The new scheme for a League of Peace can make very little appeal to
practical minds that give it real attention. Like all such plans it is
largely visionary and based upon assumptions and premises which have no
basis in fact because they fail to take into account the fundamentally
static selfishness of human nature. The leaders of this movement strike
ground only at one point and then impotently. They recognize the fact
that anything done in the way of working for permanent peace must be
accomplished through force and not by moral suasion.
Their scheme is to gather together the powers of the earth into a peace
league, the members of which will pool their military and naval strength
for the common good. No country will thereafter be permitted to make war
upon another until certain measures of prevention have been taken and
certain formalities observed, all with a view to settling the trouble
in a peaceful way. If a government transgresses, the whole world will
immediately jump on its back.
This is an extension of the international police idea of visionaries who
only a short year ago were still telling the world that conflicts between
great powers were at an end and that establishments for the prosecution
of war might henceforth be limited to police armaments for keeping in
order the smaller and less civilized nations such as the Balkan states
and Mexico. Naturally the European war has smashed this illusion. But it
has not discouraged the illusionists.
A very important defect in the League of Peace scheme is that it cannot
be guaranteed to work, and a plan of this sort which cannot be guaranteed
is likely to become a greater menace to peace through backfire than no
agreement at all. It means a close association and conflict of unmixable
interests and ambitions which are sure to create friction of a most
inflammatory sort.
Suppose the United States and Japan and the great powers of Europe and
the A. B. C. alliance join this league. Suppose after the league is
duly organized two of the most powerful states, states relatively as
strong as Germany and Russia were at the outset of the present war, get
into a wrangle. Suppose they disregard their promises and incontinently
go to war. How are they to be stopped and disciplined? Only through a
general world war beside which the one now in progress might sink into
insignificance. The whole population of the globe might be obliged to
fight in order to keep the peace.
A great defect in all these schemes of peace promotors and disarmament
enthusiasts is that they hope to create an artificial condition of
placidity without natural incentive, and fail to take into account the
element of self-interest which alone can make a peace pact of practical
value. Alliances, ententes and treaties among nations having common
interests have played large parts in the history of the world and have
led to prolonged periods of peace as well as to bloody wars, but they
generally have been enduring and valuable in close proportion to the
strength of their appeal to self-interest among the parties concerned.