TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT
These are three ways in which the United States might conceivably
attempt to promote the international adjustments without which peace
cannot be secured. We might seek to "go it alone," righting one wrong
after another, intervening whenever and wherever our national
conscience directed. Or we might enter into an alliance with one or a
few selected democratic and enlightened nations to force international
justice and comity upon other nations. Finally we might refrain from
ubiquitous interventions and peace-propagating alliances and devote
ourselves, in conjunction with all other willing nations, to the
formulation of principles of international policy, and unite with those
nations in the legalisation and enforcement of such principles. In
other words we might become the standard about which the peaceful
parties and groups of all nations might rally.
The first of these courses is quite impossible. It is grotesque to
think of us, or of any country, as a knight-errant, rescuing nations
forlorn from evil forsworn powers. There are two things, besides a
saving sense of humour, which preclude us from essaying this role; we
have not the knowledge and we have not the power.
For the making of peace more than good will is required. Nothing is
more harmful in international intercourse than a certain sentimentalism
and contempt for realities on the part of many of our pacifists.
The difficulty with most plans for intervention by one {232} moral and
infallible power is that they attribute a pikestaff simplicity to
international--as, in fact, to all questions. According to certain
superlatively well-intentioned people, some nations are wicked and
others virtuous; some nations love the clash of arms, some the ways of
peace; some nations are greedy, brutal and dishonourable, others are
generous, gentle and honourable. It is the absolute bad and the
impossible good of the melodrama, in which the human sheep and goats
are sundered by an obvious moral boundary line.
In point of fact, no nation is good or bad in this simple sense, but
all have a certain justice in their claims, however difficult it is to
square these claims with the moral philosophy of the neutral country.
The British had a certain justice in their conflict with the Transvaal
as had also the Dutch burghers who resisted them. Even in our brutal
attack upon Mexico in 1846 we had the justification arising from our
greater ability to use the conquered territory. It is easy to find
phrases to be used whenever we wish to interfere, but these phrases
sometimes conceal an ambiguous meaning and sometimes have no meaning at
all. Are we, for instance, to become the defenders of small
nationalities, ready to go to war whenever one is invaded? Has a small
nation a right to hold its present territory when that right conflicts
with the economic advance, let us say, of a whole continent? Should we
respect Canada's right to keep New York, had that city originally been
settled by Canadians? Should we compel Russia to treat her Poles and
Jews fairly and concede to Russia the right to compel us to treat our
Negroes fairly? Some extension of the right of interference in what
are now called the internal affairs of other nations must be admitted,
but it is a precipitous road to travel. The united powers may compel
Roumania or Greece to {233} behave, but the United States, acting
alone, would find it irksome to have to constrain or discipline Russia.
By this it is not meant that we should never intervene. It would be
futile to fix such a rule for conduct which, in the end, will be
determined by circumstances. In any question of interference, however,
the burden of proof should rest heavily upon the side which urges a
nation to slay in order to secure what it believes to be the eternal
principles of justice. The general development will be toward greater
interference, but this intervention will be increasingly international,
not national.
In actual practice the problem when to interfere is immensely
difficult. It is easy to say "let America assume her responsibility
for policing the world," but the question arises, "What in particular
should we do and what leave undone?" Should we war against Germany
because of Belgium, and against France and England because of Greece?
Should we fight Japan to aid China? Are we to mete out justice
even-handed to the Poles, Finns and Jews of Russia, the Czechs and
Southern Slavs of Austria, the Armenians and Alsatians? Should we have
interposed to save Persia from benevolent absorption by Russia and
England? Clearly we could not do these things alone, and to attempt
them would be to strike an impossibly virtuous attitude. Even if we
had the wisdom or the sure instinct to save us from error, we should
not have a fraction of the power necessary to make our benevolent
intervention effective.
To right the wrongs of the world, to build up a firm international
policy and thus to create and establish peace seems easier if it be
attempted in alliance with two or three other virtuous powers. But if
we unite with England, France and Russia, to maintain virtue in the
world, may we not, at least hypothetically, be playing a fool's {234}
part in a knave's game of diplomacy? May we not be simply undermining
Germany and Austria? To use our army and navy for such purposes would
constitute us a part of one great European combination against the
other, and our disinterested assistance might be exploited for purposes
with which we had no sympathy.
A proposal, at least potentially more popular, is the formation of an
Anglo-American Union for the maintenance of peace. It is assumed that
the two nations, and the five self-governing British colonies are
kindred in blood, inspired by the same ideals and united by a common
language. Their white population exceeds one hundred and fifty
millions. They are capable, energetic, individualistic peoples,
favourably situated on an immense area, and holding dominion over
hundreds of millions in various parts of the world. These Britons,
Colonials and Americans, by reason of geographical position, are naval
rather than military, and if they could hold the sea, would be able to
preserve peace in lands not accessible to military powers and to
dictate peace even to the military nations. Such an integration of the
English-speaking peoples would thus constitute a step towards
international peace.
It is not here proposed to discuss the value of this proposal as a
means of defending the United States. In general, its defensive value
for us would probably be less in the coming decades than for Britain
and her colonies. The British Empire has the greater number of enemies
and is the more easily assailed. Great Britain cannot protect her
colonies without maintaining her naval supremacy not alone in the North
Sea, but in the Pacific as well. As for England, she occupies the same
position towards us in any attack from the European continent that
Belgium occupies towards England. She is an outpost. Our own
continental territory could probably be protected in {235} most cases
by a smaller military and naval effort than would be required of us as
part-defenders of a British-American Union. It is true that these
conditions might change, with the result that we should need Great
Britain's help most urgently. For the time being, however, we are
discussing a British-American alliance or federation not as a possible
protection to us but as an instrument for eliminating war.
In all probability such an instrument would work badly, and to the
non-Anglo-Saxon world would look much like a sword. For the
fundamental defect of such a proposal lies in the fact that it is a
plan for the coercion of other powers by a group of nations, not at all
disinterested. If the British and Americans possessed eighty per cent.
of the military and naval power of the world, they might establish a
peace like that which the Roman Empire was able to establish. It would
be a peace dictated by the strong. In fact, however, there would be no
such superiority of power. Russia, Germany, Austria, Japan united,
would be quite capable of exerting a far superior force. Even if the
force opposed were only equal, the result would be a confrontation of
peoples in all essential respects like the Balance of Power in Europe,
but on a vaster scale. We should not have advanced an inch towards the
goal of a world peace or a world economy.
For the United States to enter into such a federation would be to take
our part in the world wars to come and the intrigues that precede and
accompany such wars. We might be called upon to halt Russia's progress
towards Suez, the Persian Gulf, or the Indian border. We might be
obliged to defend Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We
could not permit any nation to reach a point where British commerce
might be assailed. We should cease to be interested in {236} the
freedom of the seas because sharing the dominion of the seas. We
should have no leisure and no inclination to seek a more equal
utilisation of the backward countries. We should need armies and
navies to protect the approaches to England and to hold back the land
nations. Against us would work immense potential forces. Strong,
growing, ambitious populations, envying our arrogant sea-power and
forced by their insecurity to remain militaristic and become navalistic
would prepare unceasingly for the day when they could try conclusions
with us. The Anglo-Saxon Federation may be an exhilarating conception,
but it is not peace.
Parenthetically an agreement or understanding with Great Britain, less
ambitious and pretentious than the proposed federation, is in the
interest of the two nations. In the more than one hundred years of
acrid peace between the two countries, there has been revealed a
certain community of interest, which might properly be utilised to
prevent future conflicts. While we are not ready to involve ourselves
in Britain's European and imperialistic policies, and do not want a
whole world in arms against us, we do wish to avoid misunderstandings
with England. We should be better off were we to give Great Britain
assurances that we would not contest her naval supremacy (however much
we may strive to alter its nature), and if we were to obtain from
England her unconditional support of the doctrine that the
Latin-American countries are not to be colonised or conquered.
In our efforts to secure a basis of international peace, however, we
must rely not upon England or any other single nation or group of
nations but upon a league, into which all nations may enter upon
identical terms. We must depend upon all-inclusive, not upon exclusive
alliances.
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At this point it may be well to recapitulate the difficulties and
inevitable limitations of any such plan. In the first place
nationality exists and cannot be exorcised. The several nations,
though they have common interests, are also sundered in interest, and
in present circumstances may gain more from a given war than they lose.
No nation, because of a moral appeal, will surrender its vital
interests, and each believes that its own ambitions are morally
justified. To pursue these interests the nations arm, and this
competitive armament breeds fear, which in turn provokes war. In
various parts of the world broken nationalities seek to attain to
national independence or autonomy and these nationalistic differences
are exacerbated by economic quarrels. Moreover, within the nations
certain sections or groups find their true economic interest in
policies leading to war, and these groups are able by means of
ceaseless propaganda to drive their nation into war-provoking policies.
Finally we are faced with the grim fact that in Europe at least no
great nation can pursue a consistent policy of peace unless other
nations move simultaneously in the same direction. Furthermore the
instinctive efforts of each nation to secure its own peace by force
constitute a menace to other nations and a danger to the world's peace.
The outlook for peace is thus not cheering; "the war against war," to
use William James's expression, "is going to be no holiday excursion or
camping party."
Fortunately, however, there are certain factors making for peace, and
upon these factors we are able to build. All over the world there is a
peace sentiment, a vast, undisciplined, inchoate desire to discover
ways and means by which this scourge of war may be lifted. It is not
inherently impossible to organise this sentiment, crystallise it,
direct it and make it effective. The task is essentially {238} similar
to that of organising democracy, for wars increasingly are becoming
national wars, in which success depends not upon princes but upon the
willingness and enthusiasm of the great slow peoples. The millions who
bear the chief burdens of war and derive only its lesser gains are in
all countries moving towards self-expression and domination. It is in
the end upon these masses, with their inherent prejudices and passions,
and not upon diplomats and rulers that any project for peace must be
based.
The appeal to these millions though it be couched in terms of morality
and sentiment, must be an appeal to interest. What is necessary is to
recognise the economic motives that drive such populations to war and
to reverse those motives. It does not suffice to preach that wars are
never in the interest of the people; the nations know otherwise. It is
necessary rather to change conditions so that wars will in actual fact
lose their economic value to nations. Peace must be made not only to
appear but actually to be in the interest of the peoples of the world.
The popular horror of war, the growing sense of its immense costs, the
slowly maturing sympathy between individual members of hostile nations
form the substantial groundwork upon which an opposition to war _in
general_ is based. Added to these are the waning of the romanticism of
war and the growth of a sense of its mechanical (rather than human)
quality. The present war has immensely increased this opposition. It
has disenchanted the world. In all countries millions of men now
realise that wars must be fought not alone by adventurous youths, who
do not put a high value upon life, but by husbands and fathers and
middle-aged men, who are somewhat less susceptible to the glamorous
appeal of battle. They are beginning to recognise that wars are not
won by courage alone {239} but by numbers, by money, by intimidation,
by intrigue, by mendacity and all manner of baseness. The lies spread
broadcast throughout the world and the money spent by Germans and
Allies to bribe Bulgarian patriots are quite as great factors in
deciding the issue of the war as the valour of the _poilus_ at Verdun.
In a moral sense war has committed suicide.
This increasing comprehension of war's real nature and of war's new
manifestations is leading the peoples to demand the right to decide for
themselves when and how war is to be declared and to take part in
negotiations which may lead up to war. The power to provoke wars is
the last bulwark of autocracy; when the nation is in danger (and in
present circumstances it is always in danger), democracy goes by the
board. Let the Socialists and Liberals in all countries declaim as
they will against armies, navies, imperialism, colonialism, and
international friction, let Members of Parliament ask awkward questions
in the House, the answer is always the same, "It is a matter of
national safety. To reply to the question of the honourable gentleman
is not in the public interest." Against this stone wall the efforts of
organisations like the British "Union of Democratic Control" break
ineffectually.
The Socialists have also failed, at least externally. Identifying the
war-makers and imperialists with those classes to which they were
already opposed in internal politics, the Socialists sought to make
good their democratic antagonism to war. They opposed armies and
proposed disarmament; they threatened national strikes in case
aggressive wars were declared; they fought with a sure democratic
instinct against every manifestation of militarism. In the crisis,
however, they failed. They failed because their conception of war was
too narrow, {240} arbitrary and doctrinaire. They perceived the upper
class interest in war but failed to recognise, or rather obstinately
ignored, the national interest. When at last the nation was
threatened, the Socialists and peace-makers not only closed ranks with
those who desired war, but even lent a willing ear to proposals of
annexation (for purposes of national security) and agreed to other
international arrangements likely to be the cause or at least the
occasion of future wars.
The general will for peace we have with us already; what is to-day most
necessary is the knowledge and insight which will direct this will to
the attempted solution of the causes of war. Towards this knowledge
the present war has contributed. Never before have so many men
recognised the strength of the economic impulses driving nations into
the conflict. The war, it is true, has intensified national hatreds by
its wholesale breach of plighted agreements; it has increased terror
and distrust; it has sown broadcast the seeds of future wars by a
series of secret, but known, agreements, creating a new Europe even
more unstable than was the Europe of 1914. On the other hand, it has
forced men to open their eyes to the real facts of war, and to
recognise that wars will continue until the motives for war are
reversed, until conditions are created in which nations may realise
their more moderate hopes of development without recourse to fighting.
It is upon this recognition, upon this guide to the blind passion for
peace, that any league for peace must be based. Such a league can
probably not be immediately constructed and permanently maintained. It
depends upon the slow growth of an international mind, upon a
willingness, not indeed to sacrifice national interests but to
recognise that national interests may be made to conform with the
larger interests of humanity. It means the {241} fulfilment not the
destruction of nationality. It requires for its realisation the
breaking of two chains, an inner chain which binds the nation to the
will of a selfish minority class, an outer chain which binds its
national interest to war.
How such a league will come about it is perhaps premature to discuss.
In the immediate future we are likely to have not a true league of
peace but rather a league of temporarily satisfied powers, seeking
their group interest in the _status quo_ and pursuing their common aims
at the expense of excluded nations in much the same spirit in which a
single nation now pursues its separate interest. Such a grouping of
interested nations is likely to be only temporary, as dissensions will
arise and new alignments be made comprising the nations formerly
excluded. It is bound to break up when the _status quo_ becomes
intolerable to several of its members. On the other hand the spirit of
such an organisation might not impossibly change. The league of
satisfied nations might discover that it was to its real interest, or
might be compelled by outer pressure, to make concessions to the
excluded nations, and finally to admit them on certain terms. Such a
development would be comparable to that by which autocracies have
gradually become constitutional monarchies and republics.
But, however the League is formed, two things are essential to its
continued existence. One is the acceptance of principles of
international regulation, tending to reduce the incentive and increase
the repugnance to war, in other words a measure of international
agreement, secured either by an international body having legislative
power, or in the beginning by a series of diplomatic arrangements as at
present. The second essential is a machinery for enforcing agreements.
Such machinery cannot be {242} dispensed with. Peace cannot come by
international machinery alone; neither can it come without machinery.
Peace between nations, like peace within a nation, does not depend upon
force alone. Unless the effective majority of the nations (or of the
citizens) are reconciled to the system to be enforced, unless they
desire peace, whether international or internal, the application of
force will be impossible. On the other hand, peace is equally
impossible without force. If no compulsion can be applied the smallest
minority can throw the world into war.
Such a compulsion of one nation by others does not necessarily mean a
bombardment of cities or the shedding of blood. The force to be
applied may be economic instead of military. No nation to-day, above
all, no great industrial nation, is socially and economically
self-sufficient, but all depend upon constant intercourse with other
nations. It is therefore true, as one writer says,[1] that "if all or
most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it (the offending
nation) would soon be reduced to worse straits than those which Germany
is now experiencing. If all diplomatic intercourse were withdrawn; if
the international postal and telegraphic systems were closed to a
public law-breaker; if all inter-State railway trains stopped at his
frontiers; if no foreign ships entered his ports, and ships carrying
his flags were excluded from every foreign port; if all coaling
stations were closed to him; if no acts of sale or purchase were
permitted to him in the outside world--if such a political and
commercial boycott were seriously threatened, what country could long
stand out against it? Nay, the far less rigorous measure of a
financial boycott, the closure of all foreign exchanges to members of
the outlaw State, the prohibition of all {243} quotations on foreign
Stock Exchanges, and of all dealings in stocks and shares, all
discounting and acceptances of trade bills, all loans for public or
private purposes, and all payments of moneys due--such a withdrawal of
financial intercourse, if thoroughly applied and persisted in, would be
likely, to bring to its senses the least scrupulous of States.
Assuming that the members of the League included all or most of the
important commercial and financial nations, and that they could be
relied upon to press energetically all or even a few of these forms of
boycott, could any country long resist such pressure? Would not the
threat of it and the knowledge that it could be used form a potent
restraint upon the law-breaker? Even the single weapon of a complete
postal and telegraphic boycott would have enormous efficiency were it
rigorously applied. Every section of the industrial and commercial
community would bring organised pressure upon its government to
withdraw from so intolerable a position and to return to its
international allegiance."
It cannot be assumed that the attempt to organise such a boycott would
be invariably successful. Not all nations would be equally injured,
for while a boycott of Italy or Greece would be fatal, the United
States or Russia might survive such economic pressure. A boycott would
not be easy to enforce. It would be necessary to secure a concert of
opinion and action in states, which, however they may agree upon any
particular question, have widely divergent interests in other matters.
Different boycotting nations would be variously affected. A boycott of
Germany, while it might injure the United States or Japan would almost
certainly ruin Holland and Belgium. Even were these small countries to
be partially reimbursed for their special losses, they might still
hesitate. There would also remain the fear that some of the boycotting
nations would {244} be detached through economic bribery, with the
result that the boycott broken, the nations faithful to their
agreements would suffer. Finally, if Holland joined in a boycott of
Germany, she might within a few days be compelled to resist a German
invasion. An economic boycott might easily lead to war.
This obvious connection between economic and military compulsion is
often disregarded by men who dislike war but are willing to commit
their nation to participation in economic compulsion. The two,
however, are inseparable, though they may not be inseparable for each
nation. The boycotting nations must be prepared to prevent reprisals,
must be willing if necessary to fight. It is not, however, necessary
for each nation upholding international law to contribute equally to
this military compulsion. Certain nations might use their armies and
fleets while others, more remote from the struggle, might merely
continue to boycott.
It would not be possible, to enforce a decision against nations having
a preponderance of military power, nor even against a group with a
large, though not the preponderant share of military and economic
resources. Germany, Austria and Russia combined could not be
compelled. The essence of the problem, however, is not the creation of
a state of war between coalitions almost equal in size, but the gradual
adoption of a policy of peace by securing a unity of interest among so
large a group of nations that this group would hold a clearly
preponderant power over any other group. Just as peace within a state
cannot be secured where the law-breakers are a majority, so
international peace cannot be secured unless the preponderance of power
is clearly on the side of peace.
Even with a majority of nations agreeing "in principle," the
difficulties of actually creating a League of {245} Peace and
International Polity would be great. To carry out such a plan, to work
out modes of action which will conform to the world's evolving sense of
the necessity for more stable international relations, requires an
international machinery, concerning which nations and classes will
disagree. Some channel, however, is necessary for the flow of the
peace forces resident in the world. A machinery must be created which
will approximate in some degree to that by which a nation, composed of
conflicting classes and economic groups, manages to secure a degree of
common interest and action among such groups. There must be an
international executive, an international legislative body and some
approach to an international court. That there are immense
difficulties in the creation of such a machinery is obvious and
admitted. That the machinery cannot work perfectly, that it may
repeatedly break down; that it can be perfected only through trial and
error, are facts, which though in themselves discouraging, need not
lead to the abandonment of the effort. There is nothing inherently
impossible in the gradual creation and elaboration of such machinery.
The development of the future lies in that direction.[2]
Let the machinery be ever so perfect, however, it is useless unless
principles are formulated which meet the requirements of the nations
which are to be bound over to keep the peace. A league to enforce
peace is a futility unless it is also a league to determine
international polity. Peace cannot be negative, a mere abstention from
war. It must be a dynamic process, an adjustment of the nations of the
world to their international environment.
[1] Hobson (John A.), "Towards International Government," New York (The
Macmillan Co.), 1915, pp. 90, 91.
[2] It is not pertinent to this book to discuss in detail the plans
which are being formed for the gradual evolution of such international
machinery. For readers who desire to secure a _precis_ of such
arrangements, the book of John A. Hobson, "Towards International
Government," is recommended.
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