HOW TO STRIVE FOR WORLD PEACE
In the preceding chapters I have endeavored to set forth, in a spirit
of absolute fairness and calmness, the lessons as I see them that this
war teaches all the world and especially the United States. I believe
I have shown that, while, at least as against Belgium, there has been
actual wrong-doing, yet on the whole and looking back at the real and
ultimate causes rather than at the temporary occasions of the war,
what has occurred is due primarily to the intense fear felt by each
nation for other nations and to the anger born of that fear. Doubtless
in certain elements, notably certain militaristic elements, of the
population other motives have been at work; but I believe that the
people of each country, in backing the government of that country, in
the present war have been influenced mainly by a genuine patriotism and
a genuine fear of what might happen to their beloved land in the event
of aggression by other nations.
Under such conditions, as I have shown, our duty is twofold. In the
first place, events have clearly demonstrated that in any serious
crisis treaties unbacked by force are not worth the paper upon which
they are written. Events have clearly shown that it is the idlest of
folly to assert and little short of treason against the nation for
statesmen who should know better to pretend, that the salvation of any
nation under existing world conditions can be trusted to treaties,
to little bits of paper with names signed on them but without any
efficient force behind them. The United States will be guilty of
criminal misconduct, we of this generation will show ourselves traitors
to our children and our children’s children if, as conditions are now,
we do not keep ourselves ready to defend our hearths, trusting in great
crises not to treaties, not to the ineffective good-will of outsiders,
but to our own stout hearts and strong hands.
So much for the first and most vital lesson. But we are not to be
excused if we stop here. We must endeavor earnestly but with sanity to
try to bring around better world conditions. We must try to shape our
policy in conjunction with other nations so as to bring nearer the day
when the peace of righteousness, the peace of justice and fair dealing,
will be established among the nations of the earth. With this object
in view, it is our duty carefully to weigh the influences which are at
work or may be put to work in order to bring about this result and
in every effective way to do our best to further the growth of these
influences. When this has been done no American administration will
be able to assert that it is reduced to humiliating impotence even
to protest against such wrong as that committed on Belgium, because,
forsooth, our “neutrality” can only be preserved by failure to help
right what is wrong--and we shall then as a people have too much
self-respect to enter into absurd, all-inclusive arbitration treaties,
unbacked by force, at the very moment when we fail to do what is
clearly demanded by our duty under the Hague treaties.
Doubtless in the long run most is to be hoped from the slow growth of a
better feeling, a more real feeling of brotherhood among the nations,
among the peoples. The experience of the United States shows that
there is no real foundation in race for the bitter antagonism felt
among Slavs and Germans, French and English. There are in this country
hundreds of thousands, millions, of men who by birth and parentage are
of German descent, of French descent or Slavonic descent, or descended
from each of the peoples within the British Islands. These different
races not only get along well together here, but become knit into one
people, and after a few generations their blood is mingled. In my own
veins runs not only the blood of ancestors from the various peoples of
the British Islands, English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish, but also the
blood of Frenchman and of German--not to speak of my forefathers from
Holland. It is idle to tell us that the Frenchman and the German, the
Slav and the Englishman are irreconcilably hostile one to the other
because of difference of race. From our own daily experiences we know
the contrary. We know that good men and bad men are to be found in
each race. We know that the differences between the races above named
and many others are infinitesimal compared with the vital points of
likeness.
But this growth is too slow by itself adequately to meet present
needs. At present we are confronted with the fact that each nation
must keep armed and must be ready to go to war because there is a real
and desperate need to do so and because the penalty for failure may be
to suffer a fate like that of China. At present in every great crisis
treaties have shown themselves not worth the paper they are written on,
and the multitude of peace congresses that have been held have failed
to secure even the slightest tangible result, as regards any contest in
which the passions of great nations were fully aroused and their vital
interests really concerned. In other words, each nation at present in
any crisis of fundamental importance has to rely purely on its own
power, its own strength, its own individual force. The futility of
international agreements in great crises has come from the fact that
force was not back of them.
What is needed in international matters is to create a judge and then
to put police power back of the judge.
So far the time has not been ripe to attempt this. Surely now, in view
of the awful cataclysm of the present war, such a plan could at least
be considered; and it may be that the combatants at the end will be
willing to try it in order to secure at least a chance for the only
kind of peace that is worth having, the peace that is compatible with
self-respect. Merely to bring about a peace at the present moment,
without providing for the elimination of the causes of war, would
accomplish nothing of any permanent value, and the attempt to make it
would probably represent nothing else than the adroit use of some more
or less foolish or more or less self-interested outsider by some astute
power which wished to see if it could not put its opponents in the
wrong.
If the powers were justified in going into this war by their vital
interests, then they are required to continue the war until these
vital interests are no longer in jeopardy. A peace which left without
redress wrongs like those which Belgium has suffered or which in effect
consecrated the partial or entire destruction of one or more nations
and the survival in aggravated form of militarism and autocracy, and
of international hatred in its most intense and virulent form, would
really be only a worthless truce and would not represent the slightest
advance in the cause of righteousness and of international morality.
The essential thing to do is to free each nation from the besetting
fear of its neighbor. This can only be done by removing the causes of
such fear. The neighbor must no longer be a danger.
Mere disarmament will not accomplish this result, and the disarmament
of the free and enlightened peoples, so long as a single despotism or
barbarism were left armed, would be a hideous calamity. If armaments
were reduced while causes of trouble were in no way removed, wars
would probably become somewhat more frequent just because they would
be less expensive and less decisive. It is greatly to be desired that
the growth of armaments should be arrested, but they cannot be arrested
while present conditions continue. Mere treaties, mere bits of papers,
with names signed to them and with no force back of them, have proved
utterly worthless for the protection of nations, and where they are the
only alternatives it is not only right but necessary that each nation
should arm itself so as to be able to cope with any possible foe.
The one permanent move for obtaining peace, which has yet been
suggested, with any reasonable chance of attaining its object, is by an
agreement among the great powers, in which each should pledge itself
not only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal but to back
with force the decisions of that common tribunal. The great civilized
nations of the world which do possess force, actual or immediately
potential, should combine by solemn agreement in a great World League
for the Peace of Righteousness. In a later chapter I shall briefly
outline what such an agreement should attempt to perform. At present
it is enough to say that such a world-agreement offers the only
alternative to each nation’s relying purely on its own armed strength;
for a treaty unbacked by force is in no proper sense of the word an
alternative.
Of course, if there were not reasonable good faith among the nations
making such an agreement, it would fail. But it would not fail merely
because one nation did not observe good faith. It would be impossible
to say that such an agreement would at once and permanently bring
universal peace. But it would certainly mark an immense advance. It
would certainly mean that the chances of war were minimized and the
prospects of limiting and confining and regulating war immensely
increased. At present force, as represented by the armed strength
of the nations, is wholly divorced from such instrumentalities
for securing peace as international agreements and treaties. In
consequence, the latter are practically impotent in great crises.
There is no connection between force, on the one hand, and any scheme
for securing international peace or justice on the other. Under these
conditions every wise and upright nation must continue to rely for its
own peace and well-being on its own force, its own strength. As all
students of the law know, a right without a remedy is in no real sense
of the word a right at all. In international matters the declaration of
a right, or the announcement of a worthy purpose, is not only aimless,
but is a just cause for derision and may even be mischievous, if force
is not put behind the right or the purpose. Our business is to make
force the agent of justice, the instrument of right in international
matters as it has been made in municipal matters, in matters within
each nation.
One good purpose which would be served by the kind of international
action I advocate is that of authoritatively deciding when treaties
terminate or lapse. At present every treaty ought to contain provision
for its abrogation; and at present the wrong done in disregarding a
treaty may be one primarily of time and manner. Unquestionably it may
become an imperative duty to abrogate a treaty. The Supreme Court of
the United States set forth this right and duty in convincing manner
when discussing our treaty with France during the administration of
John Adams, and again a century later when discussing the Chinese
treaty. The difficulty at present is that each case must be treated on
its own merits; for in some cases it may be right and necessary for a
nation to abrogate or denounce (not to violate) a treaty; and yet in
other cases such abrogation may represent wrong-doing which should be
suppressed by the armed strength of civilization. At present in cases
where only two nations are concerned there is no substitute for such
abrogation or violation of the treaty by one of them; for each of the
two has to be judge in its own case. But the tribunal of a world league
would offer the proper place to which to apply for the abrogation
of treaties; and, with international force back of such a tribunal,
the infraction of a treaty could be punished in whatever way the
necessities of the case demanded.
Such a scheme as the one hereinafter briefly outlined will not bring
perfect justice any more than under municipal law we obtain perfect
justice; but it will mark an immeasurable advance on anything now
existing; for it will mean that at last a long stride has been taken
in the effort to put the collective strength of civilized mankind
behind the collective purpose of mankind to secure the peace of
righteousness, the peace of justice among the nations of the earth.
It may be, though I sincerely hope to the contrary, that such a
scheme is for the immediate future Utopian--it certainly will not be
Utopian for the remote future. If it is impossible in the immediate
future to devise some working scheme by which force shall be put
behind righteousness in disinterested and effective fashion, where
international wrongs are concerned, then the only alternative will be
for each free people to keep itself in shape with its own strength
to defend its own rights and interests, and meanwhile to do all that
can be done to help forward the slow growth of sentiment which is
assuredly, although very gradually, telling against international
wrong-doing and violence.
Man, in recognizedly human shape, has been for ages on this planet,
and the extraordinary discoveries in Egypt and Mesopotamia now enable
us to see in dim fashion the beginning of historic times six or seven
thousand years ago. In the earlier ages of which history speaks there
was practically no such thing as an international conscience. The
armies of Babylon and Assyria, Egypt and Persia felt no sense of
obligation to outsiders and conquered merely because they wished to
conquer. In Greece a very imperfect recognition of international
right grew up so far as Greek communities were concerned, but it never
extended to barbarians. In the Roman Empire this feeling grew slightly,
if only for the reason that so many nations were included within its
bounds and were forced to live peaceably together. In the Middle Ages
the common Christianity of Europe created a real bond. There was at
least a great deal of talk about the duties of Christian nations to
one another; and although the action along the lines of the talk
was lamentably insufficient, still the talk itself represented the
dawning recognition of the fact that each nation might owe something
to other nations and that it was not right to base action purely on
self-interest.
There has undoubtedly been a wide expansion of this feeling during the
last few centuries, and particularly during the last century. It now
extends so as to include not only Christian nations but also those
non-Christian nations which themselves treat with justice and fairness
the men of different creed. We are still a lamentably long distance
away from the goal toward which we are striving; but we have taken a
few steps toward that goal. A hundred years ago the English-speaking
peoples of Britain and America regarded one another as inveterate and
predestined enemies, just as three centuries previously had been the
case in Great Britain itself between those who dwelt in the northern
half and those who dwelt in the southern half of the island. Now war is
unthinkable between us. Moreover, there is a real advance in good-will,
respect, and understanding between the United States and all the other
nations of the earth. The advance is not steady and it is interrupted
at times by acts of unwisdom, which are quite as apt to be committed by
ourselves as by other peoples; but the advance has gone on. There is
far greater sentiment than ever before against unwarranted aggressions
by stronger powers against weak powers; there is far greater feeling
against misconduct, whether in small or big powers; and far greater
feeling against brutality in war.
This does not mean that the wrong-doing as regards any one of these
matters has as yet been even approximately stopped or that the
indignation against such wrong-doing is as yet anything like as
effective as it should be. But we must not let our horror at the
wrong that is still done blind us to the fact that there has been
improvement. As late as the eighteenth century there were continual
instances where small nations or provinces were overrun, just as
Belgium has been overrun, without any feeling worth taking into account
being thereby excited in the rest of mankind. In the seventeenth
century affairs were worse. What has been done in Belgian cities has
been very dreadful and the Belgian countryside has suffered in a way
to wring our hearts; but our sympathy and indignation must not blind
us to the fact that even in this case there has been a real advance
during the last three hundred years and that such things as were done
to Magdeburg and Wexford and Drogheda and the entire Palatinate in the
seventeenth century are no longer possible.
There is every reason to feel dissatisfied with the slow progress that
has been made in putting a stop to wrong-doing; it is our bounden duty
now to act so as to secure redress for wrong-doing; but nevertheless
we must also recognize the fact that some progress has been made, and
that there is now a good deal of real sentiment, and some efficient
sentiment, against international wrong-doing. There has been a real
growth toward international peace, justice, and fair dealing. We have
still a long way to go before reaching the goal, but at least we have
gone forward a little way toward the goal. This growth will continue.
We must do everything that we can to make it continue. But we must not
blind ourselves to the fact that as yet this growth is not such as in
any shape or way to warrant us in relying for our ultimate safety in
great national crises upon anything except the strong fibre of our
national character, and upon such preparation in advance as will give
that character adequate instruments wherewith to make proof of its
strength.