FOREIGN POLICY
The present war has raised in the minds of many men a question which we as
a people will soon be called upon to answer. Was this war necessary? Or was
it caused by the ambitions and foolishness of statesmen? Might it not have
been averted if the peoples of Europe had had more control over the way in
which foreign policy was carried on?
Out of these questions has arisen a demand for the "democratisation of
foreign policy"; that is, for greater popular control over diplomatic
negotiations. In view of this, it becomes necessary for every British
citizen to gain some idea of what foreign policy is and by what principles
it should be governed.
It is the purpose of this chapter to give, first, some account of the
actual meaning of the words "foreign policy," and then, secondly, to
consider how foreign policy may best be controlled in the interests of the
whole population of the British Empire, and in the interests of the world
at large.
A. THE MEANING OF FOREIGN POLICY
§1. _The Foreign Office._--To the ordinary man foreign policy is an affair
of mystery, and it not unnaturally rouses his suspicions. He does not
realise, what is nevertheless the simple truth, that he himself is both the
material and the object of all foreign policy.
The business of the Government of a country is to maintain and further the
interests of the individual citizen. That is the starting-point of all
political institutions. The business of the Foreign Office is a part of
this work of Government, and consists in the protection of the interests of
the individual citizen where those interests depend upon the goodwill of a
foreign Government.
But just as in domestic politics the individual citizen is inclined to
suspect--too often with truth--that the Government does not give impartial
attention to the interests of all the citizens, but is preoccupied in
protecting the interests of powerful and privileged persons or groups, so
in foreign policy the individual citizen is particularly prone to believe
that the time of the Foreign Office is taken up in furthering the interests
of rich bondholders or powerful capitalists. Moreover, the charge is
sometimes heard that some of the most powerful of these capitalists are
engaged in the manufacture of armaments, and that the Foreign Office
aims at securing orders from foreign Governments for these firms, thus
encouraging the nations of the world to provide themselves with means of
destruction.
Now, just as no sensible man will say that Governments do not often oppress
the people under their care, so no sensible man will contend that Foreign
Offices do not sometimes sin in the same way. But let us try to give an
accurate picture of the work on which the British Foreign Office spends its
time.
The organisation of the Foreign Office consists of:
(1) An office, situated in Downing Street, manned by a number of clerks,
under the direction of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
(2) The Diplomatic Service--that is to say, from three to eight officials
residing in the capital of each foreign country. In the more important
countries these officials are called an Embassy, and are under the
direction of an Ambassador; in the smaller countries they are called a
Legation, and are under the direction of a Minister. These Ambassadors and
Ministers receive instructions from and report to the Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, and are the mouthpiece of the British Government in
all business which Great Britain transacts with foreign countries.
(3) The Consular Service--that is to say, a large number of officials,
called Consuls, distributed over all the towns of the world where British
subjects have important trade connections or where there are a considerable
number of British subjects. These Consuls are under the direction of the
Foreign Office and of the Embassy or Legation in the country where they
reside, and their business is to assist British trade and protect British
subjects.
§2. _The Work of the Foreign Office._--The work of this whole organisation
may be divided into four classes:
(1) The protection of individual British subjects. This protection often
extends to the most petty matters. Through the offices of a Consul and
of an Embassy or Legation flows day by day a continual stream of British
subjects who are in small difficulties or have small grievances against the
officials of the country. One old lady has lost her luggage; a working man
is stranded without work and wants to get back to England; a commercial
traveller has got into trouble with the customs officials and asks for
redress. But the protection thus given is often concerned with very
important matters, and is constantly employed on behalf of the poorest and
the most helpless. For instance, our officials in the United States are
constantly occupied, in assisting British immigrant working men and women
who are suffering hardships under the stringent provisions of the United
States immigration laws.
(2) The furthering of British trade. It is the duty of the whole Foreign
Office organisation, but especially of the Consuls, to give advice to the
representatives of commercial firms, to report openings for the sale of
British goods abroad, and generally to give assistance to British trade
in its competition with foreign trade. Enquiries will, for instance, be
received by a Consul at a Chinese port from a manufacturer of pottery or
harness or tin-tacks, asking what type of goods will be likely to find
a market in that locality. The Consul will then enquire and give such
information as his local knowledge enables him to supply. Or again,
a foreign country will sometimes make regulations which hinder the
importation of English products. English oats may, for instance, be
affected with a blight which Italy fears may infect her crops if she allows
their importation. It may then become the duty of the British Embassy at
Rome to make arrangements with the Italian Government in order that English
farmers may not suffer by losing the market for their produce. But one
important point must be remembered, because it is too often forgotten by
those who criticise the Foreign Office. There is one general restriction on
the activities of the Foreign Office in assisting British trade: no British
official is allowed to invite, or try to persuade, any foreign Government
to give orders to British firms, whether for war material or for any other
article.
What we have already said applies to the relations between civilised
countries. But the relations between civilised countries on the one hand,
and uncivilised or semi-civilised countries on the other hand, are very
much more difficult in many ways. Difficulties especially arise with regard
to commerce. Many of the less-developed countries of the world, such
as some South American countries and China, cannot, like their richer
neighbours, undertake the development of their own resources. They lack
money, scientific training, business ability, and so on. They therefore
give what are called "concessions" to foreign companies or capitalists;
that is, the Government of the country leases some industry for a term of
years to the foreign company. The Mexican Government, for instance, has
leased its oil-wells to English, American, and Dutch companies, and the
Chinese Government has largely confided the construction and management of
its railroads to English, French, and German companies.
Now, in many countries where this happens, the Government is not strong
enough or permanent enough to guarantee proper security of tenure to the
foreign company to which it grants a concession; very likely some official
is bribed to grant the concession to one company and then bribed by another
company to cancel it, or the Government is overthrown by a revolution
and its successor cancels the concessions it has granted. By this means,
British workmen may be thrown out of work and their employment may pass
to workmen in the United States or Germany. Consequently, foreign
Governments--the Governments of civilised countries--gradually begin to
intervene and give protection to their subjects who have concessions in
such countries, provided that they have obtained their concessions in a
respectable and proper manner. Competition between the different foreign
companies then grows up; their Governments gradually begin to support them
against each other in this competition, until at last it becomes necessary
for the different Governments, if bad feeling is to be avoided, to try to
arrive at some arrangement among themselves, fixing the way in which
the concessions granted by this or that semi-civilised country shall be
distributed among the subjects of the Great Powers. Something like this has
been recently happening in China.
To a certain extent this line of action seems to be necessary in dealing
with backward countries, and it may be made mutually beneficial both to
those countries themselves and to the commerce of the Great Powers, but,
on the other hand, the whole policy is obviously liable to great abuse.
Consequently, every self-respecting Government knows that all matters
relating to concessions must be treated with the greatest caution and
forbearance, and that the interests of all concerned will be best served
in the long run by gradually helping backward countries along the path of
civilisation and strengthening their Governments so that they may be able
to assume complete control of their own finance and commercial enterprises.
We have now described roughly the personal and the commercial work of the
Foreign Office. This work covers all the immediate interests of individual
British citizens in regard to foreign countries. If each British subject
is protected when abroad, and if the trade and industry of the country on
which the welfare and livelihood of every individual citizen ultimately
depends is fostered and safe-guarded, then the primary duties of the
British Government in relation to other Governments have been discharged.
But this is not enough. If the interests of the individual citizen of Great
Britain are to be permanently secured in relation to foreign countries, we
must be assured that the policy of foreign Governments is civilised and
generally friendly to British subjects. There must be a general rule of law
throughout the world on which British subjects can count with assurance of
safety. And so the Foreign Office has a third and even more important class
of work:
(3) The maintenance of permanent good relations with foreign countries.
These good relations are secured, not only by continually friendly
communication with foreign Governments over innumerable questions of
policy, but also by the conclusion of a network of treaties, some of them
designed to establish international co-operation in particular social or
economic questions such, for instance, as the existing treaty between Great
Britain and France providing for the mutual payment of compensation under
the Workmen's Compensation Laws of the two countries, and others concluded
with the object of defining the mutual policy of different countries in
general matters such as the regulation of trade. The newest and most
important class of treaties are those which, like the Hague Conventions and
the treaties guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, attempt
to lay down general rules of law which all countries agree to observe.
In other words, the office of diplomacy is to secure _certainty_ in the
government of the world, so that every man may know what to expect in
dealing with his fellow-man of a different nationality.
It is difficult to describe adequately the complexity of this diplomatic
work. The economic and social systems of the world have become so involved
and intertwined that there is hardly anything one country can do which does
not react in some way on the interests of the subjects of another country.
In every European country, and in the United States, the Government is
being more and more called upon to regulate the delicate economic and
social machinery on which modern life depends. Each Government adopts an
attitude towards such problems which is determined partly by the thought
and the beliefs of its public men, and partly by the course of historical
development through which each country has passed. There thus arises
gradually in each country a more or less definite policy with which the
country becomes identified. Formerly the policy of most European countries
was mainly confined to questions arising in Europe itself, but in these
days of industrial expansion the real aims of their policy generally lie
outside Europe.
There are vast regions of the world where civilised government does not
exist, or is only beginning to exist, but where the citizens of civilised
countries travel and carry on trade. No civilised country can prevent its
traders going where they please--indeed, the prosperity of every great
country now depends to some extent at least upon its traders finding
new markets for the sale of their goods--but if these traders go to an
uncivilised country like Central Africa or the interior of China or the
South Sea Islands the civilised country not only feels obliged to protect
them there, but it must also, by every claim of justice and humanity,
prevent them from ill-using the uncivilised and helpless natives.
The horrors which accompany the unregulated activity of foreign traders in
a savage country may be seen from the _Life of John G. Paton,_ a missionary
in the New Hebrides Islands of the Southern Pacific. These islands, before
they came under the government of any civilised Power, were visited by
European and American traders, especially traders in sandalwood. "The
sandalwood traders," wrote Paton, "are as a class the most godless of
men.... By them the poor defenceless natives are oppressed and robbed on
every hand; and if they offer the slightest resistance they are ruthlessly
silenced by the musket or revolver.... The sale of intoxicants, opium,
fire-arms, and ammunition by the traders among the New Hebrideans, had
become a terrible and intolerable evil." It became necessary for the
civilised Powers to prohibit, by international regulation, the sale of
fire-arms and intoxicants in the islands. Such international regulations
are always very difficult to enforce, and finally the administration of the
islands was taken over by Great Britain and France, who now govern them
jointly.
Hence the civilised countries of the world have gradually been led to
assume jurisdiction in uncivilised regions, and have converted many of them
into colonies or "protectorates" or "spheres of influence." By this process
the interests of the nations of Europe reach out into all the far corners
of the earth, and constant care and arrangement is needed to prevent those
interests clashing. Where the interests of the different Powers do clash in
an uncivilised or semi-civilised part of the world a general international
agreement is often necessary to put things straight; for instance, during
recent years the interests of Germany, France, and Spain--and to a less
degree those of many other countries--were continually clashing in Morocco,
till it became necessary in 1906 to conclude a general international treaty
called the Algeciras Act, whereby the relations of all the Powers with
regard to Morocco were defined in great detail.
§3. _The Balance of Power._--It is this continual attempt to arrange
matters and to keep the different Powers clear of each other in order that
their interests may not clash, which is the real underlying cause to-day of
what is known as the "Balance of Power." The doctrine of the "Balance
of Power" grew up at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the
eighteenth century when Europe was threatened by the policy of aggression
and conquest undertaken by Louis XIV. of France. From that day onward,
European statesmen have sought to establish a definite European system and
to limit the growth of the European States in such a way as to ensure that
no State should be so strong as to threaten its neighbours.
The history of this attempt has been somewhat as follows. A coalition of
the States of Europe was formed against the aggressions of Louis XIV.
After a series of wars a peace was signed at Utrecht in 1713 defining the
boundaries of the European States in such a way as to establish equality
and a balance of power between them. For about ten years European statesmen
attempted to maintain the system thus set up by means of what has since
come to be known as the "Concert of Europe"--that is, by means of a series
of international congresses where opportunity was given for the settlement
of disputes between the different States. Soon, however, it became
impossible to satisfy the ambitions of the rulers and peoples of Europe by
this means, and the Concert of Europe broke up. Wars followed, during which
those statesmen, especially in England, who believed in the "Balance of
Power" sought to prevent any European nation from being overwhelmed by its
enemies. To this end, England supported Austria against the attacks of
Prussia, and then later supported Prussia against a coalition formed by the
rest of Europe to crush her. Unfortunately neither England nor France had
sufficient strength or courage to prevent the partition of Poland between
Prussia, Russia and Austria, which constituted a fatal violation of the
Balance of Power. Peace did not return to Europe till 1815, when the whole
continent had been driven to combine for the overthrow of Napoleon. At the
Congress of Vienna in that year the "Concert of Europe" was revived, and
for more than thirty years it practically succeeded by means of a series
of international congresses in maintaining a stable and balanced system in
Europe.
But this "Concert of Europe" was the very thing against which the
democratic forces on the continent finally rebelled, for the "Concert" took
the form of the so-called "Holy Alliance" between the rulers of Europe,
whose object was to prevent popular movements from disturbing the neat and
orderly peace which they had created. The system created by the Congress of
Vienna began to break down in 1848. Since then the warlike nationalist and
democratic movements in Europe, followed by the tremendous economic growth
of the European nations, have made it almost impossible to secure any
stable balance of power, though a more or less successful attempt to
establish such a balance in the affairs of south-eastern Europe was made at
the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907
did little but reveal the mutual fears and suspicions of the European
nations, though many statesmen, especially English and American, laboured
sincerely to make the Hague Conventions the guarantee of a lasting peace.
But it must be observed that the "Balance of Power," which was originally a
distinctly European conception, has now become a world-wide conception. In
order to secure a balance of power between the European States it is no
longer sufficient to settle European frontiers; it is necessary to settle
and, as it were, dovetail into each other the economic interests of the
European countries in Africa, Asia, and the Southern Pacific. It is also
necessary to define the relations of European countries to the States in
North and South America.
What is the conclusion to be drawn from this history? The idea of the
Balance of Power is unsatisfactory. You cannot really "balance" living
forces. Nations are not dead masses which can be weighed against each
other, but living growths which expand according to obscure natural laws.
Human laws can never stop natural growth; growth can only be stopped by
death, and so the Balance of Power seems to necessitate continual conflict.
And so, at least twice in the last two centuries, the attempt to maintain a
stable European system by a peaceful "Concert of Europe" has broken down.
Once, in the Holy Alliance, that Concert itself became an intolerable
tyranny. Many men to-day hope to secure peace by re-establishing the
Concert of Europe on a democratic basis, but it may well be doubted whether
any such system can be permanent, unless there be a radical reform in the
mind and character not only of European statesmen but of the European
peoples. We shall discuss this later, but meanwhile we may say this at
least. A balance of power is an imperfect conception. It is a rough and
ready--almost barbarous--policy. The best that can be said for it is that
no alternative policy has been devised, or at least none has succeeded.
Every one of us who has a spark of idealism believes that the day will come
when it shall give place to some more perfect system. But at the present
day not only international politics but also home politics are governed
by this idea of a balance of power. No democracy has yet been able to
establish itself in any country except by virtue of a continual conflict
between class and class, between interest and interest, between capital and
labour, and international conflicts are but the reflection of the domestic
conflicts within each State; both are continual unsuccessful attempts to
reach a stable equilibrium, and they can only be ended by a true fusion of
hearts and wills.
§4. _The Estimation of National Forces._--It has been necessary to
undertake this long discussion in order to give a more or less clear idea
of the work done by diplomacy in maintaining a stable international system.
Arising out of this we have now to consider the fourth class of work--and
the most difficult--which the Foreign Office has to perform. For want of a
better name we may call it--
(4) The estimation of national forces. Nations are not mere agglomerations
of individuals; they have each their own character, their own feelings,
and their own life. Science has done little to determine the laws of
their growth, but, as we have seen, each nation does grow, reaches out
slowly--almost insensibly--in this or that direction, and gathers to itself
new interests which in their turn give new impulse to its growth. Perhaps
the best simile that we can use for the foreign policy of the world is that
of a rather tangled garden, where creepers are continually growing and
taking root in new soil and where life is therefore always threatening
and being threatened by new life. The point is that we are dealing with
_life_--with its growth and decay; not with the movements of pieces on a
chequer-board.
Now, the Foreign Office largely exists in order to watch this growth and,
like a gardener, to train and lead it in directions where it can
expand without danger. But for this work intimate knowledge is
necessary--knowledge not so much of the personal character or policy of
those who govern the different nations, but knowledge of the character,
the economic needs, the beliefs, the feelings, and the aspirations of the
half-dumb millions who form and ultimately determine the life of each
nation. The diplomatist must study every political and social movement
which goes on in a nation; he must estimate the effect which the national
system of education is having on the mind of the nation; he must form an
idea of the lessons which the Government of his own country should learn
from the government of other countries, whether it be, for instance,
lessons in constitutional government or in municipal sanitation; and he
must above all be able to warn his Government of the dangers to his own
country which the growth of foreign countries seems to entail, in order
that peaceful measures may be taken in time to prevent a collision.
This, then, is a rough account of the actual work of diplomacy. It is not a
full account. There are many wrong things done which deserve criticism, but
which we have not had space to mention. There is also much self-sacrificing
and thankless work done by diplomatists and consuls in distant parts of the
world--much seeming drudgery which can hope for no reward--many honourable
services rendered to the public of which the public never hears. But the
above account will suffice to give a rough idea of the organisation with
which we are dealing, and we may now pass on to consider the question of
how this organisation should be managed and controlled.
B. THE DEMOCRATISATION OF FOREIGN POLICY
This phrase is rapidly becoming a political catchword. As such it requires
to be approached with the utmost caution. Before going further it is
necessary to test the assumptions underlying it and to inquire how far they
really correspond to the facts.
§1. _Democracy and Peace._--First of all, the main assumption made by
Englishmen who advocate the democratisation of foreign policy is that
international peace would thereby be assured. True, the extension of the
democratic principle is to many men an end in itself, quite apart from the
question whether it tends to peace. But great masses of men are not moved
to make political demands merely by theoretical considerations; it is the
pressure of definite and imminent evils which arouses them to action. In
the case of England the demand for greater democratic control in the sphere
of foreign policy arose in large measure from the sudden realisation, in
the late summer of 1911, at the time of the so-called Agadir crisis, that
war between this country and Germany was a possibility with which English
statesmen and the English people had to reckon. We had felt the breath
of war actually on our cheek, and a large section of English sentiment
revolted from it. A demand was raised for a democratic policy of peace.
Three years later, on August 3, 1914, when Parliament met to decide the
happiness or sufferings of the quarter of the human race comprised in the
British Empire, the same demand was voiced in a series of speeches which
accurately expressed the belief that peace was the policy of the people,
while war was the secret aim of their rulers. Mr. T. Edmund Harvey, M.P.,
spoke as follows:
"I am convinced that this war, for the great masses of the countries of
Europe, and not for our own country alone, is no people's war. It is a war
that has been made ... by men in high places, by diplomatists working in
secret, by bureaucrats who are out of touch with the peoples of the world,
who are the remnant of an older evil civilisation which is disappearing by
gradual and peaceful methods."
Mr. Ponsonby, M.P., spoke in the same sense:
"I trust that, even though it may be late, the Foreign Secretary will use
every endeavour to the very last moment, disregarding the tone of messages
and the manner of Ambassadors, but looking to the great central interests
of humanity and civilisation to keep this country in a state of peace."
Democracy means peace;--can we accept this assumption? Contrasts are
sometimes illuminating, and it may be well to turn from the Parliamentary
debate of August 3 to an article written sixty-two years ago in an English
review by the greatest democrat of his time. In April 1852 Mazzini
published in the _Westminster Review_ an appeal to England to intervene on
the Continent in favour of the revolutionary movements in progress there
since 1848. The following is an extract from that article:
"The menace of the foreigner weighs upon the smaller States; the last
sparks of European liberty are extinguished under the dictatorial veto of
the retrograde powers. England--the country of Elizabeth and Cromwell--has
not a word to say in favour of the principle to which she owes her
existence. If England persist in maintaining this neutral, passive, selfish
part, she will have to expiate it. A European transformation is inevitable.
When it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty
places at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided,
the peoples will remember that England had stood by, an inert, immovable,
sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts.... England will find
herself some day a third-rate power, and to this she is being brought by a
want of foresight in her statesmen. The nation must rouse herself and shake
off the torpor of her Government."
Mr. Ponsonby appealing in the name of the people to Sir Edward Grey to
stand aloof from European war; Mazzini appealing in the name of the people
to the respectable, peaceable, middle classes of England to forsake
Cobden's pacifist doctrines and throw England's sword into the scale of
European revolution--it is a strange contrast which serves to remind us
that the word "democracy," so lightly bandied about by political parties,
has many different meanings and has stood for many different policies. It
may be roughly said that it stood for internationalism in 1792, when France
claimed as her mission the liberation of all nations under the tricolor;
it stood for nationalism in 1848 in the mouth of Mazzini, Kossuth and the
German constitutional party; to-day it again stands for internationalism
in the more advanced countries of Europe, but are we justified as yet in
calling this more than a phase in the development of democratic doctrine?
It is a very difficult question, which it would be presumptuous to try to
answer offhand; all we have tried to show here is that, on the whole, the
assumption as to the peaceful tendencies of a democratic foreign policy is
a doubtful one, on which we must to some extent reserve our judgment.
§2. _Foreign Policy and Popular Forces._--The above considerations will
help us to appreciate at its true value the second main assumption which
lies behind the demand for increased democratic control of foreign
policy--namely, the assumption that the stuff of international politics
is at present spun from the designs of individual statesmen, and has no
relation to the needs of the peoples they govern. Stated thus, this idea
will not bear examination for a moment. The doctrine of the "economic
interpretation of history," which has received perhaps its most emphatic
expression in the teaching of Marxian socialists, is now in one form or
another accepted by all thinking men. But "economics" is after all a rough
name for the sum of the ordinary needs and efforts of every single human
being, and the economic interpretation of history means that the history of
the world is in the long run determined by the cumulative force of these
humble needs and efforts. This and this alone is the real stuff of
international politics. Statesmen may attempt to found systems, but the
only real force in international as in domestic politics is the education
of the individual man's desires. It is indeed open to any critic to say
that our present capitalist economic system is responsible for war because
it dams up and diverts from their true channels the needs and the efforts
of the mass of mankind. But to this an Englishman may fairly answer that
the free trade system under which our capitalist organisation has reached
its greatest development was built up by the Manchester School with the
sincere and avowed object of introducing universal peace. Cobden avowed
this object clearly:
"I see," he said, "in free trade that which shall act on the moral world
as the law of gravitation in the universe, drawing men together, thrusting
aside the antagonism of race and creed and language and uniting us in the
bonds of eternal peace... I believe that the desire and motive for large
and mighty empires, for gigantic armies and mighty navies ... will die
away."
Yet, in spite of these aspirations, great wars have come to England,
not once, but at least three times, since these words were spoken, and
armaments are immeasurably larger than ever before.
Let us understand one thing clearly in connection with the present war. Mr.
Ponsonby, in the words already quoted, implored Sir E. Grey to "look to the
great central interests of humanity and civilisation," and to preserve the
neutrality of England in those interests. But at the moment at which he
spoke the eyes of English statesmen were looking at one thing alone. It was
not a question of what French statesmen expected them to do. The British
Government had explained quite clearly to French statesmen that they must
not expect armed support from England. This fact had been made clear to the
French Foreign Office long before in a series of conversations between the
statesmen, and it had been embodied in a letter from Sir E. Grey to the
French Ambassador. But when the shadow of war actually fell on France these
conversations and this letter faded into the background. It was no longer a
question of what the French President expected from the King of England. It
was a question of what Jacques Roturier, artisan in the streets of Paris,
knowing that the Germans were on the frontier and might be dropping their
shells into Paris in a fortnight, expected from John Smith, shopkeeper in
the East India Dock Road, London, safe behind the English Channel from all
the horrors of war. That was, not rhetorically but in all soberness of
fact, the real "international obligation" on August 3, 1914; for though
treaties are made by statesmen they are in the long run interpreted, not
by statesmen, but by the public opinion which becomes slowly centred on
them--by the hopes and fears of millions of working men and women who have
never read the terms of the treaty but to whom it has become the symbol of
a friendship on which they can draw in case of need. The magistrate may
write the marriage lines, but the marriage becomes what the husband and
wife make it--a thing far deeper and more binding than any legal contract.
In the light of these considerations, we can establish one point of supreme
importance in dealing with foreign policy--namely, that the causes of war
are very different from the immediate occasions of war. When the British
Government, at the outbreak of the present war, published a White Paper
containing the diplomatic correspondence between July 20 and August 4,
1914, they were publishing evidence as to the immediate occasion of
war--namely the Austrian ultimatum of July 23 to Serbia which brought on
the war. In the twelve days which intervened between the delivery of that
ultimatum and the declaration of war between England and Germany, the
negotiations on which hung the immediate fate of Europe were, it is true,
conducted by a few leading statesmen. But it is of little use to argue
whether or not these negotiations were conducted ill or well, for they were
not the real _cause_ of the war. The cause of the war must be sought in the
slow development of forces which can be traced back for years, and even for
centuries. It was comparatively futile for Parliament to discuss whether
this or that despatch or telegram was wise or unwise; the real questions to
be asked were--What produced the crowds in Vienna surging round the Serbian
Legation at the end of June, and round the Russian Embassy at the end of
July; what produced the slow, patient sympathy for the Balkan peoples and
hatred for Austria in the heart of millions of Russian peasants; what
produced the Servian nationalist movement; above all, what produced that
strange sentiment throughout Germany which could honestly regard the
invasion of Belgium as justifiable? To answer those questions we have to
estimate the force of the most heterogeneous factors in history:--for
instance, on the one hand, the slow break-up of the Turkish Empire,
extending over more than two centuries, which has allowed the cauldron of
the Slavonic Balkan peoples to boil up through the thin crust of foreign
domination; and on the other hand, the gradual development of the whole
system of German State education, and the character of the German
newspapers, which have turned the eyes of German public opinion in upon
itself and have excluded from public teaching and from the formation of
thought every breath of fresh air from the outside world, until at last
German public sentiment, through extreme and incessant self-contemplation,
has lost the calmness and simplicity which were once the strength of the
German character. No man can allot the responsibility for these things,
spreading as they do over generations; but assuredly the responsibility
does not rest with the half-dozen Ministers for Foreign Affairs who were in
power in July 1914.
If we are right in what we have said above, then the phrase "the
democratization of foreign policy" takes on a new meaning. It does not
mean merely the introduction into foreign policy of any set of democratic
institutions; it means the realisation by both statesmen and people that
foreign policy is already in its essence a fundamentally democratic thing,
and that the success or failure of any line of action depends not upon the
desires of politicians but upon the mighty forces which move and determine
the life of peoples.
At present the statesmen do not realise this sufficiently, and hence comes
much futile and aimless talking and writing among politicians who fancy
that what they say or write to each other in their studies can determine
the course of the world. In order to enable diplomatists to discharge all
the duties we have already enumerated under the heading of "the estimation
of national forces," they need to have a better training and a fuller
knowledge of the life and social movements both of their own country and
of foreign countries. The Royal Commission on the Civil Service was still
considering, when war broke out, how this could be accomplished. It is too
long a question to enter on here, but it may safely be said that the more
the problem is examined the more does it appear to be, like the wider
problem of the whole body of 200,000 civil servants in the United Kingdom,
a question of national education, and not a mere matter of Government
regulations and democratic institutions. What is required, in the Foreign
Office, as in the whole British civil service, has been well expressed by
Mr. Graham Wallas in his book _Human Nature in Politics_:
"However able our officials are and however varied their origin, the danger
of the narrowness and rigidity which has hitherto so generally resulted
from official life would still remain and must be guarded against by every
kind of encouragement to free intellectual development."
§3. _Foreign Policy and Education_.--But if statesmen do not sufficiently
realise the strength of existing popular forces in foreign policy, it is
equally true that the people themselves do not realise it. The people of
every country are inclined to think that they can alter the destiny of
nations by ousting one foreign minister from power and setting up another;
they think that speeches and the resolutions passed by congresses can
change fundamental economic facts. They think that mere expressions of
mutual goodwill can take the place of knowledge, and they forget that no
nation can shake itself free in a moment from the historical development
which has formed it, just as no man can wholly shake himself free from
the character which he has inherited from his ancestors. Indeed all our
phrases--our whole attitude of mind--shows how little we, as a people,
realise popular forces. We commonly speak, for instance, of Russia as if
nothing in that vast country had any influence on foreign affairs except
the opinions of a few bureaucrats in Petrograd. Our sympathy for
or hostility to Russia is determined by our opinion of the Russian
bureaucracy, and we never spare a thought for the hopes and fears and the
dumb but ardent beliefs of millions of Russian peasants. We are apt to
dismiss them from our minds as ignorant and superstitious villagers
tyrannised over by the Tsar, without troubling to enquire narrowly into the
real facts of Russian life. We thus make precisely the same mistake that
diplomatists too often make. We forget that the masses of peasants who flow
every year on pilgrimage to the shrines of their religion constitute a more
vital fact in the history of the world than the deliberations of the Duma
or the decisions of police magistrates.
Here we have a lesson to learn from Germany, for German statesmen,
strangely enough, have taken immense trouble to make their policy a
democratic one. The whole German nation is behind them because for
years and years they have taught the nation through the schools, the
universities, and the press, their own reading of history and their own
idea of what true civilisation is. They have adapted their teaching to the
fundamental characteristics and to the history of the German people. They
have taken pains to ally the interests alike of capital and labour to their
policy, and to fuse the whole nation by a uniform national education and by
a series of paternal social reforms imposed from above. The real strength
and danger of Germany is not what her statesmen or soldiers _do_, but what
Germans themselves _believe_. We are fighting not an army but a false idea;
and nothing will defeat a false idea but the knowledge of the truth.
When this war is over, whatever its outcome may be, we must try to
introduce a new era into the history of the world. But our fathers and our
fathers' fathers have tried to do this same thing, and we shall not succeed
if we go about the work in a spirit of self-sufficiency and hasty pride.
Only knowledge of the truth will enable us to succeed. Knowledge of the
truth is not an easy thing; it is a question of laborious thought, mental
discipline, the humility which is content to learn and the moral courage
which can face the truth when it is learnt. How are we to gain these
things?
First of all, by schools, universities, classes--all the machinery of our
national and private education.
Then, by the same means as popular government employs in other matters--by
discussion, by debates in Parliament, by criticism of the Government. Now,
these means are not employed at present partly because it is feared that
criticism of the Government in matters of foreign policy will weaken its
hands in dealing with foreign nations. This is a just fear if criticism
merely springs from the critics' personal likings or prejudices, but
no such evil effects need be feared if the criticism springs from deep
thought, from knowledge of the facts and from the patience and wisdom
which thought and knowledge bring. But partly also effective discussion
of foreign politics does not exist because we are more interested in home
politics. We really have, if we cared to use it, as much democratic control
over the Foreign Office under our constitution as over any Government
Department, for the Foreign Office, like every other Department, is under
the control of a member of Parliament, elected by the people. But we
are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in
constitutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions
of home policy that we make and unmake Governments, and when we discuss
whether a Conservative or a Liberal Government ought to be in power, we
never think what effect the change would have on foreign policy. If the
democracy is to take a real part in foreign politics, it must recognise
that great responsibilities mean great sacrifices. We must be content to
think a little less of our internal social reform, and give more of our
attention to the very difficult questions which arise beyond the Channel
and beyond the Atlantic Ocean. We must live constantly in the consciousness
that the world to-day is one community, and that in everything we do as
a people we bear a responsibility not to ourselves alone but to the
population of the British Empire as a whole and to the family of nations.
But when we have really set ourselves to understand and discharge the
responsibilities of foreign policy, how shall we, the people of this
country, make our opinions effective? How can we be sure that the Foreign
Office will carry out a policy corresponding to the considered convictions
which we as a people have formed?
As already stated, we have in our hands the same means of Parliamentary
control over foreign policy as over internal policy. Parliament can
overthrow a Government whose policy it disapproves, and it can refuse to
grant supplies for the carrying out of such a policy. Short of this, the
people can express through Parliament its views as to the way in which
foreign policy should be conducted, and generally Ministers will bow, in
this as in other matters, to the clearly expressed views of Parliament. We
have, in fact, recently seen a striking example of this. When after the
international crisis of 1911 the country clearly expressed the opinion that
no secret engagements should be entered into with any Power which would
force Great Britain to go to war in support of that Power, the Prime
Minister stated, and has repeated his statement emphatically on several
subsequent occasions, that the Government of this country neither had
entered, nor would enter, into any such secret engagements, and that any
treaty entailing warlike obligations on this country would be laid before
Parliament. This has now become a fixed and recognised fact in British
policy, and it is not too much to say that, like other constitutional
changes under the British system of government, it is rapidly becoming a
part of the unwritten constitution of the country.
But many people would like to go beyond this, and lay down that no treaty
between Great Britain and another country shall be valid until it has been
voted by Parliament. Many countries have provisions of this kind in their
constitutions; for instance, the constitution of the United States provides
that all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate,
and the French constitution contains the following provision:
"The President of the Republic negotiates and ratifies treaties. He brings
them to the knowledge of the Chamber so soon as the interests and the
safety of the State permit.
"Treaties of peace and of commerce, treaties which impose a claim on the
finances of the State, those which relate to the personal status and
property rights of French subjects abroad, do not become valid until they
have been voted by the two Chambers. No cession, exchange, or increase of
territory can take place except by virtue of a law."
Such constitutional provisions may be good in their way, and it may be
that we should copy them. But the question is one of secondary importance.
Whether treaties must actually be ratified by Parliament, or merely laid
before Parliament for an expression of its opinion, as is commonly done in
this country, the Parliament and people of Great Britain will have control
over foreign policy just in the measure that they take a keen interest in
it. If they take a keen interest no statesman dependent for his position
on the votes of the electorate will dare to embody in a treaty a policy of
which they disapprove; while if they do not take an adequate interest,
no amount of constitutional provisions will enable them to exercise an
intelligent control over the actions of statesmen.
The same may be said of another expedient adopted in many countries;
namely, the appointment by Parliament of Committees on Foreign Affairs,
with power to call for papers and examine Ministers on their policy.
Democratic government both in foreign and internal affairs has hitherto
rested on the idea that Parliament should have adequate control over the
principles on which policy is conducted, but must to a large extent leave
the details of administration to the executive departments which are
controlled by the Ministers of the Crown. Parliament, whether through
committees or otherwise, will never be able to follow or control all
diplomatic negotiations, any more than it can control all the details
of the administration necessary to carry out a complicated law like the
Insurance Act; and Committees of Parliament, however useful, will have
no influence unless the people of the country so recognise their
responsibilities in foreign politics that they will demand from the men
whom they elect to Parliament a judgment and a knowledge of foreign
affairs, at least as sound and well based as they now require in the case
of internal affairs.
It will be seen that this imposes a very difficult task on the British
electorate. How are they to weigh foreign affairs and internal affairs
against each other? What are they to do if they approve the internal policy
of a Government, but disapprove of its foreign policy, or _vice versa_? Are
we, for instance, to sacrifice what we believe to be our duty in foreign
affairs in order that we may keep in power a Government which is carrying
out what we believe to be a sound policy of internal social reform? It
is here, it would seem, that some reform is really needed. There is one
solution: namely, to separate the control of domestic affairs on the one
hand and foreign affairs on the other, placing domestic affairs in the
hands of a Parliament and and a Cabinet who will stand or fall by their
internal policy alone, and entrusting foreign affairs to an Imperial
Parliament and an Imperial Cabinet formed of representatives not of Great
Britain alone but of the whole British Empire. This is an idea which merits
the most careful consideration by the people of the United Kingdom, for it
may well be doubted whether any real popular control of foreign policy is
possible until some such division of functions takes place. One word in
conclusion. If it is true that domestic policy and foreign policy are
separate functions of Government, it is also true that the domestic policy
of a country in the long run determines its foreign policy. International
peace can never be attained between nations torn with internal dissensions;
international justice will remain a dream so long as political parties and
schools of thought dispute over the meaning of justice in domestic
affairs. A true ideal of peace must embrace the class struggle as well as
international war. If we desire a "Concert of Europe" which shall be based
on true freedom and not on tyranny, it behoves us to realise our ideal
first in England, and to raise our country itself above the political and
social conflicts and hatreds which have formed so large and so sordid a
part of our domestic history for the last decade.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
It is difficult to give a list of books illustrating foreign policy in
general. The lists given in other chapters sufficiently illustrate the
various problems with which foreign policy to-day has to deal.
The diplomacy of a century ago is well illustrated by the _Diaries and
Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury_. 4 vols. 1844. (Out of print.)
For the diplomacy of the middle of the nineteenth century, when the present
national forces of Europe were being created, the following biographies are
useful:
_Life of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe_, by Lane-Poole. 2 vols. 1888.
_Life of Lord Granville_, by Lord Fitzmaurice. 2 vols. 1905.
_Life of Lord Clarendon_, by Sir Herbert Maxwell. 2 vols. 1913.
_Life of Lord Lyons_, by Lord Newton. 2 vols. 1898.
_Life of Cavour_, by Roscoe Thayer. 2 vols. 1911.
_Bismarck's Reflections_.
There are many studies of the diplomatic problems of the present day, but
as they deal with history in the making they are to be read for the general
survey they give of forces at work rather than as authoritative statements.
A very comprehensive survey of all the complexities of international
politics will be found in Fullerton's _Problems of Power_ (1913). 7s. 6d.
net.
The actual workings of diplomacy may best be seen in the "White Books" of
diplomatic correspondence, periodically published by the Foreign Office,
such, for instance, as the successive volumes of _Correspondence Respecting
the Affairs of Persia_. Perhaps the best idea of the actual labour of
foreign relations can be gained by consulting such compilations as
Hertslet's _Commercial Treaties_--23 vols. 1827-1905--which are a record of
work actually completed.
On the staffing of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service, see the
fifth Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service (Cd. 7748), just
published (5-1/2 d.).