THE FORCES OF INTERNATIONALISM
An internationalism, which will bind the nations together into one
economic unit, can be secured only as a result of a further political
and economic development, limiting the power and autonomy of the
several nations. Without pressure, external or internal, no union or
agreement among the nations can be expected. The thirteen American
colonies would not have been willing to live together had they been
able to live separately, and, similarly, to-day the great powers would
make no concessions to internationalism were it safe and profitable to
retain a complete liberty of action. But no such plenary independence
is longer possible. Forces are at work which circumscribe national
autonomy and compel each nation to act with reference to the will of
others.
In the case of small nations this tendency is manifest. Belgium before
1914 was a neutralised state, a ward of Europe. It had surrendered its
right to declare war or form alliances. Switzerland, Denmark, Norway
and Sweden, while preserving their technical liberty, were by their
weakness precluded from entering upon policies disapproved by stronger
nations. Even the six Great Powers were forced to pool issues.
Austria dared not carry out a programme which Germany opposed, nor
could Russia or France act without the other's acquiescence. Group
policies were substituted for purely nationalistic aims.
{271}
Economically a similar interdependence is being created. No nation is
wholly self-sufficing. Italy must import coal and iron, Germany
cotton, wool, leather and fodder. France requires Germany's coal and
Germany the iron of France. A safe access to these markets and sources
of raw material can only be assured by alliance with other powers.
The economic dependence of one nation, moreover, influences the
policies of its neighbours. The stress of a country suffering from
industrial disequilibrium is transmitted to other nations. If, when
Germany has exhausted her iron ore, she is prevented from obtaining a
supply, let us say from French Lorraine, she will be faced with the
alternative of dismantling her works in Westphalia and Silesia or of
forcing France to sell ore to her. Germany's stringency will thus
vitally affect France's international policy. Equally, if Russia or
Austria cannot obtain what it needs from abroad, the nations which
close the gates are endangered. Caution alone must prevent a nation
from allowing its neighbour to risk starvation. However ill-founded in
precedent, the right to secure what it imperatively needs is a right
that every people will fight for.
From this political and economic interdependence among nations
potentially hostile, there results a vague community of interest in
peace. This common interest is strongly reinforced by the staggering
costs of modern war. The present conflict is teaching us that Europe
cannot continue to live and fight, since more than what it fights for
is lost in the fighting. On the other hand it cannot stop fighting
until it evolves principles of settlement based on the economic
security of the vanquished. What the industrial powers will gain from
this conflict is but an insignificant part of its cost. Compared with
the billions {272} of dollars which France has spent upon this war, how
insignificant are the few tens of millions that she may have gained
from a monopolistic administration of her colonies! How little would
the open door have cost the successful colonial nations as compared
with the losses of this war! Not that colonial administration was the
only or the main cause of the conflict; other factors contributed, such
as the megalomania of the Pan-Germans. It seems probable, however,
that Pan-German fanaticism was rendered infectious only by the fear
that Germany was to be economically encircled and undermined. This
fear may well outlast the war. A German defeat, however crushing, will
not solve the peace problem, for defeat without security means
militarism and reaction in Germany, which in turn means militarism and
reaction in Europe. The special advantages which the nations,
possessing colonies, may in the future secure will be dearly bought at
the expense of new wars, as costly and decivilising as that under which
we now live.
This is the chief sanction of internationalism, the price which is
exacted from both beneficiaries and victims of a narrow nationalistic
policy. Whether a liberal internationalism would not pay better, even
on the plane of dollars and cents, is a question that admits of but one
rational answer.
At this moment[1] there is small likelihood that that rational answer
will be given. Fighting inhibits thinking, and in the allied countries
the belief is held that Germany provoked the war through mere
wantonness and not because of economic pressure, and that security can
come only by ending Prussian militarism. In Germany there is an
analogous conception of her opponents.
The theory that the war was merely wanton has the {273} merit of
simplicity, but like other simple interpretations, it does not cover
the facts. There were in Germany certain current ideas concerning
racial dominion, the natural mission of the German and the absolute
supremacy and moral self-sufficiency of the State, which intensified
the war spirit. The Pan-Germans harangued in press and on platform to
a people intoxicated by former military and economic triumphs and
rendered susceptible by army discipline to martial intoxication. Had
it not been for a real sense of insecurity, however, peaceable Germans
would have been less receptive to such martial ideas. For a generation
after 1870 Germany, though armed, had been pacific because secure; her
economic centre of gravity lay within. It was not until her national
interests extended beyond her boundaries that this sense of insecurity
arose. Pan-Germanism was the intellectual and emotional expression of
an economic malaise.
To boycott Germany after the war will neither decrease her anxiety nor
improve the prospects of peace in Europe. Such a "war after the war,"
as it is now proposed, is a flat denial of the economic interdependence
of nations. Its obvious result would be to intensify, rather than
moderate, the industrial competition. Driven from the markets of the
allies, Germany would be forced to dump her goods into all neutral
countries (at the expense of the trade of the boycotting nations), as
well as to form a counter economic alliance and if possible a military
coalition. A permanent economic injury to the Central Powers would at
the first convenient moment provoke military retaliation. And,
parenthetically, a nation like Germany, with its growing population and
resources, cannot remain crushed. Even if too weak to make headway
against a powerful group of nations, it will always be strong enough to
act as a make-weight between two opposed coalitions. {274} Thus if
England and Russia, no longer united by a common peril, were to clash
in the Mediterranean or in Persia, the presence of an economically
threatened and therefore bellicose Germany would tend to precipitate
hostilities. If a boycotted Germany by an economic or military
alliance could detach one or more of her present enemies, the
international situation created would be as dangerous as that of
1914.[2]
The argument that economic insecurity does not tend toward war is thus
seen to halt on all fours. There is, however, a stronger or at least a
more obvious argument against the promotion of economic
internationalism. It is the claim that wars are caused by
nationalistic strife. If the incessant struggle between nationalities
cannot be appeased but must lead again and again to world-wide wars,
then it is futile to seek to avert war by the creation of an economic
internationalism. No agreement among the great nations about trade or
colonies will avail so long as Poles, Bulgars and Southern Slavs can
throw the world into war to fulfil their nationalistic aspirations.
Until this nationalistic problem is solved no sure advance towards a
permanent peace is possible.
Undoubtedly the struggle of subject nationalities to be {275} free, and
of independent nations to annex their kin, has been a fruitful source
of strife during the last century. The sense of nationality has been
intensified by the nation's mobilisation of the economic interests of
its citizens; it has become almost pathological as a result of petty
nationalistic fragments competing for separate existence. Bulgarians,
Greeks and Serbians want the same tract in Macedonia; Roumanians,
Italians and Serbs wish to redeem their subject brethren in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire; France seeks to rescue the Francophile though
German-speaking Alsatians and Lothringians, and Germany would gladly
welcome the Dutch and Flemings back to their putative German
allegiance. There is no limit to these nationalistic claims; no room
for arbitration; no fixed principle to determine to which nation each
group shall be awarded. The result, quite apart from any action among
the Great Powers, seems war--inevitable and endless.[3]
{276}
It is impossible to withhold one's admiration for the inspiring fight
which oppressed peoples all over the world are making for their
independence. We thrill over the old story of the Grecian revolt
against Turkey, of the great risorgimento of Italy, of the long slow
struggle of Germany to achieve statehood. The century since the Vienna
Congress has marked an almost uninterrupted victory for the principle
of nationality. Yet though we sympathise with the aspirations of
Poles, Finns, Armenians and Bohemians, an unlimited independence cannot
always be desired. Nationalities are not sundered geographically, but
men of diverse stocks and traditions are interspersed, as though a
malign power had wished to make concord forever impossible. Ireland
cannot secure autonomy, to say nothing of independence of Great
Britain, without encountering Ulster's demand to be independent of
Ireland. Similarly a Great Roumania, a Greater Serbia, a Poland, an
independent Bohemia can be secured only by denying the equal rights of
lesser racial groups. To-day Hungarians misrule the Roumanians of
Transylvania; to-morrow a Greater Roumania may misrule the Transylvania
Hungarians. The principle of the independence of nationalities
collides with itself.
It also collides with overwhelming economic facts. Racially Trieste is
semi-Italian, but if Italy acquires the city (and includes it in her
customs union), a vast Austrian and German _hinterland_ is deprived of
a necessary commercial outlet. Italy can hold the East Adriatic only
by smothering Serbia. Moreover many of these foetal nationalities are
too weak and geographically too insecure for independent political
existence. What reality would attach to an independent Bohemia held in
a vice between two hostile German neighbours, and with a German
population in its own territory? Even in peace the {277} Teutonic
powers could gently strangle the new nation by means of discriminating
tariffs.
Finally many of the claims for nationalistic expansion are inspired by
a motive quite different from what appears on the surface. What the
nation usually wants is not merely its own unredeemed brethren, but
more territory and people. Its unredeemed brethren are the easiest to
take. But while Roumania demands sovereignty over the Roumanians of
Transylvania, she will not let the Bulgarians of the Dobrudja go. In
the one case she upholds the sacred principle of nationality; in the
other she discards that principle for the sake of a strategic frontier.
Serbians and Greeks ask not only for the right to recover their ancient
territory but also for the right to rule over Bulgarians and Turks.
What they really desire is access to the sea, ample resources for an
adequate population, and the national power, without which an
independent existence is an illusion.
It is too late to dream of a really independent existence for each
pigmy nationality, strewn about in Eastern Europe. In the absence of a
Balkan Confederation, Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece
may preserve their separate sovereignties, though only if they submit
to the "advice" of greater nations, as Portugal submits to Britain.
But for such nations to have conflicting nationalistic aspirations, to
wage bloody wars for larger territory and more subjects, is a
ridiculous and a tragic situation. Servia, dreaming of the restoration
of the empire of Tsar Stephen Dushan, whose armies marched to the walls
of Constantinople, Greece aspiring to the Empire of the East, are a
menace to the peace of the world. It is doubtful whether all of these
ambitious nationalities can even preserve their separate national
existence. If the welfare of Europe conflicts with the {278}
independence of a Montenegro or a Bohemia, some lesser form of
self-government must be discovered.
That lesser form of self-government might be sought in a local autonomy
under a federal government. It is not improbable that the political
development, of south-eastern Europe for example, will tend towards
group organisations based on the co-operation of diverse nationalities
and stocks somewhat on the Swiss model. If the political question
could be divorced from the question of the economic exploitation of
these small nations, and if each nationalistic group were permitted to
retain its language, traditions and _Kultur_, the result might be
better than a mere _morcellement_ of south-eastern Europe, with petty
nationalities fighting the battles of their big backers. In such a
larger Switzerland, each group might be represented in proportion to
its numbers, and the worst evils of the present racial contests be
avoided.
The important question in the present connection, however, is not what
the particular solution is to be, but whether any solution is possible.
It need not be a perfect but only a permanent settlement. Such a
settlement presupposes a concert among the Great Powers, an agreement
concerning their own problems. Given such an agreement, however, the
Powers could in time work out a Balkan arrangement, which neither
Servia nor Bulgaria, Roumania nor Greece would dare resist. In the
end, if the arrangement were definite, practicable, in reasonable
conformity with nationalistic lines, and with a strong and certain
sanction, the small nations would become resigned. To-day they have
boundless ambitions because the division among the Great Powers gives
them a chance of realising ambitions, and what ambitions they have not
to start with, Austria or Russia will lend to them on short notice. In
this sense and to this extent, the {279} nationalistic problem in its
worst form is an appendage to the vast struggle between the powers, and
it may cease to be provocative of great wars once a basis of agreement
is established among these larger nations.
With the best will such a basis of international agreement among the
Great Powers cannot be established in a few years. It requires a
gradual development, a progressive give and take, a continuous widening
of the principle of joint use. An international convention, altering
the rules of maritime warfare, would be a long step in this direction;
a congress of the nations for opening up the trade of colonies (like
our international postal conventions) would be another step. The
internationalisation of Panama, Kiel, Gibraltar, Constantinople, would
immensely enhance security, and advance the progress of
internationalisation. So also an economic convention between France
and Germany, or between Germany and Russia, in which reciprocal
industrial advantages were accorded. Such specific arrangements, which
permit of international interpretation and enforcement, would help to
bring about a larger economic internationalism.
But for the real foundations of peace we must look far below the level
of all these diplomatic and political arrangements, in the world
industry itself. To-day we are still in the full momentum of an
economic development that makes for war, but we are also at the
beginning of an economic trend towards peace. In the present
world-economy the nation is the unit and international friction the
rule, but the movement, at what rate we do not know, tends towards a
world business in which the unit will be international and there will
be peace between partners. We are already in the first beginnings of
the internationalism of capital.
This development is in part the cause of a general {280} phenomenon,
the growth of an internationalism of class. Each social group seeks to
establish relations with similar groups across the border, for the
protection of interests that traverse national boundaries. Thus we
have a certain internationalism of the wage-earning class, of finance,
of various scientific groups. The possibility of this internationalism
grows with the integration of the world through commerce, industry,
communication and the spread of knowledge.
The most obviously international of social groups is the proletariat.
Though sundered on the question of immigration, though (in some
countries) nationalistic and even militaristic in spirit, the
wage-earners on the whole have less to gain from imperialism and
national aggression than have wealthier classes, while they share
disproportionately in the burdens that war entails. On the other hand
workers have less influence in the making of diplomatic decisions than
do their employers. In the end, moreover, their decision, like that of
the capitalist class, is chiefly determined by economic forces largely
beyond their control. It is the nascent internationalism of capital,
not of capitalists or of wage-earners, that is the supreme element
making for peace.
We must beware, however, of welcoming all foreign investment as a
portent of a growing internationalism of capital. Much that is
accounted economic internationalism is in truth merely an extended
nationalism, an extra-nationalism. For investments to allay
international discord they should create a community of interest
between nations potentially hostile. If Britain invested freely in
Germany and Germany in Britain there would be created a mutuality of
interest which would render peace probable. Each nation would have a
stake in the prosperity of the other; each would have given hostages to
peace. {281} But when the London financier puts his money in India,
Canada or the Argentine, he is not co-operating but competing with
potentially hostile nations. The process is an extension of the
national economy to outlying districts, a transition to a larger
national unit, like that created in the Middle Ages when the free
cities ruled adjoining farm territory. Such an economic extension
exacerbates national antagonisms and leads to war.
While foreign investment is preponderatingly of this sort, however,
there also exist the beginnings of a movement more truly international.
The securities of one nation are dealt with upon the stock exchanges of
another, capital flows across national borders and great international
business concerns are created. The movement in favourable
circumstances is likely to accelerate, either by the mutual economic
interpenetration of nations, as when the French build factories in
Germany or the Germans in France, or by the amalgamation of the
capitals of two countries and their use in joint enterprises. The
formation of large international syndicates for the exploitation of
backward countries, whatever its other consequences, tends towards the
creation of a community of interest. If the powers unite, for example,
and can agree upon a Chinese loan, a step forward will have been taken
towards an internationalism of capital.
The process of trust formation tends in the same direction. As
competing industries within a nation frequently end by combining, so in
many great industries the competing national units may develop a
gentleman's agreement to regulate output and finally may establish an
international cartel. Considerable progress has already been made in
the division of the international field. A further development along
these lines, though not easy, is by no means impossible or even
improbable.
{282}
We may seek to understand this eventual international evolution of
business by visualising a world organisation of the steel industry.
Either one corporation might be formed or a common control might be
established among national steel companies through an interchange of
stock. The result might be somewhat as follows: In the United States
we should have an organisation comprising all American steel concerns,
its directors representing constituent companies as well as the
government, labour and consumers. In its domestic affairs, it would be
under governmental jurisdiction. Its capital might amount to a few
billion dollars, of which a part would represent holdings of European
companies in return for American stock, transferred to European
companies.
Such a world corporation would be a financial aggregation immensely
greater than any in the past. Its principles of organisation, however,
would not materially differ from those with which we are familiar. In
each country a board of directors would hold control over constituent
companies, and at London, Paris or New York a high Federal Council
would settle controversies and make arrangements for the business of
the world. Each company would have two elements of protection against
unfair treatment; a community of interest secured through an
interchange of stock and a representative on the Federal Council.
A development, such as is here outlined, is in advance of the
psychological preparation of the world. We have not yet succeeded in
regulating corporations, and there would remain innumerable
difficulties and inequalities as between nations, which could not
easily be settled. The price which such concerns might be allowed to
pay for ores or charge for finished products and the pressure which
they might put upon workmen might cause financial {283} quarrels,
leading to international controversies. If the governments held hands
off, even greater evils might result. The various peoples would
hesitate to turn over their basic industries to a private corporation
beyond the regulation either of competitors or of their own government.
But we are here concerned not with the end but with the direction of
international capitalism, and this direction tends to be the same as
that of national capitalism. Division of the field, interchange of
stock, community of interest, co-operation and combination in one form
or another are as much a temptation in the relation of firms separated
by a frontier as between those within one customs union. Capital is
fluid. It is quantitative. It is potentially international. A
hundred dollars is indistinguishable from a certain number of pounds,
marks or francs. The machinery for an international combination of
capital is already present, the beginnings of international investment
have already been made. Further progress waits only upon the removal
of barriers, in part traditional. The larger economic interests of the
nations, and of most of the classes within the nations, lead towards
the removal of these barriers and towards the gaining of that security
without which international investment is dangerous and conventions and
agreements almost worthless.
Given such an economic co-operation and such an economic
interpenetration of rival European nations, and the political and
diplomatic conflicts would grow less acrid and dangerous. As the
process continued the interest of each nation in the welfare of its
neighbours would become so great as to make international war as
unthinkable as a war of Pennsylvania against New York. A vital and
powerful international spirit, which already exists but is held in
check by the fear and insecurity of each {284} independent nation,
would be given full sway. There would be a new Europe and a new world,
in which war would be but a vague and hateful memory.
Such developments, however, are slow and generations live their
uncertain lives during a period of transition. While waiting for an
economic internationalism to develop to maturity the nations remain on
guard, armed, threatened and threatening. The change from our present
anarchy to a future concord will not be swift.
For the time even an increase of the economic unit to include several
nations instead of one is not likely to put an end to all international
economic strife. It is not improbable that the proximate economic
development will be not internationalism but _supra-nationalism_. Just
as the customs union grew from a district to a nation, so it may grow
to include a group of nations but not the whole world. The world may
come to be divided into a group of five or six vast economic units,
each of which would be composed of one or several or indeed many
political units. The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United
States, China and Japan, South America, one or two economic coalitions
of west and central Europe (with their colonial possessions) would
furnish a far more stable economic equilibrium for the world than is
the present division of the powers. Each of these groups would have
both agricultural and manufacturing resources; none of them would be
imperatively obliged to fight for new territories. While there would
be friction, while one group would have a population in proportion to
its resources in excess of a neighbouring group, the sheer brutal
necessity of expansion which now forces nations to fight would be
largely moderated.
Such a division of the world into seven or six or perhaps fewer
economic aggregates though not easy is quite within {285} the bounds of
possibility. Three of these aggregates, Britain, Russia and the United
States, are already political units; the chief difficulty would consist
of western and central Europe. No thoroughgoing political amalgamation
of such countries as France, Germany and Italy is at all proximate, but
some form of economic unity is not impossible. The bond which would
join these countries might be less tight and therefore stronger than
the _Ausgleich_, which holds together the kingdoms of Austria and
Hungary. In the beginning it might be merely a series of trade
conventions terminable on notice; from this it might grow to more
permanent trade agreements and finally to a customs union. While the
opposition to such an economic union would be strong the forces driving
in this direction would also be powerful. As the really great nations
emerge, as Russia, the United States and the British Empire increase
their population into the hundreds of millions and their wealth into
the hundreds of billions, the individual nations of Europe will become
economically insignificant and economically unsafe. Only by a pooling
of their resources will they be able to escape from the crushing
superiority of the nations with large bulk and from an insecurity which
makes for war.
Even with such an economic rearrangement of the world the west European
coalitions would be unsafe unless they lessened the rate of increase of
their population. Never before has this population grown so rapidly.
In the decade ending 1810 western Europe (including the nations lying
to the west of Russia), added 6.3 millions to its numbers; in the
decade ending 1900 it added almost 19 millions. Despite a decline in
the birth-rate, the mortality has fallen so far that the population is
reaching a point where it will be difficult to secure adequate food
supplies from abroad. Rather than starve or live under the {286}
constraint of scarce food and high food prices, the West European
powers will fight for new territory from which to feed their people.
With the industrial development of Asia, and especially of China, this
danger will be enhanced. Of the three great nuclei of population in
the world, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Western (and Central)
Europe, only one has been able to draw upon the surplus food of the
world. Eight hundred million Asiatics have been forced to live on
their own meagre home resources. As China begins to export coal, iron,
textiles and other manufactured products, however, she will be able,
whether politically independent or not, to compete with Europe for the
purchase of this food supply. Not only will China's population
probably increase with the advent of industrialism but the standard of
living of her population will rise, and her competition with Europe for
the sale of manufactured products and the purchase of food will become
intense. The cheap, patient, disciplined labour of China's hundreds of
millions will be fighting with the Belgian, the German and the Italian
wage-earners to secure the food which it will be necessary to import.
It is not a yellow, but a human peril; a mere addition to the hungry
mouths that are to be fed. The supply of exportable food that can be
raised in the world has of course not reached its maximum, but beyond a
certain point every increase in agricultural production means a more
than proportional increase in the cost of the product. To feed eight
hundred millions costs much more than twice as much as to feed four
hundred millions. Even though China secure only a minor part of the
exportable food, it will by just so much increase the strain upon the
industrial populations of Europe.
It is a crisis for European industrialism, a slowly {287} preparing
crisis with infinitely tragic possibilities. What it involves is not a
mere re-distribution of wealth and income but an adjustment of
population to the available home and foreign resources in food.
Collectivism will not permanently save the European wage-earner from
hunger if he continues to multiply his numbers faster than the visible
food supply increases. A decline in the rate of population growth is
essential.
Fortunately this decline is already in progress. All the nations of
Western and Central Europe are moving towards a lower birth-rate and in
France this diminution has reached a point where there is no longer a
natural increase. In a few decades the birth rate will probably begin
to fall everywhere faster than the death rate declines. An adjustment
of the population to its probable resources will be in progress.
In this progressive decline in the birth rate is to be found the
greatest of all the factors making for internationalism and peace. It
is a development which takes away the edge from the present frantic
effort of industrial nations to secure a monopolistic control of
foreign resources. It permits the gradual creation of an equilibrium
between the nation's population and its physical resources at home and
abroad.
Powerful forces in the world are at present slowly making for an
economic internationalism to supplant the economic nationalism which
to-day makes for war. The problem that faces the United States is what
shall be its policy and action in view of the present nationalistic
strife and of the slowly maturing economic internationalism.
[1] November, 1916.
[2] The proposal to boycott Germany after the war is sometimes based
upon weirdly moral rather than economic considerations. "Is it
possible," writes one C. R. Enoch, "that trade relations with the
nation that has outraged every tenet of international and moral
decency, every consideration of humanity, and has committed unspeakable
atrocities, as has Germany in her conduct of the war, can be taken up
again at the point where they were broken off? ... There is only one
procedure compatible with honour and justice--namely, that no ordinary
commercial dealings should be carried out with Germany until the
_generation of Teutons that did these things has passed away_, unless
absolute penitence and reparation--if reparation be possible--is done
therefor." "Can We Set the World in Order." London, 1916, p. 197.
(My italics.)
[3] The granting of permission to the people of the disputed district
to decide their own allegiance is a good general principle, but,
unfortunately, does not carry us far. The main difficulty lies in
determining what shall be the unit of territory and population which is
to decide. If Ireland votes as a unit, all Ireland will have home
rule; if each county is to have the right of self direction, Ulster
will be detached from the rest of the island. If Alsace-Lorraine votes
to become French, whole districts, which will have voted to remain
German, will be dissatisfied. Moreover, in the latter case, should all
the residents of the two provinces be permitted to vote or only those
people and their descendants who were living there in 1870? If the
first plan is adopted a premium is placed upon the policy of legally
dispossessing the inhabitants of a conquered land and filling their
places with loyal _immigres_; if the latter is chosen, the principle of
the right of a population to determine its allegiance is abandoned.
Finally, if the decision of the population of the disputed district
were adverse to the interests of Europe as a whole, it would be
irrational to validate such a result. The interests of Europe are
superior to those of any nation, however powerful, and vastly superior
to those of a Luxemburg, Ulster or Alsace-Lorraine.
{288}