes between States. It leads, and
can only lead, to an intolerable situation from which war comes to be
regarded by diplomacy as the only escape.
An all-round limitation of armaments must follow the present war if the
world is to be permanently relieved of the nightmare which has weighed
upon it for so long. We can no longer afford to listen to arguments as
to the impracticability of such a course from those whose claims to the
possession of human wisdom and experienced guidance have so utterly
broken down.
[Sidenote: Armament industry rests in government demand, and creates an
economic force interested in war preparedness.]
The difficulty of compelling a change in the policy of European
Governments has been intensified by the conditions under which armament
construction is carried on in this and other countries. Every one is
familiar with the fact that the object of a commercial firm is to
push its wares in every legitimate manner, to advertise them, and
systematically to tout for orders both at home and abroad. Every one
is aware that there exists a powerfully-equipped industry for the
manufacture of military and naval engines and instruments of offense.
Disguise it as we may, that industry waxes and wanes, the profits
its management derives rise and fall, the dividends earned by its
shareholders increase and dwindle in the measure of the demand for the
articles it produces. That demand does not emanate from members of the
public. It emanates from the military and naval departments of the public
services. The industry relies, therefore, for its existence and for its
profits not upon a private demand, but upon a Government demand, and the
extent of that Government demand will depend upon the view which the
Government may take of the number and nature of these articles required
to ensure the national safety. Such a condition of affairs is a permanent
and terrible danger both to democratic government and to international
peace. What are its implications?
[Sidenote: Private interests manipulate government.]
There is created in every country an economic force in private hands
directly interested in war and in the preparation for war; directly
interested in assisting to bring about a general atmosphere advantageous
to an industry which, were wars to cease or the expenditure on armaments
to be substantially reduced, would suffer accordingly. What the
successful prosecution of an ordinary commercial undertaking requires
this industry also requires. The demand for the article must be created.
That basic situation engenders effects which can only be appreciated in
their cumulative significance. It is not at all necessary to attribute
sinister machinations to individuals. These effects are automatic. An
industry disposing, as does this one, of an enormous aggregate of capital
possesses almost unlimited power of influence and suggestion. For such
purposes the press is a potent instrument ready at hand. Many of those
most closely associated with this great industry are men of considerable
influence. Some have been in the public service and have acquaintances
in the Government Departments. Others may be on friendly and perfectly
honorable terms with the proprietors or editors of newspapers or
associations of newspapers. The proprietor of a newspaper may be honestly
convinced, or may by arguments be persuaded, that an agitation for
increased armaments is advisable. If he is acquainted with one of the
directors of the armament industry that acquaintance will hardly act as
a deterrent to his entertaining those views. He may be furnished with
special information, accurate or otherwise, as to the projects, real or
alleged, of other Governments, which will be familiar to the director
through his connection with Continental branches of the same industry.
The press may be utilized in a similar manner by certain permanent
officials in the nation’s Foreign Department, who feel that their views
of the international situation can be best served by a press campaign of
a certain kind. The influence of the industry which stands to gain from
the existence of these views, and the willingness of newspaper editors
and proprietors to push them on to the public, cannot be expected to
intervene against their propagation. Again, an ambitious Minister, in
charge of one of the fighting branches of the public service, desirous of
placing his personality in the limelight and focusing public attention
upon the affairs of his Department, will be from that circumstance a
readier listener to representations from the industry in question. Those
representations may quite legitimately take the form of pointing out
that heavy expenses have been incurred in providing a certain type of
machinery or special accommodation for the construction of a particular
kind of offensive instrument, that the orders have not kept pace with the
expenditure, and that if further orders be not forthcoming losses will
ensue and future facilities for production be necessarily restricted.
There would be nothing indefensible in representations of this character.
And again, it is not unlikely that a member of Parliament, convinced
of certain public dangers associated with the existing system, but
representing a constituency where this great industry is established
and employs, perhaps, not an inconsiderable section of the local labor,
may find his freedom of speech considerably curtailed lest he should be
accused of taking the bread from the mouths of some of his constituents.
[Sidenote: Armaments cannot be safely left to private profit.]
Endless, indeed, are the ramifications of a _private_ industrial interest
so wealthy and so well organized, and dependent for its profits upon
_national_ expenditure in instruments of warfare, and, consequently, in
the ultimate resort, upon war itself. _The general influence exerted upon
public life as a whole by the very fact that this industry is a private
one, and possesses a large body of shareholders usually belonging to
the upper strata of society, cannot be regarded otherwise than as an
unhealthy and dangerous element in the nation._ Emphasis is lent to this
aspect of the case when it is borne in mind that the armaments industry
has of late years become internationalized to a remarkable degree. Recent
disclosures, the accuracy of which has not been disputed, in Germany,
France, England, and Japan, have clearly shown an inter-connection of
the armament interest productive of repellent accompaniments. This
inter-connection of interest has, for example, made it possible for a
body of British shareholders, including prominent ecclesiastics, members
of Parliament, and even Cabinet Ministers, to be financially interested
in enterprises engaged in the manufacture of engines of destruction
impartially used in the slaughter of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and
Russians.
But however revolting this may be, it is insignificant compared with the
graver peril to which precedent allusion has been made. _Reflection must
bring with it the conviction that the armament industry is not one which
the nation can safely permit to be retained in private hands and to be
the subject of private profit._
* * * * *
What, then, is to be our policy in connection with the war? First and
foremost we must be victorious. That is a prime necessity upon which
the nation is unanimous. We must win not only because many British
institutions of the highest value would be destroyed by our defeat,
not only because Prussia, our principal enemy, is the leading exponent
of that doctrine of military domination and intolerance which is
incompatible with a permanently peaceful Europe; but also because we must
see justice done, as far as may be, to the least powerful of our Allies.
_Ample compensation must be secured for Belgium to repair her material
loss and in recognition of the wrong done to her._
[Sidenote: What Democracy must do.]
What of the future? What lessons do the incompetence and secretiveness,
the jealousies and vanities of that vaunted European statecraft which has
plunged the world in war convey to the peoples who are its victims?
What can the people do to amend a system under which they are used as
pawns in a game of chess?
They can begin to understand what that system is and that its existence
is their undoing. They can begin to understand the monstrous errors
and fallacies which underlie the whole teaching imposed upon their
intelligence. They can begin to understand that this immunity from public
control enjoyed by the small group of professional men who manipulate
international relations has led to the establishment amongst the latter
of a standard of conduct which would not be tolerated in the ordinary
affairs of a well-ordered community. They can begin to understand
that “high politics” in the diplomatic world has become a synonym for
intrigue; that a code of morals is therein practised which, in other
branches of the public service, would entail dismissal, and in the
business world would involve disgrace.
They can force themselves to a mental effort which shall lead them to
the realization of the complete artificiality of the conditions under
which they suffer, the remoteness from their real and vital needs of the
issues for which they are asked to sacrifice all that they hold dear.
_They can rid themselves of the paralyzing belief that their relations
with their neighbors are so complicated and mysterious as to be beyond
their comprehension. They can bring themselves to grasp a plain and
demonstrable truth, and to appreciate its full significance, which is
that those to whom they have looked for guidance, those who have told
them that in the preservation of the “Balance of Power,” and in the
multiplication of colossal armaments lay the one chance of international
peace, have been utterly, hopelessly, calamitously wrong. They can put to
themselves these simple issues._
“By the terrible logic of events which now confront us we see that the
methods advocated by those to whose training and wisdom we trusted to
ensure peace among the nations have entirely failed. The system which
we were induced reluctantly to support, far from preserving peace, has
precipitated us into the greatest conflict in history, a conflict we
passionately desired to avoid, and for the avoidance of which we made
heavy sacrifices because, we were told, that therein lay our hope of
averting it. The system was wrong. We must evolve another.”
[Sidenote: We must aim at a federalized Europe.]
The idea of a federalized Europe, regulated by an Areopagus, involving
the disappearance, or substantial reduction, of standing armies and
navies, and the submission of all disputes to a Central Council, is not
to be dismissed. It is the ultimate goal to aim at. But it cannot be
attained until the constitutionally governed democracies of the West are
brought to realize how impossible it is that their moral and spiritual
development and their happiness and well-being can be secured under a
system of government which leaves them at the mercy of the intrigues
and imbecilities of professional diplomatists and of the ambitions of
military castes; helpless, too, in the face of an enormously powerful and
internationalized private interest dependent for its profits upon the
maintenance of that “armed peace” which is the inevitable prelude to the
carnage and futility of war.
[Sidenote: Democracies in the different countries must cooperate.]
To awaken these sentiments among the democracies of this and other
countries, to instil into them these convictions, to ensure the
cooperation of all forces in all countries working to that end—is the
task to which we must all turn our attention.
Potentates, diplomatists, and militarists made this war. They should not
be allowed to arrange unchecked and uncontrolled the terms of peace and
to decide alone the conditions which will follow it. The mass of the
people who suffer from their blunders and their quarrels must claim the
ineradicable right of participating in the future settlement.
And, when peace has come, the democratic parties of Europe must set
before themselves a new province of political effort. That peace will
be permanently preserved only if our artisans and industrialists keep
up with the artisans and industrialists of other countries a constant
and deliberate communication through their political parties and other
organizations which will prevent misunderstandings and subdue the hatreds
out of which war ultimately comes.
_“The Morrow of the War,” Union of Democratic Control,
London, Bulletin No. 1._
NO PEACE WITHOUT FEDERATION
[Sidenote: The war has betrayed mankind.]
The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family happiness
and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the accumulated
savings of many former generations in structures, objects of art, and
industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose on
twentieth-century Europe. From all these points of view, it is evidently
the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human race, and the
most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed. It is, and is
to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the forces which make
for liberty and righteousness and those which make for the subjection of
the individual man, the exaltation of the State, and the enthronement of
physical force directed by a ruthless collective will. It threatens a
sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
[Sidenote: The real causes of the war.]
Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the disaster,
maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each Government has
issued a statement to prove that some other Government is responsible
for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost entirely to
actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and August 4—a short
period of hurried messages between the chancelleries of Europe—actions
which only prove that the monarchs and ministers for foreign affairs
could not, or at least did not, prevent the long-prepared general
war from breaking out. The assassination of the Archduke and Duchess
of Hohenberg, on the 28th of June, was in no proper sense a cause of
the war, except as it was one of the consequences of the persistent
aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern neighbors.
Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts on July 29
a cause of the war; for that was only an external manifestation of the
Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a state of mind well
known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. No more
was the invasion of Belgium by the German army on August 4 a true cause
of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished from the occasion, of
Great Britain’s becoming involved in it. By that action, Germany was only
taking the first step in carrying out a long-cherished purpose, and in
executing a judicious plan of campaign prepared many years in advance.
The artificial panic in Germany about its exposed position between two
powerful enemies, France and Russia, was not a genuine cause of the
war; for the General Staff knew they had crushed France once, and were
confident they could do it again in a month. As to Russia, it was, in
their view, a huge nation, but very clumsy and dull in war.
[Sidenote: The most potent cause is the lust for world-empire.]
The real causes of the war are all of many years’ standing; and all the
nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the
development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental
causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each
sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished
with a Cabinet selected by the monarch,—Governments which can make war
without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected
representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies,
through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth
for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call
of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent
armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become
powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the
creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the
management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is
kept secret from the public at large; and finally (4) the habitual use
of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous
or detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or
controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four,
since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the
other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world-empire.
Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the
only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other
hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world-empire by
force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned
that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded
to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its
Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the
nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the
Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon
is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British
people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests
of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such
powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably—though in vain—last July. In
all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a
large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government
and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
[Sidenote: Germany has been the leader in imperialism.]
These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in
Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex
causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last
fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic
and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great
intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the
world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times
since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to
her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial
possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In
her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught
for generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her
expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous Powers
which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and that the
salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will depend till
the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the warlike spirit
of her people. This instruction, given year after year by teachers,
publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in Prussia, but now
seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in 1871.
[Sidenote: The German ethics is the ethics of valor and the State.]
The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of
the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but
during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness
of Germany and her passion for world-empire have grown to much more
formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played
the part of the peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war-lord in
both speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever
it has been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practise a
divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an “invincible” army, an
army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he
carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing
patriotism. Mass-fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have
deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to
see, reason, and judge correctly—no new phenomenon in the world, but
instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German
education—the lack of liberty and, therefore, of practise in self-control.
[Sidenote: No peace is possible unless idea of world-domination is given
up.]
The twentieth-century educated German is, however, by no means given over
completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship of
might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a collective
entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the free, healthy,
and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more effective types
of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline which takes much
account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the weak or meek.
He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but accepts the
religion of Valor, which exalts strength, courage, endurance, and the
ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty, happiness, and life itself
for Germany’s honor and greatness. A nation of sixty millions holding
these philosophical and religious views, and proposing to act on them in
winning by force the empire of the world, threatens civilization with
more formidable irruptions of a destroying host than any that history
has recorded. The rush of the German army into Belgium, France, and
Russia and its consequences to those lands have taught the rest of Europe
to dread German domination, and—it is to be hoped—to make it impossible.
[Sidenote: The hopes for federation instead of domination.]
The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind
or temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness,
her theory of the State, and her intelligent and skilful use of all
the forces of nineteenth-century applied science for the destructive
purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape
from the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present
undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using
against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same
martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the
murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting
peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and
far-reaching decisions in regard to governmental structures and powers.
In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must
go farther and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions
which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on
the one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations,
or can give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace in
Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is to
be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation—no such thing as
world-empire for any single nation—Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan,
or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden invasion in
Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be soldiers,
and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for instant use.
There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation of the European
States is established, capable of making public contracts intended to be
kept, and backed by an overwhelming international force subject to the
orders of an international tribunal. The present convulsion demonstrates
the impotence toward permanent peace of secret negotiations, of
unpublished agreements, of treaties and covenants that can be broken on
grounds of military necessity, of international law if without sanctions,
of pious wishes, of economic and biological predictions, and of public
opinion unless expressed through a firm international agreement, behind
which stands an international force. When that international force has
been firmly established it will be time to consider what proportionate
reductions in national armaments can be prudently recommended. Until
that glorious day dawns, no patriot and no lover of his kind can expect
lasting peace in Europe or wisely advocate any reduction of armaments.
[Sidenote: A federalized Europe is possible, even if the road is long.]
The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
the war with their inevitable moral and physical degradations ought to
shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
developed—Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. Switzerland
is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal bond three
different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and divided
locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the Protestant.
The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a federation;
and the methods of government both in Great Britain itself and in its
affiliated commonwealths are becoming more and more democratic in
substance. The war has brought this fact out in high relief. As to the
United States, it is a strong federation of forty-eight heterogeneous
States which has been proving for a hundred years that freedom and
democracy are safer and happier for mankind than subjection to any sort
of autocracy, and afford far the best training for national character and
national efficiency. Republican France has not yet had time to give this
demonstration, being encumbered with many survivals of the Bourbon and
Napoleonic régimes, and being forced to maintain a conscript army.
It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or governmental
changes needed is already illustrated in the practise of one or more
of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary changes is to
postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the present calculated
destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral and religious chaos.
Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe, reconstruct European
society, substitute republics for empires, and abolish armaments are in
fact obstructing the road toward peace and good-will among men. That road
is hard at best.
The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars, not a truce, but
a durable peace.
_Charles W. Eliot, “The Road Toward Peace,” chap. XI._
PART II
A LEAGUE OF PEACE
PART II. A LEAGUE OF PEACE
BASES FOR CONFEDERATION
[Sidenote: The substitution of partnership for force.]
After this war is over, will the nations fall back again into the
armed peace, the rival alliances, the Balance of Power with competing
armaments, the preparations for another war thus made “inevitable,” or
will they go forward to the realization of the idea of “public right,”
as expounded by Mr. Asquith, “the substitution for force, for the clash
of competing ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a precarious
equipoise, of a real European partnership, based on the recognition
of equal rights and established and enforced by the common will?” The
preservation and progress of civilization demand that the peoples go
forward. But how shall “public right” be realized?
The issue is, perhaps, best approached by putting a narrower, more
concrete question: How can nations be got to reduce their armaments? For
this action will be the best test and pledge of the establishment of
“public right” and the reliance on a pacific future. Could a conference
of Powers bring about a reduction of armaments by agreement? Surely not
unless the motives which have led them in the past to arm are reversed.
These motives are either a desire to be stronger than some other Power,
in order to take something from him by force—the aggressive motive; or
a desire to be strong enough to prevent some other Power from acting
in this way to us—the defensive motive. Now how can these motives be
reversed? Nations may enter into a solemn undertaking to refer all
differences or disputes that may arise to arbitration or to other
peaceful settlement. If they can be got to adhere to such a general
agreement, international law and public right will take the place of
private force, and wars of aggression and defense will no longer happen.
But what will ensure the fulfilment of their undertaking by all the
signatory Powers? Public opinion and a common sense of justice are found
inadequate safeguards. There must be an executive power enabled to apply
an economic boycott, or in the last resort an international force. If
this power is adequate, it will secure the desired reversal of the
offensive and the defensive motives to armaments, and will by a natural
process lead to a reduction of national forces.
[Sidenote: The League of Peace must become an International government.]
But it is not safe for the League of Nations to wait until difficulties
ripen into quarrels. There must be some wider power of inquiry and
settlement vested in a representative Council of the Nations. This will
in substance mean a legislative power. For peace cannot be secured by
adopting a purely statical view of the needs and rights of nations in
relation to one another. New applications of the principles of political
“autonomy” and of “the open door” will become necessary, and some
international method of dealing with them is essential. So there emerges
the necessity of extending the idea of a League of Peace into that of an
International Government.
The new era of internationalism requires the replacement of the secret
diplomacy of Powers by the public intercourse of Peoples through their
chosen representatives. If the Peace which ends this war is to be
durable, it must be of a kind to facilitate the setting-up of these new
international arrangements. No timid, tentative quarter measures will
suffice. Courage and faith are needed for a great new extension of the
art of government....
[Sidenote: “Armed peace” must not be renewed.]
Almost everybody hopes that, when this war is over, it will be possible
to secure the conditions of a lasting peace by reducing the power of
militarism and by setting the relations between nations on a better
footing. To watchers of the present conflict it seems an intolerable
thought that, after the fighting is done, we should once more return to
a condition of “armed peace,” with jealous, distrustful, and revengeful
Powers piling up armaments and plotting singly or in groups against
their neighbors until Europe is plunged into another war more terrible,
more bloody, and more costly than this. Yet nothing is more certain than
that this will happen unless the Peoples which are so vitally concerned
are able to mobilize their powers of clear thought, sane feeling, and
goodwill in carefully considered plans for a cooperative policy of
nations.
[Sidenote: The peril of “crushing” Germany.]
The first great obstacle to the performance of this task is the state of
mind of those who seem to think that all that is required is “to crush
German militarism,” and that, this incubus once removed, the naturally
pacific disposition of all other nations will dispose them to live
together in amity. It is not easy to induce such persons to consider
closely what they mean by “crushing German militarism,” or how its
destruction, whatever it does mean, would secure the peace of Europe,
we will not say in perpetuity, but for a single generation. But let
us suppose the most complete success for the arms of the Allies, the
slaughter or the capture of great German forces, the invasion of Germany,
and the dictation of terms of peace by the Allies at Berlin. Such terms
as were imposed might cripple her military power of aggression or revenge
for some years. But would it kill what we know as German militarism? If
our accepted political analysis be right, the German militarism that
must be crushed is not an army and a navy, but a spirit of national
aggression, proud, brutal, and unscrupulous, the outcome of certain
intellectual and moral tendencies embodied in the “real” politics and the
“real” culture of the nation. Can we seriously suppose that this evil
spirit will be exorcised by a crushing defeat on land and sea, followed
by a humiliating peace? If Germany could be permanently disabled from
entertaining any hopes of recovering her military strength, or from
exercising any considerable influence in the high policy of Europe, her
feelings of resentment and humiliation might perhaps be left to rankle
in impotence, or to die out by lapse of time. But nothing which the
Allies can do to Germany will leave her in such long-lasting impotence.
Even if stripped of her non-Teutonic lands and populations, she will
remain a great Power—great in area, population, industry, and organizing
power—and no temporary restrictions or guarantees can long prevent her
from once more developing a military strength that will give dangerous
meaning to her thirst for vengeance. Whether the hegemony of Prussia over
a confederation of German States (possibly including Austria) be retained
or not, Europe can have no security that the same passions which stirred
France to the most strenuous efforts to recover her military strength
after 1870 will not be similarly operative throughout Germany. We cannot
feel sure that the experience of the most disastrous war will effectively
destroy the hold of Prussianism, and that the efficiency of intellect and
will which constitute that power will not be able to reassert their sway
over a broken Germany.
[Sidenote: Not German militarism but militarism in general must be
broken.]
The fear of such a revival of German strength will remain ever-present
in her neighbors, and will compel them to maintain great military
preparations. A beaten Germany, with a ring of military Powers round
her, watching every phase of her recovery with suspicion, and always
liable to quarrel among themselves, will not give peace to Europe. Even,
therefore, if we assign to Germany a monopoly of the spirit of aggressive
militarism, European peace is not secured by crushing Germany. A saner
review of the situation, however, will recognize that Germany has no
such monopoly of the spirit of aggression, though that spirit has in her
recent policy found its most formidable and most conscious expression.
If the craving for a colonial Empire with “places in the sun” was, as
seems likely, the principal factor in the aggressive designs of Germany,
can we confidently assert that no other State has in the past harbored
such designs, or may not harbor them again? The expansive Imperialism of
Great Britain, France, Russia, and even more recently of Japan, gives
the lie to any such assertion. Pan-Slavism is in spirit identical with
the Pan-Teutonism which has contributed to this _débâcle_, and Great
Britain and France are already sated with the overseas Empire which
Germany was craving. History shows that, in every militarist State,
aggressive and defensive motives and purposes are present together in
different degrees at all times. While, therefore, we may reasonably
think that the aggressive militarism of Germany held increasing sway in
the political direction of that Empire during recent years, and was the
direct efficient cause of the present conflict, we cannot hold that, with
the defeat or even the destruction of the military and naval power of
Germany, militarism would tend to disappear from the European system, and
that the relations between nations would henceforth undergo so radical
a change as to secure the world against all likelihood of forcible
outbreaks in the future.
[Sidenote: Real problem, to change inner attitudes of nations.]
Clearly, it is not German militarism alone, but militarism in general
that must be broken. The real question is how to change the inner
attitude of nations, their beliefs and feelings towards one another, so
as to make each nation and its rulers recognize that it is no longer
either desirable or feasible to seek peculiar advantages for itself by
bringing force to bear upon another nation.
But it may be urged, granted that disarmament may not be set afoot
spontaneously and separately by the different nations, mutual disarmament
can occur by arrangement between the Powers, which, after the menace
of German aggression is removed, will be disposed to take this step in
concert. Such disarmament, it is usually conceived, will not stand alone,
but will form an important feature of a larger international policy, by
which the Powers will agree among themselves to settle any differences
that may arise by reference to courts of conciliation or of arbitration,
and perhaps also to concert measures of common action in dealing with
States and territories not within their jurisdiction. Such a concert of
European Powers has hitherto appeared to many to yield an adequate basis
for the peace of Europe, if it could be brought about. It has also seemed
to most men the utmost limit of the actually attainable. The idea of the
possibility of any closer relation between sovereign independent States
has been dismissed as chimerical.
[Sidenote: Difficulties of disarmament schemes. No standard for
proportioning armaments justly.]
Now in any discussion of the feasibility of such a concert of European
or world Powers as will by mutual agreement secure disarmament and a
settlement of differences by judicial methods, it must be recognized
at the outset that this war may make the successful pursuance of such
a policy more difficult than it would have been before. A Balance of
Power, whatever may have been its other disadvantages, seemed in itself
favorable to the possibilities of an agreement in which each nation,
or group of nations, might be an equal gainer. But a decisive victory
in war, which leaves the Allied nations with a strong preponderance of
power, is less likely to yield a satisfactory basis of agreement for
a mutual disarmament. Is it likely that they will readily consent to
a reduction in their several military and naval forces equivalent to
the reduction they will demand in the forces of the nations that have
been their enemies? To put the difficulty in concrete terms: Would
France consent to an early reduction of her army upon terms which would
leave her fighting-strength as compared with that of Germany relatively
the same as before the war? Would Great Britain consent to reduce her
navy in the same proportion as the reduction she required of Germany?
Even if the Allies believed that the proportionate reduction would be
duly carried out by Germany, would they regard such an arrangement as
affording the desired security? Obviously not. It may, of course, be
urged that an agreed basis of reduction might be reached, according to
which the relative strength of army and navy assigned to Germany would
be smaller than before. But the more closely the proposition is examined
the less feasible does it appear. What basis for the size of armies could
reasonably, or even plausibly, be suggested which would not assign to
Germany a larger preponderance over France in number of soldiers than she
possesses at present? Size of population, or of frontiers, the two most
reasonable considerations for apportioning defensive needs, would tell in
favor of Germany against France. True it would tell even more strongly
in favor of Russia, assigning her, in fact, a relatively larger military
predominance in Europe than she has ever claimed. But would either France
or Germany regard the new military situation as safe or desirable? Nor
would there be any permanence in an arrangement based on such a mutable
factor as population, according to which the German preponderance over
France and of Russia over Germany would be continually increasing. If
area of territory, as well as population and frontiers, were taken into
consideration in fixing a basis, France would come off a little better
in relation to Germany, but the size of Russia, even if her European
lands were alone included, would give her an overwhelming advantage. If,
as might not unreasonably be claimed, the extra-European possessions of
Russia, Great Britain, and France must be reckoned in, either on a basis
of territory or of population, Great Britain and Russia would possess a
superiority of military strength which would give them, acting together,
a complete control over the politics of Europe and Asia. Or, were the
United States to come into the arrangement, the military strength of
Anglo-Saxondom might too obviously surpass that of any likely combination
of other Powers.
Again, what basis of naval strength would be satisfactory? Great Britain
would not think of accepting the area, population, or frontier factors
unless the Empire as well as the British Isles were counted in. On the
other hand, her proposal, that volume of shipping and of foreign trade
should count heavily in the basis, might give her for the time being
an even greater preponderance over other navies than she has hitherto
possessed.
If the comparison of the military and naval strength of nations were
conducted, as in the past, by direct consideration of the numerical
strength and the fighting value of the several items of an army and a
navy, agreement upon a basis of reduction would be manifestly impossible.
The discovery and acceptance of any standard unit of naval or military
value applicable to changing conditions of modern warfare are found to be
impracticable. For though every military budget implies the acceptance
of some scale of values by which the worth of a battery of artillery
is compared with that of a battalion of infantry, while every naval
budget involves a calculation of the worth of a submarine or a seaplane
as compared with an armored cruiser and a super-Dreadnought, no two
budgets would be found to support the same scale of values. It is quite
manifest that no agreement for reducing armaments could be attained by
stipulations as to the number, size, or quality of the several forces and
arms employed. This difficulty in itself, however, is not fatal to the
proposal. For a far simpler and more satisfactory method of agreement
might be found by disregarding the concrete armaments and accepting a
financial basis of expenditure which would leave each nation complete
liberty to apply the money prescribed to it as a maximum expenditure
on armaments in whatever way it chose. Though each nation, considering
its defense, would doubtless have to take into account the sort of
preparations for possible attack its neighbors might be making, it would
be entitled to spend as large a proportion of its authorized expenditure
upon guns, torpedo-boats, aircraft, Dreadnoughts, as it chose.
[Sidenote: Must get rid of motives which impel armament. Mere agreement
to reduce armament will be futile.]
The real difficulty, therefore, turns upon the agreement upon a basis
of comparative expenditure. Now this difficulty appears insuperable, if
reduction of armaments be regarded as the sole, or the chief, mainstay of
a durable peace. For so long as the motives which have hitherto impelled
nations to increase their armaments still retain the appearance of
validity in any nation or group of nations, no agreed basis for reduction
will be reached, or, were it reached, no reliable adherence to its terms
could be expected. For the reduction of armaments involves the acceptance
of and the adherence to a principle of reduction by all the Great
Powers. If any single Great Power refused to come into the agreement,
or, coming in, was suspected of evading the fulfilment of its pledge by
concealing some of its expenditure on armaments, this method would have
failed _pro tanto_, both as an economy and a security. For each of the
would-be pacific nations would have to make adequate provision against
the warlike outsider or suspect. Now, that a mere agreement for mutual
disarmament would thus be baffled is almost certain. So long as a Power,
by simply refusing to come in, could retain full liberty to pile up arms
with a view to a future policy of menace or aggression, would there not
be Governments which would find some more or less plausible excuses for
declining the invitation to come in? Or could we feel complete assurance
that a Power with an aggressive past, after entering into such an
agreement, would faithfully fulfil it when so many facilities of evasion
present themselves? Nay, there would be a positive incentive to an
aggressive or revengeful Power either to stay outside, or, entering in,
to violate secretly its obligations. For, by either course, it would be
enabled to steal a march in military strength over its intended enemy,
if the latter were a faithful adherent to such a treaty. The slightest
reflection suffices to show that a mere agreement for disarmament or
reduction of armament must be futile.
But, it will be contended, these difficulties may be overcome by
extending the agreement so as to bind the signatory Powers to bring
their united force to bear upon any member convicted of a wilful evasion
or infraction of the agreement. That is to say, they must engage to
secure the agreement by an ultimate sanction of physical force. The
administration of such an agreement would, of course, involve the setting
up of some standing Court or Committee of Inquiry, vested with full
rights of inspection and judgment, and endowed with a power of armed
executive.
But if a treaty of reduction of armaments could be secured by such a
guarantee of collective force, it would still find itself confronted by
the problem of the lawless outsider. So long as an aggressive outsider
were at liberty to threaten or coerce a member of the League without
involving the hostility of the other members, this danger would compel
members of the League to maintain large armaments, though they were
secure against internal hostility. A single Power, such as Germany,
Russia, or Japan, standing out for its absolute right to determine its
own expenditure and policy, would cancel nearly all the economy of the
agreement. It would become self-evident that the Powers entering such
an agreement must bind themselves to a common defense against such an
outsider. They would be impelled to this course by a double motive.
In no other way could each member gain that security which would win
his consent to a basis of reduction that would lower his separate
defensive power. Again, by pledging themselves to united action against
an aggressive outside Power, they would diminish, perhaps destroy,
the aggressive design or policy of such a Power. For such aggressive
policy and the armed force which supports it are only plausible upon
the assumption that they can be successfully applied to gain a selfish
national end. If the united strength of the Treaty Powers remained so
great as to render the pursuance of its aggressive designs impossible or
too dangerous, the lawless Powers might learn the lesson of the law, and,
abandoning its hopes of aggression, come into the League.
[Sidenote: Reduction must be linked with reversal of motives.]
In a word, the proposal for reduction of armaments only becomes really
feasible when it is linked with a provision for reversing the _motives_
which lead nations to increase their armed forces. Once bring to bear
upon the Governments of States a clear recognition of the two related
facts: first, that by no increase of their armed force will they be
reasonably likely to succeed in any aggressive design upon a neighbor;
second, that by the pledged cooperation of their cosignatories they
are not dependent for defense upon their own force alone, then obvious
motives of economy and self-interest will lead them to reduce their
armaments. Though the military caste may still plead the instability of
pacific agreements and the disciplinary advantages of National Service,
while contractors for armaments do their best to sow dissension among
the leagued Powers and to arouse the military ambitions of new nations,
these war interests would no longer be able to play as heretofore upon
the fears and passions of the peoples. For whatever the secret political
and business policy behind the race for armaments, its engineers could
only make that policy effective by periodic appeals to the menace of
invasion. Once make it manifest that no evil-minded foreigner can
threaten aggression against one country without meeting an overwhelming
strength of leagued forces, to which one particular contribution is not
of determinant importance, and the balance of national motives leans
heavily and constantly towards smaller and less expensive forces.
[Sidenote: Must make it too dangerous for one Power to attack another.]
The absolute strength of the rational and moral case against war and
militarism has in some degree obscured the fact that, so long as pushful
statesmen and diplomatists, ambitious soldiers, covetous financiers, and
war-traders were able to stimulate and carry out aggressive policies
of conquest and aggrandizement on the part of stronger against weaker
States, the apprehensions upon which these same interests played
in urging the necessity of large expenditure upon defense were not
unreasonable. It is only by making it too obviously difficult and
dangerous for any one Power to attack any other Power that the balance of
reasonable motives is firmly weighted against armaments. This can only
be achieved by substituting for a world of isolated independent States,
or of Balances of Power, a world in which the united strength of a
sufficient number of States is brought to bear immediately and certainly
against any disturber of the public peace.
“Splendid isolation” is no longer practicable in the modern world of
international relations. Group alliances in pursuit of the Balance of
Power are seen to be nothing else than an idle feint. For the sole
and constant aim of each such group and Power is not to achieve or to
maintain the balance, but to weight it on one side. Such an alternating
and oscillating balance gives the maximum of insecurity, and thus plays
most effectively the game of war and armaments. The only possible
alternative is the creation of such a concert or confederation of
Powers as shall afford to each the best available security against the
aggression of another within the concert and the best defense of all
against aggression from outside.
[Sidenote: A confederation for security against aggression.]
The general form in which a cooperation of nations for these objects
presents itself is that of a League or Confederation. The primary object
of such a League is to bind all its members to submit all their serious
differences to arbitration or some other mode of peaceful settlement,
and to accept the judgment or award thus obtained. Some advocates of a
League of Peace think that the sense of moral obligation in each State,
fortified by the public opinion of the civilized world, would form a
valid sanction for the fulfilment of such undertakings, and would afford
a satisfactory measure of security. But most hold that it is advisable
or essential that the members of such a League should bind themselves to
take joint action against any member who breaks the peace.
[Sidenote: Success depends on the size of the nucleus of leagued States.
League of Peace must have absolute preponderance of force.]
Assuming that a considerable body of nations entered such a League with
good and reliable intentions, how far would it be likely to secure the
peace of the world and a reduction of armed preparations? The answer
to this question would depend mainly upon the number and status of the
Powers constituting the League, and their relations to outside nations.
If, as is not unlikely, at first only a small number of nations were
willing to enter such a League, the extent of the pacific achievement
would be proportionately circumscribed. If, say, Britain, France, and
the United States entered the League, undertaking to settle all their
differences by peaceful methods, such a step, however desirable in
itself, would not go far towards securing world-peace or enabling these
leagued Powers to reduce their national armaments. This is so obvious
that most advocates of the League of Peace urge that the leagued Powers
should not confine their undertakings to the peaceful settlement of
differences among themselves, but should afford a united defense to any
of their members attacked by any outside Power which was unwilling to
arbitrate its quarrel. A defensive alliance of three such Great Powers
(for that is what the League of Peace would amount to at this stage of
development) would no doubt form a force which it would be dangerous for
any nation, or combination of nations, to attack. But it would secure
neither peace nor disarmament. Nor would it, as an earnest advocate of
this procedure argues, necessarily, or even probably, form a nucleus of
a larger League drawing in other nations. A few nations forming such a
League would not differ substantially from the other nominally defensive
alliances with which the pages of history are filled. Their purely
defensive character would be suspected by outside Powers, who would tend
to draw together into an opposing alliance, thus reconstituting once more
the Balance of Power with all its perils and its competing armaments.
Nay, if such a League of Peace were constituted in the spirit of the
Holy Alliance of a century ago, or of the resurrection of that spirit
which Mr. Roosevelt represents in order “to back righteousness by force”
in all quarters of the earth, such an opposition of organized outside
Powers would be inevitable. The League of Peace idea, in order to have
any prima facie prospect of success, must at the outset be so planned as
to win the adherence of the majority of the Great Powers, including some
of those recently engaged in war with one another. For until there was an
absolute preponderance of military and naval strength inside the League,
the relief from internal strife would do very little, if anything, to
abate the total danger of war, or to enable any country to reduce its
armed preparations. Further, it would seem essential that such a League
should in its relations to outside Powers assume a rigorously defensive
attitude, abstaining from all interference in external politics until
they encroached directly upon the vital interests of one or more of its
members. Such an encroachment it would presumably treat as an attack upon
the League, and would afford the injured member such power of redress as
was deemed desirable by the representatives of the Powers forming the
League.
Before entering upon the fuller consideration of the practicability of a
League of Nations formed upon these lines, it may be well to set forth
in a brief, formal manner the nature of the chief implications which
appear to be contained in the proposal. We shall then be in a position
to examine seriatim the various steps which the advocates of this method
of securing world-peace and disarmament desire to take, and the many
difficulties which are involved.
[Sidenote: What the joint Powers would undertake.]
The signatory Powers to the Treaty or Agreement establishing such a
League of Peace would undertake:
(1) To submit to arbitration or conciliation all disputes or differences
between them not capable of settlement by ordinary processes of
diplomacy, and to accept and carry out any award or terms of settlement
thus attained.
(2) To bring joint pressure, diplomatic, economic, or forcible, to bear
upon any member refusing to submit a disputed matter to such modes of
peaceable settlement, or to accept and carry out the award, or otherwise
threatening or opening hostilities against any other member.
(3) To take joint action in repelling any attack made by an outside
Power, or group of Powers, upon any of the members of the League.
(4) To take joint action in securing the redress of any injury which, by
the general assent of the signatory Powers, had been wrongfully inflicted
upon any member of the League.
_J. A. Hobson, “Towards International Government,” pp. 5-27._
EXISTING ALLIANCES AND A LEAGUE OF PEACE
[Sidenote: Already the League of Peace is evolving.]