A DEMOCRATIC WORLD.[44]
“We believe in association—which is but the reduction to action of
our faith in one sole God, and one sole law, and one sole aim—as the
only means we possess of realising the truth; as the method of
progress; the path leading towards perfection. The highest possible
degree of human progress will correspond to the discovery and
application of the vastest formula of association.
We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the Peoples as the
vastest formula of association possible in our epoch;—in the
_liberty_ and _equality_ of the peoples without which no true
association can exist; in _nationality_, which is the _conscience_
of the peoples, and which, by assigning to them their part in the
work of association, their function in humanity, constitutes their
mission upon earth, that is to say, their _individuality_, without
which neither liberty nor equality is possible; in the sacred
_Fatherland_, cradle of nationality, altar and worship of the
individuals of which each people is composed.
* * * * *
And, as we believe in humanity as the sole interpreter of the law of
God, so do we believe in the people of every state as the sole
master, sole sovereign, and sole interpreter of the law of humanity,
which governs every national mission. We believe in the people, one
and indivisible, recognising neither castes nor privileges, neither
_proletariat_ nor _aristocracy_, whether landed or financial; but
simply an aggregate of faculties and forces consecrated to the
well-being of all, to the administration of the common substance and
possession, the terrestrial globe.”—
Mazzini.
Footnote 44:
This chapter was written some time before the League of Nations plan
adopted at the Peace Conference was issued. It is, in spite of a few
points which might require modification, allowed to stand as it was
written, since the general course of the argument still appears to be
sound, especially as it raises points in relation to which the
official scheme will most certainly require great changes.
“Come, read the meaning of the deep!
The use of winds and waters learn!
’Tis not to make the mother weep
For sons that never will return.
’Tis not to make the nations show
Contempt for all whom seas divide;
’Tis not to pamper war and woe
Nor feed traditionary pride;
* * * * *
It is to knit with loving life
The interests of land to land,
To join in far-seen fellowship
The tropic and the polar strand.
* * * * *
And more, for Knowledge crowns the gain
Of intercourse with other souls,
And wisdom travels not in vain
The plunging spaces of the poles.
O may our voice have power to say
How soon the wrecking discords cease,
When every wandering wave is gay
With golden argosies of peace.”
—GEORGE MEREDITH.
DEMOCRACY can only thrive in a democratic setting; and while any
powerful remnants of the dynastic tradition survive in the world, it is
unlikely that democracy will be able to reach the full term of its own
development. For the dynastic tradition is from the nature of the case
of an incurably predatory character; and democracy will be arrested in
its self-realisation by so much of the dynastic habit of thought and way
of life as it may be necessary to retain in order to gain immunity from
attack. It has been one of the commonplaces of the Great War that the
democratic countries have been compelled to defend themselves against
Prussianism by adopting the familiar Prussian methods of repression and
regimentation. And what the war has actually provoked is always
potentially present. So long as there are dynastic nations with highly
centralised and omnicompetent authority and consequently in a more or
less advanced state of preparation for military enterprise, it is not to
be expected that their democratic neighbours will leave themselves at
their mercy; and the common democratic rights of freedom—whether of the
person or of thought—have to be so far permanently subject to
curtailment and even entire suspension in the event of war. It is easy
to say that once the danger is past, the former liberties will be
automatically restored; but it does not so work out in actual fact. For
authority is ever loth to relinquish any advantage it has gained; and
there are always parties in every community who either on selfish or
academic grounds are favourable to the curtailment of democratic rights.
The restoration of these rights has commonly to be effected against the
opposition of parties interested in their curtailment. It is a matter of
common knowledge that powerful interests are already at work, for
instance, to secure that the hard-won privileges of the Trade Unions
shall not be restored to them; and we may expect to find very
considerable and dangerous opposition to the re-establishment of those
civil liberties which were suspended “for the duration of the war.” It
is not likely, however, that this opposition can be long maintained. But
it is certain that it will be some time after the close of the war
before the domestic liberties of the democratic countries will be
restored to the point which they had reached at the beginning of the
war; and by so much democratic advance will have been retarded.
I
So that the development of the democratic principle requires the
cessation of war and of preparedness for war. And this to begin with
requires the disappearance of the dynastic tradition. But will the
disappearance of the dynastic tradition necessarily carry with it the
abolition of that preoccupation with national “prestige” and the like
out of which it has always drawn its strength? The dynasty may vanish;
but nationalism may remain; and the catchwords of national prestige and
national honour may conceivably become a menace to peace and therefore
to freedom as real as the dynastic tradition.
And at the present time there is, as has been previously shown, a very
real possibility that the disappearance of the dynastic tradition may
leave the door open to another type of predatory nationalism no less
injurious to the cause of democracy. This is that “commercial
imperialism” to which reference has already been made. The impression
has been deeply made upon this generation that the accumulation of
wealth constitutes the primary business of the community. It should aim
to become the richest, wealthiest nation. It is not generally perceived
that the distribution of this wealth is of a character which robs it of
any right to be regarded as a “national” interest. It is the interest
only of a comparatively small class within the nation. Yet so sedulously
has this illusion of national prosperity been cultivated, and so feeble
is the faculty of discrimination in the multitude, that it will yet be
possible for commercial adventurers to invoke and receive national
endorsement of their projects even to the extent of a guarantee of
military support in case of need. The surplus capital of a nation will
seek avenues of activity beyond its frontiers and it will move heaven
and earth to secure that the nation shall be committed to the business
of protecting it when it goes abroad. And it will do this by fostering
the illusion that in some mysterious way its profitable foreign
excursions bring prosperity to the home community. A moment’s reflection
should be sufficient to show that operations of this kind will bring to
no nation any compensation that is even remotely commensurate with the
cost of guaranteeing them.
Nor is it for their foreign adventures alone that these particular
interests will work up national pride and prejudice. They look upon the
home market with the same avid eye as the foreign; and it is an affair
of common knowledge that they have not hesitated to inflame national
feeling in order to secure invidious protective tariffs against other
nations. “Keep out the foreigner” is always an effective battlecry; it
bears a certain immediate and obvious plausibility to the untutored and
uncritical mind. The argument for free trade labours under the
disadvantage of not possessing this kind of effective simplicity. Except
in cases where free trade has been tried and is supported by experience,
the argument for it has to lean upon postulates which are not so easily
demonstrable to the crowd and which do not lend themselves to glib
catchwords such as the protectionists delight in. It is easy for
instance, to show that the prosperity of a particular industry depends
upon its security against a foreign competition which apparently starts
with the superior advantage of cheap labour; and a case may be fairly
made for the protection of a young and struggling industry from unequal
competition. The protectionist, however, extends his argument to cover
all industry; his concern is not for the growth of a struggling industry
but for a monopoly of the home markets—what time he is also actively
invading foreign markets. The free trader has in reply to show that a
protective tariff is a stranglehold upon all industry. Because, for
instance, it renders the capitalist producer immune from foreign
competition, it reduces the necessity on his part to improve methods of
production; and in so much as his care is for his profits rather than
the real development of industry for the good of the social whole, he
will tend to remain content with obsolete and antiquated methods of
production so long as improvement is not essential to the maintenance of
profits. Moreover, it works in the direction of compelling the
industries of the nation to utilise the raw materials available within
its own borders even though these be inferior in quality to those
obtainable elsewhere, with the result that the national industries are
seriously handicapped in competition in foreign markets, even in some
cases in the home markets. The problem of clothing oneself in the United
States of America is a sufficient illustration of the fantastic illusion
that a protective tariff makes for the common good. The tariff on
woollen goods may be useful to the owners of the woollen industries in
America; but the advantage is gained at the expense of the whole people,
including the very operatives in woollen mills.
This is, however, not the place to state the whole case as between
protection and free trade. Chiefly it is to our point here to emphasise
the fact that the advocates of a protective tariff belong mainly to the
capitalist class; and that they will plead for a protective tariff on
the ground of national prosperity, and that national pride and prejudice
will be invoked in support of the argument. They will be careful to
abstain from calling undue attention to the point that a protective
tariff will discriminate in favour of the classes that are already
sufficiently prosperous, and their popular argument will have much to
say about the high wages of the worker. “Make the foreigner pay” was the
battlecry of the Chamberlainite fiscal reformer in England; and what the
foreigner pays we all enjoy together. It sounds fair enough; until it is
seen that by no chance whatsoever does the foreigner pay anything. He
may lose something in the diminution of his trade; but he pays nothing.
The payment is made by the domestic consumer in the higher prices which
immediately prevail in respect of “protected” commodities; and this
higher price brings an advantage to whom? To the worker? Not at all, if
the capitalist can help it. Will the worker get higher wages? Only if he
is strong enough to demand it. The empty hypocrisy of this talk about
national prosperity should be evident from the fact that the very people
who are interested in high prices are those who are equally interested
in lowering wages. The increase of the wage rate during the war has not
automatically or proportionately followed the rise in prices; it has
always to be wrested by main force from those whose interest lies in
keeping prices high and wages low. Under a protectionist régime, wages
are rarely high enough to compensate for the higher cost of living, and
the more dependent a country is upon importation from abroad, the truer
is this statement. It is only in countries like the United States of
America where the natural resources are large and more or less easily
available that protection can effect any substantial appearance of
social prosperity, and even in these cases it is scarcely doubtful that
the general prosperity would be greatly increased by the removal of a
protective tariff. The dividends upon invested capital would no doubt be
lower; but the general level of material well-being would be appreciably
raised.
Democracy must make up its mind upon this point. It must turn a cold and
critical eye upon all plausible talk about national prosperity and ask
whether this prosperity is in fact the thing it professes to be.
National wealth is so inequitably distributed that the production of
wealth as a national concern is a polity _pour rire_. Protection and
commercial imperialism are devices which work in the interests of the
already prosperous classes, a very small minority of the community. This
is not to say that there are not advocates of protective tariffs who
sincerely believe all they say so fluently about “national” prosperity;
of these good people it is not the disinterestedness that is to be
called into question but the intelligence. But it as sure as anything
can very well be that if a statutory limit were set upon profits,
incomes and fortunes, we should hear very little about protective
tariffs and the need of protecting commercial interests “_in partibus
infidelibus_.” To say that this would immediately crush the incentive to
the commercial and industrial enterprise of the nation would be an
unworthy reflection upon the patriotism of those who are at present
directing the enterprise. In any case the point which is coming up for
the decision of democratic communities is whether they are going to
identify themselves with, and commit themselves to, the support of
enterprises which primarily serve the interests of a class already well
enough provided for and which can bring no advantage to the people at
large commensurate with the risk involved in endorsing them. With the
crumbling of the dynastic tradition, the one substantial cause still
outstanding of international misunderstanding is commercial rivalry; but
this commercial rivalry is in no sense a rivalry between peoples; it is
purely a rivalry between the capitalist interests in the different
countries. Are the democracies still prepared to suffer arrest of their
own development by retaining a sort of potential war-footing in the
interests of what are after all mainly class-adventures?[45]
Footnote 45:
The proposal to establish an _International Labour Standard_ will, of
course, do something to rob the protectionist argument of the force it
borrows from playing up the “dumping” of goods produced by underpaid
foreign labour.
But it may be urged that even in the event of the elimination of this
type of commercial rivalry, the national feeling would still
remain—intrinsically and without the adventitious aid of dynastic or
commercial interests—a permanent ground of separation and possible
dissension between peoples, even democratic peoples. We are told that
there is such a thing as national “honour” which is a sacred trust and
which the nation must be prepared to defend against all comers. It may
be seriously questioned whether this conception of national “honour” is
not an archaism which has lapped over from the age when men still talked
of gambling debts as “debts of honour” and gentlemen adjusted their
differences by means of “affairs of honour.” It should be evident that
no nation has any kind of honour which is subject to real offence save
at its own hands, or which can be forfeited save by its own act; and a
nation in anything like a mature stage of ethical development should be
(in a memorable phrase) “too proud to fight” merely because its _amour
propre_ had been pricked by some ill-behaved urchin among the nations.
No self-respecting citizen resorts to fisticuffs in order to avenge an
insult; and the more self-respecting he is the more effectual is the
interior constraint which forbids him to act in that way. And it is
equally inconceivable that a self-respecting nation should think it
worth while to assert itself in a retaliatory way against what after all
can amount to no more than rudeness or impertinence. It is true that
there is a good deal of residual superstition in this particular region
which is apt to magnify out of all proportion the significance of such
improprieties as disrespect to the flag; but a little good humoured
realism is all the antidote that is required. Such things as these have
no real meaning except where symbolic and formal punctilio still takes
precedence over the actualities of life. For the rest, the only possible
sources of offence to national honour lies in the region where national
honour travels abroad in the persons of official and unofficial
individuals of that nation. But at this time of day, it is inconceivable
that any issues should arise in this region which are not capable of
easy and friendly adjustment. In point of fact, that is what usually
happens. Apologies are made; a formula is adopted; and the affair blows
over. It will occur to the cynical that in recent times the point of
honour has been chiefly insisted upon on such occasions as the pursuit
seemed likely to eventuate in some material advantage; in any case the
point of honour survives only as an affair of statesmen and diplomats
and provokes no more than a languid interest in the remainder of the
nation, which has more pressing concerns on hand. National “honour”
seems on the whole to be but a frill left over from the day in which the
divine right of kings was still a live dogma.
In the fact of nationality itself there is nothing which necessarily
tends to a breach of the peace. We know that it represents no fact of
organic inheritance which is bound to perpetuate divisions of an
unfriendly or unneighbourly kind between peoples. There is no modern
“nation” which can claim homogeneity of racial origin, of language, of
religion. It describes a political unity within which a people by the
simple process of living together has developed and is continuing to
develop a particular way of life and quality of culture. The peculiar
colour of national life is due of course to some extent to its
geographical location, to the circumstances of its history, and to its
natural resources, but national unity is achieved in the evolution of a
common tradition and a common culture. Nor is it possible to fix any
real bounds to the growth of a nation. It is a historical commonplace
how the small primitive groupings of man have steadily grown in extent
until we have reached the stage of vast aggregations of polyglot peoples
comprehended under a single national name—like the British Empire and
the United States. The “nation” possesses no fixity, and national
feeling undergoes continual change and modification as the result of
changing circumstances. There are many like the present writer whose
early schooling left them with the impression that there was a necessary
and permanent antagonism of interest between the British and French; but
since then the Entente Cordiale and other momentous happenings have
completely banished that hoary tradition from the British mind. It is,
moreover, not open to question that the increase and improvement of
means of communication have done much to dispel the ignorance from which
national prejudice and international suspicion drew their strength. The
biological judgment upon nationality is pertinent to this point: “All
the most important agencies producing the divergent modification of the
nations are human products and can be altered.”[46] These agencies are
presumably the factors which constitute what Mr. Benjamin Kidd called
social heredity; and he has shown with great force how possible it is to
“impose the elements of a new social heredity” on a whole people and to
change its character accordingly.[47] The sum of the matter is that
nationality is a fluid and changing entity; and its intrinsic nature and
its history appear to point to the conclusion that it is a necessary
stage in the evolution of human society, by which the caveman is to
become at last a citizen of the world. There is nothing to justify the
expectation that present national characters and national frontiers will
remain as permanent factors in the life of the world.
Footnote 46:
Chalmers Mitchell, _Evolution and the War_, p. 90.
Footnote 47:
Benjamin Kidd, _The Science of Power_, p. 305.
This does not mean that the world will not continue to be organised on
the basis of nationality; it means only that the present national
divisions are not permanent. The law of natural variation will operate
in producing diversity in the complexion and culture of communities; and
the race will contain to the end an infinite variety of social types.
Indeed as the dynastic imperial tradition decays, the tendency to induce
uniformity among the peoples brought under a common rule will disappear;
and the free play of variation will probably be more evident in the
future than it has been, at least in the near past. The emphasis upon
the rights of small nations and the disruption of Russia and of the Dual
Monarchy into their constituent nations both alike indicate that we
shall have a considerable accentuation of distinctive national types in
the years ahead of us. But this is not in any sense a matter for
misgiving; for the larger the variety of typical national cultures, the
more varied and rich will the life of the race become. As Lord Bryce
said in the early days of the war, the world was already too uniform and
was becoming more uniform every day; and a reaction from uniformity is a
sign of renewed life.
At the same time it must not be forgotten that without some balancing
principle there are dangers inherent in nationality. It has been justly
observed that nationality is an admirable thing when it is being
struggled for, but that once achieved it is apt to become a peril. The
passion for nationality may overshoot its mark. National
self-consciousness may breed national self-conceit; and out of this
temper especially under the conditions of modern commerce may grow the
spirit of aggression. It is useless to hide this fact from ourselves;
the recent history of Italy gives ample demonstration of it. The Italy
of Garibaldi was hardly recognisable in the Italy of the Tripoli
adventure. It is therefore necessary that the nations that have come to
new birth in the world-travail of these last five years, should be
preserved from the danger of becoming aggressive at the expense of their
neighbours, and in this necessity is contained in little the entire
problem of international integration which is likely to occupy the minds
of statesmen and political thinkers in the coming century. At the same
time the ultimate security of the peace which is necessary to the
progress of the democratic principle must lie not in external safeguards
and checks but in the increasing democratisation of national life. The
elimination of those residual predatory interests which still dog the
steps of democracy and are still able to pervert it to their own ends
may be helped by the creation of international machinery which will
limit the area of their opportunities; but it depends most of all upon
the progressive disappearance of class and sectional privileges within
the nations. For privilege is always predatory; and so long as there
still remain privileged classes within the nations no international
machinery of adjustment and restraint can do more than preserve a highly
precarious equilibrium between conflicting interests.
III
Upon this whole subject there is little to be said which is not already
perfectly clear to those who have given it any serious thought. Two
courses are open, and only two, to modern democracies. They may choose
to retain the traditional dogmas of national sovereignty and “honour,”
and the current acceptances of the business system, or they may resolve
upon a break with the past. The consequences of the first choice are
perfectly evident from the state into which the world has been brought
by its operation in the near past. It implies the retention of a
privileged class with interests to be defended at home and abroad; it
will work out in competitive commerce and as a natural corollary in
competitive armaments. And competitive armaments soon or late mean war.
It has already been pointed out how the doctrine of military
“preparedness” must inevitably retard and arrest the realisation of
democratic liberty within the nation, but it must farther be recognised
that any general retention of military establishments, under the
conditions of modern industry, must eventuate in the total destruction
of democracy and civilisation. The other choice means a deliberate and
progressive attempt to organise the intercourse of nations upon a basis
of reciprocity and co-operation. Even though the consequences of such an
attempt may be at present uncertain and problematical, it may at least
be asserted that they cannot be worse than those which have so
tragically ensued from the former tradition.
Indeed, we have already come to a state of the world in which the former
tradition has long ceased to correspond to actuality. So long as the
means of communication remained elementary and slow, it was possible for
nations to live more or less independent lives and it was in their
interest to become self-sufficing and self-contained. They were
sufficiently far from one another to meet only in the event of border
brawls or of predatory excursions on a large scale on the part of a
strong neighbour against a weaker. But with the modern development of
the means of communication a policy of isolation has become utterly
impossible. The world has become a neighbourhood; and national interests
are inextricably intertwined. When President Wilson said in 1916 that
the European War was the last great war out of participation in which it
would be possible for the United States to remain, he was speaking with
this particular circumstance in mind; and not even his foresight was
sufficient at that time to see that the day of isolation was already
over. In six months, the United States was engulfed in the bloody
maelstrom. The policy of national isolation is obsolete; and the persons
who advocate military preparedness and protective tariffs are “back
numbers.” These atavistic policies are no longer possible except at the
cost of the incalculable impoverishment of the nation which adopts them.
The nation that shuts others out also shuts itself in and will slowly
perish from an inbreeding mind and an ingrowing energy. For the barrier
against mutual confidence and goodwill which is military preparedness,
and the barrier against reciprocal trade, which is a protective tariff,
hinder much more than the exchanges of friendship and trade. They hinder
that exchange of spiritual, intellectual and cultural goods which are on
any radical analysis more essential to a people’s growth and wealth than
its trade.
Even as things are, those barriers are not sufficient to prevent a
certain mutuality in trade and in culture. Neither the German tariff
could keep Sheffield steel out of Germany, nor does the United States
tariff keep Bradford cloth out of America, and in the region of
intellectual and cultural interests the commerce has attained in recent
times a considerable briskness. But in the present state of the world,
why should a nation still cling to the illusion that it is a source of
strength to be self-contained? It is simply silly to continue to live on
homemade goods and homemade ideas when one’s neighbours are ready to
supply those which they are in a position to produce better than
ourselves, and to supply them freely on a basis of fair exchange; and it
is no compensation for the consumption of second-rate goods that it
helps to increase the bank balance of a few of one’s countrymen,
especially when these few countrymen who are thus profited can out of
their profits procure the superior foreign article which they put out of
the reach of the rest.
The organisation of the world upon a basis of international reciprocity
becomes a necessity by reason of the proximity into which modern means
of communication have thrown the peoples. The process is indeed already
afoot and in spite of hindrances will inevitably grow in power and
range; and we are only anticipating events when we set out to organise
the nations on a foundation of mutuality. The process is, however, not
without its difficulties; and the conditions which are necessary in
order to create a league of nations bound together by a principle of
reciprocity may be passed in brief review.
IV
First of all it is necessary that the last vestige of imperial dominion
should disappear. A nation which is held unwillingly within a particular
political unity should be emancipated and be set up in independence.
Real reciprocity is only possible on a foundation of common freedom, and
it is a pre-requisite of any scheme of world federation that any
so-called “subject” nation which puts in a claim to independence should
have its claim conceded at sight. The whole conception of reciprocity is
denied when a nation is dragged into the scheme at the tail of another.
At the same time it should be made clear that an independence thus
recognised does not carry with it the prerogative of a sovereignty of
the traditional kind. Independence is to mean autonomy in domestic
affairs but not independent action in external affairs. Reciprocity
implies joint action in matters of international interest; and in so
much as the working of a reciprocal scheme implies the power of
authoritative action by some superior joint council, it is clear that
there must be a cession of such portion of national sovereignty as is
implied in the joint transaction of international affairs. Nor is this
to be a rule merely for the lesser or the newly emancipated nations.
Clearly it must be a rule for all nations great or small which enter
into the arrangement. It is supposed that the nations will be found
unready to make this surrender; in which case it is in no need of
demonstration that a League of Nations is impossible save only for the
purely negative business of adjusting difficulties and settling
disputes. That indeed were a great gain, even though from the nature of
the case it would in all probability be only temporary. Nations still
boasting sovereignty would soon or late be tempted to take matters into
their own hands in the event of adjustments and settlements which proved
unsatisfactory. But in point of fact there is no difficulty at all about
this cession of sovereignty except in the minds of incurable jingoes or
legal doctrinaires. The thing has been done and is in practice on a
large scale already. That vast unity called the United States of America
became and remains possible only because independent states have
voluntarily ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to a federal
authority; and there is no objection other than that of chauvinistic
prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually prevent the
creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a greatly
extended United States of America as well.
But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a
league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that
this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must
be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath
Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground that
it is the organisation of a people in the interests of its material
welfare and power;[48] and insomuch as the nation finds its focus in the
sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A league of
nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of states, of
governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a league would
tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and policies rather than the
broader matters of human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a league
of nations will be able to divest itself from the characteristic
stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would
naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in the traditional order.
No league has any chance of permanence which does not break wholly with
the current conventions of international business; and the only hope of
such a break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various
countries of their own representatives on the council of the league. The
league must be democratically controlled; and that with as much direct
democratic power as such expedients as proportional representation and
recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe are so incurably
steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have to do with any
future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue, the diplomatic
_finesse_ in which they have been expert are incongruous with the
democratic principle; and it is necessary in the interest of
international understanding that they should be put out of commission
with all decent haste. The kind of domestic organisation for foreign
business which a league of nations requires differs _toto coelo_ from
the existing institution; and it will have to be built from the bottom
up.
Footnote 48:
See _Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1917, p. 291.
A league of peoples requires plain dealing in the open; but there is
nothing gained even then if there be no public apprehension of the
nature of the business in hand. Hitherto, the common man has displayed
but a flickering interest in the external affairs of his country; and
this vast and important region has been left the monopoly of a
comparatively small coterie of people who have made the shunning of
publicity a fine art. This circumstance is bound up with the fact that
speaking generally these persons have consistently belonged to the
prosperous classes; and the conventions of the diplomatic tradition have
made it a preserve of people possessing considerable independent
incomes. It is needless to observe how inevitably the whole service must
be vitiated by this anti-democratic discrimination. The established
system is secured by employing in it only those whose upbringing and
education have instilled into them the spirit of class superiority and
ascendency. The Foreign Offices of Europe have from the nature of the
case been the breeding ground of jingoism and chauvinism. The principle
of democratic control in foreign affairs, both by the public discussion
of international business and by the thorough democratisation of Foreign
Offices is a _sine qua non_ not alone of democracy at home but of any
such league of peoples as may be established.
It follows as a corollary that there should be a systematic education of
the people in foreign affairs. Popular ignorance would nullify any
advantage which accrued from the democratisation of the control and the
conduct of international business. For the control and conduct would
under such conditions pass back into the hands of specialists and
experts and interested parties. This popular education does not fail to
be considered in detail at this point. But it may be questioned whether
it can be effectively sustained unless in some form or another foreign
relations can be made a permanent issue of domestic politics. Perhaps we
may come to the point of instituting the popular election of the persons
in whom the responsibility of foreign business shall be vested. At the
present time it is only rarely, and then but in a subordinate way, that
questions of foreign policy enter into the issues of an election; and
until some means is devised of educating the public mind in the
subject-matter of foreign relations, this condition will continue.
V
It is, however, likely that the force of circumstances may expedite this
process of education. The articles of the coming peace are guaranteed to
contain a provision for general disarmament; and so far as Europe is
concerned, this will be a work of necessity and not of supererogation.
Professor Delbrück, for instance, has come to acknowledge that the
“derided notions” of disarmament, hitherto “entertained only by persons
of no account,” are likely to be raised to “the position of the ruling
principle of our time.”[49] His conversion is due to the fact that the
war will leave the belligerents of Europe in a financial position which
will not only make the increase of armaments impossible, but will
require the very drastic reduction of their military establishments. The
only danger to the process of disarmament lies in the circumstance that
two of the belligerent powers, the United States and Japan, have been so
little crippled by the war that they are in a position and may get into
the mood to maintain large armaments. It is useless to obscure from
ourselves the further circumstance that these two powers that are in a
position to afford large military establishments look upon one another
with a considerable measure of suspicion despite their recent
association upon the same side in the war, and the formal professions of
mutual good-will that have latterly been made. It must be borne in mind
that Japan is still mainly dynastic in government and consequently
imperialistic in spirit, that its economic development seems to require
an expansion of marketing opportunities, and that its over-population
will stimulate emigration. In these matters there is plenty of
inflammable stuff; and we should be guilty of not facing the facts of
the case, did we not perceive that by reason of the attraction which
Western America has for the Japanese emigrant, and of the peculiar
interest which America has taken in the welfare of China, situations of
very great peril may arise between Japan and the United States. It is
upon such a state of the case that the argument for universal military
service in America will be based; and indeed must be based; as it is
inconceivable that any American in his senses should apprehend any
danger from the other side of the Atlantic. The certain democratisation
of Europe and the virtual certainty of the impossibility on financial
grounds of any considerable war-like enterprise on the part of the
European nations make the contingency of a Transatlantic war unthinkable
at the present time, or indeed at any future time. This, of course,
pre-supposes that the causes of friction likely to arise from the
national underwriting of private foreign investments will be removed by
a common understanding that the private ventures of capital abroad are
made at its own risk.
Footnote 49:
_Prüssische Jahrbucher_ (November, 1917).
The possible strain of the situation between the United States and Japan
is, however, already alleviated to some extent by the prospect of a
democratic movement in the latter country. Japan can in any case hardly
expect to keep its institutions intact if it enters into reciprocal
relations with democratic communities. Now, for the first time, a
commoner is premier of Japan; and the widespread social discontent is
likely to stimulate the tendency to popularise the machinery of
government. It is probably too much to expect in the present state of
Japanese education, that the veneration in which the dynasty is held
will speedily disappear. Yet after the swift and dramatic disappearance
of “divine rights” in Germany, it is not wise to assume that historical
processes of this type are necessarily slow.
Apart, however, from the possible causes of friction between the United
States and Japan, there seems to be little insuperable difficulty in
reaching an international understanding concerning disarmament.[50] Upon
such an understanding, the whole future of the projected League of
Nations hangs. The League will be no more than an empty shell if the
constituent nations still continue to go about with loaded fire-arms.
Yet even if the League itself were not to come into existence
immediately the economic necessity of disarmament would of itself
suffice to change international relationships very profoundly. Reduction
in armaments will involve a revolution in foreign policy. For the two
things go together. A particular kind of foreign policy requires a
corresponding scale of armaments; and the state of a nation’s armaments
very materially affects the objects and the tone of its foreign policy.
In a word the reduction of armaments would compel the nations in some
sort to moralise their mutual relations. The old basis of
ambition-_cum_-fear backed by force will have to be displaced by a
practice of plain dealing and mutual understanding. Since the nations
cannot afford to fight one another for some time to come, there is
nothing for it but that they learn to behave themselves properly toward
each other. After a while it is permissible to hope that they would not
want to fight each other.
Footnote 50:
This statement does not seem quite so true now as when it was written,
in view of the provisions of the Peace Treaty.
VI
But if disarmament is likely to compel a new type of international
dealing, it is plain that there must be some kind of international
clearing house. We have gone past the stage at which one nation can
transact a bargain with another which will not affect the interests of a
third party. The shrinkage of the world has thrown the nations too
closely together for any of them to suppose that they can determine
their policies in isolation and carry them through piece-meal with this
one and that, without reference to the rest. Preferential trade
agreements, for instance, are not merely an affair of the contrasting
parties; they affect all the nations. And it is impossible any longer—in
the absence of _force majeure_—to establish relations of that kind
without the consent of the rest of the world. The case for an
international clearing house is indeed at this time of day irresistible.
Moreover, the immediate stress of the food-situation throughout the
world is certain to require some such organ for the co-ordination and
the distribution of the available food-supply. It seems likely that the
supply of food for the world will be for some years inadequate to the
need without careful distribution; and it will require the most careful
organisation and rationing of what food there is if the people of some
parts of the world are to escape very great and protracted hardship. For
this, a clearing house is necessary. Fortunately we have the foundations
of this organisation already laid—on the one hand in the machinery of
international distribution created by Mr. Hoover, and on the other in
Mr. David Lubin’s far-seeing institution of an international bureau for
the survey of the world’s grain resources. From a central organisation
of this kind the world will need to receive its food for some time to
come.
Nor is the problem of food the only urgent matter of this kind. There
will be presently a very great demand for the raw material of industrial
production. In the past, raw material has been provided by means of
private ventures of all kinds on a competitive basis. Any reversion to
such a chaotic and uncoordinated method of providing raw material would
be attended by consequences of a most disastrous kind. There would be no
guarantee of equitable distribution among the nations; with the result
that those unfavourably placed in the matter of capital or credit, would
be put in a position of permanent and increasing economic dependence and
disability. If the nations now released from ancient tyrannies are to be
set upon their feet, it is plain that they must receive supplies of raw
material as nearly adequate for their need as possible. Otherwise we may
create a number of pauper nations. In addition to this fact, there is
also the danger that the private exploitation of the sources of raw
material would tend to the subjugation of backward peoples whose lands
chanced to be rich in such material. It is an old and a shameful story
how the need of civilisation for raw material has led to the laceration
and impoverishment of the native population of (say) Africa; and it is
necessary that the conscience of the world should refuse to tolerate the
system of concessions and the like which made this criminality possible.
On both grounds—the need of industrial production among the civilised
people, and the rights of the undeveloped peoples—a system of the joint
international quest and distribution of raw material is requisite.
This international rationing of raw material may seem a drastic and
impracticable proposal; but any consideration of its alternatives must
drive us to the conclusion that we cannot escape some experiment however
inadequate in this direction. In the present state of the world, the
balance is so overwhelmingly in favour of the strong nations that any
perpetuation of the private and competitive quest of raw materials will
simply lead to a struggle of great commercial imperialisms in which the
victims will be the weak nations. Just as the unprivileged classes
within the nation have been the victims of the great industrial powers,
the weaker nations which start with a handicap in the struggle will be
disabled in perpetuity and will be squeezed between their stronger
neighbours. It is difficult to see that the economic dependence and
subjection of one nation to another differs appreciably in its
consequences to the people at large from that political dependence and
subjection to destroy which the European war was undertaken and fought
at so terrific a cost.
VII
The necessity and the logic of the case leads us therefore, to expect
the creation of an international organisation which shall have certain
positive functions in addition to the negative task of mitigating the
causes of international friction and the adjustment of differences. The
hope of the permanence of the League lies in its positive activities
rather than in its purely negative offices. Moreover, the just rationing
of food and raw material would of itself so considerably diminish the
possibility of international misunderstanding, that we may look to the
extension of the positive and integrative functions of the League while
the need of purely mediatorial activity would naturally decrease. Nor
have we exhausted the matters in which the need of the nations requires
action and organisation of a constructive and positive kind. At the
present time it is plain that some of the peoples newly liberated are
not in a position to conduct their affairs without outside assistance.
Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, for instance, must be guided and
protected for some time to come; and while the peoples of these
countries might choose to be placed under the wing of one or other of
the existing “great” powers, it is not open to argument that such a
connection should be under an arrangement which secured the
accountability of the protecting power to an international body. If
Great Britain becomes foster-mother to Palestine, or France to Syria,
the agreement should be so formulated that this relationship is always
subject to revision at the hands of the League of Peoples. The case with
the native populations in the former German colonies is still more
clear. Africa, in especial, has suffered unspeakable things from the
imperialistic rivalries of the European nations; and its whole future
development is bound up with a guarantee that its territory and its
peoples shall be immune from invasion and exploitation at the hands of
nations with selfish purposes. This again points to the institution of a
system of international tutelage and supervision. It goes without
saying, of course, that any such international action should consist not
only of protection and tutelage, but of education into self-government.
The question as to the mode in which this international supervision
should be exercised is secondary. The proposal that it should be made
effective by means of international commissions is met with the
objection that international commissions have proved to be a failure in
practice. In some cases this is doubtless true; but it is not the whole
truth. The Danube Commission and the Postal Union furnish examples of
successful management by international commission. But there is no need
to mix up the question of international supervision with the method of
rendering it effective. There appears to be no inconsistency in
maintaining that the method of international commission would be most
fruitful in some instances, while the method of devolving the work upon
a single nation suitably placed for doing it would be more advantageous
in other cases. In those instances, where a weak or backward people is
capable of appreciating the alternatives, there is no reason why the
choice should not be left to the people themselves.
One of the further consequences of the contraction of the world is that
health has become an international question. The days when a plague
could be confined to a city are over.[51] The recent spread of the
so-called “Spanish” influenza is an instance which proves how
indissolubly bound together the world has come to be. And the system of
national quarantines has to be superseded by an international organ for
the localisation and the extirpation of diseases which like the bubonic
and the pneumonic plagues are capable of easy and destructive diffusion;
and for the removal of those conditions of filth and insanitation in any
part of the world to which these scourges owe their origin. It is
likely, moreover, that the great increase in pulmonary and venereal
diseases as by-products of the war require international handling if
their worst consequences are to be averted.
Footnote 51:
If, indeed, there ever were any such days. In 1665, the Great Plague
was brought from London to Eyam, a little Derbyshire town, in a parcel
of cloth consigned to the local tailor!
It will also belong to the proposed international body to oversee and
improve the facilities for travel and transport. Obviously this is
largely a question of keeping the seas an open highway for traffic. The
phrase “the freedom of the seas” has a special connotation in current
discussions which is apt to obscure the real point at issue. The claim
made by the German Government for the establishment of the “freedom of
the seas” seemed and was intended to imply that British naval supremacy
had constituted a hindrance to sea-borne trade in normal times. No one
with any historical knowledge would be able to consent to that judgment.
British naval supremacy has been in no sense a limitation upon the
“freedom of the seas” in times of peace. The seas have always been free
in modern times; and so far from its having been restricted by British
naval supremacy, a good case may be made out for the contrary view. The
safety of the high seas is possibly more connected with the efficiency
of the British navy than a superficial judgment might allow. The freedom
of the seas only comes in question in war time; and if we are minded to
eliminate war from the world the whole problem loses its relevancy
anyhow, except in so far that some measure of police surveillance may
continue to be necessary. In the meantime it should be remembered that
the insular position of Great Britain has created the necessity in past
times for a strong navy in order to secure the freedom of the seas for
its own commerce; but it is not to be maintained for a moment that it
has in recent times used its supremacy to limit the freedom of other
commerce. Even if the policing of the high seas should be placed by the
international authority in the hands of Great Britain, its past record
shows that it may be trusted; and in any case its own interest in the
free and unimpeded passage of commerce upon the seas is a guarantee that
it would discharge its office effectually.
Still, it is probably not desirable that the control of the seas should
be devolved upon a single power. The universal interests of the nations
in the franchise of the ocean highways make it necessary that their
protection be an international obligation. This part of the problem
should, however, present no insuperable difficulty. In practice the high
seas are to all intents and purposes already neutralised. Our
difficulties arise when we come to the question of narrow inter-ocean
waterways. The most conspicuous, though perhaps not the most important,
case of this type, is the water connecting the Black and the Ægean Seas;
and the obvious solution lies in the permanent neutralisation of the
Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles. There is no
difficulty involved in the institution of an international commission to
carry this project into effect. This particular outlet affects so many
nations that it is intolerable that it should remain the particular
property of a single nation; and the only possible alternative is this
of neutralisation under international commission. The straits of
Gibraltar present a different though a no more difficult problem. With
the development of modern ordnance, the military and political
importance of the Rock of Gibraltar has virtually disappeared; and its
value is chiefly that of a naval base and coaling station. It is
difficult to see what purpose under modern conditions the retention of a
kind of British sovereignty in the Straits serves. In the days when the
route to India had to be protected, it was of course another story; and
there is really no reason why the Straits of Gibraltar—as well as all
other narrow waterways—should not be neutralised in perpetuity under
international guarantee. The experience of the present war in the matter
of submarine attacks on merchant ships in the Mediterranean showed how
ineffectual any guardianship of the Straits is likely to be in the
future; and the same thing is true of all waterways which are not
sufficiently narrow to be swiftly barred against entrance by submarine
craft.
The most thorny part of this problem lies in the question of the two
great inter-ocean canals, Suez and Panama. These two passages are now
held by single powers though they are governed in such a way as to give
virtual equality of use to the seacraft of all nations. Apart from the
profits which accrue to the possessing nations from the charges upon
traffic, it is difficult to see what advantage the arrangement
possesses. It is in the interest of the possessing nations to encourage
the general use of the canals, so much so, indeed, that it has been
found expedient by the United States to renounce the idea of
preferential treatment to its own shipping in the Panama Canal. Probably
not much would be immediately gained by the neutralisation of these
canals, though it is likely that the pressure of circumstances may lead
to such an event at a later time. Nevertheless, any international
authority would find it necessary to secure that craft of all nations
should have free and equal access to the canals at all times.
But the facilitation of international traffic is not an affair of the
water only. It is no less essential that the great trunk railroads
should be effectually co-ordinated. The British project of an “all-red
route” round the world is an instance of the kind of co-ordination that
is required. The Interstate Railroad Commission of the United States
supplies the idea at another angle. The convenient international
transport of persons and commodities, the regulation of time-schedules,
of fares and freights, is surely part of the subject matter of a League
of Nations. It has long been seen that the roads of a nation are its
arteries and veins; and the provision of cheap and easy transit for
persons and things may well become one of the most potent factors in the
cohesive energy of a League of Nations.
Enough has already been said upon the conditions of international trade
which are requisite to the project of a League of Peoples. Invidious
protective tariffs, “favoured nation” clauses, preferential arrangements
of any kind must work injuriously to the process of integration. That
these devices are also injurious to the nations which utilise them is of
less moment to us at this point than their effect in creating rivalry
and antagonism. To secure a genuine and universal reciprocity in trade
should be one of the aims of the league, as it will also be one of the
primary conditions of its consolidation and growth.
VIII
But may not this concentration of authority in the hands of an
international body create a kind of super-state? In any case this danger
is very remote at the present time; but it is no less necessary that at
its inception conditions should be agreed upon which will safeguard it
from such a tendency. This might be done in one of two ways. It might,
for instance, be ordained that the machinery of the League should not be
unitary, but that the commissions requisite for various purposes should
be independently appointed by the contracting nations and derive their
mandate directly from them; and in the event of overlapping, the
commissions concerned might adjust the matter by joint session. The
other alternative is that there should be a supreme international
authority, but that it should be subject to a “Barrier Act.”[52] This
would provide that the power and the enactments of the authority should
be perpetually subject to the revision of the contracting parties; and
it would be impossible for the international body to take any material
step outside the limits of its mandate and consequently to extend its
sphere of authority without the general consent of the nations
concerned. Perhaps both these conditions are necessary—the direct
appointment of commissions and the Barrier Act; and in any case a
general agreement should be reached beforehand as to the limits and
nature of the functions to be vested in the international body. It is
plain, of course, that in any event the League must stand upon consent.
It will be a voluntary association of free peoples; and its maintenance
will depend upon the impossibility of its ever accruing any authority
sufficient to prevent the withdrawal of any nation which might be so
minded. It is questionable whether once the League had come into
operation, any nation could afford to withdraw; but no power should be
veiled in it to coerce a nation to remain in the League against its
will. The basis of free and voluntary association is the only guarantee
of genuine and fruitful solidarity.
Footnote 52:
The Barrier Act was a Presbyterian device against hasty innovation.
“Every proposal which contemplates a material change in the
constitution of the Church or in its laws respecting doctrine,
discipline, government, or worship, after being considered and
accepted by the Synod, must be sent down to Presbyteries for their
approval or disapproval, before it can become the law of the Church.”
(The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church of England, p. 50.) Just
so, the Federal Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
relative to prohibition had to be referred to the several states for
endorsement before final ratification.
This, however, raises the question of whether the League should be armed
with powers to enforce its decisions. That it should be endowed with a
definite judicial authority goes without saying; but is it to be
supported by a police organisation? In the present state of opinion it
appears likely that some kind of international police force will be
attached to the League; but there are some reasons for doubting whether
such a provision is necessary or likely to be useful. In this connection
the interesting point has been raised that the Constitution of the
United States established a court to adjudicate upon disputes between
the States, with no provision of force to compel a State to accept the
Court’s decision, but depending upon public opinion alone to validate
the judgment. Had there been any attempt on the part of those who framed
the Constitution to invest the federal authority with power to coerce a
recalcitrant state, it is likely that the Union would never have come
into existence; but the Union was founded and survived despite the
absence of coercive sanctions, and the venture of faith has been
vindicated by the growth and unity of the American people.[53] There is
a real danger lest the institution of a police force at the disposal of
the League might prove a disruptive factor; and the question should be
carefully canvassed before a decision is reached. In any case it is safe
to say that it should be the business of the League to work towards the
ultimate elimination of coercive sanctions.
Footnote 53:
Technically, in the Civil War, force was used to prevent the secession
of the South; but what the North really fought for was the abolition
of slavery.
But meantime is there any method by which the League could effectually
deal with recalcitrant nations other than direct physical compulsion? A
good deal has been said about the use of economic boycott; but it
requires some casuistry to distinguish successfully between military
coercion and economic boycott. Certainly in intention both devices come
within the same category, and in result they may work out in curiously
identical fashion. Constraint by starvation bears in effect a strong
family resemblance to constraint by destructive _force majeure_. At the
same time it is evident that a nation which chooses to put itself “in
_contumaciam_” must in some way or another pay the penalty of its
offence. The Bank Clearing House deals with an offending and impenitent
member by the simple process of exclusion. In the League of Nations, a
nation in the same position should be dealt with in the same fashion; it
should understand that its persistency in the offending attitude carries
with it exclusion from the comity of nations. It should, that is, be
compelled to accept the responsibility of imposing the punishment upon
itself. It has put itself outside the pale; and no injustice is involved
in accepting its deed at its obvious face value and letting it remain
where it has chosen to place itself until such time as it elects to
think better of its action. It is doubtful whether any constituent
nation would think it worth while to indulge in a contumacy which
automatically led to excommunication.
It would take us too far afield from our purpose to discuss the details
of the organisation required by a League of Nations. Questions of
constitution and representation, the problems involved in the adhesion
to the League of vast composite aggregates like the British Empire, and
of the place of some of the minute independent states that still remain
in the world,—these and many more matters will have to be faced in the
institution of the League. Here, however, it has been our business
merely to point out that some such device as a League of Peoples is
entirely necessary to the further development of the democratic
principle, and to pass in brief review certain of the conditions which
the League must satisfy, and certain of the functions it must assume, if
it is to be consistent with and helpful to the realisation of the ideal
of democracy. A League to enforce peace may be no more than the Holy
Alliance _redivivus_, an unholy alliance in defence of the _status
quo_.[54] What is needed is a League to guarantee freedom and to promote
fellowship, and given such a League peace will largely look after
itself. It is not sufficiently recognised that to make peace an object
in itself is to condemn the world to virtual stagnation. The only peace,
like the only happiness which is permanent, is that which is a
bye-product. Permanent peace will come from a voluntary association of
peoples co-operating on a basis of reciprocity; and such a consummation
is not so far off as it would at fist sight appear. The reciprocity
which has been established between the Allied peoples in the war will
have to be continued long after the war. Their needs are so vast that
they will only escape death and want by close co-operation. Moreover,
the agreement of the Allies reported in the press as these pages are
written to send food to their late enemies, is an asset of the utmost
importance to the creation of the League. And once the League is
properly afoot, we may live in the hope of the day which William Blake
foretold:
“In my exchanges, every land shall walk,
And mine in every land;
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in heart, and hand in hand.”
Footnote 54:
It is hardly possible to resist the remark at this point that the
League as fashioned in Paris bears a strong family likeness to the
Holy Alliance, and so far behaves uncommonly like it,—_e.g._, towards
Russia and Hungary.
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