By Lord Channing of Wellingborough.
Lord Channing, who makes the following suggestion to American
statesmen, was born in the United States of the well-known
Channings of Boston. His father was the Rev. W.H. Channing,
Chaplain of the House of Representatives during the civil war
and a close friend of President Lincoln. Lord Channing has
been for twenty-five years a member of the British Parliament,
and for the last three years a member of the House of Lords,
having been created first Baron of Wellingborough in 1912. He
is President of the British National Peace Congress.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
As a member of the British Legislature for a generation, and a lifelong
Liberal, and having also the closest ties of blood with America, and a
proud reverence for her ideals, I would wish, with the utmost respect,
to offer some comments on one specific aspect of present affairs, as
they affect America, which does not seem to have been marked off with
the distinctness its importance calls for.
This is the greatest crisis in the history of the world, and attention
concentrates itself on the attitude of the greatest neutral State.
It is unthinkable that America can divest herself of responsibility for
the final outcome. This seems as clearly recognized in America as in
Europe.
To us in England this war is a life or death struggle between two
principles--Pan-Germanism on the one side, with its avowed purpose to
impose its hegemony and its rigid system of ideas and organization on
the rest of the world, not by consent, but by irresistible military
force; on the other side the claim of the other nations, large and
small, to maintain inviolate their freedom and individuality, and to
think and work out for themselves their own political and economic
future in their own way.
The one principle would seem the flat contradiction of all that America
stands for, the other principle would seem to be precisely the essential
idea of free self-government and democratic evolution, in which are
rooted the very life and being of America.
For this reason there is instinctive and profound sympathy on the part
of the great majority of native Americans with the cause of England and
her allies.
This sympathy is not merely the tie of blood or the unity of ideals.
Reason has convinced Americans that the supreme principles and highest
interests of America will be best safeguarded if the Allies win.
They dread instinctively what might happen if Pan-Germanism absorbed the
smaller nationalities, crushed the great free countries like France and
England, and dominated the whole world with the "mailed fist," not only
Europe and the Far East, but South America and the Pacific. Perhaps the
hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and
the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown
some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron
system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by German needs
cannot attract.
America Can't Stand Apart.
That is one side that American statesmen have to consider. There is, of
course, another.
The United States visibly form the greatest force the world has yet seen
to bring together, to unite, to assimilate, in the development of their
vast territories, measureless resources, and complicated industries, all
that is best from all the other great nations, welding slowly but
surely, through free institutions, these new elements into instruments
for the fuller realization of the generous and noble ideals for which
America stands. Perhaps an eighteenth or even fifteenth part of the
population is of German origin, a percentage not far from equal to that
contributed by the United Kingdom and Canada.
There is thus not only the broad question of avoiding war with Germany,
whose people have so large a share in the life of America, a war doubly
unwelcome at all times because of the innumerable links of science,
invention, professional training, of commerce, and of personal
friendship; but there is also the local question of peace and good-will
in the daily work of America as between huge sections of her population.
These visible facts not unnaturally give great weight to the argument
for neutrality. No wise man on this side of the Atlantic will try to
ignore them, or take exception to the dignity and correctness with which
the American Executive has dealt with the grave problem before it.
Neutrality has, of course, its limits and conditions, logical and moral.
Those limits and conditions, the possibility of their infringement in
such a way as to make some change of policy imperative, are matters
solely for the United States.
The point the present writer wishes to press is on a different plane,
and is precisely this:
America does not and can not stand wholly apart from supreme European
decisions.
America is as responsible as Europe for the great extensions,
definitions, the strengthening and modification of international law.
America stands forth as the apostle of arbitration, to widen the area
within which disputed points may be determined amicably. America stands
also as the chief signatory of the great world conventions which have
settled new rules for the conduct of war, to mitigate its horrors,
especially for non-combatants.
America has taken a noble part in framing machinery for securing peace
and justice, and in moving forward the landmarks of civilization as
against savagery, and of human mercy as against cruel terrorism.
Can America safely or wisely divest herself of the duty thus placed upon
her, logically and morally, by her participation in this, the noblest
work of our age?
And is it wise or is it safe to indefinitely postpone the discharge of
this duty?
By the events of the last three months the whole of this new charter of
humanity has been challenged and is at stake.
Is it not sound policy as well as an imperative duty to take some step
here and now to "stop the rot" and to make good here and now as much as
we can of what we have won and wish to keep?
Belgium's Wrongs.
Admittedly a "guiltless and unoffending nation,"[1] whose neutrality and
independence had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, to which the powers
concerned in the war were parties, has had her treaty rights violated by
one of these powers on the cynical plea that there is no right or wrong
as against national interest, that necessity obeys no law, and treaties
are "scraps of paper." This is not matter for inquiry or judicial
decision at some later date. It has been frankly avowed by the German
Government from the outset of this war.
[Footnote 1: Theodore Roosevelt.]
Again, this admitted wrong is not the sudden and unavoidable outcome of
events unforeseen and uncontrollable. It has been deliberately planned
years ahead, with elaborate preparation of railway and other facilities,
and with every invention and contrivance, to rush in irresistible
forces; to subvert and destroy the independent State that Germany was
herself pledged to defend.
Thirdly, this policy of absolute annihilation of Belgium, of its right
to live its own life, its right even to preserve those monuments of its
noble and beautiful history which had become treasured heirlooms of the
whole world, has been carried out with a ruthless barbarity to the
people, and especially the non-combatants, for which it is hard to find
a parallel in the worst incidents of the Thirty Years' War or of the
devastation of the Palatinate. To bring the actual guilt home to those
who actually did or ordered these deeds to be done in individual cases
is one thing. The broad fact that these barbarous deeds were done stands
manifest and insistent, and demands such instant action as can be taken
by a great and responsible people.
And, lastly, there is the undisguised adoption of the policy of
terrorizing non-combatants to submission by such acts as forcing women
and children to walk before the advancing enemy, the wholesale burning
of houses, shooting of hostages and other non-combatants, and the
dropping of bombs from aeroplanes not on forts or troops, but on places
where women and children can be killed or injured.
And all this tragic sweeping away of such good things as had been won
with worldwide consent, at the instance of the Czar in initiating The
Hague policy, has gone on, so far as it could go on, with equal horror,
throughout Northern France. Rheims and Senlis have suffered the fate of
Louvain and Termonde and Malines, and Paris has had her quota of women
and children wantonly slain by bombs, exactly like Antwerp.
The Threat to England.
And America knows, as we here in England know, from the open menace of
the German press, writing of England as the _one supreme enemy_, that it
is the full intention of Germans, if they can, to carry through England,
too, even more ruthlessly, the same policy.
We are fighting here, and are confident that we shall fight with
success, not only to protect our English homes and to guard the historic
buildings of this land but to make an end of this Prussian terrorism of
the world; to secure no national aggrandizement, but to secure a
permanent and solid peace, based on guaranteed liberties, and a rational
settlement of the question of armaments.
These questions touch us all the more because many of us have been the
most persistent friends of international peace and have specially
labored to promote happy and friendly relations with the German people.
The present writer, who was honored by election as President of this
year's National Peace Congress, has been associated with the work of men
like Lord Brassey, Sir John Lubbock, (later Lord Avebury,) as a member
of the Anglo-German Friendship League, and has repeatedly in Parliament
argued against any hostile or provocative attitude toward Germany. This
war is our answer and our reward!
America in the Settlement.
So far as can be judged from authoritative words of President Wilson and
ex-President Roosevelt, America does and will claim a right to share in
the final settlement of the terms of a permanent and stable peace.
If that claim is sound, if the efforts of America to create better
machinery for securing peace and for generously and humanely vindicating
the liberties and happiness of nations and of the individuals who make
them up do entitle America to a voice, and a potent voice, in the work
of mending and remaking the world after this terrific catastrophe, then
I would submit with all respect that it is really idle to wait till all
the recognized principles of what has been held to be right or wrong as
between nations, and what has been held to be right or wrong in the
methods of conducting war have gone overboard, without one word of
protest; we must save the world first, if we are to have a real chance
of remaking it on lines which are worth having.
Nothing but good could come from immediate action by the American
Executive to assert as they, best of all nations, could assert, now and
at once in terms uncompromising, unanswerable, that the ground taken up
by international consent in the past generation must be held now and
hereafter, and accepted as an essential basis of the final settlement.
Such a pronouncement now by America would make a landmark in
history--would render a measureless service to the whole world in
emancipation from the persistent degradation of the twin doctrines that
might makes right, and that necessity knows no law, and would bring to
America herself imperishable honor and glory in the fearless assertion
and eternal consecration of her own noblest ideals.
I would submit further that such a national declaration by America
involves no violation of neutrality, and is in no sense inconsistent
with the spirit of official utterances already made.
To take the latter first--we have had notable utterances from the
President and from the ex-President.
President Wilson seems to have given a sympathetic hearing to the
mission which laid the case of Belgium before him, both as to the
violation of Belgium's neutrality and as to the cruel treatment of the
non-combatant population and the wanton destruction of towns and
villages and of precious historical monuments. He is understood to have
promised an investigation, and it is gathered from the Indépendance
Belge this week that this investigation has been, and is being, carried
out by American Military Attachés in Belgium, and also at the London
Embassy of the United States.
Again, President Wilson's recent letter to the Kaiser, while confirming
neutrality in precise terms, went on to intimate that there must be a
"day of settlement" and that "where injustices have found a place
results are sure to follow, and all those who have been found at fault
will have to answer for them." If the "general settlement" does not
sufficiently determine this, there is the ultimate sanction of "the
opinion of mankind" which will "in such cases interfere." He would
apparently reserve judgment until the end of the war, but in no way
disclaims or surrenders American responsibility.
Mr. Roosevelt is not tied by official responsibility, and can speak with
less restraint and more freedom. In The Outlook he has substantially
accepted and indorsed all that is material in the Belgian case.
America should help in securing a peace which will not mean the
"crushing the liberty and life of just and inoffending peoples or
consecrate the rule of militarism," but which "will, by international
agreement, minimize the chances of the recurrence of such worldwide
disaster," and "will, in the interests of civilization, create
conditions which will make such action" as the violation of Belgian
treaty rights "impossible in the future."
Like President Wilson, he seems to think that the time for judicial
pronouncement on acts presumably guilty and wrongful will come at the
conclusion of the war. At the same time he surrenders no part of
America's responsibility, but reaffirms it with all the force of his
trenchant style.
But elsewhere, and later, he has insisted on the "helplessness"--the
"humiliating impotence created by the fact that our neutrality can only
be preserved by failure to help to right what is wrong."
Mr. Roosevelt's Remedy.
And he has gone on to adumbrate his practical remedy--"a world league"
with "an amplified Hague Court," made strong by joint agreement of the
powers, to secure "peace and righteousness," and to vindicate the just
decisions of such a court by "a union of forces to enforce the decree."
He adds that this might help to obtain a "limitation of armaments that
would be real and effective."
That so happy a plan may be capable of realization would be the hope of
all wise men.
But where I take exception with Col. Roosevelt is as to America's
present "impotence"--that nothing effectual can be done by America
without breaking her own neutrality.
That view I wholly traverse. It might conceivably be felt by America,
under certain grave eventualities, that neutrality must be broken.
But it is clear that the articles of The Hague Convention of 1907 amply
provide for the type of action here and now by the United States which
I have ventured to lay before American statesmen in this paper. And, in
my opinion, it is conceivable that more good might be achieved by
America taking that action, while maintaining her neutrality.
It goes without saying, it really needs no demonstration, that nearly
every international agreement embodied in The Hague Convention has been
broken, wholly or in part, in the letter and in the spirit, in the
proceedings of this unhappy year.
The violation of the territory of a neutral State by the transit of
belligerent troops and other acts of war is forbidden, (Articles 1, 2,
3, 4, &c.) It is the duty of the neutral State not to tolerate, (Article
5,) but to resist such acts, and her forcible resistance is not to be
regarded as an act of war, (Article 10.)
Interference with Neutrals.
That, of course, covers the case of Belgium completely and establishes
absolutely that there is, and need be, no breach of neutrality in
resistance thus legally sanctioned to illegal interference with neutral
rights.
It is hardly necessary to recapitulate the articles that have been torn
up. To refer to the most striking, there is the repeated bombardment of
undefended towns, pillage incessant throughout Belgium and Northern
France, (Articles 28 and 47;) the levying of illegal contributions,
(Articles 49 and 52;) the seizure of cash and securities belonging to
private persons, banks, and local authorities, (Articles 52 and 56;)
collective penalties for individual acts for which the community as a
whole are not responsible, (Article 50.) Articles 50 and 43 should have
made impossible the punitive destruction of Visé, Aerschot, Dinant, and
Louvain, and numberless villages; Article 56 should have preserved from
destruction institutions and buildings dedicated to religion, education,
charity, hospitals, &c. All these wrongful acts, committed everywhere,
have been prohibited by these articles.
The gradual introduction of the policy of terrorism has been ably traced
by perhaps the highest French authority on international law, Prof.
Edouard Clunet, formerly President of the Institute of International
Law, in a recent address.
"Bombardment par intimidation" was adopted by the Germans in 1870 and
used at Strassburg, Paris, Péronne, &c., shells being directed and
conflagrations spread in the inhabited parts of towns apart from the
fortifications. Germany herself assented to serious mitigations of this
practice at the Conference of Brussels in 1874 and at The Hague in 1907.
The worst evolution of the policy of terrorism has been in the throwing
from aeroplanes of bombs, explosive or incendiary. M. Clunet lays down
that, by the most recent decision of the institute, bomb throwing from
aeroplanes must follow the rules of bombardment by artillery. This would
prohibit such bombs without formal notice. But in Antwerp bombs were
dropped without notice over the Royal Palace, to the peril of the Queen
and her young children, and the number of peaceable inhabitants killed
or injured was thirty-eight, three children being mutilated in their
beds. In Paris, besides the bombs dropped on Notre Dame, bombs were
deliberately dropped in the public streets and a number of peaceable
victims killed or wounded. The dropping of bombs as an act of war on
fortresses, ammunition depots, Zeppelin sheds, &c., is, of course,
legal. But the bomb dropping adopted in Belgium and France, and
threatened in England, if the opportunity arises, is undisguised
terrorism, and not war.
It is important to note also that at Brussels in 1874 Antwerp addressed
a petition to the conference praying that any bombardment should be
limited to fortifications only. The commission of the conference, which
included three well-known German Generals and two professors, recognized
the justice of this plea and recommended Generals to conform to it.
But the one point that should appeal most strongly to the patriotism as
well as the idealism of America is the fact that the instructions of
1863 for armies in campaign, drawn up by the United States Government
in the height of the civil war, first codified the laws for the conduct
of war, and have been the source and starting point of all these later
international agreements.
And it should be remembered that both Germany and America signed the
Fourth Convention of The Hague with its annexed regulations as to sieges
and bombardments (Articles 22 to 28) and the further provision which may
even yet be applied punitively to the proceedings of the present war.
"The belligerent who shall have violated the provisions of the said
regulation shall be held liable for an indemnity."
And if it be thought that America can render no help in such a position
as the present without violating her neutrality, the answer is that by
Article 3 of Convention 1 of The Hague, 1907, neutral powers have the
right to offer their suggestions (bons offices) or their mediation, even
during the course of hostilities. And further: "The exercise of this
right must never be considered by one or the other of the parties to
the conflict as an unfriendly act."
With all submission, I earnestly urge on the leaders of American thought
to support this attempted interpretation of the supreme duty and the
noble opportunity the present position places before their country.
One more word. I referred to the possible benefit of neutrality being
maintained while this protest against wrong and appeal for right is at
the same time advanced.
Is it not more than probable that there is an immense section of
moderate though patriotic opinion in the great German people which at
heart deprecates the extreme doctrines of conquest and world supremacy
in pursuit of which the great, the wonderful achievements of the German
race in science, in industry, in the extension of commerce, are being
rashly risked?