but while Mr. Churchill really meant Socialism by Socialism, Mr. Lloyd
George only meant a tendency to vote for Labour instead of for Lloyd
George. By nature and tradition Mr. Lloyd George is on the Left side
in politics, and his experience of Tories and rich men during the
last few years has probably restored his leftward tendencies to their
primitive vigour. As his record in the Ministry of Munitions shows, he
has no respect for money: he throws it about, he can be careless and
rough with it, it is a means to an end, and he has probably accumulated
very little. Returned to power and faced by a spectacle of economic
débacle, he is capable of taxing, levying upon, and confiscating the
property of the rich to an extent that would make Mr. Henderson white
with terror and throw Mr. Ramsay MacDonald into convulsions of Scotch
caution. (But mark you, it won’t be Socialism. He is against Socialism.)
So Mr. Lloyd George emerges again from his temporary eclipse seated on
the back of a united Liberal Party and already leaning a little to the
Left. As the world situation develops he will probably lean more and
more to the Left. Until he leans right over the Socialist programme.
He has with him the affectionate distrust of a great multitude of his
countrymen. They like his smile, have a profound sympathy for his
tendencies, and wish they knew more of his intentions. He is by far
the most vigorous and popular personality in the new House. He may do
anything. This election that has reunited the Liberal Party in his
interest has cost the country over two million pounds. We trust him to
give us a show for our money.
XIV
SPAIN AND ITALY WHISPER TOGETHER
15.12.23
The noise of the British General Election subsides, and we realise that
a crisis of supreme insignificance to the world in general is over. The
affair has had much the same importance as a wayside epileptic fit.
The patient falls into convulsive movements, emits strange noises.
Presently it is all over, and the patient seems very little the worse
for it. Britain’s herself again, and nobody can tell what it meant at
all. One can only hope that there will not be another fit for some
time. But there is no knowing. Great Britain is subject to these fits.
The space and attention that long-established custom has directed to
these manifestations has a little distracted attention from an event of
much greater significance: the coming together of Spain and Italy.
It became inevitable when President Poincaré made his speech about
Black France, probably the most stupid speech ever made by a
responsible statesman. There were Frenchmen who saw in his policy the
certainty of a final isolation face to face with a Germany driven to
desperation. He rebuked them for their fears. There were not forty
million Frenchmen, he said, but a hundred million. He called in sixty
million Africans to redress the balance of the population in Europe.
He directed the attention of all the world to the steady progress
of the Black French policy. For this the French were building their
submarines, to protect their transports on their way from Africa to
France. That was admitted even in 1921 at Washington. But now all
Europe turns its eyes to the great railway developments of France in
Africa, and sees the material confirmation of President Poincaré’s
threat. These railways are plainly not development railways; they are
strategic railways. They are as surely strategic railways as the lines
the German Imperialists made to the Belgian frontier.
That White France that so many Americans and English love like a second
motherland, the White France of the Great Revolution, of Lafayette
and Mirabeau, of Voltaire and Pasteur and Anatole France, France the
propagandist of liberty, equality, and fraternity throughout the world,
France the guardian of art and of personal freedom and of the gracious
life, passes into eclipse beneath this black shadow. Black France is
ousting her from men’s imaginations and sympathies.
It was impossible for Italy and Spain to see this scheme coming into
reality under their eyes without an intense repulsion. Response on
their part followed almost automatically. The French organisation
of North Africa jostles both Italy and Spain intolerably. The
fragmentation of Germany, the impoverishment of England, will leave
both these countries, if they remain disunited, in a position of
helplessness under the domination of what all Europe is coming to
regard as the most egoistic of nations. Any reasonably intelligent
boy of sixteen who had followed the course of events could have told
President Poincaré that the necessary result of his Black French policy
and his Black France speech would be an understanding between Italy and
Spain for joint preparations to cut the umbilical cord between France
in Europe and France in Africa whenever a due occasion might arise.
A glance at a map of Europe will show how comparatively easy it
would be to do that. The Balearic Isles of Spain are less than two
hundred miles from Italian Sardinia. Across that line the transports
bringing the Africans to Europe must go--four hundred miles of open
sea. Confronted with the map that stream of transports pouring black
troops into France is seen to be the most foolish dream that has ever
corrupted the policy of a great nation. Neither Spain nor Italy nor
Britain, nor, indeed, mankind at large, can allow it. They cannot
afford to allow it.
Yet it is upon this project, doomed beforehand, that the whole forward
policy of France has rested and rests to-day. Two virtual dictators,
Mussolini and General de Rivera, talk quietly together and look at it,
and it begins to fade.
That is the obvious significance of this recent visit of King Alfonso
with his minister to Rome. But more than that one paramount question
seems to have been discussed. Both Spain and Italy are still in form
constitutional monarchies modelled or remodelled in the nineteenth
century on the not very congenial British pattern--which in that
time was the political fashion everywhere. Recent events have thrust
the monarchs of both countries a little aside in favour of virtual
dictators. Except for the persistence of the crown, both Italy and
Spain have taken on a new resemblance to the republics of Latin
America. Those countries seem to find their natural form of political
expression neither in royal rule nor in parliamentary forms, but in
some sort of dictator-president. The social and intellectual life
and probably the political thought of Latin America may be in as
close touch and may even be in closer touch with the European mother
countries than is the case between Great Britain and her Dominions.
There is a great Italian population in several South American States;
and everywhere in Italy and the Spanish Peninsula one comes upon
the houses of rich “Americanos”--from the Argentine and Brazil,
and so forth. And it is quite easy to believe the rumours that the
conversations in Rome went beyond the Mediterranean and considered the
possibility of still greater alliances and understandings in support
of the Latin idea, from which France, which is neither northern with
the British and Germans nor Latin with the Italians, but half and half
between them, and incurably and self-centredly France, may be excluded.
I will not write here now of how an understanding of that sort might
affect the relationship of its participants to the League of Nations,
nor will I speculate how the United States and the Monroe doctrine
would be touched by such a coalescence of old and new world Latinism.
The first, most obvious reaction of this new move towards a higher
unity is upon France. I do not know how far the newspaper consortium
in France will allow the news of what has happened to reach the white
population of France. For long the European French have been kept in
profound ignorance of the gathering British distrust of their foreign
policy, and in still profounder ignorance of the reasons for that
distrust. I believe attempts are now being made in France to represent
this coming together of Spain and Italy as an alliance to keep Britain
out of the Mediterranean. It is nothing of the sort. It is an alliance
to restrain French Africa. But there have been signs since King
Alfonso’s visit to Rome of a dim realisation even on the part of M.
Poincaré of the circle of dismay and disapproval that is closing in
slowly and steadily upon France.
I wish Frenchmen travelled more. I wish they were more receptive of
unflattering news. I wish they could realise the enormous distress
with which civilised men everywhere, in New York and London as in Rome
and Madrid, watch their fantastic dance over the broken body of Germany
to absolute isolation in the world’s affairs.
XV
LATIN AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE
22.12.23
In my previous article I discussed the visit of King Alfonso to Rome,
and the profound significance to France and the world in general of the
conversations that must have taken place there between the Spanish and
Italian dictators. Among other issues was the possibility of a Latin
League, comprehending the two European peninsulas and Latin America. I
return to this idea.
At the least it is an imaginative gesture on the parts of General de
Rivera and Signor Mussolini on a higher creative level than anything
we have had from European statecraft for some time. At the best it
may be an opening of a way towards a real league of peoples for the
preservation of the world’s peace.
It is suggested that all these Latin peoples, who have so much in
common, who are so admirably equipped for a common understanding
and the achievement of a common destiny, should withdraw from that
lamentable cul-de-sac of good intentions, the existing League of
Nations, in order to group themselves together for collective
action in the world’s affairs. Now that is a very hopeful idea. Let
us see just how it might be extended. Suppose the British Empire
also presently came out of the League in order to be free for a
parallel and still more potent grouping with the United States of
the English-speaking communities. It seems to me that in these
rearrangements we should have two great steps made towards a real
conference of the peoples of the earth.
The next step would be the entry of France into an association with
these two groups. France, half northern and half Latin, would be free
to relieve the world of its nightmare dream of La France Nègre, because
it could find its security in a new Atlantic Association. It could
deal with these two agglomerations as a necessary associate and link
and intermediary; and Paris, so balanced, could remain a world centre
instead of sinking to the level of a mere nationalist capital. That
threefold grouping need have no fear of a Germany restored and a Russia
reborn.
It is of supreme importance, if we are to get on to any real and
effective world confederation, that it should be a gathering of
linguistic, racial, and cultural groups rather than of nationalist
governments--trailing their infernal “foreign” policies into its
deliberations. That is the most obvious defect of the Geneva situation;
it is not a gathering of world representatives, but a bargain- and
alliance-hunting place for diplomatists. One of the most obvious
consequences of such larger aggregations of kindred peoples would
be that in them the old nationalist and imperialist policies that
still divide and afflict the world would be dissolved and lost. Spain
and Italy linked up to Latin America would find little support for
adventures in North Africa. Great Britain, tied a little closer to the
United States, would be under a new restraint towards Mesopotamia or
Asia Minor.
This idea of a league of peoples into which the Powers of the world
would come not as “national” sovereign States, but as great groups of
States, each group with something like a common culture, is not a new
one. It was suggested in the memorandum of 1918 upon which the British
propaganda against Germany was based. But President Wilson and the
British Foreign Office ignored that, and indeed most other documents
and facts, when the existing League of Nations was brought into
being--and so we have this preposterous body at Geneva, which is, and
must be, I maintain, for any large and grave international occasions, a
hopelessly useless body.
I use the word “preposterous.” That may seem a harsh, excessive epithet
to many readers. They believe in this sham. They give it their love
and enthusiasm. They burn indignantly at my criticisms and treat me as
an enemy to Peace and mankind. But I would put before them, mainly in
the words of Mr. H. Wilson Harris, a little story of what happened
at Geneva this year, and I would ask them to remember that this is an
assembly from which the sixty millions of Germany and the hundred odd
millions of Russia are inexorably barred out--presumably as unfit for
representation.
Abyssinia is not barred out. Abyssinia is now taking its part with
France, Sweden, Britain, and the other great nations of the world--in
whatever the League of Nations is permitted to do. Here is the account
of the coming of Abyssinia. It must surely fill the citizens of the
United States with envious admiration. “The delegation consisted of
two dark-skinned native representatives and a French adviser,” Count
Robert Linant de Bellefonds, bearing a letter of authorisation from
“Her Majesty the Queen of the Kings of Ethiopia.” A few minor questions
had to be settled by telegram between the Queen’s Court and Geneva.
Ethiopia renounced the slave trade and one or two other little domestic
oddities by cable, and on September 28,
“amid resounding cheers, an impressive Ethiopian, clad in a black silk
cape over a kind of surplice, and with white duck trousers gathered
in at the ankles, slowly mounted the tribune, and, settling a pair
of gold-rimmed glasses with much deliberation on his swarthy nose,
proceeded to repeat an incomprehensible declaration in his native
tongue”
--of the best intentions in the world.
The assembly presently proceeded to re-elect the non-permanent members
of the Council. China was dropping out, and Poland, the closest ally
of France in Europe, was put forward. Abyssinia, now a seasoned member
of upward a week’s standing, became a passionate supporter of Poland.
Cablegrams suddenly appeared from the Queen of the Kings, “intimating
that the Government of that distant and dusky realm was earnest in its
support of Poland’s candidature _on account of the historic ties which
bound the two countries to one another_.”
I wish I could have heard Count Robert de Bellefonds on these historic
ties. I think that justifies my “preposterous” up to the hilt. I think,
too, it justifies my reiterated assertion that the constitution of the
League is so hopeless, so childish, so diplomatically conceived and
useless, that nothing but reorganisation from the ground upward can
give us a proper organ for the expression of the real need and desire
for unity in the world.
Of course, Count Robert Linant de Bellefonds has led this tame vote for
France into the ring partly in emulation and partly in derision of the
British troupe of young lions, and the absolutely domesticated Indian
elephant. France scored a point against Britain. To this the League has
come in four brief years. Anyone but a pedant could have foretold this
sort of thing, as the necessary fruit of the principle of one sovereign
State one vote.
I hope the full significance of the Abyssinian turn has not been lost
on the Latin American States. It may help them to realise why there
should be this feeling in Spain and Italy against the League, and the
excellent reasons there are for setting up some new association for the
working out and expression of the will of the Latin civilisation as
a whole in the world’s affairs. It may help their decision towards a
creative withdrawal. For the world is in urgent need of a real League
of Nations and a real conference of peoples--this costume parade at
Geneva is a mere mockery of its hopes.
XVI
COSMOPOLITAN AND INTERNATIONAL
29.12.23
Sometimes words for quite unaccountable reasons get down on their luck.
They lose caste, they drop out of society, nobody will be seen about
with them.
A word for which I have the greatest sympathy is “Cosmopolitan.” I
want to see it restored to a respectable use. It is a fine word and
it embodies a fine idea. But for more than half the English-speaking
people who hear it, I suppose, it carries with it the quality of a
shady, illicit individual with a bad complexion, a falsified passport
and a police record. This creature to be typical should be mixed up
with the drug traffic and a danger to the inexperienced and honest
everywhere; Monte Carlo is the idea of heaven for such a Cosmopolitan,
and Ellis Island the corresponding hell. I don’t know how it has come
about that this good word Cosmopolitan has got so firmly attached to
the trunks of such gentry, for the proper term that should be there
is surely “extreme individualist.” Even “Internationalist” would be a
better word for a man or woman who passes between country and country
and belongs to none. But I do not see why we should punish a word
because it has been stupidly misapplied.
For what is Cosmopolis but the City of the World, and what can a
Cosmopolitan be but a good citizen wherever he goes? That is what I
want to be and not International--which seems to me an altogether
homeless adjective. It means, I take it, “in between nations”--in
between the substantial things of life. The only truly international
thing is the ocean outside territorial waters. Trying to be
International is like trying to walk about on the cracks between
the boards, instead of walking on the floor; you could only do it
if you had feet like skates, and I cannot understand why we tack
this dismal adjective nowadays on to all our current attempts to get
human brotherhood put upon a broader basis than parochial or national
feeling. I am an Englishman and a Cosmopolitan, a good Englishman, and
I hope a good Cosmopolitan; I do not see why I should repudiate my own
original plank or any other planks because I want to go freely over all
the floor.
My emotional equipment as a faithful son of England I claim to be sound
and complete. To the end of my days I shall think of England, the
kindly England of the south-east, London and Essex, Kent and Sussex,
as my own very particular region of the world. London is mine, as no
other city can ever be; I have seen it grow and change and become
ever more wonderful and beautiful and dear to me since first I came
up to it, to the stupendous gloomy vault of Cannon Street Station,
half a century ago. But Paris also, open and elegant, with a delicate
excitement in its air; New York, the towering and beautiful; many a
prim South German town; Venice; Rome, as I remember it, before reviving
prosperity and that vile monument to Victor Emmanuel vulgarised it so
hopelessly; frosty and sullen Petersburg, have charmed me, and I want a
share in their happiness and welfare, I want to possess them also and
to care for them, and I am ready to barter the welcome of my London in
exchange. Cosmopolis is all these cities and a thousand others, and I
want to be free of them all.
But the world is full of stupid people who will not let me be free of
Cosmopolis. They make my England almost a gaol for me by inventing a
thousand inconveniences if I want to go out of it. There are passport
offices and tariff offices stuck across every path of travel and
desire; there are differences in coinage and a multitude of petty
restrictions to exasperate every attempt I make at holiday in my
Europe. The streets of Cosmopolis are up and barricaded; I want to
break down these barricades.
There is not a reasonable and honest man in the world who does not want
a uniform coinage about the earth. Only the greedy, cunning exchange
speculator--and idiot collectors--want either varied coinages or a
variety of stamps in this world. If the League of Nations at Geneva
wasn’t the dismallest sham on the earth, it would insist upon running
the posts of Europe and having a mint of its own. Wherever one goes
in Europe one finds oneself loaded up with foreign money that ceases
to be current after a day’s journey, and with useless postage stamps.
And every silly little scrap of Europe is pretending to be a separate
economic system--in mysterious conflict with other economic systems.
Every hundred miles or so in Europe there is a fresh tariff barrier.
Everybody, except for a few monopolists and officials, loses by
tariffs. They are devices for gaining a little for some particular
section of mankind at the cost of an infinitely greater loss to
Cosmopolis. Mean and narrow in conception, they are abominable in
action. It is an intolerable nuisance to be searched for tobacco and
matches by some sedulous eater of garlic before one may enter France
from England--they even turn out your pockets now--and to have one’s
portmanteau locks broken and one or two minor possessions stolen
whenever one goes into Italy. At Dover they read the books you have
with you to see if they are improper. The quays of New York again,
after the arrival of a liner, are a grossly indecent spectacle. They go
half-way back from civilisation to the barbecue of a foreign sailor by
cannibal wreckers. Much as I like New York, I never miss a thrill of
intense anger when the large hand of the Customs officer routs among
my under-clothes.
And these are only the minor inconveniences of not living in
Cosmopolis; they are just the superficial indications that the world
one moves about in is a thin crust hanging insecurely above the abyss
of war. I do not believe that any mere Internationalism and League of
Nations that leaves the coinages separate, and the Customs Houses on
the frontiers, and the passport officials busy at their little wickets
with their nasty rubber stamps, which leaves the mean profits of tariff
manipulation possible for influential people, which denies by all these
things our common ownership and common responsibility for all the
world, can ever open the way to world peace.
I am for world-control of production and of trade and transport,
for a world coinage, and the confederation of mankind. I am for the
super-State, and not for any League. Cosmopolis is my city, and I
shall die cut off from it. When I die I shall have lived only a part
of my possible life, a sort of life in a corner. And this is true of
nearly all the rest of mankind alive at the present time. The world
is a patchwork of various sized internment camps called Independent
Sovereign States, and we are each caught in our bit of the patchwork
and cannot find a way of escape. Because most of us have still to
realise, as I do, a passionate desire to escape. But a day will come
when Custom House officers will be as rare as highwaymen in Sussex,
and when the only passports in the world will be found alongside
of Aztec idols and instruments of torture and such-like relics of
superstition in our historical museums.
XVII
THE PARLIAMENTARY TRIANGLE
5.1.24
That profoundly absurd body the British Parliament will meet on January
8, and the recondite and fascinating game of party politics will be
resumed under novel conditions with three parties, none of which have a
majority, and with a Labour Party in sight, not of power, but of office.
I call the British Parliament an absurd body with set and measured
intention. It is twice as big as it ought to be for efficient
government; it carries a load, a fatty encumbrance, of more than three
hundred undistinguished and useless members; much of its procedure, its
method of taking divisions for example, is idiotically wasteful of the
nation’s time; and it is elected by methods so childishly crude that
it represents neither the will nor the energy nor the intelligence of
the country. It dissipates and caricatures the national consciousness.
Assembled, it will have nothing definite to say to France, Germany,
Russia, America, or to the festering mass of British unemployed. From
the Parliamentary point of view that sort of thing is subsidiary.
Its party leaders will engage at once in the primary business of
party leaders, which is, of course, to secure the sweets of office as
speedily and securely as possible.