NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT
The change noted in the preceding chapter raises certain profound
questions of Right. These may be indicated as follows:--
* * * * *
By our political power we _can_ create a Europe which, while not
assuring advantage to the victor, deprives the vanquished of means of
existence. The loss of both ore and coal by the Central Powers might
well make it impossible for their future populations to find food. What
are they to do? Starve? To disclaim responsibility is to claim that we
are entitled to use our power to deny them life.
This 'right' to starve foreigners can only be invoked by invoking the
concept of nationalism. 'Our nation first.' But the policy of placing
life itself upon a foundation of preponderant force instead of mutually
advantageous co-operation, compels statesmen perpetually to betray the
principle of nationality; not only directly (as in the case of the
annexation of territory, economically necessary, but containing peoples
of alien nationality), but indirectly; for the resistance which our
policy (of denying means of subsistence to others) provokes, makes
preponderance of power the condition of survival. All else must give way
to that need.
Might cannot be pledged to Right in these conditions. If our power is
pledged to Allies for the purposes of the Balance (which means, in fact,
preponderance), it cannot be used against them to enforce respect for
(say) nationality. To turn against Allies would break the Balance. To
maintain the Balance of Power we are compelled to disregard the moral
merits of an Ally's policy (as in the case of the promise to the Czar's
Government not to demand the independence of Poland). The maintenance of
a Balance (_i.e._ preponderance) is incompatible with the maintenance of
Right. There is a conflict of obligation.
Before the War, a writer in the _National Review_, desiring to show the
impossibility of obviating war by any international agreement, took the
example of the conflict with Germany and put the case as follows:--
'Germany _must_ go to war. Every year an extra million babies are
crying out for more room, and as the expansion of Germany by
peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those
babies at the cost of potential foes.
'This ... it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious
greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space
which more than a thousand years ago drove one Teutonic wave after
another across the Rhine and the Alps, is now once more a great
compelling force.... This aspect of the case may be all very sad
and very wicked, but it is true.... Herein lies the ceaseless and
ruinous struggle for armaments, and herein for France lies the dire
necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful
allies.'
'And so,' adds the writer, 'it is impossible and absurd to accept the
theory of Mr. Norman Angell.'
Now that theory was, not that Germany and others would not fight--I was
very insistent indeed that[26] unless there was a change in European
policy they would--but that war, however it might end, would not solve
the question. And that conclusion at least, whatever may be the case
with others, is proved true.
For we have had war; we have beaten Germany; and those million babies
still confront us. The German population and its tendency to increase is
still there. What are we going to do about it? The War has killed two
million out of about seventy million Germans; it killed very few of the
women. The subsequent privations of the blockade certainly disposed of
some of the weaker among both women and children. The rate of increase
may in the immediate future be less. It was declining before the War as
the country became more prosperous, following in this what seems to be a
well-established rule: the higher the standard of civilisation the more
does the birth-rate decline. But if the country is to become extremely
frugal and more agricultural, this tendency to decline is likely to be
checked. In any case the number of mouths to be fed will not have been
decreased by war to the same extent that the resources by which they
might have been fed have been decreased.
What do we propose to Germany, now that we have beaten her, as the means
of dealing with those million babies? Professor Starling, in a report to
the British Government,[27] suggests emigration:--
'Before the War Germany produced 85 per cent. of the total food
consumed by her inhabitants. This large production was only
possible by high cultivation, and by the plentiful use of manure
and imported feeding stuffs, means for the purchase of these being
furnished by the profits of industry.... The loss to Germany of 40
per cent. of its former coal output must diminish the number of
workers who can be maintained. The great increase in German
population during the last twenty-five years was rendered possible
only by exploiting the agricultural possibilities of the soil to
the greatest possible extent, and this in its turn depended on the
industrial development of the country. The reduction by 20 per
cent. in the productive area of the country, and the 40 per cent.
diminution in the chief raw material for the creation of wealth,
renders the country at present over-populated, and it seems
probable that within the next few years many million (according to
some estimates as many as fifteen million) workers and their
families will be obliged to emigrate, since there will be neither
work nor food for them to be obtained from the reduced industries
of the country.'
But emigration where? Into Russia? The influence of Germans in Russia
was very great even before the War. Certain French writers warn us
frantically against the vast danger of Russia's becoming a German colony
unless a cordon of border States, militarily strong, is created for the
purpose of keeping the two countries apart. But we should certainly get
a Germanisation of Russia from the inside if five or ten or fifteen
million Germans were dispersed therein and the country became a
permanent reservoir for those annual million babies.
And if not Russia, where? Imagine a migration of ten or fifteen million
Huns throughout the world--a dispersion before which that of the Jews
and of the Irish would pale. We know how the migration from an Ireland
of eight millions that could not feed itself has reacted upon our
politics and our relations with America. What sort of foreign problems
are we going to bequeath to our children if our policy forces a great
German migration into Russia, or the Balkans, or Turkey?
This insistent fact of a million more or less of little Huns being born
into the world every year remains. Shall we suggest to Germany that she
must deal with this problem as the thrifty householder deals with the
too frequent progeny of the family cat?
Or shall we do just nothing, and say that it is not our affair; that as
we have the power over the iron of Lorraine and Morocco, over the
resources of Africa and Asia, over the ocean highways of the world, we
are going to see that that power, naval and military, is used to ensure
abundance for ourselves and our friends; that as for others, since they
have not the power, they may starve? _Vae victis_ indeed![28]
Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine
that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of
the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny
to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to
existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that
military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to
choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their
case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their
children, their livelihood.
Let us compare France's position. Unlike the German, the French
population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the
years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite
decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low
birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have
been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very
deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining
population is among the richest and most varied in the world, producing
in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results
which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the
sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial
empire--in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest
food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa,
Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist
principles.
We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency
to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be),
possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral
resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many
times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much
larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller
territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory
without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have
passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of
self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials
from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned.
Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable,
resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary
economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of
'free and independent national states' of Mr. Asquith's phrase?[29]
If things are left where this Treaty leaves them, then the militarist
theories which before were fallacies will have become true. We can no
longer say that peoples as distinct from imperialist parties have no
interest in conquest. In this new world of to-morrow--this 'better and
more stable world'--the interests of peoples themselves will be in
deadly conflict. For an expanding people it will be a choice between
robbery of neighbours' territory and starvation. Re-conquest of Lorraine
will become for the Germans not a matter of hurt pride or sentiment, but
a matter of actual food need, a need which will not, like hurt pride,
diminish with the lapse of time, but increase with the growth of the
population. On the side of war, then, truly we shall find 'the human
stomach and the human womb.'
The change is a deeper reversion than we seem to realise. Even under
feudalism the means of subsistence of the people, the land they
cultivated, remained as before. Only the lords were changed--and one
lord was very like another. But where, under modern industrial economy,
titles to property in indispensable raw materials can be cancelled by a
conqueror and become the State property of the conquering nation, which
enforces the right to distribute them as it pleases, whole populations
may find themselves deprived of the actual means of supporting
themselves on the territory that they occupy.
We shall have set up a disruptive ferment working with all the force of
the economic needs of 50 or 100 million virile folk to bring about once
more some vast explosion. Europe will once more be living on a volcano,
knowing no remedy save futile efforts to 'sit on the lid.'
The beginnings of the attempt are already visible. Colonel Repington
points out that owing to the break up of Russia and Austria, and the
substitution for these two powerful States of a large number of small,
independent ones likely to quarrel among themselves, Germany will be the
largest and most cohesive of all the European Continental nations,
relatively stronger than she was before the War. He demands in
consequence, that not only France, but Holland and Belgium, be extended
to the Rhine, which must become the strategic frontier of civilisation
against barbarism. He says there can be no sort of security otherwise.
He even reminds us that it was Rome's plan. (He does not remind us that
if it had notably succeeded then we should hardly be trying it again two
thousand years later.) The plan gives us, in fact, this prospect: the
largest and most unified racial block in Europe will find itself
surrounded by a number of lesser States, containing German minorities,
and possessing materials indispensable to Germany's economic life, to
which she is refused peaceful access in order that she may not become
strong enough to obtain access by force; an attempt which she will be
compelled to make because peaceful access is denied to her. Our measures
create resistance; that resistance calls forth more extreme measures;
those measures further resistance, and so on. We are in the thick once
more of Balance of Power, strategic frontiers, every element of the old
stultifying statecraft against which all the Allies--before the
Armistice--made flaming protest.
And when this conflict of rights--each fighting as he believes for the
right to life--has blazed up into passions that transcend all thought of
gain or advantage, we shall be asked somewhat contemptuously what
purpose it serves to discuss so cold a thing as 'economics' in the midst
of this welter.
It won't serve any purpose. But the discussion of economics before it
had become a matter for passion might have prevented the conflict.
The situation has this complication--and irony: Increasing prosperity, a
higher standard of living, sets up a tendency prudentially to check
increase of population. France, and in hardly less degree even new and
sparsely populated countries like Australia, have for long shown a
tendency to a decline of the rate of increase. In France, indeed, as has
already been mentioned, an absolute decrease had set in before the War.
But as soon as this tendency becomes apparent, the same nationalist who
invokes the menace of over-population as the justification for war, also
invokes nationalism to reverse the tendency which would solve the
over-population problem. This is part of the mystic nature of the
nationalist impulse. Colonel Roosevelt is not the only warlike
nationalist who has exhausted the resources of invective to condemn
'race suicide' and to enjoin the patriotic duty of large families.
We may gather some idea of the morasses into which the conception of
nationalism and its 'mystic impulses' may lead us when applied to the
population problem by examining some current discussions of it. Dr
Raymond Pearl, of John Hopkins University, summarises certain of his
conclusions thus:--
'There are two ways which have been thought of and practised, by
which a nation may attempt to solve its problem of population after
it has become very pressing and after the effects of internal
industrial development and its creation of wealth have been
exhausted. These are respectively the methods of France and
Germany. By consciously controlled methods, France endeavoured, and
on the whole succeeded, in keeping her birth-rate at just such a
delicate balance with the death-rate as to make the population
nearly stationary. Then any industrial developments simply
operated to raise the standard of living of those fortunate enough
to be born. France's condition, social economy, and political, in
1914 represented, I think, the results of about the maximum
efficiency of what may be called the birth-control method of
meeting the problem of population.
'Germany deliberately chose the other plan of meeting the problem
of population. In fewest words the scheme was, when your population
pressed too hard upon subsistence, and you had fully liquidated the
industrial development asset, to go out and conquer some one,
preferably a people operating under the birth-control population
plan, and forcibly take his land for your people. To facilitate
this operation a high birth-rate is made a matter of sustained
propaganda, and in every other possible way encouraged. An
abundance of cannon fodder is essential to the success of the
scheme.'[30]
A word or two as to the facts alleged in the foregoing. We are told that
the two nations not only followed respectively two different methods,
but that it was in each case a deliberate national choice, supported by
organised propaganda. 'By consciously controlled methods, France,' we
are told, 'endeavoured' to keep her birth-rate down. The fact is, of
course, that all the conscious endeavours of 'France,' if by France is
meant the Government, the Church, the learned bodies, were in the
exactly contrary direction. Not only organised propaganda, but most
elaborate legislation, aiming through taxation at giving a preference to
large families, has for a generation been industriously urging an
increase in the French population. It has notoriously been a standing
dish in the menu of the reformers and uplifters of nearly every
political party. What we obviously have in the case of France is not a
decision made by the nation as a corporate body and the Government
representing it, but a tendency which their deliberate decision, as
represented by propaganda and legislation, has been unable to check.[31]
In discussing the merits of the two plans, Dr Pearl goes on:--
'Now the morals of the two plans are not at issue here. Both are
regarded, on different grounds to be sure, as highly immoral by
many people. Here we are concerned only with actualities. There can
be no doubt that in general and in the long run the German plan is
bound to win over the birth-control plan, if the issue is joined
between the two and only the two, and its resolution is military in
character.... So long as there are on the earth aggressively-minded
peoples who from choice deliberately maintain a high birth-rate, no
people can afford to put the French solution of the population
problem into operation unless they are prepared to give up,
practically at the asking, both their national integrity and their
land.'
Let us assume, therefore, that France adopts the high birth-rate plan.
She, too, will then be compelled, if the plan has worked out
successfully, 'to get out and conquer some one.' But that some one will
also, for the same reasons, have been following the plan of high
birth-rate. What is then to happen? A competition in fecundity as a
solution of the excess population problem seems inadequate. Yet it is
inevitably prompted by the nationalist impulse.
Happily the general rise in the standard of life itself furnishes a
solution. As we have seen, the birth-rate is, within certain limits, in
inverse ratio to a people's prosperity. But again, nationalism, by
preventing the economic unification of Europe, may well stand in the way
of that solution also. It checks the tendencies which would solve the
problem.
A fall in the birth-rate, as a concomitant of a rising standard of
living, was beginning to be revealed in Germany also before the War.[32]
If now, under the new order, German industrialism is checked and we get
an agricultural population compelled by circumstances to a standard of
life not higher than that of the Russian _moujik_, we may perhaps also
be faced by a revival of high fertility in mystic disregard of the
material means available for the support of the population.
There is a further point.
Those who have dealt with the world's food resources point out that
there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties
do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution
of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten
Commandments--particularly the eighth--do not run. By the code of
nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation
may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those
who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is
political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people
is what Colonel Roosevelt called 'intense Nationalism,' intense
nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt, even at some
cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as
possible self-sufficing.
It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States
in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create
a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist
upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he
will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of
diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be
poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the
result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with
starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of
Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil
fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable
of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to
the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and
the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the
real cause of the scarcity.
And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we
may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners--Boche
or Bolshevist--suffer in still greater degree.
Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely
distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that
the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of
maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries,
creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably
difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of
co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree,
deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first
instance, from the 'herd,' or tribal, instinct, and develops into a
sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the
conviction that there exists a conflict of interest, the result is
pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these
terms:--
If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight
one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must
starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible.
Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this
is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in
the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: 'Either I
have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let's come to a friendly
agreement about it.' They won't come to a friendly agreement about it.
They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it
really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they
would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that
there was ample food within their reach--out of their reach, say, so
long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on
the shoulders of the other ('this is an allegory'), and so get the fat
cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be
cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the
only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact,
which would provoke them to fight.
When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw
material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of
that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about
primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves--Britain or
France--in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the
indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite
soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government
urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves,
of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it
was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help
Germany. And even when one gets a stage further and there is general
admission 'in the abstract' that if France is to secure reparations,
Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility
stands in the way of any specific measure.
We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a
psychology which, gathering round words like 'patriotism,' deprives us
of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry
through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be
indispensable to our country's welfare.
We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics
without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of
nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic
facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic
relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great);
group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important,
the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the
moral phenomena of nationalism--group preferences or prejudices, herd
instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in
international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a
problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the
manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own
countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions
are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as
primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of
the conflict of nationalisms.
One very commonly hears the argument: 'What is the good of discussing
economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our
participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by
economic considerations?'
Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very
well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a
stronger motive in European politics than any other. The chief menace
to nationality may none the less be economic need.
While it may be perfectly true that Belgians, Serbs, Poles, Bohemians,
fought from motives of nationality, it may also be true that the wars
which they were compelled to fight had an economic cause.
If the desire of Germany or Austria for undeveloped territory had
anything to do with that thrust towards the Near East in the way of
which stood Serbian nationality, then economic causes _had_ something to
do with compelling Serbia and Belgium to fight for their nationality.
Owing to the pressure of the economic need or greed of others, we are
still concerned with economic forces, though we may be actuated only by
the purest nationalism: the economic pressure of others is obviously
part of the problem of our national defence. And if one examines in turn
the chief problems of nationality, one finds in almost every case that
any aggression by which it may be menaced is prompted by the need, or
assumed need, of other nations for mines, ports, access to the sea (warm
water or other), or for strategic frontiers to defend those things.
Why should the desire of one people to rule itself, to be free, be
thwarted by another making exactly the same demands? In the case of the
Germans we ascribe it to some special and evil lust peculiar to their
race and training. But the Peace has revealed to us that it exists in
every people, every one.
A glance at the map enables us to realise readily enough why a given
State may resist the 'complete independence' of a neighbouring
territory.
Here, on the borders of Russia, for instance, are a number of small
States in a position to block the access of the population of Russia to
the sea; in a position, indeed, by their control of certain essential
raw materials, to hold up the development of a hundred million people,
very much as the robber barons of the Rhine held up the commerce of that
waterway. No powerful Russia, Bolshevik or Czarist, will permanently
recognise the absolute right of a little State, at will (at the
bidding, perhaps, of some military dictator, who in South American
fashion may have seized its Government), to block her access to the
'highways of the world.' 'Sovereignty and independence'--absolute
sovereignty over its own territory, that is--may well include the
'right' to make the existence of others intolerable. Ought any nation to
have such a right? Like questions are raised in the case of the States
that once were Austria. They have achieved their complete freedom and
independence. Some of the results are dealt with in the first chapter.
In some cases the new States are using their 'freedom, sovereignty, and
independence' for the purpose of worsening a condition of famine and
economic paralysis that spells indescribable suffering for millions of
completely innocent folk.[33]
So far, the new Europe is economically less competent than the old. The
old Austrian grouping, for instance, made possible a stable and orderly
life for fifty million people. A Mittel Europa, with its Berlin-Bagdad
designs, would, whatever its dangers otherwise, have given us a vastly
greater area of co-ordinated production, an area approaching that of the
United States; it would have ensured the effective co-operation of
populations greatly in excess of those of the United States. Whatever
else might have happened, there would have been no destruction by famine
of the populations concerned if some such plan of organised production
had materialised. The old Austria at least ensured for the children
physical health and education, for the peasants work in their fields, in
security; and although denial of full national rights was doubtless an
evil thing, it still left free a vast field of human activities--those
of the family, of productive labour, of religion, music, art, love,
laughter.
A Europe of small 'absolute' nationalisms threatens to make these things
impossible. We have no standard, unhappily, by which we can appraise the
moral loss and gain in the exchange of the European life of July, 1914,
for that which Europe now faces and is likely to face in the coming
years. But if we cannot measure or weigh the moral value of absolute
nationalism, the present situation does enable us to judge in some
measure the degree of security achieved for the principle of
nationality, and to what extent it may be menaced by the economic needs
of the millions of Europe. And one is impelled to ask whether
nationality is not threatened by a danger far greater than any it had to
meet in the old Europe, in the anarchy and chaos that nationalism itself
is at present producing.
The greater States, like Germany, may conceivably manage somehow to find
a _modus vivendi_. A self-sufficing State may perhaps be developed (a
fact which will enable Germany at one and the same time to escape the
payment of reparations and to defy future blockades). But that will mean
embittered nationalism. The sense of exclusion and resentment will
remain.
The need of Germany for outside raw materials and food may, as the
result of this effort to become self-sufficing, prove less than the
above considerations might suggest. But unhappily, assumed need can be
as patent a motive in international politics as real need. Our recent
acquiescence in the independence of Egypt would imply that our need for
persistent occupation was not as great as we supposed. Yet the desire to
remain in Egypt helped to shape our foreign policy during a whole
generation, and played no small part in the bargaining with France over
Morocco which widened the gulf between ourselves and Germany.
The preservation of the principle of nationality depends upon making it
subject at least to some form of internationalism. If 'self-determination'
means the right to condemn other peoples to death by starvation, then
that principle cannot survive. The Balkanisation of Europe, turning it
into a cauldron of rival 'absolute' nationalisms, does not mean safety
for the principle of nationality, it means its ultimate destruction
either by anarchy or by the autocratic domination of the great
Powers. The problem is to reconcile national right and international
obligation. That will mean a discipline of the national impulse, and
of the instincts of domination which so readily attach themselves to
it. The recognition of economic needs will certainly help towards such
discipline. However 'materialistic' it may be to recognise the right of
others to life, that recognition makes a sounder foundation for human
society than do the instinctive impulses of mystic nationalism.
Until we have managed somehow to create an economic code or comity which
makes the sovereignty of each nationality subject to the general need of
the whole body of organised society, this struggle, in which nationality
is for ever threatened, will go on.
The alternatives were very clearly stated on the other side of the
Atlantic:--
'The underlying assumption heretofore has been that a nation's security
and prosperity rest chiefly upon its own strength and resources. Such an
assumption has been used to justify statesmen in attempting, on the
ground of the supreme need for national security, to increase their own
nation's power and resources by insistence upon strategic frontiers,
territory with raw material, outlets to the sea, even though that course
does violence to the security and prosperity of others. Under any system
in which adequate defence rests upon individual preponderance of power,
the security of one must involve the insecurity of another, and must
inevitably give rise to covert or overt competitions for power and
territory, dangerous to peace and destructive to justice.
'Under such a system of competitive as opposed to co-operative
nationalism, the smaller nationalities can never be really secure.
International commitments of some kind there must be. The price of
secure nationality is some degree of internationalism.
'The problem is to modify the conditions that lead to war. It will be
quite inadequate to establish courts of arbitration or of law if they
have to arbitrate or judge on the basis of the old laws and practices.
These have proved insufficient.
'It is obvious that any plan ensuring national security and equality of
opportunity will involve a limitation of national sovereignty. States
possessing ports that are the natural outlet of a hinterland occupied by
another people, will perhaps regard it as an intolerable invasion of
their independence if their sovereignty over those ports is not absolute
but limited by the obligation to permit of their use by a foreign and
possibly rival people on equal terms. States possessing territories in
Africa or Asia inhabited by populations in a backward state of
development, have generally heretofore looked for privileged and
preferential treatment of their own industry and commerce in those
territories. Great interests will be challenged, some sacrifice of
national pride demanded, and the hostility of political factions in some
countries will be aroused.
'Yet if, after the War, States are to be shut out from the sea; if
rapidly expanding populations find themselves excluded from raw
materials indispensable to their prosperity; if the privileges and
preferences enjoyed by States with overseas territories place the less
powerful States at a disadvantage, we shall have re-established potent
motives for that competition for political power which, in the past, has
been so large an element in the causation of war and the subjugation of
weaker peoples. The ideal of the security of all nations and "equality
of opportunity" will have failed of realisation.'[34]
_The Balance of Power and Defence of Law and Nationality._
'Why were you so whole-soully for this war?' asked the interviewer of Mr
Lloyd George.
'Belgium,' was the reply.
The Prime Minister of the morrow continued:--
'The Saturday after war had actually been declared on the Continent
(Saturday, 1st August), a poll of the electors of Great Britain
would have shown ninety-five per cent. against embroiling this
country in hostilities. Powerful city financiers whom it was my
duty to interview this Saturday on the financial situation, ended
the conference with an earnest hope that Britain would keep out of
it. A poll on the following Tuesday would have resulted in a vote
of ninety-nine per cent. in favour of war.
'What had happened in the meantime? The revolution in public
sentiment was attributable entirely to an attack made by Germany on
a small and unprotected country, which had done her no wrong, and
what Britain was not prepared to do for interests political and
commercial, she readily risked to help the weak and helpless. Our
honour as a nation is involved in this war, because we are bound in
an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty,
the integrity of a small neighbour that has lived peaceably; but
she could not have compelled us, being weak. The man who declined
to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce
it, is a blackguard.'
A little later, in the same interview, Mr Lloyd George, after allusion
to German misrepresentations, said:--
'But this I know is true--after the guarantee given that the German
fleet would not attack the coast of France or annex any French
territory, _I_ would not have been party to a declaration of war,
had Belgium not been invaded, and I think I can say the same thing
for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise,
she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government
then would not have intervened. Germany made a grave mistake.'[35]
This interview compels several very important conclusions. One, perhaps
the most important--and the most hopeful--is profoundly creditable to
English popular instinct and not so creditable to Mr Lloyd George.
If Mr Lloyd George is speaking the truth (it is difficult to find just
the phrase which shall express one's meaning and be Parliamentary), if
he believes it would have been entirely safe for Great Britain to have
kept out of the War provided only that the invasion of Belgium could
have been prevented, then indeed is the account against the Cabinet, of
which he was then a member and (after modifications in it) was shortly
to become the head, a heavy one. I shall not pursue here the inquiry
whether in point of simple political fact, Belgium was the sole cause of
our entrance into the War, because I don't suppose anybody believes it.
But--and here Mr Lloyd George almost certainly does speak the truth--the
English people gave their whole-souled support to the war because they
believed it to be for a cause of which Belgium was the shining example
and symbol: the right of the small nation to the same consideration as
the great. That objective may not have been the main inspiration of the
Governments: it was the main moral inspiration of the British people,
the sentiment which the Government exploited, and to which it mainly
appealed.
'The purpose of the Allies in this War,' said Mr Asquith, 'is to pave
the way for an international system which will secure the principle of
equal rights for all civilised States ... to render secure the principle
that international problems must be handled by free people and that
their settlement shall no longer be hampered and swayed by the
overmastering dictation of a Government controlled by a military
caste.' We should not sheathe the sword 'until the rights of the smaller
nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation.'
Professor Headlam (an ardent upholder of the Balance of Power, by the
way), in a book that is characteristic of the early war literature, says
the cardinal principles for which the War was fought were two: first,
that Europe is, and should remain, divided between independent national
States, and, second, that subject to the condition that it did not
threaten or interfere with the security of other States, each country
should have full and complete control over its own affairs.
How far has our victory achieved that object? Is the policy which our
power supported before the War--and still supports--compatible with it?
Does it help to strengthen the national security of Belgium, and other
weak States like Yugo-Slavia, Poland, Albania, Finland, the Russian
Border States, China?
It is here suggested, first, that our commitments under the Balance of
Power policy which we had espoused[36] deprived our national force of
any preventive effectiveness whatever in so far as the invasion of
Belgium was concerned, and secondly, that our post-war policy, which is
also in fact a Balance of Power policy is betraying in like fashion the
cause of the small State.
It is further suggested that the very nature of the operation of the
Balance of Power policy sets up in practice a conflict of obligation: if
our power is pledged to the support of one particular group, like the
Franco-Russian group of 1914, it cannot also be pledged to the support,
honestly and impartially, of a general principle of European law.
We were drawn into the War, Mr Lloyd George tells us, to vindicate the
integrity of Belgium. Very good. We know what happened in the
negotiations. Germany wanted very much to know what would induce us to
keep out of the War. Would we keep out of the War if Germany refrained
from crossing the Belgian frontier? Such an assurance, giving Germany
the strongest material reasons for not invading Belgium, converting a
military reason (the only reason, we are told, that Germany would listen
to) for that offence into an immensely powerful military reason against
it, could not be given. In order to be able to maintain the Balance of
Power against Germany we must 'keep our hands free.'
It is not a question here of Germany's trustworthiness, but of using her
sense of self-interest to secure our object of the protection of
Belgium. The party in the German councils opposed to the invasion would
say: 'If you invade Belgium you will have to meet the hostility of Great
Britain. If you don't, you will escape that hostility.' To which the
general staff was able to reply: 'Britain's Balance of Power policy
means that you will have to meet the enmity of Britain in any case. In
terms of expediency, it does not matter whether you go through Belgium
or not.'
The fact that the principle of the 'Balance' compelled us to support
France, whether Germany respected the Treaty of 1839 or not, deprived
our power of any value as a restraint upon German military designs
against Belgium. There was, in fact, a conflict of obligations: the
obligations to the Balance of Power rendered that to the support of the
Treaty of no avail in terms of protection. If the object of force is to
compel observance of law on the part of those who will not observe it
otherwise, that object is defeated by the entanglements of the Balance
of Power.
Sir Edward Grey's account of that stage of the negotiations at which the
question of Belgium was raised, is quite clear and simple. The German
Ambassador asked him 'whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate
Belgian neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral.' 'I replied,'
writes Sir Edward, 'that I could not say that; our hands were still
free, and we were considering what our attitude should be. I did not
think that we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition
alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
integrity of France and her Colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.'
'If language means anything,' comments Lord Loreburn,[37] 'this means
that whereas Mr Gladstone bound this country to war in order to
safeguard Belgian neutrality, Sir Edward would not even bind this
country to neutrality to save Belgium. He may have been right, but it
was not for the sake of Belgian interests that he refused.'
Compare our experience, and the attitude of Sir Edward Grey in 1914,
when we were concerned to maintain the Balance of Power, with our
experience and Mr Gladstone's behaviour when precisely the same problem
of protecting Belgium was raised in 1870. In these circumstances Mr
Gladstone proposed both to France and to Prussia a treaty by which Great
Britain undertook that, if either of the belligerents should in the
course of that war violate the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain
would co-operate with the other belligerent in defence of the same,
'employing for that purpose her naval and military forces to ensure its
observance.' In this way both France and Germany knew and the whole
world knew, that invasion of Belgium meant war with Great Britain.
Whichever belligerent violated the neutrality must reckon with the
consequences. Both France and Prussia signed that Treaty. Belgium was
saved.
Lord Loreborn (_How the War Came_) says of the incident:--
'This policy, which proved a complete success in 1870, indicated
the way in which British power could effectively protect Belgium
against an unscrupulous neighbour. But then it is a policy which
cannot be adopted unless this country is itself prepared to make
war against either of the belligerents which shall molest Belgium.
For the inducement to each of such belligerents is the knowledge
that he will have Great Britain as an enemy if he invades Belgium,
and as an Ally if his enemy attacks him through Belgian territory.
And that cannot be a security unless Great Britain keeps herself
free to give armed assistance to either should the other violate
the Treaty. The whole leverage would obviously disappear if we took
sides in the war on other grounds.'[38]
This, then, is an illustration of the truth above insisted upon: to
employ our force for the maintenance of the Balance of Power is to
deprive it of the necessary impartiality for the maintenance of Right.
Much more clear even than in the case of Belgium was the conflict in
certain other cases between the claims of the Balance of Power and our
obligation to place 'the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe
upon an unassailable foundation' which Mr Asquith proclaimed as the
object of the War.
The archetype of suppressed nationality was Poland; a nation with an
ancient culture, a passionate and romantic attachment to its ancient
traditions, which had simply been wiped off the map. If ever there was a
case of nation-murder it was this. And one of the culprits--perhaps the
chief culprit--was Russia. To-day the Allies, notably France, stand as
the champions of Polish nationality. But as late as 1917, as part of
that kind of bargain which inevitably marks the old type of diplomatic
Alliance, France was agreeing to hand over Poland, helpless, to her old
jailer, the Czarist Government. In March, 1916, the Russian Ambassador
in Paris was instructed that, at the then impending diplomatic
conference[39]
'It is above all necessary to demand that the Polish question
should be excluded from the subjects of international negotiation,
and that all attempts to place Poland's future under the guarantee
and control of the Powers should be prevented.'
On February 12th, 1917, the Russian Foreign Minister informed the
Russian Ambassador that M. Doumergue (French Ambassador in Petrograd)
had told the Czar of France's wish to get Alsace-Lorraine at the end of
the War, and also 'a special position in the Saar Valley, and to bring
about the detachment from Germany of the territories west of the Rhine
and their reorganisation in such a way that in future the Rhine may form
a permanent strategic obstacle to any German advance.' The Czar was
pleased to express his approval in principle of this proposal.
Accordingly the Russian Foreign Minister expressed his wish that an
Agreement by exchange of Notes should take place on this subject, and
desired that if Russia agreed to the unrestricted right of France and
Britain to fix Germany's western frontiers, so Russia was to have an
assurance of freedom of action in fixing Germany's future frontier on
the east. (This means the Russian western frontier.)[40]
Or take the case of Serbia, the oppressed nationality whose struggle for
freedom against Austria was the immediate cause of the War. It was
because Russia would not permit Austria to do with reference to Serbia,
what Russia claimed the right to do with reference to Poland, that the
latter made of the Austrian policy a _casus belli_.
Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality.
But the 'Balance' demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the
scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing
Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which
stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of
Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and
west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the
Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations
of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and
put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same
kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian
Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the
principles which should guide his policy as 'a freedom from all
preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of
"Sacred egoism" (_sacro egoismo_) for Italy.'
To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our
Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic Yugo-Slavs regard
war with Italy one day as inevitable.[41] Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward
Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to
come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything
else, must come second.
The moral implications of this political method received another
illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated
in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at
Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was
at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations--a wish
not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish
to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At
first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had
obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov,
she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff
thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on
General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, 'who looked upon
Rumania's entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the
nearing of the War's end.' So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed
with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her
Bukovina and all Transylvania. 'The events which followed,' says the
report, 'showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they
overvalued Rumania's entry.' In fact, Rumania was in a brief time
utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of
Rumania's plans as a Great Power 'is not particularly opposed to
Russia's interests.'
One might follow up this record and see how far the method of the
Balance has protected the small and weak nation in the case of Albania,
whose partition was arranged for in April, 1915, under the Treaty of
London; in the case of Macedonia and the Bulgarian Macedonians; in the
case of Western Thrace, of the Serbian Banat, of the Bulgar Dobrudja, of
the Southern Tyrol, of German Bohemia, of Shantung--of still further
cases in which we were compelled to change or modify or betray the cause
for which we entered the War in order to maintain the preponderance of
power by which we could achieve military success.
The moral paralysis exemplified in this story is already infecting our
nascent efforts at creating a society of nations--witness the relation
of the League with Poland. No one in 1920 justified the Polish claims
made against Russia. Our own communications to Russia described them as
'imperialistic.' The Prime Minister condemned them in unmeasured terms.
Poland was a member of the League. Her supplies of arms and ammunition,
military stores, credit, were obtained by the grace of the chief members
of the League. The only port by which arms could enter Poland was a city
under the special control of the League. An appeal was made to the
League to take steps to prevent the Polish adventure. Lord Robert Cecil
advocated the course with particular urgency. The Soviet Government
itself, while Poland was preparing, appealed to the chief constitutional
governments of the League for some preventive action. Why was none
taken? Because the Balance of Power demanded that we should 'stand by
France,' and Polish Imperialism was part of the policy quite overtly and
deliberately laid down by M. Clemenceau, who, with a candour entirely
admirable, expressed his preference for the old system of alliances as
against the newfangled Society of Nations. We could not restrain Poland
and at the same time fulfil our Alliance obligations to France, who was
supporting the Polish policy.[42]
By reason of the grip of this system we supported (while proclaiming the
sacredness of the cause of oppressed nationalities) or acquiesced in the
policy of Czarist Russia against Poland, and incidentally Finland; we
supported Poland against republican Russia; we encouraged the creation
of small border States as means of fighting Soviet Russia, while we
aided Koltchak and Denikin, who would undoubtedly if successful have
suppressed the border States. We supported the Southern Slavs against
Austria when we desired to destroy the latter; we supported Italy (in
secret treaties) against the Southern Slavs when we desired the help of
the former. Violations and repressions of nationality which, when
committed by the enemy States, we declared should excite the deathless
resistance of all free men and call down the punishment of Heaven, we
acquiesce in and are silent about when committed by our Allies.
This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the
relations of States.
The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the
country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of
Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The
Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of
_Macht-Politik_, of the principle that Might makes Right.