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Title: Towards an enduring peace : A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
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TOWARDS AN
ENDURING PEACE
A SYMPOSIUM OF PEACE
PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
1914-1916
COMPILED BY
RANDOLPH S. BOURNE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
[Illustration]
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR
INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION
NEW YORK
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I—PRINCIPLES OF THE SETTLEMENT: ECONOMIC
Problems of Economic Opportunity, by John A. Hobson 3
Trade as a Cause of War, by H. N. Brailsford 9
Economic Imperialism, by H. N. Brailsford 15
The Problem of Diplomacy, by Walter Lippmann 22
Socialists and Imperialism, by William English Walling 33
The Higher Imperialism, from the New Republic 38
PRINCIPLES OF THE SETTLEMENT: POLITICAL
Nationality and the Future, by Arnold J. Toynbee 43
Nationality and Sovereignty, by Arnold J. Toynbee 57
The Governmental Theory, by G. Lowes Dickinson 70
The Way Out of War, by G. Lowes Dickinson 76
Lowes Dickinson’s Plan, from the New Republic 81
The Morrow of the War, by the Union of Democratic Control 86
No Peace Without Federation, by Charles W. Eliot 108
PART II. A LEAGUE OF PEACE
Bases for Confederation, by John A. Hobson 119
Existing Alliances and a League of Peace, by John Bates Clark 135
Protection of Small Nations, by Charles W. Eliot 143
A League to enforce Peace, by A. Lawrence Lowell 148
The Constitution of a League, by Hamilton Holt 160
Pacifism and the League of Peace, from the New Republic 164
The Economic Boycott, by John A. Hobson 174
Economic Coercion, by Norman Angell 184
World-Organization and Peace, by A. A. Tenney 189
PART III. TOWARDS THE FUTURE
The New Outlook, by Nicholas Murray Butler 203
Above the Battle, by Romain Rolland 205
The New Idealism, by Rudolf Eucken 214
The Future of Patriotism, by Walter Lippmann 217
The Future of Civilization, by A. E. Zimmern 221
Towards the Peace that Shall Last, by Jane Addams and Others 230
APPENDIX: PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROBLEMS
I INTERNATIONAL
1. Ford Neutral Conference at Stockholm 243
2. Central Organization for a Durable Peace 247
3. Union of International Associations 248
4. International Bureau of Peace 249
5. International Congress of Women 250
6. Conference of Socialists of Allied Nations 259
7. Conference of Socialists of Neutral Nations 261
II UNITED STATES
8. League to Enforce Peace 264
9. National Peace Convention 264
10. World Peace Foundation 266
11. American School Peace League 267
12. Women’s Peace Party 268
13. New York Peace Society 270
14. Socialist Party of America 271
15. David Starr Jordan 273
16. Nicholas Murray Butler 275
17. Chamber of Commerce of the United States 276
III GREAT BRITAIN
18. Union of Democratic Control 277
19. Fabian Society 278
20. Independent Labor Party 296
21. National Peace Council 298
22. Women’s Movement for Constructive Peace 298
23. Australian Peace Alliance 300
24. Charles Roden Buxton 301
25. H. N. Brailsford 302
IV GERMANY
26. German and Austro-Hungarian Socialists 306
27. “Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft” 306
28. Manifesto by Eighty-eight Professors and Statesmen 308
29. South German Social Democrats 310
30. German Socialists 310
31. Peace Manifesto of Socialists 311
32. Dr. Bernhard Dernburg 314
33. Prof. L. Quidde 316
34. Ed. Bernstein 317
V FRANCE
35. General Confederation of Labor 322
VI SWITZERLAND
36. Swiss Peace Society 323
37. Swiss Committee for Study of Principles of Durable
Treaty of Peace 323
VII HOLLAND
38. Nederlandsche Anti-Oorlog Raad (Dutch Anti-War Council) 325
VIII Norman Angell on Differential Neutrality for America 326
INDEX 333
INTRODUCTION
When the storm has gone by and the skies after clearing have softened,
we may discover that a corrected perspective is the result of the
war that we are most conscious of. Familiar presumptions will appear
foreshortened, and new distances of fact and possibility will lie before
us.
Before the fateful midsummer of 1914 the most thoughtful part of mankind
confidently held a lot of agreeable presumptions which undoubtedly
influenced individual and collective conduct. The more intangible of
them were grouped under such name symbols as “idealism,” “humanitarian
impulse,” “human brotherhood,” “Christian civilization.” The workaday
ones were pigeonholed under the rubric: “enlightened economic interest.”
Between the practical and the aspirational were distributed all the
excellent Aristotelian middle course presumptions of the “rule of reason”
order.
And why not? The nineteenth century had closed in a blaze of scientific
glory. By patient inductive research the human mind had found out
nature’s way on earth and in the heavens, and with daring invention
had turned knowledge to immediate practical account. The struggle
for existence had become a mighty enterprise of progress. Steam and
electricity had brought the utmost parts of the world together. Upon
substantial material foundations the twentieth century would build a
world republic, wherein justice should apportion abundance.
Upon presumption we reared the tower of expectation.
Yet on the horizon we might have seen—some of us did see—a thickening
haze and warning thunderheads. Not much was said about them, but to some
it seemed that the world behaved as if it felt the tension of a rising
storm. With nervous eagerness the nations pushed their way into the
domains of the backward peoples. They sought concessions, opportunities
for investment, command of resources, exclusive trade, spheres of
influence. Private negotiations were backed by diplomacy, and year after
year diplomacy was backed by an ever more impressive show of naval and
military power.
But we did not believe that the Great War impended. There would still be
restricted wars here and there of course, but more and more they could
be prevented. The human mind that had mastered nature’s way could master
and control the ways of man. Economic interest would bring its resistless
strength to bear against the mad makers of the wastes of war. A sensitive
conscience would revolt against the cruelties of war. Reason, which had
invented rules and agencies to keep the peace within the state, would
devise tribunals and procedures to substitute a rational adjustment of
differences for the arbitrament of war between states.
The world has recovered from disaster before now, it will recover again.
Presumptions that disappointed have been reexamined and brought into
truer drawing. Expectation has been more broadly built, it will be more
broadly built again.
There is conscience in mankind, and the war has sublimely revealed it,
as it has revealed also undreamed of survivals of faithlessness and
cruelty. The presumption of rational control in human affairs has been
foreshortened, but not painted out. In the background stand forth as grim
realities, forces of fear, distrust, envy, ignorance, and hate that we
had thought were ghosts. Conscience is as strong and as sensitive as we
believed it to be; reason is as effective as we presumed; but the forces
arrayed against them we now see are mightier than we knew. So now we
ask, By what power shall conscience and reason be reinforced, and the
surviving forces of barbarism be driven back?
There is but one answer left, all others have been shot to pieces.
Conscience and reason are effective when they organize material energies,
not when they dissipate themselves in dreams. Conscience and reason
must assemble, coördinate, and bring to bear the economic resources and
the physical energies of the civilized world to narrow the area and to
diminish the frequency of war.
But how? General presumptions will not do this time. There must be
a specific plan, concrete and practical; a specific preparedness, a
specific method. And what is more, plan, preparedness, method must be
drawn forth from the situation as the war makes and leaves it, not
imposed upon it. They must be a composition of forces now in operation.
There were academic plans aplenty for the creation of pacific
internationalism before the war began. The bankers had invented theirs;
the socialists, the conciliationists, and the international lawyers
respectively had invented theirs. The free traders, first in the field,
had not lost hope.
It would be foolish to let ourselves think in discouragement that all
these efforts to organize “the international mind” were idle. They were
not ineffective. They did not organize the international mind adequately,
much less did they reform its habits, but they quickened it; they
organized it in part, they pulled it together enough to make it powerful
for the work yet to be done.
What we have to face, then, is not the extinction or abandonment of
internationalism, but the fact that the ideal, the all-embracing and
thoroughly rational internationalism lies far in the future, and that
before it can be attained we must have that partial internationalism
which is practically the same thing as the widening of nationalism that
is achieved when nations coöperate in leagues or combine in federations.
The league of peace may be academic or it may soon stand forth as a
tremendous piece of realism, we do not know which, but the forces that
are holding many of the nations together in military coöperation now are
present realities, and they will be realities after the military war is
over. There will still be tariffs, but the areas within which tariff
barriers will no longer be maintained will be immensely widened. Beyond
these areas will be, as now, various arrangements of reciprocity. In like
manner, there will be a determination on the part of the coöperating
nations to stand together for the enforcement of international agreements
and to discipline a law-breaking state that would needlessly resort to
arms. The internationalism of commerce, of travel, of communication, of
intellectual exchange and moral endeavor will continue to grow throughout
the world, but in addition there will be the more definite, the more
concrete internationalism of the nations that agree in making common
cause for the attainment of specific ends.
Within this relatively restricted internationalism there will be,
there is now, a certain yet more definite aggregation of peoples,
interests, and traditions upon which rests a great and peculiar moral
responsibility. The English-speaking people of the world are together the
largest body of human beings among whom a nearly complete intellectual
and moral understanding is already achieved. They have reached high
attainments in science and the arts, in education, in social order, in
justice. They are highly organized, they cherish the traditions of their
common history. To permit anything to endanger the moral solidarity
of this nucleus of a perfected internationalism would be a crime
unspeakable. To strengthen it, to make it one of the supreme forces
working for peace and humanity is a supreme obligation.
FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.
CONCERNING THE AUTHORS QUOTED
Jane Addams has been head resident at Hull House in Chicago for many
years. She is widely known for her leadership in the social movement, and
particularly for her connection with the International Congress of Women
at The Hague.
Norman Angell is the author of “The Great Illusion,” and one of the most
brilliant of the workers in the cause of peace. He is also the author of
“International Polity,” “Arms and Industry,” and “The World’s Highway.”
Ed. Bernstein is one of the leaders of the German Social Democracy of the
revisionist wing.
H. N. Brailsford is a prominent English traveler, correspondent, and
essayist, and one of the most illuminating writers on world-problems. His
books include “The War of Steel and Gold,” “Shelley, Godwin and their
Circle.”
Nicholas Murray Butler is President of Columbia University, Acting
Director of the Division of Intercourse and Education of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace and Chairman of the American
Association for International Conciliation.
Charles Roden Buxton is a prominent English Liberal, and member of the
Union for Democratic Control.
John Bates Clark is Director of the Division of Economics and History of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Professor of Political
Economy at Columbia University.
Bernhard Dernburg is the German ex-Minister of Colonies, who spent some
time in America at the beginning of the war as semi-official spokesman
for German opinion.
Charles W. Eliot is President Emeritus of Harvard University, and a
leader in the peace movement.
Rudolf Eucken is one of the most widely-known of living German
philosophers. He visited America in 1913.
G. Lowes Dickinson of Cambridge University, England, is author of
“Letters of a Chinese Official,” “Justice and Liberty,” “A Modern
Symposium,” etc.
Franklin H. Giddings is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.
John A. Hobson is one of the best-known English economists, the author of
“The Rise of Modern Capitalism,” “The Science of Wealth,” “The Industrial
System,” “Towards International Government,” etc.
Hamilton Holt is managing editor of _The Independent_.
Paul U. Kellogg is an editor of the _Survey_ in New York.
Walter Lippmann is one of the most brilliant of the younger American
publicists, an editor of the _New Republic_, and author of “A Preface to
Politics,” “Drift and Mastery,” and “The Stakes of Diplomacy.”
A. Lawrence Lowell is President of Harvard University.
Romain Rolland is the author of “Jean-Christophe.” His attitude on the
war has forced his exile from France to Geneva. His eloquent book “Above
the Battle” expresses the emotion of a cosmopolitan soul confronted with
the madness of a world-war.
Prof. L. Quidde was one of the leading German pacifists before the war.
A. A. Tenney is assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.
Arnold J. Toynbee is the son-in-law of Prof. Gilbert Murray, and the
author of “Nationality and the War,” and “Greek Policy Since 1882.” He is
one of the most brilliant students of problems of nationality.
Lillian Wald is head-worker at the Henry Street Settlement in New York
City.
William English Walling is a prominent American Socialist, editor of the
_New Review_, and author of “Socialists and the War,” etc.
Alfred E. Zimmern is in the English Education service, and is author of
“The Greek Commonwealth.”
PREFACE
The aim of this book is to present a discussion of some of the most
hopeful and constructive suggestions for the settlement of the war on
terms that would make for a lasting peace. The selections are taken from
books, magazines, manifestoes, programs, etc., that have appeared since
the beginning of the war. Part I contains a discussion of the general
principles of a settlement, economic and political. Part II contains the
more concrete suggestions for the constitution of a definite League of
Peace. Part III presents some of the reconstructive ideals—“Towards the
Future”—as voiced by writers in the different countries. In the Appendix
are collected definite programs for peace put forward by associations and
individuals, international organizations, etc., in this country, Great
Britain, Germany, France, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, and Switzerland.
The books quoted form, it is believed, an indispensable library for the
understanding of international questions:
“Nationality and the War,” by Arnold J. Toynbee. New York: E.
P. Dutton and Co.
“Towards International Government,” by John A. Hobson.
“The Stakes of Diplomacy,” by Walter Lippmann. New York: Henry
Holt and Co.
“The Road Toward Peace,” by Charles W. Eliot. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co.
“The War of Steel and Gold,” by H. N. Brailsford. New York:
Macmillan.
“The War and Democracy,” by A. E. Zimmern and others. New York:
Macmillan.
“The World’s Highway,” by Norman Angell. New York: Geo. H.
Doran & Co.
PART I
PRINCIPLES OF THE SETTLEMENT
PART I. PRINCIPLES OF THE SETTLEMENT: ECONOMIC
PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
[Sidenote: Most international quarrels have economic origin. The present
war produced by economic antagonisms.]
The growing dependence of modern civilized and thickly populated
countries for the necessaries of life and industry, for commercial
profits, and for gainful investments of capital upon free access to
other countries, especially to countries differing from themselves in
climate, natural resources, and degree of economic development, is of
necessity a consideration of increasing weight in the foreign policy of
to-day. Every active industrial or commercial nation is therefore fain
to watch and guard its existing opportunities for foreign trade and
investment, and to plan ahead for enlarged opportunities to meet the
anticipated future needs of an expanding trade and a growing population.
It views with fear, suspicion, and jealousy every attempt of a foreign
country to curtail its liberty of access to other countries and its equal
opportunities for advantageous trade or exploitation. The chief substance
of the treaties, conventions, and agreements between modern nations in
recent times has consisted in arrangements about commercial and financial
opportunities, mostly in countries outside the acknowledged control
of the negotiating parties. The real origins of most quarrels between
such nations have related to tariffs, railway, banking, commercial, and
financial operations in lands belonging to one or other of the parties,
or in lands where some sphere of special interest was claimed. Egypt,
Morocco, Persia, Asia Minor, China, Congo, Mexico, are the most sensitive
spots affecting international relations outside of Europe, testifying to
the predominance of economic considerations in foreign policy. The stress
laid upon such countries hinges in the last resort upon the need of “open
doors” or upon the desire to close doors to other countries. These keenly
felt desires to safeguard existing foreign markets for goods and capital,
to obtain by diplomatic pressure or by force new markets, and in other
cases to monopolize markets, have everywhere been the chief directing
influences in foreign policy, the chief causes of competing armaments,
and the permanent underlying menaces to peace. The present war, when
regard is had to the real directing pressure behind all diplomatic acts
and superficial political ferments, is in the main a product of these
economic antagonisms. This point of view is concisely and effectively
expressed in a striking memorandum presented by the Reform Club of New
York to President Wilson:—
Consider the situation of the present belligerents.
Serbia wants a window on the sea, and is shut out by Austrian
influence.
Austria wants an outlet in the East, Constantinople or Salonica.
Russia wants ice-free ports on the Baltic and Pacific,
Constantinople, and a free outlet from the Black Sea into the
Mediterranean.
Germany claims to be hemmed in by a ring of steel, and needs
the facilities of Antwerp and Rotterdam for her Rhine Valley
commerce, security against being shut out from the East by
commercial restrictions on the overland route, and freedom of
the seas for her foreign commerce.
England must receive uninterrupted supplies of food and raw
materials, and her oversea communications must be maintained.
This is true also of France, Germany, Belgium, and other
European countries.
Japan, like Germany, must have opportunity for her expanding
population, industries, and commerce.
The foreign policies of the nations still at peace are also
determined by trade relations. Our own country desires the open
door in the East.
South and North American States and Scandinavia are already
protesting against the war’s interference with their ocean
trade.
All nations that are not in possession of satisfactory harbors
on the sea demand outlets, and cannot and ought not to be
contented till they get them.
Nations desiring to extend their colonial enterprises entertain
those ambitions for commercial reasons, either to possess
markets from which they cannot be excluded, or to develop such
markets for themselves and be able to exclude others from them
when they so determine.
[Sidenote: Desire for commercial privilege is the primary cause of war.]
The generalization from these statements of fact is expressed in the
formula, “The desire for commercial privilege and for freedom from
commercial restraint is the primary cause of war.”
Now, that the foreign policies of nations are, in fact, determined mainly
by these commercial and financial considerations, and that the desire to
secure economic privilege and to escape economic restraints is a chief
cause of war, are indisputable propositions. So long as these motives are
left free to work in the future as in the past there will be constant
friction among the commercially developed nations, giving rise to
dangerous quarrels that will strain, perhaps to the breaking-point, any
arrangements for arbitration that may be made....
[Sidenote: International trade is restricted.]
Disputes arising from these economic causes are even deeper seated and
more dangerous than those connected with the claims of nationality and
autonomy. Indeed, political autonomy is shorn of most of its value
unless it is accompanied by a large measure of economic liberty as
regards commercial relations with the outside world. The case of Serbia,
liable at any moment to be denied access to the sea, or to be cut off
by Austria from her chief land markets, is a case in point. Or once
again, would the autonomy of such a country as Hungary, Bohemia, or
Poland, however valid its political guarantees, satisfy the legitimate
aspirations of its population if high tariff-walls encompassed it on
every frontier? Such instances make it evident that no settlement of “the
map of Europe” on lines of nationality can suffice to establish peace.
The effective liberty of every people demands freedom of commercial
intercourse with other peoples. A refusal or a hindrance of such
intercourse deprives a people of its fair share of the common fruits of
the earth, and deprives the other peoples of the world of any special
fruits which it is able to contribute to the common stock.
If any international Government existed, representing the commonwealth of
nations, it would seek to remove all commercial restrictions which impair
the freedom of economic intercourse between nations.
These restrictions are placed by the Reform Club Memorandum under the
four following categories:—
First. There is the restriction of tariffs imposed by nations.
Second. There are restrictions upon the best uses of
International commerce, of the terminal and land transfer
facilities of the great trade routes and seaports of the
world. A few such ports command entrance to and exit from vast
continental hinterlands. It is vital to these interior regions
that their natural communications with the outside world should
be kept widely open, and this is equally vital to the rest of
the world. Obstructive control of such ports and routes to the
detriment of the world’s commerce cannot and should not be
tolerated by states whose interests are adversely affected.
But routes and ports are needed for use, not government; and
port rivalries constantly tend towards offering the best and
equal facilities to all. The swelling tides of commerce are
clearing their own channels, and mutual interests will more and
more prompt the states through which the principal trade routes
pass to facilitate the movement of commerce.
Third. There are restrictions upon opportunities to trade with
territories ruled as colonies or being exploited within spheres
of influence. This is what now remains of the old mercantile
system which flourished before our Revolutionary War, and
which has been weakening ever since. Great Britain claims no
preference for herself in her colonies. Other states have been
less liberal. The fear of such restrictions being applied
against them is to-day the main motive for a policy of colonial
oversea possessions. If industrial states could be assured of
the application of the open-door policy, no state would envy
another its colonies. Colonies should be the world’s.
Fourth. There are restrictions in the free use of the sea.
Unlike land routes, ocean routes are offered practically
without cost to all, whithersoever the sea runs. Over these,
however, until modern times commerce has been subject to
pillage by regular warships as well as by pirates. The claims
of commerce have been more slowly recognized on the sea than on
the land; and, to an extent now unthinkable on land, warring
states still feel free to interfere with neutral traders....
[Sidenote: National financial groups control foreign policy. Economic
oppositions determine foreign policy.]
Another factor of increasing importance in the recent conflict of
nations has been the competition between groups of financiers and
concessionaires, organized upon a “national” basis, to obtain exclusive
or preferential control in the undeveloped countries for the profitable
use of exported capital. Closely related to commercial competition, this
competition for lucrative investments has played an even greater part in
producing dangerous international situations. For these financial and
commercial interests have sought to use the political and the forcible
resources of their respective Governments to enable them to obtain
the concessions and other privileges they require for the security
and profitable application of their capital. The control of foreign
policy thus wielded has been fraught with two perils to world-peace.
It has brought the Governments of the competing financial groups into
constant friction, and it has been the most fruitful direct source of
expeditionary forces and territorial aggressions in the coveted areas.
As the struggle for lucrative overseas investments has come to occupy a
more important part than the struggle for ordinary markets, the economic
oppositions between European Governments have become more and more
the determinant factors in foreign policy, and in the competition of
armaments, upon which Governments rely to support and to achieve the aims
their economic masters impose upon them.
_John A. Hobson, “Towards International Government,” pp. 128-139._
TRADE AS A CAUSE OF WAR
[Sidenote: Idealism hides real causes of war.]
Decent men in the belligerent countries feel a natural repugnance in
time of war to any discussion of the economic bearings of the struggle.
If nations are to fight with clear consciences and single hearts,
they must fight on in the belief that any objects which concern their
statesmen beyond the objects of defense and national security are
purely idealistic. We are all pragmatists in wartime; we believe what
will conduce to victory. Cool observers see clearly the widening out
of an immense range of colonial, imperial, and economic issues which
will confront us at the settlement and after it. But these things are
not debated as we debate the issues of nationality in this war. One
might suppose from a study of our press that we are much more vitally
interested in the fate of the Slovenes than we are in the trade of China.
This idealism is absolutely sincere, and a natural consequence of the
exaltation of emotion which belongs to any war of nations. We can endure
the thought that our young men are falling in many thousands for the
liberties of little peoples. That brief statement of our aims would end
in bathos if we were to add to it the subjection of China to Japanese
suzerainty, the partition of Turkey into spheres of influence, the
acquisition by the Allies of the German colonies, and the setting up of a
Russian customs house at Constantinople. The mischief of this obsession
is that the very field which stands most in need of illumination from
critical yet idealistic thinking is left in a half light of semi-secrecy,
and the will of democracies hardly dreams of intervening in the clash of
the interests which divide it. Public opinion and the fortunes of war
will govern the settlement of Belgium and Alsace, but in our present
temper it is only too probable that all the colonial and economic issues
involved in it will be left to the diplomatists with only the interests
behind them.
[Sidenote: Our need is organization to make international change without
war.]
The penetrating memorandum addressed by the New York Reform Club
to President Wilson has sketched broadly but with sure insight the
commercial and colonial questions which helped to lead up to this war.
None of these issues appeared in the negotiations which preceded the war,
but most of them were latent in the consciousness of the statesmen and
even of the peoples. The curse of our unorganized Europe has been that
fundamental change has rarely been possible save as a sequel of war.
Diplomacy was always busied with a pathetic conservatism in bolstering up
the _status quo_, or in arranging those little readjustments which might
just avail to stave off war. We shall not banish war from Europe until we
are civilized enough to create an organization that can make and impose
fundamental changes without war. The best we can do in the meantime is
to prepare to avail ourselves of the brief moment of settlement during
which the structure of Europe will still be fluid under the shock of war,
to bring our idealistic and democratic forces to bear upon these larger
issues.
[Sidenote: Free trade would remove incentive for colonies—and for
concessions and monopolies.]
The Reform Club’s memorandum deals with three of these questions: the
abolition of capture at sea in wartime, the freedom of the world’s
straits and highways in time of war, and the exploitation of colonies
under a system of protection. The system of legalized piracy which
permits navies to prey on commerce in wartime is undoubtedly the most
potent incentive to swollen armaments at sea. So long as it survives,
the opinion of the mercantile classes will never effectively back the
demand for economy in armaments, for it is bound to regard navies as an
insurance. The question of the ownership of straits stands high among the
many competing causes of bloodshed. It explains the German struggle for
Calais no less than the Allied expedition to the Dardanelles. One may
doubt, however, whether a proposal to neutralize any of the more vital
of these straits—the Straits of Dover or Gibraltar, for example—would
stand a chance of calm consideration on the morrow of such a war as
this. It will be feasible when war is no longer an ever-present terror;
and when that day comes it will have lost its importance. Far more
central in our problem is the general question of colonialism. It is a
commonplace to say that modern industrial peoples desire colonies almost
solely for economic reasons, and that one of the chief motives for this
expansion would disappear with any approach to free trade. If the British
colonies had not granted a preference to the mother country, and if
French colonies were not hedged about with an impenetrable tariff wall,
the feeling among German industrialists that their expansion was “hemmed
in” would have been less acute, and the pressure for “places in the sun”
would have been less powerful.
But it is doubtful whether the question of markets is as potent a
cause of armaments and war as the competition to secure concessions,
monopolies, and spheres of influence. The export of capital means
much more for the modern politics of imperialism than the export of
manufactured goods. The _conquistador_ of to-day is the financier who
acquires mining rights in Morocco, loan privileges in Turkey, or railway
concessions in China. The foreign policy of Great Britain and our
place in the European system has been governed for a generation by the
occupation of Egypt, whither we went in the wake of the bond-holders.
It explains our long bickerings with France; it helped to fling an
isolated France into the arms of Russia; it brought us finally into the
disastrous bargain over Morocco which underlay our feud with Germany.
The competition of national financial groups for concessions in Turkey
or China is not the competition of the market-place at home. Behind the
financier stands the diplomatist, and behind the diplomatist is his navy.
There is a clash of armor-plates when these competitors jostle. The
struggle for a Balance of Power in Europe has often seemed little more
than a race for the force and prestige which would enable the dominant
Power or group of Powers to secure the concessions of the monopoly
spheres which it coveted in the half-developed regions of the earth. No
modern nation would openly make war to secure such ends as these, for no
democracy would support it. Even the half-evolved democracy of Russia
recoiled from the Manchurian War. But every nation, by pursuing these
ends, makes the armed peace and the unstable equilibrium which prepares
our wars.
[Sidenote: Colonial free trade must be declared by international
agreement, and the export of capital internationalized.]
The remedy is so simple that only a very clever man could sophisticate
himself into missing it, and it is as old as Cobden. It is not necessary
to establish universal free trade to stop the rivalry to monopolize
colonial markets; it would suffice to declare free trade in the colonies,
or even in those which are not self-governing. To deal with the evil
of “concessions” all that is required is a general understanding that
financiers must win their own way, by merit or push or bribes, and that
the doors of the embassies will be banged in their faces when they seek
support. These sentences are easily written, but they would involve the
democratization of diplomacy everywhere, the overthrow of the colonial
group in France, and the confounding of the national economists in
Germany. The force which might work such miracles is nowhere mobilized,
for, with all their will to peace, the democracies nowhere understand the
bearings of these colonial and commercial issues on war and armaments.
It requires some imagination to understand that when two embassies
compete in Peking for a railway concession, the issue may be determined
by the balance of naval power in the North Sea. It requires some habit
of observation to realize that because this may happen in Peking, the
investing and governing classes are bound to keep up the balance in the
North Sea. The nexus is none the less simple and clear, and it will hold
as long as diplomacy continues to engage in this disguised imperial
trading, so long as capital possesses nationality and regards the flag as
an asset.
There are none the less ways of escape which are neither Utopian nor
heroic. It ought not to be utterly beyond the statesmanship of Europe to
decree some limited form of colonial free trade by general agreement—to
apply it, for example, to Africa. France would oppose it, but what if
Alsace were to be restored on this condition? To open a great colonial
market to Hamburg, while ending the dream of _revanche_, would be
to remove the two chief causes of war in western Europe. American
statesmanship may ere long have the power to propose such a bargain as
this. For the plague of concession-hunting the best expedient would
probably be to impose on all the competing national groups in each area
the duty of amalgamating in a permanently international syndicate. If
one such syndicate controlled all the railways and another all the mines
of China and Turkey, a vast cause of national rivalry would be removed.
The interests of China and Turkey might be secured by interposing a
disinterested council or arbitrator between them and the syndicate to
adjust their respective interests. Short of creating a world state or
a European federation, the chief constructive work for peace is to
establish colonial free trade and internationalize the export of capital.
_H. N. Brailsford, “Trade as a Cause of War,”
The New Republic, May 8, 1915._
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM
[Sidenote: Evil of “spheres of influence.” “Spheres” become
“dependencies.”]
The evils of an unrestricted competition for concessions and monopolies
between rival financial groups backed by their Governments, are so
notorious that diplomacy has found several typical formulæ for bringing
them to an end. The obvious method of resolving such conflicts is the
demarcation of spheres of “influences,” “interest” or “penetration”
within which each of the competing Powers enjoys a monopoly respected by
the others. This method is open to two grave objections. In the first
place, it is rarely adopted before a ruinous conflict has exhausted the
competitors. For years or decades they carry on a trial of strength
which affects not merely their local relationship, but their attitude to
one another in Europe, and is measured year by year in their military
and naval estimates. If we were to take the sum by which British and
German armaments have increased in the present century, it would be
possible to allocate the increase, roughly, somewhat as follows: 50 per
cent. or less for the settlement of the question, Who shall exploit
Morocco?; 25 per cent. or more for the privilege of building a railway to
Bagdad and beyond it; 25 per cent. or more for the future eventualities
which remain unsettled—the fate of the Portuguese colonies in Africa,
and the destinies of China. In the second place, the delimitation of
spheres of interest is almost inevitably fatal to the national existence
of the country partitioned, and as inevitably adds a vast burden to
the commitments of the Imperial Power. Persia furnishes the obvious
illustration. Sir Edward Grey is clearly resolved that he will not allow
himself by the march of events to be drawn into the assumption of any
direct responsibility for the administration of the British sphere. It is
a laudable resolve, but Russia may at any moment frustrate it. She deals
with her own sphere on the opposite principle, and her sphere happens to
include the seat of the central government. That government is already
a puppet of Russian policy, enjoying only a simulacrum of independence.
How much longer can a government which is not a government continue
to rule the southern sphere? Sooner or later a choice must be made.
Either Russia must withdraw, or some separate government under British
protection must be created for the south. Turkey is drifting rapidly
towards a dissolution in which the spheres which the Great Powers already
claim will be formally delimited. It is easy to predict what that will
mean. There will be first provincial loans, then provincial advisers,
and finally a military control, under which each of these “spheres” will
become what Egypt already is, a dependency of a European Power.
[Sidenote: How to avoid the evil. Must preserve peace without destroying
victim nationality.]
The method of avoiding financial competition by marking off zones
of monopoly, is clearly the worst which can be pursued. There are
alternatives. Let us consider what methods might be followed if the
Powers were sage enough to shrink from the terrific conflict which may
one day overtake them for the partition of China. China is so thickly
peopled that crude conquest presents few attractions. Even Japan could
not settle her surplus population in a country where every hill is
terraced and every field subjected to intensive cultivation. But there is
here a field which capital is already eager to exploit, and every year
diminishes the resistance of prejudice and inertia to its ambitions. The
attempts to mark out spheres of influence have so far been tentative
and unsuccessful. Our own claim to the lion’s share, the Yangtse Valley,
is admitted by no other Power, and it is doubtful whether the Foreign
Office still maintains it. There are several principles which might
be adopted if the Powers desired to avoid the jealous and dangerous
struggle for concessions. In the first place, the simplest plan and the
best would be the adoption of a self-denying ordinance by all the chief
competitors. Let it be understood that British, French, and German banks
may compete among themselves for railways and loans, but that none of
them shall receive any aid or countenance whatever from the embassies
or consulates of their respective countries. If that could be decided,
the allotment of concessions would be settled either by the merits of
the competitors or more probably by their skill and audacity in bribing
Chinese officials. One may doubt, however, whether any of the Powers
has sufficient faith in the honor of its competitors to enter on such
an undertaking. A second and more hopeful plan might be borrowed from
the undertaking negotiated by France and Germany over Morocco. They
agreed to promote cooperation among their subjects, who were to share
in agreed percentages in the coveted opportunities for public works. A
vast “pool” or syndicate in which all the rival financial groups were
represented, might be left to internationalize all the opportunities of
monopoly in China on a plan which would give to each its allotted share
in the risks and profits. The scheme worked badly in Morocco, and indeed
created the friction which led to the Agadir incident. Something of the
kind existed in China while the alliance of the banks of the Six Powers
subsisted, and it eventually broke down. By this method friction may
be avoided among the Great Powers, but China would be subjected to an
intolerable financial dictation, which would be none the less oppressive
because it was cosmopolitan. There exists, however, in the Ottoman Public
Debt, a model which might be followed elsewhere. Its council represents
all the bondholders of every nationality, and usually maintains good
relations with the Porte. If the railways of Turkey, China, and Persia
could be amalgamated, each in a single system under a cosmopolitan
administration, the risk of partition and all the danger to peace, which
this risk entails, might be removed. The obvious step is to confer on
these syndicates of capitalists an international legal personality,
which would enable them to sue or be sued before the Hague Tribunal.
Some disinterested council nominated by The Hague should be interposed
between the syndicate and the State in which it operates, so that the
intervention of diplomacy may be as far as possible eliminated.
[Sidenote: The Drago Doctrine.]
The problems raised by the export of capital have been considered in this
chapter mainly from the standpoint of the creditor State, which sees its
diplomacy involved in the process. We have found, so far, no solution
which is satisfactory from the standpoint of the debtor nation. The
inroad of foreign capital always means for it some loss of independence,
and it has nothing to gain by agreements among competing Empires. It
may, indeed, keep its independence by playing on their rivalries. Its
shadowy autonomy vanishes when they come to terms. The pacifist and the
nationalist are here divided in their sympathies. The former, thinking
only of European peace, rejoices when Russia and Britain end their
differences by the partition of Persia. The latter, seeing only that a
nation has been destroyed, regards the agreement as a peculiarly evil
development of Imperialism. Both are right, and both are wrong. The
ideal expedient would preserve European peace without destroying the
victim nationality. To propose that expedient requires an excursion into
the realms of Utopian construction. We can propose nothing which seems
feasible to-day, but a solution is conceivable which requires only an
easy step in the organization of the civilized world for peace. The
motives for the partition of Persia were rather political than financial.
The object-lesson of Egypt, where the occupation had its origin in debt,
is a more typical instance of modern processes. It happens that the
Hague Conference has laid down a principle which is capable of fruitful
extension for dealing with such cases as these. The Drago Doctrine, put
forward by Señor Drago, a jurist and statesman of the Argentine Republic,
supported by the United States and eventually adopted by all the Powers,
provides that no creditor State may use arms to enforce a liability upon
a debtor State, unless a decision of the Hague Tribunal has recognized
the liability and prescribed the method of payment. This doctrine, even
as it stands, is of immense value to minor but civilized States like the
South American republics, Portugal and Greece, which may find themselves
obliged to defer payment of an external debt. The Hague Tribunal would
in such a case, if it realized its opportunities, act as a good County
Court Judge would do at home—refuse to admit a merely usurious claim, and
lay down terms and dates of payment which would admit of the debtor’s
recovery from any temporary difficulty.
[Sidenote: Permanent Credit Bureau.]
But to defeat the more unscrupulous methods of the international
usurer, this idea requires some amplification. It may be necessary for
a debtor State, some grades below the level of Portugal and Greece in
civilization, to mortgage some part of its revenues, and to accept, at
least over part of them, some degree of foreign control. That means, if
the creditor country has also political ambitions, the almost certain
loss of its independence. There are also States like Turkey which stand
in need of expert advice for the reorganization of their finances, but
dread the consequences of admitting any foreigner, who may perhaps think
more of the interests of European finance and of his own motherland, than
of those of the country which employs him. To draw the full advantage
from the international machinery at The Hague, there ought to be evolved
a permanent Credit Bureau to which weak and timid States might apply.
It might conduct enquiries into their solvency, lend them experts to
reorganize their finances, help them to negotiate loans in neutral
markets on fair terms, and in case of need provide the commissioners who
would control their mortgaged revenues. It would act as a trustee or as a
Court of Chancery towards its wards. It could have no political ambitions
to further, and the country which applied to it need not tremble for
its independence. Persia or Egypt, had this Bureau existed, might have
turned to The Hague for help. If, in the end, owing to civil war, or the
hopeless incapacity of native statesmen, forcible intervention became
inevitable, it would lie not with any interested Power, but with The
Hague itself, to take the initiative of summoning a European Conference
to prescribe the nature and limits of the interference. It is even
possible that the Bureau might be used as an arbitrator at the request of
a State like China, hard pressed by the rivalry of Empires competing for
concessions, to decide between them in its name, and to appoint a neutral
adviser or board of advisers, who would stand between it and the greedy
Powers in the allotment of its financial patronage.
[Sidenote: Export of capital must be made servant of humane diplomacy.]
A Europe which has organized itself for peace will be at no loss for
expedients wherewith to reconcile the appetites of capital with the
rights of nationality. A spectator of the moving cosmopolitan drama which
is played, the world over, around this central motive of the export
of capital, can readily invent attractive schemes for the regulation
of the process. But such exercises tempt one to ignore the dynamics
of the problem. The same primitive forces of greed which in earlier
centuries inspired conquests and migrations are still strong enough to
grip diplomacy and build navies. Our first task is to win at home the
power to control this export of capital, to check it where it disregards
the current ethical standards, to rebuff it where it would lead us into
international rivalry, and at last to use it as the potent servant of
a humane diplomacy. It can be forbidden to carry the devastations of
slavery into distant continents. It can be checked in its usurer’s
practises upon simple States. It can be used, if it be firmly mastered,
to starve into submission a semi-civilized Empire which meditates
aggressive war, or draws from Western stores the funds to finance its own
oppressions.
_H. N. Brailsford, “The War of Steel and Gold,” pp. 241-253._
THE PROBLEM OF DIPLOMACY
[Sidenote: The chief problem of diplomacy is the weak State.]
This whole business of jockeying for position is at first glance
so incredibly silly that many liberals regard diplomacy as a cross
between sinister conspiracy and a meaningless etiquette. It would be
all of that if the stakes of diplomacy were not real. Those stakes
have to be understood, for without such an understanding diplomacy is
incomprehensible and any scheme of world peace an idle fancy.
The chief, the overwhelming problem of diplomacy seems to be the weak
state—the Balkans, the African sultanates, Turkey, China, and Latin
America, with the possible exception of the Argentine, Chile, and Brazil.
These states are “weak” because they are industrially backward and at
present politically incompetent. They are rich in resources and cheap
labor, poor in capital, poor in political experience, poor in the power
of defense. The government of these states is the supreme problem of
diplomacy. Just as the chief task of American politics to the Civil War
was the organization of the unexploited West, so the chief task of world
diplomacy to-day is the organization of virgin territory and backward
peoples. I use backward in the conventional sense to mean a people
unaccustomed to modern commerce and modern political administration.
This solicitude about backward peoples seems to many good democrats a
combination of superciliousness and greed....
And yet the plain fact is that the interrelation of peoples has gone
so far that to advocate international laissez-faire now is to speak a
counsel of despair. Commercial cunning, lust of conquest, rum, bibles,
rifles, missionaries, traders, concessionaires have brought the two
civilizations into contact, and the problem created must be solved, not
evaded.
[Sidenote: Economic imperialism and the weak State.]
The great African empires, for example, were not created deliberately by
theoretical imperialists. Explorers, missionaries, and traders penetrated
these countries. They found rubber, oil, cocoa, tin; they could sell
cotton goods, rifles, liquor. The native rulers bartered away enormous
riches at trivial prices. But the trading-posts and the concessions were
insecure. There were raids and massacres. No public works existed, no
administrative machinery. The Europeans exploited the natives cruelly,
and the natives retaliated. Concession hunters and merchants from other
nations began to come in. They bribed and bullied the chiefs, and created
still greater insecurity. An appeal would be made to the home government
for help, which generally meant declaring a protectorate of the country.
Armed forces were sent in to pacify, and civil servants to administer
the country. These protectorates were generally sanctioned by the other
European governments on the proviso that trade should be free to all....
It is essential to remember that what turns a territory into a diplomatic
“problem” is the combination of natural resources, cheap labor, markets,
defenselessness, corrupt and inefficient government. The desert of
Sahara is no “problem,” except where there are oases and trade routes.
Switzerland is no “problem,” for Switzerland is a highly organized modern
state. But Mexico is a problem, and Haiti, and Turkey, and Persia. They
have the pretension of political independence which they do not fulfil.
They are seething with corruption, eaten up with “foreign” concessions,
and unable to control the adventurers they attract or safeguard the
rights which these adventurers claim. More foreign capital is invested
in the United States than in Mexico, but the United States is not a
“problem” and Mexico is. The difference was hinted at in President
Wilson’s speech at Mobile. Foreigners invest in the United States, and
they are assured that life will be reasonably safe and that titles to
property are secured by orderly legal means. But in Mexico they are given
“concessions,” which means that they secure extra privileges and run
greater risks, and they count upon the support of European governments or
of the United States to protect them and their property.
[Sidenote: Economic penetration into weak States is protected only
through order and political control.]
The weak states, in other words, are those which lack the political
development that modern commerce requires. To take an extreme case which
brings out the real nature of the “problem,” suppose that the United
States was organized politically as England was in the time of William
the Conqueror. Would it not be impossible to do business in the United
States? There would be an everlasting clash between an impossible legal
system and a growing commercial development. And the internal affairs of
the United States would constitute a diplomatic “problem.”
This, it seems to me, is the reason behind the outburst of modern
imperialism among the Great Powers. It is not enough to say that they
are “expanding” or “seeking markets” or “grabbing resources.” They are
doing all these things, of course. But if the world into which they are
expanding were not politically archaic, the growth of foreign trade would
not be accompanied by political imperialism. Germany has “expanded”
wonderfully in the British Empire, in Russia, in the United States, but
no German is silly enough to insist on planting his flag wherever he
sells his dyestuffs or stoves. It is only when his expansion is into
weak states—into China, Morocco, Turkey, or elsewhere that foreign trade
is imperialistic. This imperialism is actuated by many motives—by a
feeling that political control insures special privileges, by a desire
to play a large part in the world, by national vanity, by a passion for
“ownership,” but none of these motives would come into play if countries
like China or Turkey were not politically backward.
Imperialism in our day begins generally as an attempt to police and
pacify. This attempt stimulates national pride, it creates bureaucrats
with a vested interest in imperialism, it sucks in and receives added
strength from concessionaires and traders who are looking for economic
privileges. There is no doubt that certain classes in a nation gain by
imperialism, though to the people as a whole the adventure may mean
nothing more than an increased burden of taxes.
Some pacifists have attempted to deny that a nation could ever gain
anything by political control of weak states. They have not defined the
“nation.” What they overlook is that even the most advanced nations are
governed, not by the “people,” but by groups with special interests.
These groups do gain, just as the railroad men who controlled American
legislatures gained. A knot of traders closely in league with the
colonial office of a great Power can make a good deal of money out of
its friendships. Every government has contracts to be let, franchises to
give; it establishes tariffs, fixes railroad rates, apportions taxes,
creates public works, builds roads. To be favored by that power is to be
favored indeed. The favoritism may cost the motherland and the colony
dear, but the colonial merchant is not a philanthropist....
[Sidenote: The backward States are the arenas of international friction.]
The whole situation might be summed up by saying that the commercial
development of the world will not wait until each territory has created
for itself a stable and fairly modern political system. By some means
or other the weak states have to be brought within the framework of
commercial administration. Their independence and integrity, so-called,
are dependent upon their creating conditions under which world-wide
business can be conducted. The pressure to organize the globe is
enormous....
Out of this complexity of motive there is created a union of various
groups on the imperial program: the diplomatic group is interested
primarily in prestige; the military group in an opportunity to act; the
bureaucratic in the creation of new positions; the financial groups in
safeguarding investments; traders in securing protection and privileges,
religious groups in civilizing the heathen, the “intellectuals,” in
realizing theories of expansion and carrying out “manifest destinies,”
the people generally in adventure and glory and the sense of being great.
These interested groups severally control public opinion, and under
modern methods of publicity public opinion is easily “educated.”
Who should intervene in backward states, what the intervention shall
mean, how the protectorate shall be conducted—this is the bone and
sinew of modern diplomacy. The weak spots of the world are the arenas
of friction. This friction is increased and made popular by frontier
disputes over Alsace-Lorraine or Italia Irredenta, but in my judgment
the boundary lines of Europe are not the grand causes of diplomatic
struggle. Signor Ferrero confessed recently that the present generation
of Italians had all but forgotten Italia Irredenta, and the Revanche has
been a decadent French dream until the Entente and the Dual Alliance
began to clash in Morocco, in Turkey, in China. Alsace-Lorraine has no
doubt kept alive suspicion of Germany, and predisposed French opinion
to inflicting diplomatic defeats in Morocco. But the arena where the
European Powers really measure their strength against each other is in
the Balkans, in Africa, and in Asia....
[Sidenote: War is for sake of prestige in undeveloped countries.]
This war is fought not for specific possessions, but for that diplomatic
prestige and leadership which are required to solve all the different
problems. It is like a great election to decide who shall have the
supreme power in the Concert of Europe. Austria began the contest to
secure her position as a great Power in the Balkans; Russia entered it
to thwart this ambition; France was engaged because German diplomatic
supremacy would reduce France to a “second-class power,” which means a
power that holds world power on sufferance; England could not afford
to see France “crushed” or Belgium annexed because British imperialism
cannot alone cope with the vigor of Germany; Germany felt herself
“encircled,” which meant that wherever she went—to Morocco, Asia Minor,
or China—there a coalition was ready to thwart her. The ultimate
question involved was this: whenever in the future diplomats meet to
settle a problem in the backward countries, which European nation shall
be listened to most earnestly? What shall be the relative prestige of
Germans and Englishmen and Frenchmen and Russians; what sense of their
power, what historical halo, what threat of force, what stimulus to
admiration shall they possess? To lose this war will be like being a
Republican politician in the solid South when the Democrats are in power
at Washington. It will mean political, social, and economic inferiority.
[Sidenote: World problem is due to competition for unorganized territory.]
Americans have every reason to understand the dangers of unorganized
territory, to realize clearly why it is a “problem.” Our Civil War was
preceded by thirty or forty years of diplomatic struggle for a balance of
power in the West. Should the West be slave or free, that is, should it
be the scene of homesteads and free labor, or of plantations and slaves?
Should it be formed into States which sent senators and representatives
to support the South or the North? We were virtually two nations, each
trying to upset the balance of power in its own favor. And when the South
saw that it was beaten, that is to say “encircled,” when its place in the
Western sun was denied, the South seceded and fought. Until the problem
or organizing the West had been settled, peace and federal union were
impossible.
The world’s problem is the same problem tremendously magnified and
complicated.
The point I have been making will, I fear, seem a paradox to many
readers,—that the anarchy of the world is due to the backwardness of
weak states; that the modern nations have lived in an armed peace and
collapsed into hideous warfare because in Asia, Africa, the Balkans,
Central and South America there are rich territories in which weakness
invites exploitation, in which inefficiency and corruption invite
imperial expansion, in which the prizes are so great that the competition
for them is to the knife.
This is the world problem upon which all schemes for arbitration, leagues
of peace, reduction of armaments must prove themselves. The diplomats
have in general recognized this. It was commonly said for a generation
that Europe would be lucky if it escaped a general war over the breakup
of Turkey in Europe. The Sick Man has infected the Continent. Our own
“preparedness” campaign is based on the fear that the defenselessness of
Latin America will invite European aggression, that the defenselessness
of China will bring on a struggle in the Pacific. Few informed people
imagine for a moment that any nation of the world contemplates seizing
or holding our own territory. That would be an adventure so ridiculous
that no statesman would think of it. If we get into trouble it will be
over some place like Mexico, or Haiti, or the Philippines, or the Panama
Canal, or Manchuria, or Hawaii....
[Sidenote: Need of European legislatures to deal with problem.]
Europe has also recognized that some kind of world government must be
created. The phrase world government, of course, arouses immediate
opposition; the idea of a European legislature would be pronounced
utopian. Yet there have been a number of European legislatures. The
Berlin Conference of 1885 was called to discuss “freedom of commerce in
the basin and mouths of the Congo; application to the Congo and Niger
of the principles adopted at the Congress of Vienna with a view to
preserve freedom of navigation on certain international rivers ... and a
definition of formalities to be observed so that new occupations on the
African coasts shall be deemed effective.” The Powers represented made
all sorts of reservations, but they managed to pass a “General Act of the
West African Conference.” The Congo Free State was recognized. As Mr.
Harris says: “Bismarck saw in this a means of preventing armed conflict
over the Congo Basin, of restricting the Portuguese advance, and of
preserving the region to free trade.” What was it that Bismarck saw? He
saw that the great wealth of the Congo and its political weakness might
make trouble in Europe unless the Congo was organized into the legal
structure of the world.
[Sidenote: Example of Algeciras.]
The Conference at Algeciras was an international legislature in which
even the United States was represented; the London Conference after the
Balkan wars was a gathering of ambassadors trying to legislate out of
existence the sources of European trouble in the Balkans. But all these
legislatures have had one great fault. They met, they passed laws, they
adjourned, and left the enforcement of their mandate to the conscience
of the individual Powers. The legislature was international, but the
executive was merely national. The legislature moreover had no way of
checking up or controlling the executive. The representatives of all
the nations would pass laws for the government of weak territories, but
the translation of those laws into practise was left to the colonial
bureaucrats of some one nation.
If the law was not carried out, to whom would an appeal be made? Not to
the Conference, for it had ceased to exist. There was no way in which
a European legislature could recall the officials who did not obey
its will. Those officials were responsible to their home government,
although they were supposed to be executing a European mandate. Those
who were injured had also to appeal to their home government, and the
only way to remedy an abuse or even sift out the truth of an allegation
was by negotiation between the Powers. This raised the question of their
sovereignty, called forth patriotic feeling, revived a thousand memories,
and made any satisfactory interpretation of the European Act or any
criticism of its administration a highly explosive adventure.
Suppose, for example, that Congress had power to pass laws, but that
the execution of them was left to the States. Suppose New York had its
own notions of tariff administration. How would the other States compel
the New York customs officials to execute the spirit and letter of
the Federal law? Suppose every criticism by Pennsylvania of a New York
Collector was regarded as an infringement of New York’s sovereignty, as
a blow at New York’s pride, what kind of chaos would we suffer from? Yet
that is the plight of our world society.
[Sidenote: An international Senate for each arena of friction.]
The beginnings of a remedy would seem to lie in not disbanding these
European conferences when they have passed a law. They ought to continue
in existence as a kind of senate, meeting from time to time. They ought
to regard themselves as watchers over the legislation which they have
passed. To them could be brought grievances, by them amendments could be
passed when needed. The colonial officials should at least be made to
report to this senate, and all important matters of policy should be laid
open to its criticism and suggestion. In this way a problem like that of
Morocco, for example, might be kept localized to a permanent European
Conference on Morocco. Europe would never lose its grip on the situation,
because it would have representatives on the spot watching the details
of administration, in a position to learn the facts, and with a real
opportunity for stating grievances.
The development of such a senate would probably be towards an increasing
control of colonial officials. At first it would have no power of
appointment or removal. It would be limited to criticism. But it is
surely not fantastic to suppose that the colonial civil service would in
time be internationalized; that is to say, opened to men of different
nationalities. The senate, if it developed any traditions, would begin to
supervise the budget, would fight for control of salaries, and might well
take over the appointing power altogether. It would become an upper house
for the government of the protected territory, not essentially different
perhaps from the American Philippine Commission. The lower house would
be native, and there would probably be a minority of natives in the
senate....
An organization of this kind would meet all the difficulties that our
Continental Congress or that any other primitive legislature has had to
deal with. There would be conflicts of jurisdiction, puzzling questions
of interpretation, and some place of final appeal would have to be
provided. It might be the Senate of European representatives; but if the
Senate deadlocked, an appeal might be taken to The Hague. The details of
all this are obviously speculative at the moment.
[Sidenote: Prevention of war by international commissions for unorganized
regions.]
The important point is that there should be in existence permanent
international commissions to deal with those spots of the earth where
world crises originate. How many there should be need not be suggested
here. There should have been one for Morocco, for the Congo, for the
Balkan Peninsula, perhaps for Manchuria; there may have to be one for
Constantinople, for certain countries facing the Caribbean Sea. Such
international governing bodies are needed wherever the prizes are great,
the territory unorganized, and the competition active.
The idea is not over-ambitious. It seems to me the necessary development
of schemes which European diplomacy has been playing with for some time.
It represents an advance along the line that governments, driven by
necessity, have been taking of their own accord. What makes it especially
plausible is that it grasps the real problems of diplomacy, that it
provides not a panacea but a method and the beginnings of a technique.
It is internationalism, not spread thin as a Parliament of Man, but
sharply limited to those areas of friction where internationalism is most
obviously needed.
_Walter Lippmann, “The Stakes of Diplomacy,” pp. 87-135._
SOCIALISTS AND IMPERIALISM
[Sidenote: Peace impossible without solution of economic conflicts.]
Possibly we shall learn nothing from the war; at the present moment it
looks that way. For all the world, including Socialists, seem to be
divided between militarists and pacifists. By pacifism I mean of course
the movement Socialists have attacked for fifty years—up to the present
war—under the name of “bourgeois pacifism,” the idea that disarmament,
the Hague Tribunal, and similar devices could put an end to militarism
and war.
In one sense of course every internationalist, whether Socialist or
Democrat, is a pacifist. Every internationalist is opposed to war. But
from the days of Marx and before, up to the present time, all Socialists
have been prepared for certain war-producing contingencies which can
be abolished neither by calling them “illusions,” as Norman Angell
has done, nor by any other phrases or exorcisms. Nor can the economic
causes of national conflict be avoided by disarmament, Hague tribunals,
international police, or abolition of secret diplomacy, as proposed by
the Women’s Peace Party, the British Union of Democratic Control, the
Independent Labor Party, etc. In a word, no measure dealing with military
affairs or with mere political forms can _in the long run_ have any
effect whatever—as long as the present conflict of economic interests
between the nations remains. The whole effort of the bourgeois pacifist
from the Socialist standpoint is to attempt—in spite of the horrible and
tremendous lessons of the present war—to close our eyes resolutely to the
great task that lies before us, namely, to find a way either in the near
future or ultimately to bring the conflict of national economic interests
to an end.
[Sidenote: Interests of nations do conflict.]
There are two economic forces in the world which can not be conjured
away either by words, by mere political rearrangements, or by any
action whatever with regard to arms—whether making for more armament or
less armament. There is no power at present which can prevent a great
independent nation like Russia or Japan, Germany or Austria, where the
political conditions are in whole or in part those of the eighteenth
century, from declaring wars of conquest either against helpless,
backward or small countries, or against the economically more advanced
and more democratic countries like England, France, or the United States.
It is true that industrial capitalism now preponderates in Germany,
but no German publicist has ever denied the tremendous influence of
the landlord nobility, both over the government and over the economic
and political structure of German society. It is true also that these
great agricultural estates are partially operated under capitalistic
conditions, but the position of agricultural labor throughout enormous
districts of Prussia is certainly semi-feudal. This is equally true of
Austria, and the landlord nobility is perhaps even more predominant in
Hungary than in Prussia.
The second fact which can not be conjured away by phrases or mere
political rearrangements is that—under the present system of
society—there is a direct conflict of interests between all nations, even
the most civilized. This is why Norman Angell, in his new book (“Arms and
Industry”), is at such great pains to deny that nations are economic
units and “competing business firms.” His denial is futile.
[Sidenote: Even workers gain from successful imperialism.]
Even under individualistic capitalism all elements of the capitalist
class have a greater or less interest in the business of the nation to
which they belong; under the State Socialist policy, which is spreading
everywhere, this community of interests is still closer. Moreover, under
State Socialism even the working classes gain a share (of course, a small
one) of whatever profits accrue from the successful competition of one’s
own nation with other nations, and especially from such competition in
its aggressive form, “imperialism.”
Socialists have sometimes denied that the economic interests of the
working people of the various nations conflict.
Otto Bauer, of Austria, the world’s leading Socialist authority on
Imperialism—who was to report on the subject for the International
Socialist Congress to have been held in Vienna last summer—is of the
contrary opinion. He believes that one of the worst features of the
present system is that, under capitalism, the immediate economic
interests of the working people of the various nations _do_ conflict.
Only in so far as the working people attach greater importance to
attaining Socialism than to anything they can gain under the present
society, are their interests in all nations the same. In so far as the
working people aim at an improvement of their condition _this side of
Socialism_ their economic interests are often in conflict.
Moreover, State Socialism, political democracy, and social reform,
since they tend to give the working people a slightly greater share in
the prosperity of each nation, intensify the workers’ nationalism and
aggravate the conflict of immediate economic interests. This is why all
the labor union parties of the world are tending in the same direction
as that in which the German Party has been so clearly headed since the
war—a tendency very clearly formulated by _Vorwaerts_ when it recently
asked whether the German Party was not becoming a “nationalistic social
reform labor party.”
The bourgeois pacifists consider war to be the “great illusion.” In
favoring war, under any conditions, they say, the capitalists, the middle
classes, and the working classes are all mistaken. The only people that
gain are the officers of armies and navies, and armament manufacturers.
It is needless for Socialists—believers in the economic interpretation of
politics—to point out that such a conclusion can only be reached by an
abandonment of the economic point of view.
[Sidenote: Only solution is industrial and financial
internationalization.]
In the opinion of internationalists, war can be abolished neither by
armament or disarmament, nor by any measures leading in either direction.
War can be abolished only by abolishing the causes of war, which every
practical man admits are economic. By strengthening already existing
and natural economic tendencies which are slowly bringing the nations
together, the causes of war may be gradually done away with.
The outlook therefore is very hopeful—provided the intelligent (if
selfish) ruling classes of the great capitalistic nations (England,
France, America) decide once and for all to place no hopes either
on militarism or pacifism. These natural economic tendencies indeed
would already have made war impossible if they had not been impeded by
artificial obstacles, such as tariff walls, immigration restriction,
financial concessions to favored nations, etc.
[Sidenote: And the modernization of undemocratic countries.]
Socialists relied upon natural economic forces to abolish competition,
establish the trusts, bring about government ownership, and prepare the
way for democratic ownership. They rely upon similar economic forces
to bring the nations together; reciprocal lowering of tariffs, the
common development of the backward countries by the leading nations,
the neutralization of canals—and last but not least, the modernization
of Russia, Japan, Prussia, and Austria, that is, the full establishment
in these countries of industrial capitalism and the semi-democratic
political institutions that accompany it—as we see them in Great Britain,
France, and America.
_William English Walling, “The Great Illusions,”
The New Review, June 1, 1915._
THE HIGHER IMPERIALISM
[Sidenote: Cause of all wars found in economic motives:—that is, in
competition of nationalist capitalistic groups.]
When the Socialists in the belligerent countries voted for the war
budgets and took their seats in the war cabinets, their whole attitude
towards war underwent a fundamental change. It is true that in Germany
and elsewhere the Socialists berated the capitalists and militarists
for bringing on the conflict, but having made this protest, they acted
exactly as did every one else. They excused themselves on the ground that
the war was defensive. But the Kaiser and the Czar and the President
of the French Republic all made the same excuse. It was not that the
Socialists did not have power to put obstacles in the way of their
governments. They did not have the will. They were forced into a painful
position, where their love of country struggled against their adherence
to the proletariat of the world. Despite themselves they were moved by
idealistic considerations, which according to their theory should have
had no weight.
For according to socialist doctrine the great events of the world are
determined by economic factors. The idealists may speak of national honor
and national duty, of the inviolability of treaties and the sacred rights
of small nations, but the cause of all wars is really to be traced to
the clash of economic motives. If we are to establish peace, we must
found it on the customary reactions of selfish men, who want things and
are willing to fight for them. Peace must be a peace between men as
they are. It will not come by preaching, nor by nations surrendering
their ambitions. It will not come through non-resistance, through the
submission of the meek to the overbearing. It will not come through
the nations joyously disarming as the light of reason breaks through
the clouds. Reason is not so simple nor so unrelated a thing, for the
material things that each nation wants, and the means by which the nation
gets them, seem to the nation preeminently just and reasonable. However
pompous the superstructure of ethics and ideals, the solid foundation of
war, as of other social developments, is economic. So long as nations, or
at all events their ruling groups, have conflicting economic interests,
war is inevitable.
According to the Socialist, therefore, war and capitalism were
inseparable. War must continue so long as the wage-system continued.
The argument was simple. The great owners of capital, earning more
than they could consume or profitably invest in home industries, were
compelled to send their surplus to colonies and dependencies, where a new
profit could be made. With the rapid increase of capital, however, the
competition between the industrial nations for the possession of these
agricultural dependencies became keener. Such competition meant war. As
capitalism approached its climax wars were bound to become more frequent,
destructive, and violent.
[Sidenote: But now competitive imperialism makes way for imperialism by
combination.]
If this theory had been true it would have followed that the interests
of capital would make for war and the interests of labor would make
for peace. The day laborer, with no money in the bank, would not be
interested in capital investments in Morocco, Manchuria, or Asia Minor.
He would have no national interests whatever. But, as we may read in
the admirable book on “Socialists and the War,” by William English
Walling, a few Socialists have for some time begun to recognize that
wage-earners do have special national interests and that these interests
may be directly opposed to the interests of wage-earners in an adjoining
country. If Serbia is completely shut off from the sea, her wage-earners
suffer as acutely as do her peasants. If Switzerland is surrounded by a
wall of hostile tariffs, if Holland and England are deprived of their
colonies, the loss is felt not only by great capitalists but by the man
who works with a trowel or a lathe. The ultimate interests of German and
British wage-earners are identical, but if their immediate interests
conflict, there will grow up a spirit of nationalism in both countries,
and wage-earners will clamor for a national policy which may lead to war.
This seems to shut a door that leads to peace. But in shutting this
door the newer Socialist thought has opened another. It assumes that
the capitalists themselves are increasingly likely to profit by
peace, to desire peace, and to achieve peace. According to the German
Socialist, Karl Kautsky, we are approaching a new stage in the industrial
development of the world. At first capitalists exploited the resources
of their own country. Then they competed nationally for the exploitation
of colonies and dependencies, and this policy led to imperialism and
war. Now they are beginning to unite for the joint exploitation of all
backward lands. Competitive imperialism is making way for imperialism
by combination, just as competitive industry gave way to the trust.
English, French, German, and Belgian capitalists will unite to exploit
dependencies, will have joint spheres of influence, and the result will
be peace with profits. Imperialism in the old sense will die out, and its
place will be taken by a pacific super-imperialism, a higher imperialism.
[Sidenote: This higher imperialism fraught with dangers.]
What this theory actually means is that the normal development of
industry and finance will automatically bring about international peace,
and that socialism and even democracy are quite unessential to that end.
Socialists may cry for peace, but they might as well cry for free air.
But the theory concedes too much and goes too far. It is tainted with the
same ultra-rationalistic spirit as is the earlier socialist theory, from
which it is a reaction. War is not fought for economic motives alone,
although these are important. Serbia would have been less vindictive had
Austria conceded her an outlet for her trade, but in any case Serbia
would not willingly be ruled by Austria, nor Bulgaria by Greece. Racial
pride, religious prejudice, ancient traditions of all sorts still divide
nations irrespective of economic interest. You cannot reduce a nation to
a single unit thinking only in economic terms.
Moreover, even on the purely economic side there are infinite chances
for war in the distribution of the profits of joint enterprises among
the capitalists of the various nations. We all know how “gentlemen’s
agreements” are broken as soon as it is profitable for the gentlemen to
break them, and we cannot wholly trust irresponsible magnates, whether
industrial or political, to be even intelligently selfish. Moreover,
in the present state of the world the higher imperialism is a policy
fraught with the very dangers and difficulties which it seeks to evade.
If the capitalists of Europe were determined to exploit South America
under a joint European control, the decision might directly lead to war.
There are too many vested national interests in colonies, dependencies
and spheres of influence to make internationalization of investment an
immediate specific against war.
[Sidenote: Internationalization of investment is only one step towards
peace.]
But in this matter of the higher imperialism we are less concerned to
know how false than how true it is. It is a thing to be desired if it
circumscribes war, even though it does not end war, if it tends towards
peace, even though it does not by itself alone assure peace. We believe
that this present war is not unlikely to end in a combination of great
nations with enormous capital, willing to enter upon foreign investments
jointly. The great capitalists, who influence if they do not rule our
modern industrial nations, will often discover that it is cheaper to
divide than to fight. It will be better to have twenty per cent. of a
Chinese loan without going to war than thirty per cent.—or nothing at
all—after a war. They will strive for the peace of “understanding”—the
peace of give and take.
If the big speculators can thus merge their interests and deal across
national boundaries, the little investors who have less to gain and more
to lose by war will be even more pacific. Farmers and wage-earners have a
still more attenuated interest in war, and a still more obvious interest
in peace. Once great liens of peace are established, moreover, many of
the incitements to war will of themselves disappear....
In the end, however, any internationalization of investment will be only
a single step in the direction of peace. There are many other steps to be
taken. Education, commerce, the development of an international morality,
the creation of machinery for dealing with international disputes,
are all essential to the evolution of peace. Industrial and political
democracy are above all necessary. Men must be given a full life and
a real stake in the wealth that peace provides, and they who bear the
burdens of war must actually determine the national policies which make
for war or peace.
_The New Republic, June 5, 1915._
PRINCIPLES OF THE SETTLEMENT: POLITICAL
NATIONALITY AND THE FUTURE
[Sidenote: War has shattered our constructive effort.]
For the first time in our lives, we find ourselves in complete
uncertainty as to the future. To uncivilized people the situation is
commonplace; but in twentieth-century Europe we are accustomed to look
ahead, to forecast accurately what lies before us, and then to choose
our path and follow it steadily to its end; and we rightly consider that
this is the characteristic of civilized men. The same ideal appears
in every side of our life: in the individual’s morality as a desire
for “Independence” strong enough to control most human passions: in
our Economics as Estimates and Insurances: in our Politics as a great
sustained concentration of all our surplus energies (in which parties are
becoming increasingly at one in aim and effort, while their differences
are shrinking to alternatives of method), to raise the material, moral,
and intellectual standard of life throughout the nation. From all this
fruitful, constructive, exacting work, which demands the best from us
and makes us the better for giving it, we have been violently wrenched
away and plunged into a struggle for existence with people very much like
ourselves, with whom we have no quarrel.
We must face the fact that this is pure evil, and that we cannot escape
it. We must fight with all our strength: every particle of our energy
must be absorbed in the war: and meanwhile our social construction must
stand still indefinitely, or even be in part undone, and every class
and individual in the country must suffer in their degree, according to
the quite arbitrary chance of war, in lives horribly destroyed and work
ruined....
The psychological devastation of war is even more terrible than the
material. War brings the savage substratum of human character to the
surface, after it has swept away the strong habits that generations of
civilized effort have built up. We saw how the breath of war in Ireland
demoralized all parties alike. We have met the present more ghastly
reality with admirable calmness; but we must be on our guard. Time wears
out nerves, and War inevitably brings with it the suggestion of certain
obsolete points of view, which in our real, normal life, have long been
buried and forgotten.
[Sidenote: It has roused the instinct of revenge.]
It rouses the instinct of revenge. “If Germany has hurt us, we will hurt
her more—to teach her not to do it again.” The wish is the savage’s
automatic reaction, the reason his perfunctory justification of it: but
the civilized man knows that the impulse is hopelessly unreasonable. The
“hurt” is being at war, and the evil we wish to ban is the possibility
of being at war again, because war prevents us working out our own lives
as we choose. If we beat Germany and then humiliate her, she will never
rest till she has “redeemed her honor,” by humiliating us more cruelly in
turn. Instead of being free to return to our own pressing business, we
shall have to be constantly on the watch against her. Two great nations
will sit idle, weapon in hand, like two Afghans in their loopholed
towers when the blood feud is between them; and we shall have sacrificed
deliberately and to an ever-increasing extent (for the blood feud grows
by geometrical progression), the very freedom for which we are now
giving our lives.
[Sidenote: And of plunder.]
Another war instinct is plunder. War is often the savage’s profession:
“‘With my sword, spear and shield I plow, I sow, I reap, I gather in the
vintage.’ If we beat Germany our own mills and factories will have been
at a standstill, our horses requisitioned and our crops unharvested, our
merchant steamers stranded in dock if not sunk on the high seas, and our
‘blood and treasure’ lavished on the war: but in the end Germany’s wealth
will be in our grasp, her colonies, her markets, and such floating riches
as we can distrain upon by means of an indemnity. If we have had to beat
our plowshares into swords, we can at least draw some profit from the
new tool, and recoup ourselves partially for the inconvenience. It is
no longer a question of irrational, impulsive revenge, perhaps not even
of sweetening our sorrow by a little gain. To draw on the life-blood of
German wealth may be the only way to replenish the veins of our exhausted
Industry and Commerce.” So the plunder instinct might be clothed in
civilized garb: “War,” we might express it, “is an investment that must
bring in its return.”
The first argument against this point of view is that it has clearly been
the inspiring idea of Germany’s policy, and history already shows that
armaments are as unbusinesslike a speculation for civilized countries as
war is an abnormal occupation for civilized men. We saw the effect of
the Morocco tension upon German finance in 1911, and the first phase of
the present war has been enough to show how much Germany’s commerce will
inevitably suffer, whether she wins or loses.
It is only when all the armaments are on one side and all the wealth is
on the other, that war pays; when, in fact, an armed savage attacks a
civilized man possessed of no arms for the protection of his wealth. Our
Afghans in their towers are sharp enough not to steal each other’s cows
(supposing they possess any of their own) for cows do not multiply by
being exchanged, and both Afghans would starve in the end after wasting
all their bullets in the skirmish. They save their bullets to steal cows
from the plainsmen who cannot make reprisals.
If Germany were really nothing but a “nation in arms,” successful war
might be as lucrative for her as an Afghan’s raid on the plain, but she
is normally a great industrial community like ourselves. In the last
generation she has achieved a national growth of which she is justly
proud. Like our own, it has been entirely social and economic. Her goods
have been peacefully conquering the world’s markets. Now her workers
have been diverted _en masse_ from their prospering industry to conquer
the same markets by military force, and the whole work of forty years is
jeopardized by the change of method.
[Sidenote: But to fight for trade no longer pays.]
Fighting for trade and industry is not like fighting for cattle. Cattle
are driven from one fastness to another, and if no better, are at
least no worse for the transit. Civilized wealth perishes on the way.
Our economic organization owes its power and range to the marvelous
forethought and cooperation that has built it up; but the most delicate
organisms are the most easily dislocated, and the conqueror, whether
England or Germany, will have to realize that, though he may seem to have
got the wealth of the conquered into his grip, the total wealth of both
parties will have been vastly diminished by the process of the struggle.
[Sidenote: Germany’s economic ruin would compromise world-prosperity.]
The characteristic feature of modern wealth is that it is international.
Economic gain and loss is shared by the whole world, and the shifting of
the economic balance does not correspond to the moves in the game of
diplomatists and armies. Germany’s economic growth has been a phenomenon
quite independent of her political ambitions, and Germany’s economic
ruin would compromise something far greater than Germany’s political
future—the whole world’s prosperity. British wealth, among the rest,
would be dealt a deadly wound by Germany’s economic death, and it would
be idle to pump Germany’s last life-blood into our veins, if we were
automatically draining them of our own blood in the process.
But issues greater than the economic are involved. The modern “Nation”
is for good or ill an organism one and indivisible, and all the diverse
branches of national activity flourish or wither with the whole national
well-being. You cannot destroy German wealth without paralyzing German
intellect and art, and European civilization, if it is to go on growing,
cannot do without them. Every doctor and musician, every scientist,
engineer, political economist and historian, knows well his debt to the
spiritual energy of the German nation. In the moments when one realizes
the full horror of what is happening, the worst thought is the aimless
hurling to destruction of the world’s only true wealth, the skill and
nobility and genius of human beings, and it is probably in the German
casualties that the intellectual world is suffering its most irreparable
human losses.
With these facts in our minds, we can look into the future more clearly,
and choose our policy (supposing that we win the war, and, thereby,
the power to choose) with greater confidence. We have accepted the
fact that war itself is evil, and will in any event bring pure loss to
both parties: that no good can come from the war itself, but only from
our policy when the war is over: and that the one good our policy can
achieve, without which every gain is delusive, is the banishing of this
evil from the realities of the future. This is our one supreme “British
interest,” and it is a German interest just as much, and an interest of
the whole world.
This war, and the cloud of war that has weighed upon us so many years
before the bursting of the storm, has brought to bankruptcy the “National
State.” Till 1870 it was the ultimate ideal of European politics, as it
is still in the Balkans, where the Turk has broken Time’s wings. It was
such a fruitful ideal that it has rapidly carried us beyond itself, and
in the last generation the life of the world has been steadily finding
new and wider channels. In the crisis of change from nationalism to
internationalism we were still exposed to the plague of war. The crisis
might have been passed without it, and war banished for ever between the
nations of civilized Europe. Now that the catastrophe has happened (it
is childish to waste energy in incriminations against its promoters) we
must carry through the change completely and at once: we cannot possibly
afford to be exposed to the danger again.
[Sidenote: The bases of true nationality must be laid.]
No tool, machine, or idea made by men has an immortal career. Sooner or
later they all run amuck, and begin to do evil instead of good. At that
stage savage or unskilful men destroy them by force and replace them by
their opposite: civilized men get them under control, and build them into
something new and greater. Nationality will sink from being the pinnacle
of politics only to become their foundation, and till the foundations are
laid true, further building is impossible. But the bases of nationality
have never yet been laid true in Europe. When we say that “nationality
was the political ideal of the nineteenth century,” and that 1870 left
the populations of Europe organized in national groups, we are taking
far too complacent a view of historical facts. The same century that
produced a united Italy and Germany, saw out the whole tragedy of Poland,
from the first partition in 1772 to the last revolt in 1863. Human ideas
do not spring into the world full-grown and shining like Athena: they
trail the infection of evil things from the past.
In the Dark Ages Europe’s most pressing need and only practicable ideal
was strong government. Strong government came with its blessings, but it
brought the evil of territorial ambitions. The Duke of Burgundy spent
the wealth of his Netherland subjects in trying to conquer the Swiss
mountaineers. Burgundy succumbed to the king of France. But the very
factor that made the French kings survive in the struggle for existence
between governments, the force of compact nationality which the French
kingdom happened to contain, delivered the inheritance of the kings to
the Nation.
[Sidenote: Nationalism has perpetuated violence.]
The French Nation in the Revolution burst the chrysalis of irresponsible
government beneath which it had grown to organic life, but like a true
heir it took over the Royal Government’s ideal: “Peace within and
piracy without.” France had already begun aggression abroad before she
had accomplished self-government at home, and in delivering herself to
Napoleon she sacrificed her liberty to her ambition. Napoleon’s only
enduring achievements outside France were the things he set himself to
prevent, the realization, by a forceful reaction against force, of German
and Italian nationality. Nationalism was converted to violence from the
outset, and the struggle for existence between absolute governments has
merely been replaced by a struggle between nationalities, equally blind,
haphazard, and non-moral, but far more terrific, just because the virtue
of self-government is to focus and utilize human energy so much more
effectively than the irresponsible government it has superseded.
Naturally the result of this planless strife has been no grouping of
Europe on a just and reasonable national basis. France and England,
achieving racial frontiers and national self-government early, inherited
the Earth before Germany and Italy struggled up beside them, to take
their leavings of markets and colonial areas. But the government that
united Germany had founded its power on the partition of Poland, and in
the second Balkan War of 1913 we saw a striking example of the endless
chain of evil forged by an act of national injustice.
[Sidenote: Intranational oppression has been a chief cause of war.]
The Hungarians used the liberty they won in 1867 to subject the Slavonic
population between themselves and the sea, and prevent its union with
the free principality of Serbia of the same Slavonic nationality. This
drove Serbia in 1912 to follow Hungary’s example by seizing the coast of
the non-Slavonic Albanians; and when Austria-Hungary prevented this (a
right act prompted by most unrighteous motives), Serbia fought an unjust
war with Bulgaria and subjected a large Bulgarian population, in order
to gain access to the only seaboard left her, the friendly Greek port of
Salonika.
Hungary and Serbia are nominally national states: but more than half the
population in Hungary, and perhaps nearly a quarter in Serbia, is alien,
only held within the state by force against its will. The energy of both
states is perverted to the futile and demoralizing work of “Magyarizing”
and “Serbizing” subject foreign populations, and they have not even been
successful. The resistance of Southern Slav nationalism on the defensive
to the aggression of Hungarian nationalism has given the occasion for the
present catastrophe.
The evil element in nationalism under its many names, “Chauvinism,”
“Jingoism,” “Prussianism,” is the one thing in our present European
civilization that can and does produce the calamity of war. If our object
is to prevent war, then, the way to do so is to purge Nationality of this
evil. This we cannot do by any mechanical means, but only by a change
of heart, by converting public opinion throughout Europe from “National
Competition” to “National Cooperation.” Public opinion will never be
converted so long as the present system of injustice remains in force, so
long as one nation has less and another more than its due. The first step
towards internationalism is not to flout the problems of nationality, but
to solve them.
[Sidenote: The map of Europe must be justly revised.]
The most important practical business, then, of the conference that meets
when war is over, will be the revision of the map of Europe....
[Sidenote: Otherwise no permanent settlement is possible.]
If we do not think about nationality, it is simply because we have long
taken it for granted, and our mind is focussed on posterior developments;
but it is increasingly hard to keep ourselves out of touch with other
countries, and though our blindness has been partly distraction, it has
also been in part deliberate policy. We saw well enough that the present
phase of the national problem in Europe carried in it the seeds of war.
We rightly thought that war itself was the evil, an evil incomparably
greater than the national injustices that might become the cause of
it. We knew that, if these questions were opened, war would follow.
We accordingly adopted the only possible course. We built our policy
on the chance that national feeling could be damped down till it had
been superseded in the public opinion of Europe by other interests, not
because Nationalism was unjustified, but because it endangered so much
more than it was worth. Knowing that we had passed out of the nationalist
phase ourselves, and that from our present political point of view war
was purely evil, we hoped that it was merely a question of time for the
Continental populations to reach the same standpoint. Notably in Germany,
the focus of danger, we saw social interests coming more and more to the
front at the expense of militarism. We threw ourselves into the negative
task of staving off the catastrophe in the interim, by a strenuous
policy of compromise and conciliation, which has been successful on at
least two critical occasions. Now that the evil has been too powerful
and the catastrophe has happened, the reasons for this policy are dead.
Nationalism has been strong enough to produce war in spite of us. It
has terribly proved itself to be no outworn creed, but a vital force to
be reckoned with. It is stronger on the Continent than social politics.
It is the raw material that litters the whole ground. We must build it
into our foundations, or give up the task, not only of constructive
social advance beyond the limits we have already reached, but even of any
fundamental reconstruction of what the war will have destroyed.
Perhaps we might have foretold this from the case of Ireland immediately
under our eyes. Failure to solve her national problem has arrested
Ireland’s development since the seventeenth century, and imprisoned her
in a world of ideas almost unintelligible to an Englishman till he has
traveled in the Balkans. This has been England’s fault, and we are now
at last in a fair way to remedy it. The moment we have succeeded in
arranging that the different national groups in Ireland govern themselves
in the way they really wish, the national question will pass from the
Irish consciousness; they will put two centuries behind them at one
leap, and come into line with ourselves. The Dublin strike, contemporary
with the arming of the Volunteers, shows how the modern problems are
jostling at the heels of the old. Although “Unionist” and “Nationalist”
politicians could still declare that their attitude towards the strike
was neutral, the parliament of the new Irish state will discuss the
social problem and nothing else.
[Sidenote: Nationality is subjective not material.]
Ireland, then, has forced us to think about the problem of nationalism;
and our Irish experience will be invaluable to us when peace is made,
and we take in hand, in concert with our allies, the national questions
of the rest of Europe. To begin with, we already have a notion of what
Nationality is. Like all great forces in human life, it is nothing
material or mechanical, but a subjective psychological feeling in living
people. This feeling can be kindled by the presence of one or several of
a series of factors: a common country, especially if it is a well defined
physical region, like an island, a river basin, or a mountain mass; a
common language, especially if it has given birth to a literature; a
common religion; and that much more impalpable force, a common tradition
or sense of memories shared from the past.
[Sidenote: “Historical sentiment” is largely factitious.]
But it is impossible to argue _a priori_ from the presence of one or even
several of these factors to the existence of a nationality: they may
have been there for ages and kindled no response. And it is impossible
to argue from one case to another: precisely the same group of factors
may produce nationality here, and there have no effect. Great Britain is
a nation by geography and tradition, though important Keltic-speaking
sections of the population in Wales and the Highlands do not understand
the predominant English language. Ireland is an island smaller still and
more compact, and is further unified by the almost complete predominance
of the same English language, for the Keltic speech is incomparably
less vigorous here than in Wales; yet the absence of common tradition
combines with religious differences to divide the country into two
nationalities, at present sharply distinct from one another and none
the less hostile because their national psychology is strikingly the
same. Germany is divided by religion in precisely the same way as
Ireland, her common tradition is hardly stronger, and her geographical
boundaries quite vague: yet she has built up her present concentrated
national feeling in three generations. Italy has geography, language and
traditions to bind her together; and yet a more vivid tradition is able
to separate the Ticinese from his neighbors, and bind him to people of
alien speech and religion beyond a great mountain range. The Armenian
nationality does not occupy a continuous territory, but lives by language
and religion. The Jews speak the language of the country where they
sojourn, but religion and tradition hold them together. The agnostic Jew
accepts not only the language but all the other customs of his adopted
countrymen, but tradition by itself is too strong for him: he remains a
Jew and cannot be assimilated.
These instances taken at random show that each case must be judged on
its own merits, and that no argument holds good except the ascertained
wish of the living population actually concerned. Above all we must be
on our guard against “historical sentiment,” that is, against arguments
taken from conditions which once existed or were supposed to exist, but
which are no longer real at the present moment. They are most easily
illustrated by extreme examples. Italian newspapers have described the
annexation of Tripoli as “recovering the soil of the Fatherland” because
it was once a province of the Roman Empire; and the entire region of
Macedonia is claimed by Greek chauvinists on the one hand, because it
contains the site of Pella, the cradle of Alexander the Great in the
fourth century B.C., and by Bulgarians on the other, because Ohhrida,
in the opposite corner, was the capital of the Bulgarian Tzardom in the
tenth century A.D., though the drift of time has buried the tradition
of the latter almost as deep as the achievements of the “Emathian
Conqueror,” on which the modern Greek nationalist insists so strongly.
[Sidenote: We must understand nationalistic aims and diversities.]
The national problems of Europe are numerous, and each one is beset
by arguments good, bad, and indifferent, some no more specious than
the above, some so elaborately staged that it requires the greatest
discernment to expose them. Vast bodies of people, with brains and money
at their disposal, have been interested in obscuring the truth, and have
used every instrument in their power to do so. It is therefore essential
for us in England to take up these hitherto remote and uninteresting
national problems in earnest, to get as near to the truth as we possibly
can, both as to what the respective wishes of the different populations
are, and as to how far it is possible to reconcile them with each other
and with Geography; and to come to the conference which will follow the
war and is so much more important than the war itself, with a clear idea
of the alternative solutions and a mature judgment upon their relative
merits.
To accomplish this we need a coordination of knowledge on a large scale,
knowledge of history, geography, religion, national psychology and public
opinion....
[Sidenote: Individuality and tolerance must be our international ideals.]
With the growth of civilization the human and the territorial unit
become less and less identical. In a primitive community the members
are undifferentiated from one another: the true human unit is the total
group, and not the individual, and the territory this group occupies
is a unit too, self-sufficing and cut off from intercourse with the
next valley. In modern Europe every sub-group and every individual
has developed a “character” or “individuality” of its own which must
have free play; while the growth of communications, elaboration of
organization, and economic interdependence of the whole world have broken
down the barriers between region and region. The minimum territorial
block that can be organized efficiently as a separate political unit
according to modern standards is constantly growing in size: the maximum
human group which can hold together without serious internal divergence
is as steadily diminishing.
This would look like an _impasse_, were it not corrected by the virtues
of civilization itself. We started with the fact that the essence of
civilization was “Forethought” and its ideal the “power of free choice”:
the complementary side of this ideal, on the principle “Do as you would
be done by,” is to allow free choice to others when they are in your
power. It is a virtue with as many names as there are spheres of human
life: “Forbearance,” “Toleration,” “Constitutionalism.”...
_Arnold J. Toynbee, “Nationality and the War,” chap. I._
NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY
[Sidenote: We must have new forms of guarantee.]
The old Europe is dead, the old vision vanished, and we are wrestling in
agony for new inspiration....
We must beware of putting our new wine into old bottles. While guarantees
hold, they conserve their charge: when they break, the destruction is
worse than if they had never existed. Unless we can ensure that the
sovereign States of Europe respect European guarantees hereafter in other
fashion than Germany at the present crisis, we must modify the formula or
else discard it altogether.
Can the mechanism of the European system be safeguarded against its
individual members?...
We have asked our question and must accept the answer. It is useless to
fortify our new European organism by guarantees of the old order, because
we cannot fortify such guarantees themselves against the sovereign
national State. Whenever it chooses, the sovereign unit can shatter the
international mechanism by war. We are powerless to prevent it: all we
can do is to abandon our direct attack, and look for the causes which
impel States to a choice as terrible for themselves as for their victims.
[Sidenote: The German position.]
“You ask,” the Germans say, “why we broke our contract towards Belgium?
It would be more pertinent to ask how we were ever committed to such a
contract at all.
“The heart of modern Germany is the industrial world of the Rhineland
and Westphalia. The Belgian frontier and the Belgian tariff-wall rob
this region of its natural outlet at Antwerp, yet the contract expressly
forbids us to right this economic and geographical wrong by uniting the
sea-port to its hinterland.
“The chief need of modern Germany is a source of raw produce and a market
for her finished products in the tropical zone. Belgium has staked out
for herself the one important region in Africa which was not already
occupied by France or Great Britain. She can do nothing with it, while
we—but this contract expressly forbids us to kick the Belgian dog out of
the manger.
“Because of this Belgian guarantee we must go in want of almost
everything we need, yet meanwhile our great neighbors on either flank
have conspired to take from us even the little we possess already. The
struggle with France and Russia on which we are now engaged has been
impending for years, and on our part it is a struggle for existence, but
even here the same remorseless contract operates to paralyze our efforts.
On the scale of modern warfare the Western battle-front must extend from
Switzerland to the North Sea, yet the greater part of this immense zone
is neutralized by natural and artificial obstacles on either side. From
Switzerland to the Ardennes there will be stalemate: the decision will be
reached in the open country between the Ardennes and the coast. Here, as
soon as war broke out, France and our own fatherland had to concentrate
the terrific energy of their armaments, yet we had contracted away our
initiative in this vital area, for it lies within the frontiers of the
Belgian State. The Government we had guaranteed might prepare the ground
for France and ruin it for ourselves, yet because of the guarantee we
must look on passively at the digging of our grave.
“Why, then, had we suffered ourselves to be bound hand and foot? We had
not: our grandfathers had entailed the bonds upon us. When they signed
the contract in 1839, they knew not what they did. At that time Germany
had no industry, Belgium had no colonies, and the Franco-German frontier
between the Ardennes and the Jura was not closed to field operations by
two continuous lines of opposing fortifications. Had their signature been
demanded in 1914, they would have refused it as indignantly as we should
have refused it ourselves. To us no choice was offered, and if we have
asserted for ourselves the right to choose, who dares in his heart to
condemn us? Who will impose a changeless law upon a changing world?”
[Sidenote: We must provide for national growth.]
This is Germany’s argument about Belgium. Her facts may be true or false,
the arguments she builds on them valid or fallacious. That is not the
point. Behind arguments and facts there looms an idea that can inspire an
individual nation to make war on Europe. We must do justice to this idea,
if it is not to play the same havoc again.
Humanity has an instinctive craving for something eternal, absolute,
petrified. This seems to be a fundamental factor in our psychology:
it has obtruded itself equally in spheres as diverse as religion and
politics, but it has been especially dominant in diplomacy.
Whenever the European organism proves its instability by breaking down,
we start in quest of a perfect mechanism, a “permanent settlement.”
We are invariably disappointed, but invariably we return to the quest
again. The Congress of statesmen at Vienna followed this will-o’-the-wisp
in 1814: in 1915 the belligerent democracies are preparing to lead
themselves the same dance. “Europe is in a mess,” we are all saying:
“Let us tidy her up ‘once for all,’ and then we can live comfortably ever
after.”
We might as well expect a baby to “live comfortably ever after” in its
swaddling clothes....
[Sidenote: The European organism is full of dynamic life.]
So it is with the European organism. It is as full of life, as
perpetually in transformation, as the individual national molecules of
which it is woven, yet we confuse it in turn with each of its transitory
garments. If we are to find a satisfactory issue out of the present
crisis, we must begin by correcting our standpoint.
The impending settlement will not be permanent, and the better it fits
the situation, the less permanent will it be....
Our real work will be to regulate this immediate settlement so that it
varies in harmony with the subsequent growth of Europe and modifies its
structure and mechanism to meet the organism’s changing needs.
We have now discovered the flaw in guarantees of the old order. They
were framed for rigidity, and therefore were doomed to crack. Our new
guarantees must be elastic: they must be forged of steel not cast in iron.
How can we frame guarantees of this malleable character?...
(i.) Firstly, we propose guarantees of political independence and
integrity in the case of the three Scandinavian States, the Slovene Unit,
the Greek islands off Anatolia, Persia, and the Sultanate of Oman. The
autonomy guaranteed to Poland within the Russian Empire comes under the
same head.
(ii.) Secondly, we propose to guarantee economic rights-of-way to one
State across the political territory of another. Instances of this type
are the Russian railway through Norway to the Atlantic and through
Persia to the Indian Ocean; Poland’s title to free trade down the
Vistula, and to the enjoyment of a free port at Danzig; and Germany’s
similar claim to an unhampered outlet at Trieste.
Both these classes of guarantee are adapted from the international
machinery invented during the nineteenth century. The first class is
an extension of the political guarantee given to Belgium in 1839, the
second of the economic right-of-way secured to her through Dutch waters,
in order to furnish the commerce of Antwerp with a free passage down the
estuary of the Scheldt to the open sea.
[Sidenote: No settlement can be permanent.]
Our standpoint towards these two classes is inevitably prejudiced
by their associations. We envisage them as embodied “once for all,”
like their nineteenth-century precedents, in a contract, and like
nineteenth-century diplomacy we tend to regard such contracts as so many
girders in a “permanent settlement.”
(iii.) There is a third class, however, which has no precedent in the
past, and which will react upon our standpoint in the very opposite
direction: our proposed guarantee of alien minorities within the national
State....
The German populations transferred with Schleswig to Denmark and with
the Eastern frontier-zone to Autonomous Poland; the Poles abandoned
to Germany in West Prussia; the Germans and Slovaks who cannot be
disentangled from Hungary; the Christian elements in Anatolia and
Arabia—these are a few out of many instances, and each one of them is a
refutation of “finality.”
The fact that such minorities must inevitably be left on our hands
compels us to recognize that beyond a certain degree the economic and the
national factor are not commensurable. Here is an essential imperfection
in the best settlement we can possibly devise.
The fact that these minorities require a guarantee reveals a deficiency
still more grave than the other, inasmuch as it is not environmental
but psychological. It means that hardly a single national society in
Europe has yet become capable of national toleration. Just as people
were persecuted for their religious beliefs in the sixteenth century and
for their political opinions in the nineteenth, so they are still in the
twentieth century almost universally exposed to persecution for their
national individuality. In this sphere the social evolution of Europe
is exceptionally backward, and the problem of nationality will never be
solved till this psychological incongruity is removed.
[Sidenote: But elastic guarantees will further racial toleration.]
This at once reduces to their proper proportion both the immediate
geographical settlement of the problem which we have elaborated in this
book and that guarantee of alien minorities which we have found to be
its necessary supplement. In this light, the contracts in which such
guarantees are enshrined appear as the transitory scaffolding they are.
Weakened by the morbid hypertrophy of nationalism which has been preying
upon her for years, exhausted by the convulsion of war in which the
malady has culminated, Europe must walk on crutches now or else collapse;
yet she will not be a cripple forever. Relieved by these guarantees from
the immediate strain of unmitigated national friction, she will be able
to concentrate all her energy upon her spiritual convalescence. As soon
as she has trained herself to national toleration, she will discard the
guarantees and walk unaided.
So far from constituting a “permanent settlement,” our third type of
guarantee is an intimation that the problem still remains unsettled. The
work will not be complete until we can dispense with the instrument, but
the instrument will not accomplish the work unless it is wielded by a
craftsman’s hand. Not only are guarantees of our third type merely the
means to an end beyond themselves: the contract in which it is embodied
is in this case the least important part of the guarantee.
When we guarantee a national minority we have of course to define certain
liberties which it is to enjoy—liberties, for instance, of religion,
education, local self-government—and all the parties to the Conference
must contract responsibility for the observance of such stipulations; yet
when we have done this, we cannot simply deposit our document in some
international “Ark of the Covenant” and go our ways. The essence of the
guarantee is its subsequent interpretation.
The relation between the different elements in a country is continually
changing. One church dwindles while another makes converts; one race
advances in culture while another degenerates; man’s indefatigable
struggle to dominate his physical environment alters the natural
boundaries between localities: a barrier that once seemed insurmountable
is pierced, and leaves one formerly insignificant in relative prominence.
Each of these modifications demands an adjustment of the guarantee,
and since they are an infinite series, the guarantee itself requires
ceaseless manipulation if it is to perform its function aright.
[Sidenote: The changing organism needs a new form of international
executive.]
This need cannot be satisfied by the original _fiat_ of the International
Conference: it can only be met by the appointment of a standing
international committee with executive powers, empowered, that is, to
administer and interpret the contracts to which the members of the
Conference have originally subscribed. Our third type of guarantee has
thus presented us with the clue we sought. The letter of international
law has proved ineffective hitherto because it has lacked the inspiration
of a living spirit, and this spirit can only be breathed into it by a
human organ of international authority.
[Sidenote: The executive and the guarantees.]
Supposing that such an organ were called into existence, what kind of
international relations would naturally fall within its scope? We can
analyze its probable sphere of activity into several departments.
(i.) The first branch would of course be those guarantees of national
minorities which have just taught us the necessity for its existence.
(ii.) The second branch would include the two subjects of guarantee
we dealt with first, namely, “Political Independence” and “Rights of
Way.” We can see now that their administration by a representative
international executive would eliminate that defect of rigidity which has
always proved fatal to them heretofore.
Between them these two branches would cover all the machinery we have
suggested for our regenerated European organism. Are there any further
spheres of national interaction over which our international organ
might properly assume control? It would be logical to assign to it, if
possible, all relations between sovereign national States which are
peculiarly subject to change.
Change is a harmonization of two rhythms—Growth and Decay. Some sovereign
units are continually waxing in population, material wealth and spiritual
energy: such are Great Britain and Germany, France and the Russian
Empire. Others, like the Ottoman Empire or Spain, are as continually
waning in respect of the same factors.
This ebb and flow in the current of life causes, and must cause, a
perpetual readjustment of the relations between units in the two
complementary phases. Units in the positive phase inevitably absorb the
fibers and trespass upon the environment of those which have passed over
into the negative rhythm. We cannot arrest this process any more than we
can abolish change itself: what we can do is to regulate it on the lines
of civilization, instead of letting it run riot in a blind struggle for
existence.
The current radiates in an almost infinite variety of interactions. Great
Britain, Germany, and India are discharging surplus population into the
empty lands of the New World; Great Britain and France are applying
surplus wealth to evoke the latent resources of countries with no surplus
of their own; Great Britain and Russia are putting forth spiritual energy
to inspire primitive peoples with the vitality of civilization.
[Sidenote: How this international organ would function.]
Our international organ can handle no more than a fraction of this
world-wide interchange.
(i.) We may exclude at once from its competence every interaction that is
confined within the limits of a single sovereign unit. Within the British
Empire, for example, it is patently impracticable to “internationalize”
the problems of Indian emigration to Vancouver or the Transvaal, of the
closure of the Australian labor-market against labor from the British
Isles, of commercial exploitation in Nigeria or Rhodesia, of autonomy
in Ireland or the Asiatic Dependencies. The Empire may handle its own
problems well or ill, but it will never consent to waive its sovereignty
in respect of them. We should regard the proposition of international
intervention as a menace to the Empire’s existence. We should undoubtedly
fight rather than submit to it, and every other sovereign State would
do the same under similar circumstances. In purely internal affairs
international authority will never obtain a footing at the expense of the
individual unit.
(ii.) We may likewise exclude interactions between two or more
sovereign States in spheres that fall entirely within their respective
sovereignty. The Dominion of Canada or the U. S. A. would never submit
to international regulation the question of Japanese immigration along
their Pacific seaboard. If Russia wished to float a loan, she would never
allow our international organ to decide where and in what proportions
it should be placed: she would insist on keeping her hands free, and
making the best bargain for herself both from the financial and the
political point of view. Italy and the Argentine would never relinquish
their respective sovereign rights over the Italian laborers who cross the
Atlantic every year to reap the South American harvests. International
authority would be flouted as uncompromisingly in these instances as in
the former.
[Sidenote: Control of weak States, and of immigration.]
(iii.) There are some units, however, so raw in their growth or so
deeply sunk in their decay as to lack the attribute of sovereignty
altogether—units which through want of population, wealth, spiritual
energy, or all three together are unable to keep the spark of vitality
aglow. Such dead units are the worst danger that threatens the peace of
the world: each one of them is an arena enticing the living units around
to clash in conflict, a vacuum into which the current of life swirls like
a maelstrom. In these “no-man’s-lands” where no sovereignty exists, our
international organ can and must assert its own sovereignty against the
sovereign States outside.
(_a_) In every such area the standing international executive should
regulate immigration from over-populated sovereign units—German
colonization, for instance, in Anatolia, or Indian settlement on the
alluvium of Irak.
(_b_) It should likewise regulate the inflow of capital....
(_c_) In areas where the pressure of spiritual energy is so low that the
population cannot save itself by its own efforts from political anarchy,
the international executive should be prepared to step in and organize
“strong government.”...
Morocco, the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire—the present war is not really
being waged to settle these problems: it is being waged because they
have been settled already, and settled on such unjust and injudicious
lines that all parties concerned have found it worth while to stake their
existence for the reversal of the settlement. No one need have been
involved by such problems in a struggle for life. They were all problems
of expansion, and their solution ought at worst to have disappointed
the expectation of immoderate gains: it ought never, as it has done, to
have threatened the parties with the loss of what they possessed already
before the problems were probed.
[Sidenote: Such an executive could have prevented the war of diplomacy
and of arms.]
Why has the contrary occurred? Because, just for lack of that
international executive with the sovereign authority we postulate, these
issues that were not vital have been fought out, like issues of life and
death, by war—not by the war of arms which has descended upon us now like
some recurrent plague, into which we relapse at rarer and rarer intervals
as we advance in civilization, but by the unobtrusive, unremittent war of
diplomacy which is being waged year in and year out between the sovereign
States of Europe, and which has increased appallingly in violence during
the last generation.
In this disastrous diplomatic warfare our opponents in the present war
of arms have been uniformly the aggressors. If Austria-Hungary is now
struggling for existence, it is because she deliberately embarked nearly
forty years ago upon a diplomatic campaign of aggrandizement against
South-Slavonic nationality. If Germany is fighting back to back with
her in the same ghastly struggle, it is because Germany has wielded
diplomatic weapons still more ruthlessly against her other European
neighbors.
[Sidenote: The war of diplomacy.]
For the terrible embitterment of the diplomatic contest Germany herself
is entirely responsible, but she has inevitably exposed herself to
reprisals as severe as her own provocative blows. She opened the battle
over Morocco by forcibly intruding upon a sphere where she had no shadow
of claim to expansion: thereby she drew France and Great Britain into
diplomatic alliance against her, and laid herself open to the humiliation
of 1911, when Franco-British diplomacy mobilized its financial forces
and drove her to retreat by cutting off her supplies. In Turkey she
might easily have satisfied her needs without any battle at all. The
untenanted area was vast, the claims staked out on it were singularly
narrow: when German enterprise circumvented the enterprise of Great
Britain and France, and secured all the railway-concessions in the virgin
hinterland of Anatolia, French and British diplomacy grumbled but did
not attempt to open hostilities. Yet instead of reaping her harvest in
peace, Germany again precipitated a diplomatic conflict by extending
her ambitions to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. The moment she aspired to
absorb the whole Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and Russia entered into
diplomatic cooperation, and opposed her purpose with all their might.
Germany’s Arabian venture has jeopardized her Anatolian gains, and if she
is defeated in the present struggle, she will probably be excluded from
the Ottoman area altogether.
The diplomatic warfare over three secondary issues, which ought never
to have been settled by fighting at all, has thus left none of the
combatants unscathed. On the contrary, the wounds inflicted then have
festered till their poison has threatened each combatant with the pains
of dissolution, and made that quack-physician the diplomatist call out in
panic for the knife of that quack-surgeon the war lord.
This diplomatic warfare is the objective of our new international
organization. Upon diplomacy we can and must make a direct attack. If
we can draw this monster’s teeth, we shall no longer be troubled by its
still more monstrous offspring—War.
_Arnold J. Toynbee, “Nationality and the War,” chap. XII._
THE GOVERNMENTAL THEORY
[Sidenote: International politics dominated by a theory.]
The position I intend to put forward and defend is this: War is made—this
war has been made—not by any necessity of nature, any law beyond human
control, any fate to which men must passively bow; it is made because
certain men who have immediate power over other men are possessed by
a certain theory. Sometimes they are fully conscious of this theory.
More often, perhaps, it works in them unconsciously. But it is there,
the dominating influence in international politics. I shall call it the
governmental theory, because it is among governing persons—Emperors,
Kings, Ministers, and their diplomatic and military advisers—that its
influence is most conspicuous and most disastrous. But it is supported
also by historians, journalists, and publicists, and it is only too
readily adopted by the ordinary man, when he turns from the real things
he knows and habitually handles to consider the unknown field of foreign
affairs.
Very briefly, and, therefore, crudely expressed, the theory is this:
“The world is divided, politically, into States. These States are a
kind of abstract beings, distinct from the men, women, and children who
inhabit them. They are in perpetual and inevitable antagonism to one
another; and though they may group themselves in alliances, that can
be only for temporary purposes to meet some other alliance or single
power. For States are bound by a moral or physical obligation to expand
indefinitely, each at the cost of the others. They are natural enemies,
they always have been so, and they always will be; and force is the only
arbiter between them. That being so, war is an eternal necessity. As a
necessity, it should be accepted, if not welcomed, by all sound-thinking
and right-feeling men. Pacifists are men at once weak and dangerous. They
deny a fact as fundamental as any of the facts of the natural world. And
their influence, if they have any, can only be disastrous to their State
in its ceaseless and inevitable contest with other States.”
[Sidenote: Artificiality of the governmental theory.]
Stated thus briefly, and in its most uncompromising terms, this is what I
have called the governmental theory. I propose to criticize it in detail.
But before doing so I will ask the reader to compare with it the ordinary
attitude of the plain men and women who inhabit these States, and who
have to bear the burden of the wars in which the theory involves them.
These ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think
at all in terms of the State. They think about the people they come in
contact with, about their business, their friends, and their families.
When they come across foreigners, as many of them do, in business or in
travel, they may like or dislike them, but they do not regard them as
predestined enemies. On the contrary, if they are intelligent, they know
themselves to be cooperating with them in innumerable complicated ways,
implying mutual advantage. Differences of language and of social habit
make it easier for most people to associate with their fellow-countrymen
than with foreigners. But that is all. There are, of course, among these
men and women real enmities and spontaneous quarrels. But these do not
occur because men belong to different States. They occur because they
really have injured one another, or hate one another; and they occur,
naturally, for the most part, between men of the same State, because it
is these who most often come into direct contact with one another. It is
not, therefore, these enmities of ordinary men that give rise to wars.
[Sidenote: Governments, not peoples, make wars.]
Wars are made by governments, acting under the influence of the
governmental theory. And of this fact—for a fact it is among civilized
Western peoples in modern times—no better example could be given than
the present war. Before it broke out nobody outside governmental and
journalistic circles was expecting it. Nobody desired it. And though,
now that it is being waged, all the nations concerned are passionately
interested in it, and all believe themselves to be fighting in a
righteous cause, yet no ordinary citizen, in the days preceding its
outbreak, would have maintained that there was any good reason for war,
and few even knew what the reasons alleged were or might be. Even now
the different nations have quite opposite views as to which Government
was responsible. We believe it was the German Government; and with equal
conviction Germans believe it was the British. But nobody believes
that it was the mass of the people in any nation. The millions who are
carrying on the war, at the cost of incalculable suffering, would never
have made it if the decision had rested with them. That is the one
indisputable fact. How can such a fact occur? How is it possible for
Governments to drag into war people who did not desire war and who have
no quarrel with one another?
The immediate answer is simple enough. In no country is there any
effective control by the people over foreign policy. That is clear in
the case of the great military empires. But it is true also of France
and of England, where, in other respects, government is more or less
under popular control. The country has no real choice, for it gets its
information only after the decisive action has been taken. That is an
important truth which ought to lead to important changes in our methods
of conducting foreign affairs. But it is only part of the truth. For we
have now to notice this further fact: that in all countries, in Germany
no less than in England and France, no sooner is the war declared than
it is supported by the whole nation. The voice of criticism is silenced,
and every one, whatever his opinion about the origin of the war, gives
his help to see it through. Why is that? The reason is obvious. As soon
as war is made, the people of one country, conscious just before of
no cause of enmity, do really become enemies of the people of another
country; for armed populations are marching on armed populations to
massacre them. Everybody, therefore, is bound to fight in self-defense.
It is too late to ask whether there was any real cause of quarrel; for,
quarrel or no, there is real and imminent danger. To meet that danger
becomes, therefore, the immediate necessity which overbears every
other consideration. And that is the deepest reason why wars made by
governments without, and even against, the will of peoples, will always
be supported by peoples.
[Sidenote: But peoples are also obsessed by the theory.]
But though that is the most powerful reason, it is not the only one.
There is a further fact. The ordinary man, though he does not live under
the obsession of the governmental theory, is not protected against it
by any knowledge or reflection. As far as he is concerned, he knows no
reason for war, and, left to himself, would never make it. But he has a
blank mind open to suggestion; and he has passions and instincts which
it is easy to enlist on the side of the governmental theory. He has been
busy all his life; and he has no education, or one that is worse than
none, about those issues which, in a crisis like that which has come upon
us, suddenly reveal themselves as the issues of life and death. History,
no doubt, should have informed him. But history, for the most part, is
written without intelligence or conviction. It is mere narrative, devoid
of instruction, and seasoned, if at all, by some trivial, habitual, and
second-hand prejudice of the author. History has never been understood,
though it has often been misunderstood. To understand it is perhaps
beyond the power of the human intellect. But the attempt even has hardly
begun to be made.
[Sidenote: Press and government poison the public mind.]
Deprived, then, of this source of enlightenment, the ordinary man falls
back upon the press. But the press is either an agent of the very
governments it should exist to criticize (it is so notoriously and
admittedly on the Continent, and, to an extent which we cannot measure,
also in England), or else it is (with a few honorable exceptions) an
instrument to make money for certain individuals or syndicates. But the
easiest way for the press to make money is to appeal to the most facile
emotions and the most superficial ideas of the reader; and these can
easily be made to respond to the suggestion that this or that foreign
State is our natural and inevitable enemy. The strong instincts of
pugnacity and self-approbation, the nobler sentiment of patriotism, a
vague and unanalyzed impression of the course of history, these and other
factors combine to produce this result. And the irony is that they may
be directed indifferently against any State. In England, for instance, a
hundred years ago, it was France against whom they were marshaled; sixty
years ago it was Russia; thirty years ago it was France again; now it
is Germany; presently, if governments have their way, it will be Russia
again.
The foreign offices and the press do with nations what they like. And
they will continue to do so until ordinary people acquire right ideas and
a machinery to make them effective....
[Sidenote: We must realize that States are unreal abstractions.]
The governmental theory holds that States are the great realities,
and that they are natural enemies. My reply is that States are unreal
abstractions; that the reality is the men and women and children who
are the members of the States; and that as soon as you substitute real
people for the abstract idea that symbolizes them you find that they have
no cause of quarrel, no interests or desires of a kind to justify or
necessitate aggressive war. And, if there were no aggressive war, there
could, of course, be no cause for defensive war....
_G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1915._
THE WAY OUT OF WAR
[Sidenote: No aggrandizement!]
We will to perpetuate European peace. How are we to accomplish it? By
keeping in view and putting into effect certain clear principles.
First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating another
must be set aside. What we are aiming at is, not that this or that group
of States should dominate the others, but that none should in future have
any desire or motive to dominate. With that view, we must leave behind
the fewest possible sores, the least possible sense of grievance, the
least possible humiliation. The defeated States, therefore, must not be
dismembered in the hope of making or keeping them weak; and that means,
in detail, that, if the Allies win, the English and the French must not
take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic Coast, the Balkans,
or Constantinople; and that, if Germany wins, she must not dismember or
subordinate to her system France or England or the neutral powers. That
is the first clear condition of the future peace of Europe.
[Sidenote: No subjugation of small nationalities!]
Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of States—and clearly they must
be rearranged—one point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give
to all peoples suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to
decide whether they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the
political system of some other nation. Thus, for example, the people of
Alsace-Lorraine should be allowed to choose whether they will remain
under Germany, or become an autonomous community, or be included in
France. The same principles shall be applied to the Poles. The same to
Schleswig-Holstein. The same to the Balkan States. The same to the Slav
communities included in Austria-Hungary. There would arise, of course,
difficulties in carrying this principle through. For, in the Balkan
States, in Bohemia, and elsewhere, there is an almost inextricable tangle
of nationalities. But with good-will these difficulties could be at least
partially met.
Even the wholesale transference of peoples of one nationality from one
location to another is a possibility; and, indeed, it is now going on. In
any case the principle itself is clear. Political rule must cease to be
imposed on peoples against their will in the supposed interest of that
great idol, the abstract state. Let the Germans, who belong together,
live together under the same government, pursuing in independence their
national ideal and their national culture. But let them not impose that
ideal and that culture on reluctant Poles and Slavs and Danes. So, too,
let Russia develop her own life over the huge territory where Russians
live. But let her not impose that life on unwilling Poles and Finns. The
English, in history, have been as guilty as other nations of sacrificing
nationality to the supposed exigencies of the State. But of late they
have been learning their lesson. Let them learn it to the end. Let no
community be coerced under British rule that wants to be self-governing.
The British have had the courage, though late, to apply this principle to
South Africa and Ireland. There remains their greatest act of courage and
wisdom—to apply it to India.
[Sidenote: There must be established an international authority.]
A Europe thus rearranged, as it might be at the peace, on a basis of real
nationality instead of on a basis of States, would be a Europe ripe for
a permanent league. And by such a league only, in my judgment, can its
future peace, prosperity, happiness, goodness, and greatness be assured.
There must be an end to the waste upon armaments of resources too scanty,
at the best, to give to all men and women in all countries the material
basis for a good life. But if States are left with the power to arm
against one another they will do so, each asserting, and perhaps with
truth, that it is arming in defense against the imagined aggression of
the others. If all are arming, all will spend progressively more and more
on their armaments, for each will be afraid of being outstripped by the
others. This circle is fatal, as we have seen in the last quarter of a
century.
To secure the peace of Europe the peoples of Europe must hand over their
armaments, and the use of them for any purpose except internal police, to
an international authority. This authority must determine what force is
required for Europe as a whole, acting as a whole in the still possible
case of war against powers not belonging to the league. It must apportion
the quota of armaments between the different nations according to their
wealth, population, resources, and geographical position. And it, and it
alone, must carry on, and carry on in public, negotiations with powers
outside the league. All disputes that may arise between members of the
league must be settled by judicial process. And none of the forces of the
league must be available for purposes of aggression by any member against
any other.
With such a league of Europe constituted, the problem of reduction of
armaments would be automatically solved. Whatever force a united Europe
might suppose itself to require for possible defense would clearly
be far less than the sum of the existing armaments of the separate
States. Immense resources would be set free for the general purposes of
civilization, and especially for those costly social reforms on the
accomplishment of which depends the right of any nation to call itself
civilized at all. And if any one insists on looking at the settlement
from the point of view of material advantage—and that point of view will
and must be taken—it may be urged, without a shadow of doubt, that any
and every nation, the conquerors no less than the conquered, would gain
from a reduction of armaments far more than they could possibly gain by
pecuniary indemnities or cessions of territory which would leave every
nation still arming against the others with a view to future squandering
of resources in another great war. This is sheer common sense of the most
matter-of-fact kind.
A League of Europe is not Utopian. It is sound business.
[Sidenote: And we must prepare public opinion for the idea.]
Such a league, it is true, could hardly come into being immediately at
the peace. There must be preparation of opinion first; and, not less
important, there must be such changes in the government of the monarchic
States as will insure the control of their policy by popular opinion;
otherwise we might get a league in which the preponderating influence
would be with autocratic emperors. But in making peace the future league
must be kept in view. Everything must be done that will further it, and
nothing that will hinder it. And what would hinder it most would be a
peace by which either there should be a return to the conditions before
the war—but of that there is little fear—or by which any one power, or
group of powers, should be given a hegemony over the others. For that
would mean a future war for the rehabilitation of the vanquished.
[Sidenote: View of peoples must supersede view of governments.]
The mood, therefore, which seems to be growing in England, that the
British must “punish” Germany by annihilating her as a political force;
the mood which seems to be growing in Germany, that she must annihilate
the British as the great disturbers of the peace—all such moods must be
resolutely discouraged. For on those lines no permanent peace can be
made. Militarism must be destroyed, not only in Germany but everywhere.
Limitation of armaments must be general, not imposed only on the
vanquished by victors who propose themselves to remain fully armed.
The view of peoples must be substituted once for all for the view of
governments, and the view of peoples is no domination, and, therefore,
no war, but a union of nations developing freely on their own lines, and
settling all disputes by arbitration.
_G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1915._
LOWES DICKINSON’S PLAN
[Sidenote: Mr. Dickinson’s plan lacks hard-headedness.]
Writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Mr. Lowes Dickinson attempts to point
the moral of the war and to offer a way out. His theory is that wars are
made by governments without the consent and against the interest of their
subjects; they are made because the governmental mind is obsessed with
the illusion that States are “natural enemies,” that they have always
been so and always will be, that force is the only arbiter between them.
This fantasy of the governing caste, says Mr. Dickinson, is what rules
the State, and through control of foreign policy and the press drags the
population to slaughter. The remedy is to shatter the illusion, to assert
against the criminal nonsense of the governing mind the humanity and
commonsense of ordinary people....
Now peace will have to be built on a very hard-headed basis or it will
be fragile and illusory. But it is just this hard-headedness which Mr.
Dickinson’s argument seems to lack. In our opinion he himself is building
on an illusion, and if his doctrine prevails among the workers for peace
their passion will be misdirected, and their disappointment will be as
deep as their hopes are high.
[Sidenote: Is political power irrelevant to economic power?]
To prove these assertions, we need not go beyond the example which Mr.
Dickinson uses, the case of Russia and her desire to hold Constantinople.
Mr. Dickinson dismisses this ambition with the statement that “for all
purposes of trade, for all peace purposes, the Dardanelles are open.
And it is the interest of all nations alike that they should remain so.”
What he is assuming here is that it makes no economic difference whether
Constantinople is under one political government or another. This is
the center of Mr. Dickinson’s argument, and it rests on the doctrine of
Norman Angell that “political power is a consideration irrelevant to
economic power.”
Is it irrelevant in a case like that of the Dardanelles? The Black
Sea region is already a great agricultural exporting region; it is
destined most probably to become the industrial center of Russia. But
to carry out goods, Russian ships must pass through a narrow Turkish
strait. Mr. Dickinson says that for all “peace purposes” the passage is
free. Is it? Let us suppose that Mexico held New York harbor, or that
Ecuador held Liverpool. Would these harbors be free to American and
English commerce? They would be free if Mexico and Ecuador were highly
efficient governments imbued with the doctrine of absolute free trade.
Then commerce might pass through easily. But if Mexicans or Ecuadorians
took it into their heads to exercise sovereignty by setting up a tariff
zone around New York or Liverpool, who would regard political power as
irrelevant to economic power? Certainly not the Manchester exporter as he
paid his customs tax to the pleasant official from Ecuador.
Although England is in no danger from Ecuador, there are nations in the
world which suffer just as fantastically. There is the case of Servia,
shut off from a “window on the sea.” Servia exports pigs, when she isn’t
fighting for the privilege of exporting them. But to export anything she
has to run the gauntlet of an Austrian tariff to the north, Albanian and
Greek discrimination to the west and south. Shut off from the sea, she is
like a man trying to get out of a restaurant who has still to tip the
waiter, the headwaiter, the girl who took care of his hat, and the boy
who brushed it.
[Sidenote: No; political power is an instrument for monopolies and
concessions.]
Political power is not in the least irrelevant to economic power. Mr.
Dickinson has no doubt heard of a thing which we Americans call vulgarly
“dollar diplomacy.” European powers do not call it that, but they
practise it. They call it staking out “spheres of influence,” and there
is nothing sentimental or illusory about it. The nation that can secure
political control of an undeveloped country can decide who shall receive
the mining rights and the railroad franchises, can fix railroad rates
to favor its own manufacturers, can use all the methods which Americans
describe as restraint of trade. It may have been dishonest, it certainly
wasn’t a delusion, when capitalists in those dreadful early days of this
republic bought political power to further economic ends. A legislature
or a governor was generally worth the price in this country, and we
presume that they would be worth the price in Asia Minor. If German
bureaucrats governed Morocco, they would, we suppose, be good to their
friends, almost all of whom have at least a nominal residence east of
Belgium, and French capitalists might then be prospecting fresh mines and
pastures new.
Mr. Dickinson ignores these considerations when he speaks of national
antagonisms arising “because a few men of the military and diplomatic
caste have a theory about States, their interests and destinies.” He
ignores the monopolies, the use of tariffs, the special privileges
of which political power is the instrument. He does not face the
fact that in every country there are exporters of goods and capital,
concession-hunters and traders, who stand to gain by the use of
governmental power in half developed territory. To them at least it is
not a matter of indifference whether Germany is politically supreme in
say India or China. Since Germany has brought the doctrine of protection
to its highest point, it would make a very great difference to the
commerce of other nations if Germany developed a world-empire.
How little reality there is in Mr. Dickinson’s contention may be seen
by analyzing his concrete proposals. Apart from the shattering of the
great illusion of the governmental mind by a propaganda, he suggests a
settlement of Europe on the basis of nationality, capped by a League of
Europe to maintain the peace.
[Sidenote: Governmental theory not mere illusion.]
Now there are all sorts of reasons for trying to found States on
nationality, and the only reason against the proposal is the reason on
which Mr. Dickinson’s article is built. He tells us on one page that
“ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think at all
in terms of the state.” Then what difference does it make to people of
the same nationality that they should be under different governments, and
how is the world’s peace to be assured by gathering into one State people
who do not care about the State? Either the people have an interest in
the State or they have not, but surely it is futile for Mr. Dickinson to
argue in one place against the German contention that their emigrants are
“lost,” and in another that the Danes of Schleswig-Holstein should go
back to Denmark. And what does he mean by telling us that in the event
of an Austro-German victory “Italy and the Balkans will be pillaged to
the benefit of Austria, and Russia rolled back—though that would be all
to the good—from her ambition to expand in the West.” Is Mr. Dickinson
also afflicted with the “governmental mind,” that he should talk of
“benefit” to Austria and pronounce it good that “Russia” be rolled back?
What does he mean by telling us that “the English and the French must not
take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic coast, the Balkans,
or Constantinople,” for what difference does it make, except to the
“governmental mind,” who exercises political power!
[Sidenote: Mr. Dickinson ignores crucial problems.]
As for the League of Europe, surely no one here would wish to obstruct
the plan. But if the League is to be based on nothing more realistic than
an absence of governmental thinking, it will be a very precarious league.
Every argument advanced by Mr. Dickinson is based on the assumption of
absolute free trade in the world, yet in his plan of peace he says not
one syllable about how tariffs and discriminations and monopolies are to
be wiped out. The conflict between Germany and England is world-wide, yet
Mr. Dickinson is thinking only of rectified frontiers in Europe.
When he proposes so readily a League of Europe with a police force to
carry out its jurisdiction, has he considered the possibility of civil
war within the League? If Germany and Austria rebelled against the
League, they would presumably be attacked on all sides. But they are
now attacked on all sides. We had on this continent a league of States
with a central government, a Supreme Court, and an army. In 1861 some
of the States seceded, and the struggle which followed, called a Civil
War, was a terrible conflict. Has Mr. Dickinson faced the fact that a
League of Europe would be based on the _status quo_, would be a sort of
legalization of every existing injustice? And how does he propose to
amend peacefully the constitution of Europe if some nation objects too
seriously?
_The New Republic, Jan. 2, 1915._
THE MORROW OF THE WAR
OUR PURPOSE
[Sidenote: In time of war, prepare for peace.]
This country (Great Britain) is at war, and has for the moment one
overwhelming preoccupation: to render safe our national inheritance.
The Union of Democratic Control has been founded for the purpose of
trying to secure for ourselves and the generations that succeed us a
new course of policy which will prevent a similar peril ever again
befalling our Empire. Many men and women have already joined us holding
varying shades of opinion as to the origins of the war. Some think it
was inevitable, some that it could and should have been avoided. _But we
believe that all are in general agreement about two things: First, it is
imperative that the war, once begun, should be prosecuted to a victory
for our country. Secondly, it is equally imperative, while we carry on
the war, to prepare for peace. Hard thinking, free discussion, the open
exchange of opinion and information are the duty of all citizens to-day,
if we are to have any hope that this war will not be what most wars of
the past have been—merely the prelude to other wars._
[Sidenote: The program.]
Our contribution to this necessary discussion are the principles put
forward for consideration by the Union of Democratic Control.
_The Union of Democratic Control has been created to insist that the
following policy shall inspire the actual conditions of peace, and shall
dominate the situation after peace has been declared_:
_1. No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without consent by plébiscite or otherwise of the
population of such Province._
_2. No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created._
_3. The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance
of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a
Concert of the Powers and the setting up of an International
Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public, part
of the labor of such Council to be the creation of definite
Treaties of Arbitration and the establishment of Courts for
their interpretation and enforcement._
_4. Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement
a plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments
of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy
shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of the
manufacture of armaments, and the control of the export of
armaments by one country to another._
It is the purpose of this pamphlet to elaborate and explain the
considerations which underlie the policy outlined above.
I
_No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without the consent of plébiscite of the population of
such Province._
[Sidenote: There must be general recognition of principle of plébiscite.]
This condition has been placed first because if adhered to practically
and in spirit, and if recognized by the European Powers as a principle
that must guide all frontier rearrangements, it would help to put an end
to European war.
If no province were retained under a Government’s power against the
will of its inhabitants, the policy of conquest and the imposition of
political power would lose its _raison d’être_.
The subject as a whole is wrapped up, of course, with the principle of
democratic government and is not merely a problem of international but
of internal politics, and could not be treated briefly in a mere outline
like the present. But any one who reflects carefully on the subject will
see that the peace in Europe ultimately depends upon the acceptance of
this idea.
It is obvious that there are many difficulties of detail in its
application; that a plébiscite may be a mere form and not reflect the
real wishes of the population concerned, and under military control it
can be used as an instrument for obtaining an apparent sanction for
oppression, and that in populations of mixed race it is very difficult
of application. But it should not be impossible to guard against the
defeat of the principle through defects in the working machinery.
Plébiscites, where used at the end of the war, might be carried out under
international supervision. The essential is that the principle involved
should be clearly enunciated.
Fortunately the Government has already given the country a valuable lead
in this matter. For Mr. Churchill, speaking on September 11, said:
“Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make
the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany made when she had
France prostrate at her feet in 1870. [Cheers.] Let us, whatever we do,
fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the European
system, and the first of those principles which we should keep before
us is the principle of nationality—that is to say, not the conquest or
subjugation of any great community, or of any strong race of men, but the
setting free of those races which have been subjugated and conquered; and
if doubt arises about disputed areas of country we should try to settle
their ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe which must
follow from this war with a fair regard to the wishes and feelings of the
people who live in them.”
[Sidenote: One nation must not be allowed to dominate another.]
We agree with Mr. Churchill that the terms of peace should secure that
there shall in the future be no more Alsace-Lorraines to create during
half a century resentment, unrest, and intrigues for a _revanche_.
The power of the victorious parties must not be used for vindictive
oppression and dismemberment of beaten nationalities, but for the
creation, by cooperation with all the belligerents, victors and
vanquished alike, of a true society of nations, banded together for
mutual security. The future relationship of the States of Europe must be
not that of victor and vanquished, domination or subserviency, but of
partnership. The struggle of one nation for domination over another must
be replaced by the association of the people for their common good.
II
_No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created._
[Sidenote: Secret diplomacy must go.]
The peoples of all constitutionally-governed countries are justified
in demanding that diplomatic relations with their neighbors shall be
conducted with the main object of maintaining friendly international
intercourse. The increasing social and economic interdependence, the
ramifications of the credit system, the facility and rapidity of
intercommunication, the developing community of intellectual interest,
the growth of a collective social consciousness, are combining to
minimize the significance of the purely political frontiers which
divide civilized States. For these reasons the world is moving towards
conferences when political difficulties arise as a substitute for war.
The determination to preserve national ideals and traditions offers no
real obstacle. But the common interest of civilized democracies cannot be
advanced by a secret diplomacy out of touch with democratic sentiment.
The anomaly of such practises in a democratic State has only to
be understood to be condemned. All the domestic activities of a
constitutional Government are tested in the crucible of public analysis
and criticism. But the Government department charged with the supervision
of the nation’s intercourse with its neighbors, which if wrongly handled
may react with ruinous effect upon the whole field of its domestic
activities and upon the future of its entire social economy, _not only
escapes efficient public control, but considers itself empowered to
commit the nation to specific courses and to involve it in obligations to
third parties entailing the risk of war, without the nation’s knowledge
of consent_.
[Sidenote: British foreign policy has been autocratic.]
During the past eight years particularly, the management of the Foreign
department has become avowedly and frankly autocratic. Parliamentary
discussion of foreign policy has become so restricted as to be
perfunctory. It is confined to a few hours’ roving debate on one day in
each session. The eliciting of information by means of questions, never
satisfactory, is rendered extremely difficult by the ingenuity employed
in evading the issues it is attempted to raise. Advantage has been taken
of the wholesome desire that discussion of foreign policy should not
partake of mere party recriminations, to burke discussion altogether,
and this process has received the endorsement of both Front Benches.
A claim to “continuity” has been further evolved to stifle debate on
foreign affairs, whereas in point of fact, if one feature more than
another has characterized British foreign policy of recent years, it has
been its bewildering fluctuations. Parliamentary paralysis has had its
counterpart in the country. The present Government’s tenure of office has
been marked by an almost complete abstention from public reference to
foreign affairs. The public has been treated as though foreign affairs
were outside—and properly outside—its ken. And the public has acquiesced.
Every attempt to shake its apathy has been violently assailed by
spokesmen of the Foreign Office in the press. The country has been told
that its affairs were in the wisest hands, and that mystery and silence
are the indispensable attributes to a successful direction of foreign
policy. The caste system which prevails in the diplomatic service, and
which has survived unimpaired the democratizing of the majority of
the public services, facilitates these outworn political dogmatisms.
Appointment is made by nomination and selection. Candidates are required
to possess an income per annum of £400. The natural result is that the
vast bulk of the national intelligence is debarred from the diplomatic
field of employment. A study of the Foreign Office list will disclose the
fact that over 95 per cent. of the British diplomatic staff is composed
of members of the aristocracy and landed gentry.
[Sidenote: Connection between politics and business is ignored.]
Inevitable exile from their country results in our diplomatic
representatives abroad losing touch with the center of affairs and living
in a mental atmosphere remote from the popular and progressive movements
of the time. Another pronounced characteristic of the system is the
indifference displayed by the Foreign Office to the business interests
of the nation. Our vast commercial interests, so intimately affected by
our relations with foreign Powers, are regarded as lying outside the
orbit of diplomatic considerations. The connection between politics
and business—and by business we mean the entire framework of peaceful
commerce upon which the prosperity of this country depends—appears
to be ignored, or, at least, treated with indifference and something
like contempt. The services of our Consuls abroad are not sufficiently
utilized, and the Consular machinery requires complete overhauling. Such
questions as, for instance, the effect upon British commercial interest
of British diplomacy supporting the acquisition of undeveloped areas of
the world’s surface by a Power like France, which imposes differential
tariffs upon British goods, and opposing the acquisition of such areas by
a Power like Germany, which admits British goods on terms of equality,
does not appear to enter into Foreign Office calculations.
[Sidenote: Policy is framed by military experts without Parliamentary
control.]
In the last few years also has been added another institution which
modifies national policy without coming under Parliamentary control,
the Committee of Imperial Defense. Its influence upon the Cabinet is
nominally indirect, and its activities confined to the discussion of
hypothetical events. But no one can doubt that its recommendations
exercise a powerful effect on the executive decisions of the Government.
No criticism of the advice given by the Committee is possible in
Parliament. Momentous military and naval schemes are prepared there on
which hang the issues of peace and war, as in the case of our recent
relations to France. It is an intimate and powerful means of framing
Government policy according to the ideas of military experts, without the
knowledge and control of Parliament.
In the various ways indicated, opportunities of evincing an intelligent
concern in its foreign policy has been increasingly withdrawn from the
nation. The work of the Department escapes all outside control, loses all
sense of contact with national life, and tends more and more to become
an autocratic institution, contemptuous of the efforts of a small group
of members in the House to acquire information, and utilizing a powerful
section of the press to mold public opinion in the direction it considers
public opinion should travel.
The nation awoke with a shock to the evils of this state of affairs in
the summer of 1911, when it suddenly found itself on the very brink of
war with Germany over a Franco-German quarrel about Morocco, and became
cognizant of the existence of diplomatic entanglements of which it had no
previous intimation.
It is obviously impossible to attempt here a full presentment of the
Moroccan crisis of 1911. But the story is inseparably intertwined with
the avowals to the House of Commons on August 3rd, 1914, of the secret
understanding with France which has played so capital a part in bringing
about British intervention in the present war.
[Sidenote: Nation must participate in direction of foreign policy.]
So long as this situation prevails it must be perfectly clear to any
man of ordinary intelligence that the system of government under which
we live is not a democratic system, but its antithesis. It cannot be
too often insisted upon that the domestic concerns of the nation, its
constitutional liberties, its social reforms, all its internal activities
in short, depend upon the preservation of peaceful relations with its
neighbors. War in which this country is involved is certain to prove a
serious check to social progress. Hence it is a matter of absolutely
vital concern to the nation that the machinery of its Foreign Office
should be thoroughly capable of performing its functions, and that the
policy pursued by that department should be pursued with the knowledge
and the consent of the nation. It is imperative not only that a treaty
with a foreign Power should require endorsement by Parliament, but that
no agreement or understanding possessing binding force and postulating
the use of the national military and naval forces should be valid without
the assent of Parliament. The nation should insist upon this essential
reform, and should seriously apply itself to considering what other steps
are needed to ensure some mechanical means whereby a greater national
control of foreign policy can be secured; whether by the establishment of
a permanent Committee of the House of Commons, by the adaptation to suit
our needs of the American system under which a two-thirds majority of one
branch of the Legislature is required for the validity of international
agreements, or other procedure. _But real and permanent reforms will not
be obtained unless the nation is determined to assert its fundamental
right to participate in the formation of its own foreign policy._
III
_The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance
of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a
Concert of Europe and the setting up of an International
Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public._
[Sidenote: The “Balance of Power.”]
What does the “Balance of Power” mean?
It is popularly supposed to mean that no single Power or group of Powers
should, in the interests of international peace, be allowed to acquire a
preponderating position in Europe, and that the policy of Great Britain
should be directed against such a consummation. British policy during
the past few years has been based upon the assumption that Germany had
attained, or was seeking to attain, that position of eminence.
It is that idea which, in the minds of masses of our people, justifies
the present war.
But if this policy has been right in the past, what prospect does the
future hold? The victory of the Allies—which is a vital necessity—must
enormously upset the “balance” by making Russia the dominant military
power of Europe, possibly the dictator both in this Continent and in Asia.
Russia can draw upon vast sources of human military material, only partly
civilized. At present she is governed by a military autocracy which is
largely hostile to Western ideas of political and religious freedom.
There is hope in the minds of Western Liberals that the war may bring
political liberation to Russia. At present that is only a hope. For wars
have as often been a prelude to tyranny as to liberty. It is only too
likely that after a victorious war our national feeling may revert to its
old anti-Russian channel, and we shall again have the “Balance of Power”
invoked to protect Europe and India against a new Russian preeminence.
Speaking generally, the “Balance of Power” is little more than a
diplomatic formula made use of by the mouthpieces of the interests from
whose operations war comes. It signifies nothing more than that, at a
given moment, in a given country, there is an effort to hold up to the
public gaze the Government and the people of another country as being
intent upon the destruction of its neighbors. At one moment it is Russia,
at another France, and at another Germany. The “Balance of Power” was
invoked for several years and down to within a few weeks of the Crimean
War to inflame British public opinion against France. It was invoked
against Russia to justify the Crimean War, and France was chosen as the
ally with which to fight Russia! No sooner had peace been signed than
France became once more the potential threat to the “Balance of Power”;
and again during the period of rivalry in West and Central Africa, and in
the Far East, in the late nineties.
[Sidenote: The power of the press in making war-opinion.]
Once the ball has been set rolling in the required direction, influences
of all kinds are brought to bear for the purpose of permanently fixing
this idea in the public mind. A flood of innuendo, denunciation, and
distorted information is let loose. Every dishonorable motive and the
most sinister of projects are attributed to the Government and the
people selected for attack. The public becomes the sport of private
ambitions and interests, of personal prejudices and obscure passions,
which it can neither detect nor control, and, for the most part, does
not even suspect. The power for mischief wielded by these forces is
to-day immense, owing to a cheap press and to the concentration of a
large number of newspapers, possessing in the aggregate an enormous
circulation, under one directing will. At the present moment the
editorial and news columns of some fifty British newspapers echo the
views of one man, who is thus able to superimpose in permanent fashion
upon public thought the dead weight of his own prejudices or personal
aims and intentions, and to exercise a potent influence upon the
Government of the day.
[Sidenote: How the “Balance of Power” works.]
For the last few years these newspapers have striven with unceasing
pertinacity to create an atmosphere of ill-will and suspicion between
Great Britain and Germany. The effort has been continuous, systematic,
and magnificently organized, and inferential evidence is not lacking that
it has been pursued with the approval and even with the assistance of
certain official influences, and to the satisfaction of certain foreign
Governments. This propaganda has had, needless to say, its counterpart in
Germany. _The net result of the latest recrudescence of the “Balance of
Power” policy with its Alliances and Ententes as the dominating factor in
international relationships is now visible to all men. A quarrel (whose
culminating episode was the murder in a Bosnian town of the heir to the
Austrian throne last June) between Austria and Serbia, to which the
Russian Government determined to become a party, has already involved the
peoples of France, Belgium, Britain, and Germany, the first three of whom
were not even remotely concerned, in a terrible and desolating war._
Japan and Montenegro have also become involved, and the same fate may
overtake Holland, Italy, the other Balkan States, and the Scandinavian
Powers. But for the policy of the “Balance of Power” the results of
the quarrel would almost certainly have been confined to the parties
immediately affected, and an early mediation by the neutral Powers would
have been possible.
Bright’s scathing denunciation of the fetish of the “Balance of Power”
appeals with even greater force to us to-day:
“You cannot comprehend at a thought what is meant by this balance of
power. If the record could be brought before you—but it is not possible
to the eye of humanity to scan the scroll upon which are recorded the
sufferings which the theory of the balance of power has entailed upon
this country. It rises up before me when I think of it as a ghastly
phantom ... which has loaded the nation with debt and with taxes,
has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen, has
desolated the homes of millions of families, and has left us, as the
great result of the profligate expenditure which it has caused, a doubled
peerage at one end of the social scale, and far more than a doubled
pauperism at the other.”
[Sidenote: It must be superseded by a council of nations.]
For a system therefore which carries with it the implication that the
interests of nations are necessarily in constant conflict and which
involves the permanent division of Europe into two hostile competing
groups, we must substitute machinery which will facilitate cooperation
and a reasonable solution of differences between all the peoples of the
world.
The objective should be a real council of the nations with at first
very limited powers, rather an expansion of an alliance of three Powers
against three, into a league of six Powers, designed to act against any
one recalcitrant member which might threaten the peace of the whole.
To this ideal, indeed, the pronouncement of Mr. Asquith in his Dublin
speech has already pointed, while it is noteworthy that Sir Edward Grey
himself seems in a significant passage of one of his despatches to admit
the failure of the balance principle and to indicate that the nations
must “start afresh” on the basis of a general council. This passage is as
follows:
“If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present crisis
safely passed, my own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement to
which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no
aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies
by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have desired
this and worked for it as far as I could through the last Balkan crisis;
and Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly
improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject
of definite proposals, but if this present crisis, so much more acute
than any Europe has gone through for generations, be safely passed, I am
hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible
some more definite _rapprochement_ between the Powers than has been
possible hitherto.”
It is from some such simple beginning, pursued with good will and
perseverance by all parties, that the nations may hope to arrive at a
system of cooperation to replace the system of hostile alliances, the
fruits of which are the present war.
It is essential, of course, if the negotiations of such a council are to
be lifted out of the atmosphere of diplomatic intrigue which the secrecy
of negotiations always involves, that its deliberations be public.
Publicity will at one and the same time be a guarantee of openness, of
good faith, and of democratic control.
IV
_Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement
a plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments
of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy
shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of the
manufacture of armaments, and the control of the export of
armaments by one country to another._
[Sidenote: Armaments, the instrument of diplomacy, must be reduced.]
The theory of the “Balance of Power” and secret diplomacy are two factors
which, in combination, make for war.
Two other factors intimately connected with these ensure its certainty.
They are: a constant progression in expenditure upon armaments, and the
toleration of a private armament interest.
[Sidenote: Competitive armaments mean the bankruptcy of statesmanship.]
It would be labor wasted to endeavor to apportion responsibility
between the various European Governments for the insane competition in
armaments which of recent years has attained incredible proportions.
No government can escape liability. Each government has defended its
policy on the ground that its neighbor’s action compelled it to do so.
Many of the governing statesmen of the world have alternately confessed
their helplessness, attacked their rivals, appealed to public opinion,
and blamed the warlike tendencies inherent in the people whose destinies
they control. Every government, without exception, has proceeded on the
assumption that in order to ensure peace it had to be stronger than its
neighbor, a philosophy which could have but one possible outcome—war. In
pursuance of this phantom, a considerable proportion of the wealth of
the European States has been wasted, and activities have been withdrawn
from the constructive work of the world, to prepare for the world’s
destruction. And with every fresh outburst of expenditure, responding
to some diplomatic check or alarmist propaganda, fresh fagots have been
piled around Europe’s powder magazine. The disaster which has fallen upon
Europe is the fitting sequel to the bankruptcy of statesmanship which
this policy embodies.
_The more extensive the armaments, the greater the temptation to seize
an opportunity for testing their efficiency; the greater the nervousness
and irritation of Governments when negotiating; the greater the pressure
upon those Governments of the powerful professional and other interests
concerned in armament construction._
The policy of gigantic armaments cannot in the very nature of things
ensure any final settlement of disputes between States. It leads, and
can only lead, to an intolerable situation from which war comes to be
regarded by diplomacy as the only escape.
An all-round limitation of armaments must follow the present war if the
world is to be permanently relieved of the nightmare which has weighed
upon it for so long. We can no longer afford to listen to arguments as
to the impracticability of such a course from those whose claims to the
possession of human wisdom and experienced guidance have so utterly
broken down.
[Sidenote: Armament industry rests in government demand, and creates an
economic force interested in war preparedness.]
The difficulty of compelling a change in the policy of European
Governments has been intensified by the conditions under which armament
construction is carried on in this and other countries. Every one is
familiar with the fact that the object of a commercial firm is to
push its wares in every legitimate manner, to advertise them, and
systematically to tout for orders both at home and abroad. Every one
is aware that there exists a powerfully-equipped industry for the
manufacture of military and naval engines and instruments of offense.
Disguise it as we may, that industry waxes and wanes, the profits
its management derives rise and fall, the dividends earned by its
shareholders increase and dwindle in the measure of the demand for the
articles it produces. That demand does not emanate from members of the
public. It emanates from the military and naval departments of the public
services. The industry relies, therefore, for its existence and for its
profits not upon a private demand, but upon a Government demand, and the
extent of that Government demand will depend upon the view which the
Government may take of the number and nature of these articles required
to ensure the national safety. Such a condition of affairs is a permanent
and terrible danger both to democratic government and to international
peace. What are its implications?
[Sidenote: Private interests manipulate government.]
There is created in every country an economic force in private hands
directly interested in war and in the preparation for war; directly
interested in assisting to bring about a general atmosphere advantageous
to an industry which, were wars to cease or the expenditure on armaments
to be substantially reduced, would suffer accordingly. What the
successful prosecution of an ordinary commercial undertaking requires
this industry also requires. The demand for the article must be created.
That basic situation engenders effects which can only be appreciated in
their cumulative significance. It is not at all necessary to attribute
sinister machinations to individuals. These effects are automatic. An
industry disposing, as does this one, of an enormous aggregate of capital
possesses almost unlimited power of influence and suggestion. For such
purposes the press is a potent instrument ready at hand. Many of those
most closely associated with this great industry are men of considerable
influence. Some have been in the public service and have acquaintances
in the Government Departments. Others may be on friendly and perfectly
honorable terms with the proprietors or editors of newspapers or
associations of newspapers. The proprietor of a newspaper may be honestly
convinced, or may by arguments be persuaded, that an agitation for
increased armaments is advisable. If he is acquainted with one of the
directors of the armament industry that acquaintance will hardly act as
a deterrent to his entertaining those views. He may be furnished with
special information, accurate or otherwise, as to the projects, real or
alleged, of other Governments, which will be familiar to the director
through his connection with Continental branches of the same industry.
The press may be utilized in a similar manner by certain permanent
officials in the nation’s Foreign Department, who feel that their views
of the international situation can be best served by a press campaign of
a certain kind. The influence of the industry which stands to gain from
the existence of these views, and the willingness of newspaper editors
and proprietors to push them on to the public, cannot be expected to
intervene against their propagation. Again, an ambitious Minister, in
charge of one of the fighting branches of the public service, desirous of
placing his personality in the limelight and focusing public attention
upon the affairs of his Department, will be from that circumstance a
readier listener to representations from the industry in question. Those
representations may quite legitimately take the form of pointing out
that heavy expenses have been incurred in providing a certain type of
machinery or special accommodation for the construction of a particular
kind of offensive instrument, that the orders have not kept pace with the
expenditure, and that if further orders be not forthcoming losses will
ensue and future facilities for production be necessarily restricted.
There would be nothing indefensible in representations of this character.
And again, it is not unlikely that a member of Parliament, convinced
of certain public dangers associated with the existing system, but
representing a constituency where this great industry is established
and employs, perhaps, not an inconsiderable section of the local labor,
may find his freedom of speech considerably curtailed lest he should be
accused of taking the bread from the mouths of some of his constituents.
[Sidenote: Armaments cannot be safely left to private profit.]
Endless, indeed, are the ramifications of a _private_ industrial interest
so wealthy and so well organized, and dependent for its profits upon
_national_ expenditure in instruments of warfare, and, consequently, in
the ultimate resort, upon war itself. _The general influence exerted upon
public life as a whole by the very fact that this industry is a private
one, and possesses a large body of shareholders usually belonging to
the upper strata of society, cannot be regarded otherwise than as an
unhealthy and dangerous element in the nation._ Emphasis is lent to this
aspect of the case when it is borne in mind that the armaments industry
has of late years become internationalized to a remarkable degree. Recent
disclosures, the accuracy of which has not been disputed, in Germany,
France, England, and Japan, have clearly shown an inter-connection of
the armament interest productive of repellent accompaniments. This
inter-connection of interest has, for example, made it possible for a
body of British shareholders, including prominent ecclesiastics, members
of Parliament, and even Cabinet Ministers, to be financially interested
in enterprises engaged in the manufacture of engines of destruction
impartially used in the slaughter of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and
Russians.
But however revolting this may be, it is insignificant compared with the
graver peril to which precedent allusion has been made. _Reflection must
bring with it the conviction that the armament industry is not one which
the nation can safely permit to be retained in private hands and to be
the subject of private profit._
* * * * *
What, then, is to be our policy in connection with the war? First and
foremost we must be victorious. That is a prime necessity upon which
the nation is unanimous. We must win not only because many British
institutions of the highest value would be destroyed by our defeat,
not only because Prussia, our principal enemy, is the leading exponent
of that doctrine of military domination and intolerance which is
incompatible with a permanently peaceful Europe; but also because we must
see justice done, as far as may be, to the least powerful of our Allies.
_Ample compensation must be secured for Belgium to repair her material
loss and in recognition of the wrong done to her._
[Sidenote: What Democracy must do.]
What of the future? What lessons do the incompetence and secretiveness,
the jealousies and vanities of that vaunted European statecraft which has
plunged the world in war convey to the peoples who are its victims?
What can the people do to amend a system under which they are used as
pawns in a game of chess?
They can begin to understand what that system is and that its existence
is their undoing. They can begin to understand the monstrous errors
and fallacies which underlie the whole teaching imposed upon their
intelligence. They can begin to understand that this immunity from public
control enjoyed by the small group of professional men who manipulate
international relations has led to the establishment amongst the latter
of a standard of conduct which would not be tolerated in the ordinary
affairs of a well-ordered community. They can begin to understand
that “high politics” in the diplomatic world has become a synonym for
intrigue; that a code of morals is therein practised which, in other
branches of the public service, would entail dismissal, and in the
business world would involve disgrace.
They can force themselves to a mental effort which shall lead them to
the realization of the complete artificiality of the conditions under
which they suffer, the remoteness from their real and vital needs of the
issues for which they are asked to sacrifice all that they hold dear.
_They can rid themselves of the paralyzing belief that their relations
with their neighbors are so complicated and mysterious as to be beyond
their comprehension. They can bring themselves to grasp a plain and
demonstrable truth, and to appreciate its full significance, which is
that those to whom they have looked for guidance, those who have told
them that in the preservation of the “Balance of Power,” and in the
multiplication of colossal armaments lay the one chance of international
peace, have been utterly, hopelessly, calamitously wrong. They can put to
themselves these simple issues._
“By the terrible logic of events which now confront us we see that the
methods advocated by those to whose training and wisdom we trusted to
ensure peace among the nations have entirely failed. The system which
we were induced reluctantly to support, far from preserving peace, has
precipitated us into the greatest conflict in history, a conflict we
passionately desired to avoid, and for the avoidance of which we made
heavy sacrifices because, we were told, that therein lay our hope of
averting it. The system was wrong. We must evolve another.”
[Sidenote: We must aim at a federalized Europe.]
The idea of a federalized Europe, regulated by an Areopagus, involving
the disappearance, or substantial reduction, of standing armies and
navies, and the submission of all disputes to a Central Council, is not
to be dismissed. It is the ultimate goal to aim at. But it cannot be
attained until the constitutionally governed democracies of the West are
brought to realize how impossible it is that their moral and spiritual
development and their happiness and well-being can be secured under a
system of government which leaves them at the mercy of the intrigues
and imbecilities of professional diplomatists and of the ambitions of
military castes; helpless, too, in the face of an enormously powerful and
internationalized private interest dependent for its profits upon the
maintenance of that “armed peace” which is the inevitable prelude to the
carnage and futility of war.
[Sidenote: Democracies in the different countries must cooperate.]
To awaken these sentiments among the democracies of this and other
countries, to instil into them these convictions, to ensure the
cooperation of all forces in all countries working to that end—is the
task to which we must all turn our attention.
Potentates, diplomatists, and militarists made this war. They should not
be allowed to arrange unchecked and uncontrolled the terms of peace and
to decide alone the conditions which will follow it. The mass of the
people who suffer from their blunders and their quarrels must claim the
ineradicable right of participating in the future settlement.
And, when peace has come, the democratic parties of Europe must set
before themselves a new province of political effort. That peace will
be permanently preserved only if our artisans and industrialists keep
up with the artisans and industrialists of other countries a constant
and deliberate communication through their political parties and other
organizations which will prevent misunderstandings and subdue the hatreds
out of which war ultimately comes.
_“The Morrow of the War,” Union of Democratic Control,
London, Bulletin No. 1._
NO PEACE WITHOUT FEDERATION
[Sidenote: The war has betrayed mankind.]
The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family happiness
and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the accumulated
savings of many former generations in structures, objects of art, and
industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose on
twentieth-century Europe. From all these points of view, it is evidently
the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human race, and the
most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed. It is, and is
to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the forces which make
for liberty and righteousness and those which make for the subjection of
the individual man, the exaltation of the State, and the enthronement of
physical force directed by a ruthless collective will. It threatens a
sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
[Sidenote: The real causes of the war.]
Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the disaster,
maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each Government has
issued a statement to prove that some other Government is responsible
for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost entirely to
actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and August 4—a short
period of hurried messages between the chancelleries of Europe—actions
which only prove that the monarchs and ministers for foreign affairs
could not, or at least did not, prevent the long-prepared general
war from breaking out. The assassination of the Archduke and Duchess
of Hohenberg, on the 28th of June, was in no proper sense a cause of
the war, except as it was one of the consequences of the persistent
aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern neighbors.
Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts on July 29
a cause of the war; for that was only an external manifestation of the
Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a state of mind well
known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. No more
was the invasion of Belgium by the German army on August 4 a true cause
of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished from the occasion, of
Great Britain’s becoming involved in it. By that action, Germany was only
taking the first step in carrying out a long-cherished purpose, and in
executing a judicious plan of campaign prepared many years in advance.
The artificial panic in Germany about its exposed position between two
powerful enemies, France and Russia, was not a genuine cause of the
war; for the General Staff knew they had crushed France once, and were
confident they could do it again in a month. As to Russia, it was, in
their view, a huge nation, but very clumsy and dull in war.
[Sidenote: The most potent cause is the lust for world-empire.]
The real causes of the war are all of many years’ standing; and all the
nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the
development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental
causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each
sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished
with a Cabinet selected by the monarch,—Governments which can make war
without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected
representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies,
through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth
for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call
of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent
armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become
powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the
creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the
management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is
kept secret from the public at large; and finally (4) the habitual use
of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous
or detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or
controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four,
since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the
other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world-empire.
Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the
only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other
hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world-empire by
force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned
that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded
to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its
Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the
nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the
Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon
is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British
people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests
of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such
powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably—though in vain—last July. In
all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a
large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government
and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
[Sidenote: Germany has been the leader in imperialism.]
These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in
Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex
causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last
fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic
and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great
intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the
world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times
since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to
her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial
possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In
her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught
for generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her
expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous Powers
which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and that the
salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will depend till
the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the warlike spirit
of her people. This instruction, given year after year by teachers,
publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in Prussia, but now
seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in 1871.
[Sidenote: The German ethics is the ethics of valor and the State.]
The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of
the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but
during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness
of Germany and her passion for world-empire have grown to much more
formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played
the part of the peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war-lord in
both speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever
it has been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practise a
divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an “invincible” army, an
army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he
carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing
patriotism. Mass-fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have
deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to
see, reason, and judge correctly—no new phenomenon in the world, but
instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German
education—the lack of liberty and, therefore, of practise in self-control.
[Sidenote: No peace is possible unless idea of world-domination is given
up.]
The twentieth-century educated German is, however, by no means given over
completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship of
might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a collective
entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the free, healthy,
and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more effective types
of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline which takes much
account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the weak or meek.
He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but accepts the
religion of Valor, which exalts strength, courage, endurance, and the
ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty, happiness, and life itself
for Germany’s honor and greatness. A nation of sixty millions holding
these philosophical and religious views, and proposing to act on them in
winning by force the empire of the world, threatens civilization with
more formidable irruptions of a destroying host than any that history
has recorded. The rush of the German army into Belgium, France, and
Russia and its consequences to those lands have taught the rest of Europe
to dread German domination, and—it is to be hoped—to make it impossible.
[Sidenote: The hopes for federation instead of domination.]
The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind
or temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness,
her theory of the State, and her intelligent and skilful use of all
the forces of nineteenth-century applied science for the destructive
purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape
from the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present
undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using
against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same
martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the
murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting
peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and
far-reaching decisions in regard to governmental structures and powers.
In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must
go farther and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions
which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on
the one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations,
or can give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace in
Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is to
be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation—no such thing as
world-empire for any single nation—Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan,
or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden invasion in
Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be soldiers,
and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for instant use.
There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation of the European
States is established, capable of making public contracts intended to be
kept, and backed by an overwhelming international force subject to the
orders of an international tribunal. The present convulsion demonstrates
the impotence toward permanent peace of secret negotiations, of
unpublished agreements, of treaties and covenants that can be broken on
grounds of military necessity, of international law if without sanctions,
of pious wishes, of economic and biological predictions, and of public
opinion unless expressed through a firm international agreement, behind
which stands an international force. When that international force has
been firmly established it will be time to consider what proportionate
reductions in national armaments can be prudently recommended. Until
that glorious day dawns, no patriot and no lover of his kind can expect
lasting peace in Europe or wisely advocate any reduction of armaments.
[Sidenote: A federalized Europe is possible, even if the road is long.]
The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
the war with their inevitable moral and physical degradations ought to
shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
developed—Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. Switzerland
is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal bond three
different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and divided
locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the Protestant.
The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a federation;
and the methods of government both in Great Britain itself and in its
affiliated commonwealths are becoming more and more democratic in
substance. The war has brought this fact out in high relief. As to the
United States, it is a strong federation of forty-eight heterogeneous
States which has been proving for a hundred years that freedom and
democracy are safer and happier for mankind than subjection to any sort
of autocracy, and afford far the best training for national character and
national efficiency. Republican France has not yet had time to give this
demonstration, being encumbered with many survivals of the Bourbon and
Napoleonic régimes, and being forced to maintain a conscript army.
It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or governmental
changes needed is already illustrated in the practise of one or more
of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary changes is to
postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the present calculated
destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral and religious chaos.
Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe, reconstruct European
society, substitute republics for empires, and abolish armaments are in
fact obstructing the road toward peace and good-will among men. That road
is hard at best.
The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars, not a truce, but
a durable peace.
_Charles W. Eliot, “The Road Toward Peace,” chap. XI._
PART II
A LEAGUE OF PEACE
PART II. A LEAGUE OF PEACE
BASES FOR CONFEDERATION
[Sidenote: The substitution of partnership for force.]
After this war is over, will the nations fall back again into the
armed peace, the rival alliances, the Balance of Power with competing
armaments, the preparations for another war thus made “inevitable,” or
will they go forward to the realization of the idea of “public right,”
as expounded by Mr. Asquith, “the substitution for force, for the clash
of competing ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a precarious
equipoise, of a real European partnership, based on the recognition
of equal rights and established and enforced by the common will?” The
preservation and progress of civilization demand that the peoples go
forward. But how shall “public right” be realized?
The issue is, perhaps, best approached by putting a narrower, more
concrete question: How can nations be got to reduce their armaments? For
this action will be the best test and pledge of the establishment of
“public right” and the reliance on a pacific future. Could a conference
of Powers bring about a reduction of armaments by agreement? Surely not
unless the motives which have led them in the past to arm are reversed.
These motives are either a desire to be stronger than some other Power,
in order to take something from him by force—the aggressive motive; or
a desire to be strong enough to prevent some other Power from acting
in this way to us—the defensive motive. Now how can these motives be
reversed? Nations may enter into a solemn undertaking to refer all
differences or disputes that may arise to arbitration or to other
peaceful settlement. If they can be got to adhere to such a general
agreement, international law and public right will take the place of
private force, and wars of aggression and defense will no longer happen.
But what will ensure the fulfilment of their undertaking by all the
signatory Powers? Public opinion and a common sense of justice are found
inadequate safeguards. There must be an executive power enabled to apply
an economic boycott, or in the last resort an international force. If
this power is adequate, it will secure the desired reversal of the
offensive and the defensive motives to armaments, and will by a natural
process lead to a reduction of national forces.
[Sidenote: The League of Peace must become an International government.]
But it is not safe for the League of Nations to wait until difficulties
ripen into quarrels. There must be some wider power of inquiry and
settlement vested in a representative Council of the Nations. This will
in substance mean a legislative power. For peace cannot be secured by
adopting a purely statical view of the needs and rights of nations in
relation to one another. New applications of the principles of political
“autonomy” and of “the open door” will become necessary, and some
international method of dealing with them is essential. So there emerges
the necessity of extending the idea of a League of Peace into that of an
International Government.
The new era of internationalism requires the replacement of the secret
diplomacy of Powers by the public intercourse of Peoples through their
chosen representatives. If the Peace which ends this war is to be
durable, it must be of a kind to facilitate the setting-up of these new
international arrangements. No timid, tentative quarter measures will
suffice. Courage and faith are needed for a great new extension of the
art of government....
[Sidenote: “Armed peace” must not be renewed.]
Almost everybody hopes that, when this war is over, it will be possible
to secure the conditions of a lasting peace by reducing the power of
militarism and by setting the relations between nations on a better
footing. To watchers of the present conflict it seems an intolerable
thought that, after the fighting is done, we should once more return to
a condition of “armed peace,” with jealous, distrustful, and revengeful
Powers piling up armaments and plotting singly or in groups against
their neighbors until Europe is plunged into another war more terrible,
more bloody, and more costly than this. Yet nothing is more certain than
that this will happen unless the Peoples which are so vitally concerned
are able to mobilize their powers of clear thought, sane feeling, and
goodwill in carefully considered plans for a cooperative policy of
nations.
[Sidenote: The peril of “crushing” Germany.]
The first great obstacle to the performance of this task is the state of
mind of those who seem to think that all that is required is “to crush
German militarism,” and that, this incubus once removed, the naturally
pacific disposition of all other nations will dispose them to live
together in amity. It is not easy to induce such persons to consider
closely what they mean by “crushing German militarism,” or how its
destruction, whatever it does mean, would secure the peace of Europe,
we will not say in perpetuity, but for a single generation. But let
us suppose the most complete success for the arms of the Allies, the
slaughter or the capture of great German forces, the invasion of Germany,
and the dictation of terms of peace by the Allies at Berlin. Such terms
as were imposed might cripple her military power of aggression or revenge
for some years. But would it kill what we know as German militarism? If
our accepted political analysis be right, the German militarism that
must be crushed is not an army and a navy, but a spirit of national
aggression, proud, brutal, and unscrupulous, the outcome of certain
intellectual and moral tendencies embodied in the “real” politics and the
“real” culture of the nation. Can we seriously suppose that this evil
spirit will be exorcised by a crushing defeat on land and sea, followed
by a humiliating peace? If Germany could be permanently disabled from
entertaining any hopes of recovering her military strength, or from
exercising any considerable influence in the high policy of Europe, her
feelings of resentment and humiliation might perhaps be left to rankle
in impotence, or to die out by lapse of time. But nothing which the
Allies can do to Germany will leave her in such long-lasting impotence.
Even if stripped of her non-Teutonic lands and populations, she will
remain a great Power—great in area, population, industry, and organizing
power—and no temporary restrictions or guarantees can long prevent her
from once more developing a military strength that will give dangerous
meaning to her thirst for vengeance. Whether the hegemony of Prussia over
a confederation of German States (possibly including Austria) be retained
or not, Europe can have no security that the same passions which stirred
France to the most strenuous efforts to recover her military strength
after 1870 will not be similarly operative throughout Germany. We cannot
feel sure that the experience of the most disastrous war will effectively
destroy the hold of Prussianism, and that the efficiency of intellect and
will which constitute that power will not be able to reassert their sway
over a broken Germany.
[Sidenote: Not German militarism but militarism in general must be
broken.]
The fear of such a revival of German strength will remain ever-present
in her neighbors, and will compel them to maintain great military
preparations. A beaten Germany, with a ring of military Powers round
her, watching every phase of her recovery with suspicion, and always
liable to quarrel among themselves, will not give peace to Europe. Even,
therefore, if we assign to Germany a monopoly of the spirit of aggressive
militarism, European peace is not secured by crushing Germany. A saner
review of the situation, however, will recognize that Germany has no
such monopoly of the spirit of aggression, though that spirit has in her
recent policy found its most formidable and most conscious expression.
If the craving for a colonial Empire with “places in the sun” was, as
seems likely, the principal factor in the aggressive designs of Germany,
can we confidently assert that no other State has in the past harbored
such designs, or may not harbor them again? The expansive Imperialism of
Great Britain, France, Russia, and even more recently of Japan, gives
the lie to any such assertion. Pan-Slavism is in spirit identical with
the Pan-Teutonism which has contributed to this _débâcle_, and Great
Britain and France are already sated with the overseas Empire which
Germany was craving. History shows that, in every militarist State,
aggressive and defensive motives and purposes are present together in
different degrees at all times. While, therefore, we may reasonably
think that the aggressive militarism of Germany held increasing sway in
the political direction of that Empire during recent years, and was the
direct efficient cause of the present conflict, we cannot hold that, with
the defeat or even the destruction of the military and naval power of
Germany, militarism would tend to disappear from the European system, and
that the relations between nations would henceforth undergo so radical
a change as to secure the world against all likelihood of forcible
outbreaks in the future.
[Sidenote: Real problem, to change inner attitudes of nations.]
Clearly, it is not German militarism alone, but militarism in general
that must be broken. The real question is how to change the inner
attitude of nations, their beliefs and feelings towards one another, so
as to make each nation and its rulers recognize that it is no longer
either desirable or feasible to seek peculiar advantages for itself by
bringing force to bear upon another nation.
But it may be urged, granted that disarmament may not be set afoot
spontaneously and separately by the different nations, mutual disarmament
can occur by arrangement between the Powers, which, after the menace
of German aggression is removed, will be disposed to take this step in
concert. Such disarmament, it is usually conceived, will not stand alone,
but will form an important feature of a larger international policy, by
which the Powers will agree among themselves to settle any differences
that may arise by reference to courts of conciliation or of arbitration,
and perhaps also to concert measures of common action in dealing with
States and territories not within their jurisdiction. Such a concert of
European Powers has hitherto appeared to many to yield an adequate basis
for the peace of Europe, if it could be brought about. It has also seemed
to most men the utmost limit of the actually attainable. The idea of the
possibility of any closer relation between sovereign independent States
has been dismissed as chimerical.
[Sidenote: Difficulties of disarmament schemes. No standard for
proportioning armaments justly.]
Now in any discussion of the feasibility of such a concert of European
or world Powers as will by mutual agreement secure disarmament and a
settlement of differences by judicial methods, it must be recognized
at the outset that this war may make the successful pursuance of such
a policy more difficult than it would have been before. A Balance of
Power, whatever may have been its other disadvantages, seemed in itself
favorable to the possibilities of an agreement in which each nation,
or group of nations, might be an equal gainer. But a decisive victory
in war, which leaves the Allied nations with a strong preponderance of
power, is less likely to yield a satisfactory basis of agreement for
a mutual disarmament. Is it likely that they will readily consent to
a reduction in their several military and naval forces equivalent to
the reduction they will demand in the forces of the nations that have
been their enemies? To put the difficulty in concrete terms: Would
France consent to an early reduction of her army upon terms which would
leave her fighting-strength as compared with that of Germany relatively
the same as before the war? Would Great Britain consent to reduce her
navy in the same proportion as the reduction she required of Germany?
Even if the Allies believed that the proportionate reduction would be
duly carried out by Germany, would they regard such an arrangement as
affording the desired security? Obviously not. It may, of course, be
urged that an agreed basis of reduction might be reached, according to
which the relative strength of army and navy assigned to Germany would
be smaller than before. But the more closely the proposition is examined
the less feasible does it appear. What basis for the size of armies could
reasonably, or even plausibly, be suggested which would not assign to
Germany a larger preponderance over France in number of soldiers than she
possesses at present? Size of population, or of frontiers, the two most
reasonable considerations for apportioning defensive needs, would tell in
favor of Germany against France. True it would tell even more strongly
in favor of Russia, assigning her, in fact, a relatively larger military
predominance in Europe than she has ever claimed. But would either France
or Germany regard the new military situation as safe or desirable? Nor
would there be any permanence in an arrangement based on such a mutable
factor as population, according to which the German preponderance over
France and of Russia over Germany would be continually increasing. If
area of territory, as well as population and frontiers, were taken into
consideration in fixing a basis, France would come off a little better
in relation to Germany, but the size of Russia, even if her European
lands were alone included, would give her an overwhelming advantage. If,
as might not unreasonably be claimed, the extra-European possessions of
Russia, Great Britain, and France must be reckoned in, either on a basis
of territory or of population, Great Britain and Russia would possess a
superiority of military strength which would give them, acting together,
a complete control over the politics of Europe and Asia. Or, were the
United States to come into the arrangement, the military strength of
Anglo-Saxondom might too obviously surpass that of any likely combination
of other Powers.
Again, what basis of naval strength would be satisfactory? Great Britain
would not think of accepting the area, population, or frontier factors
unless the Empire as well as the British Isles were counted in. On the
other hand, her proposal, that volume of shipping and of foreign trade
should count heavily in the basis, might give her for the time being
an even greater preponderance over other navies than she has hitherto
possessed.
If the comparison of the military and naval strength of nations were
conducted, as in the past, by direct consideration of the numerical
strength and the fighting value of the several items of an army and a
navy, agreement upon a basis of reduction would be manifestly impossible.
The discovery and acceptance of any standard unit of naval or military
value applicable to changing conditions of modern warfare are found to be
impracticable. For though every military budget implies the acceptance
of some scale of values by which the worth of a battery of artillery
is compared with that of a battalion of infantry, while every naval
budget involves a calculation of the worth of a submarine or a seaplane
as compared with an armored cruiser and a super-Dreadnought, no two
budgets would be found to support the same scale of values. It is quite
manifest that no agreement for reducing armaments could be attained by
stipulations as to the number, size, or quality of the several forces and
arms employed. This difficulty in itself, however, is not fatal to the
proposal. For a far simpler and more satisfactory method of agreement
might be found by disregarding the concrete armaments and accepting a
financial basis of expenditure which would leave each nation complete
liberty to apply the money prescribed to it as a maximum expenditure
on armaments in whatever way it chose. Though each nation, considering
its defense, would doubtless have to take into account the sort of
preparations for possible attack its neighbors might be making, it would
be entitled to spend as large a proportion of its authorized expenditure
upon guns, torpedo-boats, aircraft, Dreadnoughts, as it chose.
[Sidenote: Must get rid of motives which impel armament. Mere agreement
to reduce armament will be futile.]
The real difficulty, therefore, turns upon the agreement upon a basis
of comparative expenditure. Now this difficulty appears insuperable, if
reduction of armaments be regarded as the sole, or the chief, mainstay of
a durable peace. For so long as the motives which have hitherto impelled
nations to increase their armaments still retain the appearance of
validity in any nation or group of nations, no agreed basis for reduction
will be reached, or, were it reached, no reliable adherence to its terms
could be expected. For the reduction of armaments involves the acceptance
of and the adherence to a principle of reduction by all the Great
Powers. If any single Great Power refused to come into the agreement,
or, coming in, was suspected of evading the fulfilment of its pledge by
concealing some of its expenditure on armaments, this method would have
failed _pro tanto_, both as an economy and a security. For each of the
would-be pacific nations would have to make adequate provision against
the warlike outsider or suspect. Now, that a mere agreement for mutual
disarmament would thus be baffled is almost certain. So long as a Power,
by simply refusing to come in, could retain full liberty to pile up arms
with a view to a future policy of menace or aggression, would there not
be Governments which would find some more or less plausible excuses for
declining the invitation to come in? Or could we feel complete assurance
that a Power with an aggressive past, after entering into such an
agreement, would faithfully fulfil it when so many facilities of evasion
present themselves? Nay, there would be a positive incentive to an
aggressive or revengeful Power either to stay outside, or, entering in,
to violate secretly its obligations. For, by either course, it would be
enabled to steal a march in military strength over its intended enemy,
if the latter were a faithful adherent to such a treaty. The slightest
reflection suffices to show that a mere agreement for disarmament or
reduction of armament must be futile.
But, it will be contended, these difficulties may be overcome by
extending the agreement so as to bind the signatory Powers to bring
their united force to bear upon any member convicted of a wilful evasion
or infraction of the agreement. That is to say, they must engage to
secure the agreement by an ultimate sanction of physical force. The
administration of such an agreement would, of course, involve the setting
up of some standing Court or Committee of Inquiry, vested with full
rights of inspection and judgment, and endowed with a power of armed
executive.
But if a treaty of reduction of armaments could be secured by such a
guarantee of collective force, it would still find itself confronted by
the problem of the lawless outsider. So long as an aggressive outsider
were at liberty to threaten or coerce a member of the League without
involving the hostility of the other members, this danger would compel
members of the League to maintain large armaments, though they were
secure against internal hostility. A single Power, such as Germany,
Russia, or Japan, standing out for its absolute right to determine its
own expenditure and policy, would cancel nearly all the economy of the
agreement. It would become self-evident that the Powers entering such
an agreement must bind themselves to a common defense against such an
outsider. They would be impelled to this course by a double motive.
In no other way could each member gain that security which would win
his consent to a basis of reduction that would lower his separate
defensive power. Again, by pledging themselves to united action against
an aggressive outside Power, they would diminish, perhaps destroy,
the aggressive design or policy of such a Power. For such aggressive
policy and the armed force which supports it are only plausible upon
the assumption that they can be successfully applied to gain a selfish
national end. If the united strength of the Treaty Powers remained so
great as to render the pursuance of its aggressive designs impossible or
too dangerous, the lawless Powers might learn the lesson of the law, and,
abandoning its hopes of aggression, come into the League.
[Sidenote: Reduction must be linked with reversal of motives.]
In a word, the proposal for reduction of armaments only becomes really
feasible when it is linked with a provision for reversing the _motives_
which lead nations to increase their armed forces. Once bring to bear
upon the Governments of States a clear recognition of the two related
facts: first, that by no increase of their armed force will they be
reasonably likely to succeed in any aggressive design upon a neighbor;
second, that by the pledged cooperation of their cosignatories they
are not dependent for defense upon their own force alone, then obvious
motives of economy and self-interest will lead them to reduce their
armaments. Though the military caste may still plead the instability of
pacific agreements and the disciplinary advantages of National Service,
while contractors for armaments do their best to sow dissension among
the leagued Powers and to arouse the military ambitions of new nations,
these war interests would no longer be able to play as heretofore upon
the fears and passions of the peoples. For whatever the secret political
and business policy behind the race for armaments, its engineers could
only make that policy effective by periodic appeals to the menace of
invasion. Once make it manifest that no evil-minded foreigner can
threaten aggression against one country without meeting an overwhelming
strength of leagued forces, to which one particular contribution is not
of determinant importance, and the balance of national motives leans
heavily and constantly towards smaller and less expensive forces.
[Sidenote: Must make it too dangerous for one Power to attack another.]
The absolute strength of the rational and moral case against war and
militarism has in some degree obscured the fact that, so long as pushful
statesmen and diplomatists, ambitious soldiers, covetous financiers, and
war-traders were able to stimulate and carry out aggressive policies
of conquest and aggrandizement on the part of stronger against weaker
States, the apprehensions upon which these same interests played
in urging the necessity of large expenditure upon defense were not
unreasonable. It is only by making it too obviously difficult and
dangerous for any one Power to attack any other Power that the balance of
reasonable motives is firmly weighted against armaments. This can only
be achieved by substituting for a world of isolated independent States,
or of Balances of Power, a world in which the united strength of a
sufficient number of States is brought to bear immediately and certainly
against any disturber of the public peace.
“Splendid isolation” is no longer practicable in the modern world of
international relations. Group alliances in pursuit of the Balance of
Power are seen to be nothing else than an idle feint. For the sole
and constant aim of each such group and Power is not to achieve or to
maintain the balance, but to weight it on one side. Such an alternating
and oscillating balance gives the maximum of insecurity, and thus plays
most effectively the game of war and armaments. The only possible
alternative is the creation of such a concert or confederation of
Powers as shall afford to each the best available security against the
aggression of another within the concert and the best defense of all
against aggression from outside.
[Sidenote: A confederation for security against aggression.]
The general form in which a cooperation of nations for these objects
presents itself is that of a League or Confederation. The primary object
of such a League is to bind all its members to submit all their serious
differences to arbitration or some other mode of peaceful settlement,
and to accept the judgment or award thus obtained. Some advocates of a
League of Peace think that the sense of moral obligation in each State,
fortified by the public opinion of the civilized world, would form a
valid sanction for the fulfilment of such undertakings, and would afford
a satisfactory measure of security. But most hold that it is advisable
or essential that the members of such a League should bind themselves to
take joint action against any member who breaks the peace.
[Sidenote: Success depends on the size of the nucleus of leagued States.
League of Peace must have absolute preponderance of force.]
Assuming that a considerable body of nations entered such a League with
good and reliable intentions, how far would it be likely to secure the
peace of the world and a reduction of armed preparations? The answer
to this question would depend mainly upon the number and status of the
Powers constituting the League, and their relations to outside nations.
If, as is not unlikely, at first only a small number of nations were
willing to enter such a League, the extent of the pacific achievement
would be proportionately circumscribed. If, say, Britain, France, and
the United States entered the League, undertaking to settle all their
differences by peaceful methods, such a step, however desirable in
itself, would not go far towards securing world-peace or enabling these
leagued Powers to reduce their national armaments. This is so obvious
that most advocates of the League of Peace urge that the leagued Powers
should not confine their undertakings to the peaceful settlement of
differences among themselves, but should afford a united defense to any
of their members attacked by any outside Power which was unwilling to
arbitrate its quarrel. A defensive alliance of three such Great Powers
(for that is what the League of Peace would amount to at this stage of
development) would no doubt form a force which it would be dangerous for
any nation, or combination of nations, to attack. But it would secure
neither peace nor disarmament. Nor would it, as an earnest advocate of
this procedure argues, necessarily, or even probably, form a nucleus of
a larger League drawing in other nations. A few nations forming such a
League would not differ substantially from the other nominally defensive
alliances with which the pages of history are filled. Their purely
defensive character would be suspected by outside Powers, who would tend
to draw together into an opposing alliance, thus reconstituting once more
the Balance of Power with all its perils and its competing armaments.
Nay, if such a League of Peace were constituted in the spirit of the
Holy Alliance of a century ago, or of the resurrection of that spirit
which Mr. Roosevelt represents in order “to back righteousness by force”
in all quarters of the earth, such an opposition of organized outside
Powers would be inevitable. The League of Peace idea, in order to have
any prima facie prospect of success, must at the outset be so planned as
to win the adherence of the majority of the Great Powers, including some
of those recently engaged in war with one another. For until there was an
absolute preponderance of military and naval strength inside the League,
the relief from internal strife would do very little, if anything, to
abate the total danger of war, or to enable any country to reduce its
armed preparations. Further, it would seem essential that such a League
should in its relations to outside Powers assume a rigorously defensive
attitude, abstaining from all interference in external politics until
they encroached directly upon the vital interests of one or more of its
members. Such an encroachment it would presumably treat as an attack upon
the League, and would afford the injured member such power of redress as
was deemed desirable by the representatives of the Powers forming the
League.
Before entering upon the fuller consideration of the practicability of a
League of Nations formed upon these lines, it may be well to set forth
in a brief, formal manner the nature of the chief implications which
appear to be contained in the proposal. We shall then be in a position
to examine seriatim the various steps which the advocates of this method
of securing world-peace and disarmament desire to take, and the many
difficulties which are involved.
[Sidenote: What the joint Powers would undertake.]
The signatory Powers to the Treaty or Agreement establishing such a
League of Peace would undertake:
(1) To submit to arbitration or conciliation all disputes or differences
between them not capable of settlement by ordinary processes of
diplomacy, and to accept and carry out any award or terms of settlement
thus attained.
(2) To bring joint pressure, diplomatic, economic, or forcible, to bear
upon any member refusing to submit a disputed matter to such modes of
peaceable settlement, or to accept and carry out the award, or otherwise
threatening or opening hostilities against any other member.
(3) To take joint action in repelling any attack made by an outside
Power, or group of Powers, upon any of the members of the League.
(4) To take joint action in securing the redress of any injury which, by
the general assent of the signatory Powers, had been wrongfully inflicted
upon any member of the League.
_J. A. Hobson, “Towards International Government,” pp. 5-27._
EXISTING ALLIANCES AND A LEAGUE OF PEACE
[Sidenote: Already the League of Peace is evolving.]
The war has converted the belligerent world to that kind of pacifism
which consists in a grim determination that the present Armageddon shall
never be repeated, however long it may be necessary to fight in order to
ensure this outcome. To perpetuate the peace, however, a strong League
of Nations is indispensable, and various plans for such a league are
forming. Some of these rely on an extension of treaties of arbitration
and conciliation, some would fortify these treaties by giving to the
league a power to coerce recalcitrant members, and still others would
create a world State with a central government, an army and a navy. The
first question to be answered is, What kind of international union can
be secured? since, in the case of any new league of this kind, the more
ambitious the plan, the less probable it is that nations will adopt it.
In many minds grave doubt exists whether even a modest plan will be
carried into execution. In the face of this doubt I wish to express the
audacious opinion that something having the characteristics of a league
of peace is rapidly evolving and in all probability will, at the close
of the war, require only a small modification to enable it to prevent,
so long as it lasts, the recurrence of a great war on the Continent of
Europe.
It is not necessary to create a league of peace _de novo_ and without
reference to combinations which now exist. Two great leagues have been
formed, each embracing powerful States and each so firmly held together
that it acts toward the outer world much as a single great empire would
do. Since they are now waging against each other the greatest war in
history, the conclusion is much too lightly reached that such unions
are, _by their nature_, war-breeders. Defensive unions, however, are in
line with the whole trend of political evolution. Great nations, created
by combining smaller ones, are in the order of the day, and so are
federations of a looser kind, such as those which preceded the German
Empire and our own Federal State.
[Sidenote: Even alliances tend to prevent war.]
Every such consolidation involves a risk that, if a war occurs, it will
be larger than it might otherwise be; but it reduces the frequency with
which wars occur. Peace between great States continues through longer
periods than it does between warring districts which later unite in
such States. The prospect that peace shall ever be universal depends on
its tendency to establish itself within larger and larger areas till it
shall end by embracing the world. European wars have occurred in spite
of alliances rather than because of them and the general effect even of
imperfect unions has been to lengthen the intervals of peace. It is an
even century since a war akin to this one was waging in Europe, and it
is forty-four years since a war between any two great nations has taken
place on that continent. The consolidating tendency in itself makes for
peace.
The present leagues have several times acted as peace preservers. During
the Moroccan trouble and the two Balkan wars they averted a general
struggle and they might have averted the present one _if, as unions, they
had been more complete than they were_. It is a safe guess that if it had
been definitely known that Russia, France and England would act as a unit
in opposing the invasion of Serbia, the knowledge would have delayed the
invasion and possibly prevented it with all its fateful consequences. The
first thing to be remembered is that these two great leagues, both formed
for defense, will be in existence and probably vigorous when the war
shall end.
[Sidenote: But countries outside of alliance or league are not safe.]
Let us assume that peace has been made, that both the Entente and the
Alliance continue to be strong and that in everything political they are
the Powers which must first be reckoned with. Let us assume that, in
each of them, the constituent countries are held firmly together because
no single country can think of surrendering the protection which union
affords. Outside of the Entente, France would be helpless against an
attack by Germany and outside of the Alliance Austria would be helpless
against one by Italy and Russia. Any country standing alone would have a
precarious hold on its territory and its freedom.
The chief dangers that threaten a great league spring from within,
while those that threaten a small league are from without. A union of
all Europe would be entirely immune against foreign attack and, _for
that very reason_, would be far more easily disrupted and plunged into
something like civil war. Such unions as the Alliance and the Entente,
each of which has a great power now arrayed against it, are held together
much more firmly. The bond that unites its members is the imperative need
of mutual protection.
If, as we have assumed, the war has ended neither in a draw nor in a
sweeping victory for one side—if the unsuccessful league has kept most
of its territories and its fighting strength—the situation will throw an
enormous power into the hands of the neutral States. By joining either
union they might cause it to preponderate over the other; and by joining
the victorious one they could make it safe against any attack and able,
if it were disposed to do so, to guarantee the peace of Europe. In the
smaller States of Europe the opinion is growing that for them liberty
and union are one and inseparable. It may be vital for them to join a
defensive league and, by their union with it, cause it to become, if it
were not already, a true commonwealth of nations, great and small, and
fully committed to a just and peaceful policy.
[Sidenote: Present Entente a nucleus for the League.]
In order to be a nucleus of such a commonwealth a league should, if
possible, already contain enough great States to prevent any one
from dominating the others. If possible it should contain a number
of the smaller States and, as a group, it should be so free from
aggressive designs as to merit the confidence of States not as yet in
any combination. Since the Entente now virtually includes five great
States and four small ones and may soon be joined by more it already has
important qualifications for becoming such a league of peace as we are
suggesting—a commonwealth of nations powerful enough to preserve peace
and vitally interested in doing it.
[Sidenote: Might grow into true League of Peace.]
The original purpose of each of the two leagues now existing was
protective. It aimed primarily to secure each of its members against
attacks by other Powers, and this security, which all the members
continue to need, is what the small neutral countries are also compelled
to look for. What they must demand of any combination which they are
asked to join is, above all else, protection. Now the more promising
plans for new leagues of peace which have been suggested contain no
provision for protecting their members from attacks by nations outside
of their circle. They content themselves with preventing warfare between
the members. On the other hand, the present combinations have no formal
and constitutional machinery for settling internal disputes. A true
commonwealth of nations needs to be assured against both dangers and its
constitution, therefore, will need to contain the best provisions that
it is humanly possible to devise for settling peacefully all internal
disputes and also for preventing or repelling attacks by other States.
This is saying that an enlarged Entente, besides protecting its members,
as it is now using all its force in doing, will need to guard itself
against the perils that necessarily beset large leagues, those, namely,
that originate from within. The institutions of The Hague will be for it
well nigh a _sine qua non_ at success, and there must be measures for
compelling a resort to them in disputes between members of the league
and in those arising between any of them and States outside of it. Such
provisions as have been contained in the best constitutions that have
been suggested for new leagues will be needed in one that may evolve out
of one of the existing combinations.
If a new league should be formed without affording protection against
external attacks it would be necessary that the Entente and the Alliance
should continue. It would be vain to ask their members to dissolve them
and trust to a new league that would leave each of them to fight its
own battles. The Entente or the Alliance, as the case might be, would
then constitute a union within a union—a compact defensive body within a
loosely organized combination for promoting the friendly settlement of
disputes. This is entirely possible. A new league of many States might
conceivably be formed and either the Entente or the Alliance might join
it bodily and give its own members the protection which the larger league
would not give; but a simpler and more natural plan would be to enlarge
one of the present leagues and adopt the needed provisions for peacefully
settling all disputes of which a member is a party.
Of a league so formed the objection that it is theoretical and utopian
certainly cannot be urged. Nine countries are already in effect in the
Entente and that combination is now fulfilling the one function that,
in making constitutions for new leagues, few persons are bold enough to
require of the members—that of lavishing life and treasure in defending
each other. In this respect, the present reality outstrips our dreams. As
the leagues will almost certainly continue it should be possible to give
to one of them the relatively easy function of settling peacefully the
disputes occurring within its membership.
[Sidenote: Power of neutrals to help in forming such a League.]
Herein lies the golden opportunity for the neutral States. They have a
sense of danger and the protective feature of a league will attract them,
though the chance of being involved in a general war will, in itself,
repel them. It will probably repel them less than the danger of being
conquered by some great State, and both dangers will be at a minimum if
the international body that they join is too strong to be attacked and
if its spirit as well as its formal constitution and the interest of its
members hold it in ways of peace and justice. It will be in the power
of the neutral countries to help effectively in making it so. They can
consent to join only a union of this character.
It will be hard indeed for the two leagues now in deadly war with each
other at once to unite in any single union. Will the fact that one of
them for a time holds aloof be a source of danger? In one essential way
it will be a cause of security. It is sadly to be admitted that, in the
present moral status of the world, treaties are not bands of steel and
there is danger that they may be broken when they are not buttressed by
national interests. Against the danger of disruption a defensive league
which does not include all States of Europe may be stronger than one
which does so. The treaty that binds such a league together will be
powerfully reenforced if all the members have a sense of common danger—a
sense of the presence of a foe strong enough to overcome any country
singly. Pressure from without means solidarity within and, while enmities
are strong, a hostile nation might impart to a league more strength by
remaining outside of it than by joining it.
[Sidenote: All Europe might eventually be consolidated.]
In the long run, all Europe should be consolidated. The chance that
it will become so by a single step is small, and the best beginning
of a general union will be furnished by one of the existing leagues,
enlarged by the adherence of neutral States and fortified against the
danger of disruption from within by the exposure of any seceding State
to the peril of attacks from without. The league may thrive on external
hostility until the good time shall come when the desired system of
settling international disputes shall be thoroughly established and peace
shall prevail by the supremacy of reason. Guarding always the territory
and protecting the sovereignty of its members the league will develop
mutual interests so important that a new and powerful tie will bind the
countries together in addition to the bond furnished by the necessity for
defense. That necessity itself will grow less, armaments may be curtailed
and the forces now engaged in mutual destruction may become available for
raising in many ways the level of human life. Under such influences the
league should become too powerful to be attacked from without and too
indispensable to humanity to be weakened or disrupted from within.
[Sidenote: Present leagues may be means to peace.]
For these reasons I conclude that in the leagues now at war may be
afforded the most practical means of creating the league of peace. There
is inspiration in this possibility and there is a terrible spur to action
in what will ensue if it is not realized—desolated lands under enormous
debts with no assurance against a further struggle; neutral lands as
well as belligerent ones involved in the competition for larger armies,
navies, arsenals, guns and fortifications; the people demanding costly
reforms by governments unable to afford them and in peril of revolution
if they refuse to do so. Only in the relief from war and its burdens lies
the possibility of meeting such needs and giving to social progress an
upward trend. Such is the plain teaching of the pending struggle. It is
as though the war demon himself had led humanity to the parting of the
roads where the guide boards indicate, on the one side, the long way to
the Delectable Mountains and on the other, a short route to the pit. Far
reaching beyond all precedent is the choice that humanity must soon make
and lands at war and lands at peace must participate in the decision.
_John Bates Clark, Address at Lake Mohonk Conference, 1915._
PROTECTION OF SMALL NATIONS
[Sidenote: Only a firm League can protect small nations.]
A small nation—a nation of not more than fifteen millions, for
example—can have no independent existence in Europe except as a member of
a federation of States having similar habits, tendencies, and hopes, and
united in an offensive and defensive alliance, or under guarantees given
by a group of strong and trustworthy nations. The firm establishment of
several such federations, or the giving of such guarantees by a group of
powerful and faith-keeping nations ought to be one of the outcomes of
the war of 1914-15. Unless some such arrangement is reached, no small
State will be safe from conquest and absorption by any strong, aggressive
military power which covets it—not even if its people live chiefly by
mining and manufacturing as the Belgians did.
The small States, being very determined to exist and to obtain their
natural or historical racial boundaries, the problem of permanent or any
durable peace in Europe resolves itself into this: How can the small or
smaller nations be protected from attack by some larger nation which
believes that might makes right and is mighty in industries, commerce,
finance, and the military and naval arts? The experience gained during
the past year proves that there is but one effective protection against
such a Power, namely, a firm league of other Powers—not necessarily
numerous—which together are stronger in industries, commerce, finance,
and the military and naval arts than the aggressive and ambitious nation
which heartily believes in its own invincibility and cherishes the
ambition to conquer and possess.
[Sidenote: The League is at hand in the Alliance or Entente.]
Such a league is the present combination of Great Britain, France,
Russia, Italy, and Japan against the aggressive Central Monarchies
and Turkey; but this combination was not formed deliberately and
with conscious purpose to protect small States, to satisfy natural
aspirations, and to make durable peace possible by removing both fear of
invasion and fear of the cutting off of overseas food and raw materials.
In spite of the lack of an explicit and comprehensive purpose to attain
these wise and precious ends, the solidity of the alliance during a
year of stupendous efforts to resist military aggression on the part of
Germany and Austria-Hungary certainly affords good promise of success
for a somewhat larger league in which all the European nations—some,
like the Scandinavian and the Balkan, by representation in groups—and
the United States should be included. Such a league would have to act
through a distinct and permanent council or commission which would not
serve arbitrary power, or any peculiar national interest, and would not
in the least resemble the “Concert of Europe,” or any of the disastrous
special conferences of diplomatists and Ministers for Foreign Affairs,
called after wars since that of 1870-71 to “settle” the questions the
wars raised.
The experience of the past twelve months proves that such a league could
prevent any nation which disobeyed its orders from making use of the
oceans and from occupying the territory of any other nation. Reduction
of armaments, diminution of taxation, and durable peace would ensue as
soon as general confidence was established that the league would fairly
administer international justice, and that its military and naval forces
were ready and effective. Its function would be limited to the prevention
and punishment of violations of international agreements, or, in other
words, to the enforcement of treaty obligations, until new treaties were
made.
[Sidenote: Present alliance for war promises effectiveness in peace.]
The present alliance is of good promise in three important respects—its
members refuse to make any separate peace, they cooperate cordially and
efficiently in military measures, and the richer members help the poorer
financially. These policies have been hastily devised and adopted in the
midst of strenuous fighting on an immense scale. If deliberately planned
and perfected in times of peace, they could be made in the highest degree
effective toward durable peace.
The war has demonstrated that the international agreements for the
mitigation of the horrors of war, made by treaties, conferences, and
conventions in times of peace, may go for nothing in time of war;
because they have no sanction, or, in other words, lack penalties
capable of systematic enforcement. To provide the lacking sanction and
the physical force capable of compelling the payment of penalties for
violating international agreements would be one of the best functions
of the international council which the present alliance foreshadows.
Some years would probably be required to satisfy the nations concerned
that the sanction was real and the force trustworthy and sufficient. The
absolute necessity of inventing and applying a sanction for international
law, if Europe is to have international peace and any national liberty,
will be obvious to any one who has once perceived that the present war
became inevitable when Austria-Hungary, in violation of an international
agreement to which she was herself a party, seized and absorbed Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and became general and fierce when Germany, under
Prussian lead, in violation of an international agreement to which she
was herself a party, entered and plundered neutralized Belgium.
[Sidenote: Such a League could benefit Germany as well as England.]
A strong, trustworthy international alliance to preserve the freedom of
the seas under all circumstances would secure for Great Britain and her
federated commonwealths everything secured by the burdensome two-navies
policy which now secures the freedom of the seas for British purposes.
The same international alliance would secure for Germany the same
complete freedom of the seas which in times of peace between Germany and
Great Britain she has long enjoyed by favor of Great Britain, but has
lost in time of war with the Triple Entente. This security, with the
general acceptance of the policy of the “open door,” would fully meet
Germany’s need of indefinite expansion for her manufacturing industries
and her commerce, and of room “in the sun” for her surplus population.
It is a safe inference from the events of the past six months that
the longer the war lasts the more significant will be the political
and social changes which result from it. It is not to be expected,
and perhaps not to be desired, that the ruling class in the countries
autocratically governed should themselves draw this inference at present,
but all lovers of freedom and justice will find consolation for the
prolongation of the war in this hopeful reflection.
[Sidenote: Such a League is our only hope.]
To devise the wise constitution of an international council or commission
with properly limited powers, and to determine the most promising
composition of an international army and an international navy are
serious tasks, but not beyond the available international wisdom
and goodwill, provided that the tasks be intrusted to international
publicists, business men of large experience, and successful
administrators, rather than to professional diplomatists and soldiers. To
dismiss such a noble enterprise with the remark that it is “academic,”
or beyond the reach of “practical” politics, is unworthy of courageous
and humane men; for it seems now to be the only way out of the horrible
abyss into which civilization has fallen. At any rate, some such
machinery must be put into successful operation before any limitation
of national armaments can be effected. The war has shown to what a
catastrophe competitive national arming has led, and would probably
again lead the most civilized nations of Europe. Shall the white race
despair of escaping from this hell? The only way of escape in sight is
the establishment of a rational international community. Should the
enterprise fail after fair trial, the world will be no worse off than it
was in July, 1914, or is to-day.
Whoever studies the events of the past year with some knowledge of
political philosophy and history, and with the love of his neighbor in
his heart, will discover, amid the horrors of the time and its moral
chaos, three hopeful leadings for humanitarian effort, each involving a
great constructive invention. He will see that humanity needs supremely
a sanction for international law, rescue from alcoholism, and a sound
basis for just and unselfish human relations in the great industries, and
particularly in the machinery industries. The war has brought out all
three of these needs with terrible force and vividness. Somehow they must
be met, if the white race is to succeed in “the pursuit of happiness,” or
even to hold the gains already made.
_Charles W. Eliot, N. Y. Times, July 16, 1915._
A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE
[Sidenote: The proposals of the League.]
Without attempting to cover details of operation (which are, indeed,
of vital importance and will require careful study by experts in
international law and diplomacy), the proposal contains four points
stated as general objects. The first is that before resorting to arms
the members of the league shall submit disputes with one another, if
justiciable, to an international tribunal; second, that in like manner
they shall submit non-justiciable questions—that is, such as cannot be
decided on the basis of strict international law—to an international
council of conciliation, which shall recommend a fair and amicable
solution; third, that if any member of the league wages war against
another before submitting the question in dispute to the tribunal or
council, all the other members shall jointly use forthwith both their
economic and military forces against the State that so breaks the peace;
and fourth, that the signatory Powers shall endeavor to codify and
improve the rules of international law.
[Sidenote: The use of force to compel arbitration before war.]
The kernel of the proposal, the feature in which it differs from other
plans, lies in the third point, obliging all the members of the league
to declare war on any member violating the pact of peace. This is the
provision that provokes both adherence and opposition; and at first it
certainly gives one a shock that a people should be asked to pledge
itself to go to war over a quarrel which is not of its making, in which
it has no interest, and in which it may believe that substantial justice
lies on the other side. If, indeed, the nations of the earth could
maintain complete isolation, could pursue each its own destiny without
regard to the rest; if they were not affected by a war between two others
or liable to be drawn into it; if, in short, there were no overwhelming
common interest in securing universal peace, the provision would be
intolerable. It would be as bad as the liability of an individual to take
part in the _posse comitatus_ of a community with which he had nothing in
common. But in every civilized country the public force is employed to
prevent any man, however just his claim, from vindicating his own right
with his own hand instead of going to law, and every citizen is bound
when needed to assist in preventing him, because that is the only way
to restrain private war, and the maintenance of order is of paramount
importance for every one. Surely the family of nations has a like
interest in restraining war between States.
It will be observed that the members of the league are not to bind
themselves to enforce the decision of the tribunal or the award of the
council of conciliation. That may come in the remote future, but it is
no part of this proposal. It would be imposing obligations far greater
than the nations can reasonably be expected to assume at the present day;
for the conceptions of international morality and fair play are still
so vague and divergent that a nation can hardly bind itself to wage war
on another, with which it has no quarrel, to enforce a decision or a
recommendation of whose justice or wisdom it may not be itself heartily
convinced. The proposal goes no further than obliging all the members
to prevent, by a threat of immediate war, any breach of the public
peace before the matter in dispute has been submitted to arbitration;
and this is neither unreasonable nor impracticable. There are many
questions, especially of a non-justiciable nature, on which we should not
be willing to bind ourselves to accept the decision of an arbitration,
and where we should regard compulsion by armed intervention of the rest
of the world as outrageous. Take, for example, the question of Asiatic
immigration, or a claim that the Panama Canal ought to be an unfortified
neutral highway, or the desire by a European Power to take possession
of Colombia. But we ought not, in the interest of universal peace, to
object to making a public statement of our position in these matters at a
court or council before resorting to arms; and in fact the treaty between
the United States and England, ratified on November 14, 1914, provides
that all disputes between the high contracting parties, of every nature
whatsoever, shall, failing other methods of adjustment, be referred for
investigation and report to a permanent international commission, with a
stipulation that neither country shall declare war or begin hostilities
during such investigation and before the report is submitted.
[Sidenote: Would not mean cession of sovereignty.]
What is true of this country is true of others. To agree to abide by the
result of an arbitration, on every non-justiciable question of every
nature whatsoever, on pain of compulsion in any form by the whole world,
would involve a greater cession of sovereignty than nations would now
be willing to concede. This appears, indeed, perfectly clear from the
discussions at The Hague Conference of 1907. But to exclude differences
that do not turn on questions of international law from the cases in
which a State must present the matter to a tribunal or council of
conciliation before beginning hostilities, would leave very little check
upon the outbreak of war. Almost every conflict between European nations
for more than half a century has been based upon some dissension which
could not be decided by strict rules of law, and in which a violation of
international law or of treaty rights has usually not even been used as
an excuse. This was true of the war between France and Austria in 1859,
and, in substance, of the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866. It
was true of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, of the Russo-Turkish War in
1876, of the Balkan War against Turkey in 1912, and of the present war.
[Sidenote: But would reduce probability of hostilities.]
No one will claim that a league to enforce peace, such as is proposed,
would wholly prevent war, but it would greatly reduce the probability of
hostilities. It would take away the advantage of surprise, of catching
the enemy unprepared for a sudden attack. It would give a chance for
public opinion on the nature of the controversy to be formed throughout
the world and in the militant country. The latter is of great importance,
for the moment war is declared argument about its merits is at once
stifled. Passion runs too high for calm debate, and patriotism forces
people to support their government. But a trial before an international
tribunal would give time for discussion while emotion is not yet highly
inflamed. Men opposed to war would be able to urge its injustice, to ask
whether, after all, the object is worth the sacrifice, and they would
get a hearing from their fellow citizens which they cannot get after
war begins. The mere delay, the interval for consideration, would be an
immense gain for the prospect of a peaceful settlement.
Most people who have been thinking seriously about the maintenance of
peace are tending to the opinion that a sanction of some kind is needed
to enforce the observance of treaties and of agreements for arbitration.
Among the measures proposed has been that of an international police
force, under the control of a central council which could use it to
preserve order throughout the world. At present such a plan seems
visionary. The force would have to be at least large enough to cope with
the army that any single nation could put into the field—under existing
conditions let us say five millions of men fully equipped and supplied
with artillery and ammunition for a campaign of several months. These
troops need not be under arms, or quartered near The Hague, but they
must be thoroughly trained and ready to be called out at short notice.
Practically that would entail yearly votes of the legislative bodies of
each of the nations supplying a quota; and if any of them failed to make
the necessary appropriation there would be great difficulty in preventing
others from following its example. The whole organization would,
therefore, be in constant danger of going to pieces.
[Sidenote: The U. S. and the international police.]
But quite apart from the practical difficulties in the permanent
execution of such a plan, let us see how it would affect the United
States. The amount of the contingents of the various countries would
be apportioned with some regard to population, wealth, and economic
resources; and if the total were five million men, our quota on a
moderate estimate might be five hundred thousand men. Is it conceivable
that the United States would agree to keep anything like that number
drilled, equipped, and ready to take the field on the order of an
international council composed mainly of foreign nations? Of course it
will be answered that these figures are exaggerated, because any such
plan will be accompanied by a reduction in armaments. But that is an
easier thing to talk about than to effect, and especially to maintain.
One must not forget that the existing system of universal compulsory
military service on the continent of Europe arose from Napoleon’s attempt
to limit the size of the Prussian army. He would be a bold or sanguine
man who should assert that any treaty to limit armaments could not in
like manner be evaded; and however much they were limited, the quantity
of troops to be held at the disposal of a foreign council would of
necessity be large, while no nation would be willing to pledge for the
purpose the whole of its military force. Such a plan may be practicable
in some remote future when the whole world is a vast federation under
a central government, but that would seem to be a matter for coming
generations, not for the men of our day.
Moreover, the nations whose troops were engaged in fighting any country
would inevitably find themselves at war with that country.
One cannot imagine saying to some foreign State, “Our troops are killing
yours, they are invading your land, we are supplying them with recruits
and munitions of war, but otherwise we are at peace with you. You must
treat us as a neutral, and accord to our citizens, to their commerce
and property, all the rights of neutrality.” In short the plan of an
international police force involves all the consequences of the proposal
of a league to enforce peace, with other complex provisions extremely
hard to execute.
[Sidenote: Objections.]
A suggestion more commonly made is that the members of the league
of nations, instead of pledging themselves explicitly to declare
war forthwith against any of their number that commits a breach of
the peace, should agree to hold at once a conference, and take such
measures—diplomatic, economic, or military—as may be necessary to
prevent war. The objection to this is that it weakens very seriously the
sanction. Conferences are apt to shrink from decisive action. Some of
the members are timid, others want delay, and much time is consumed in
calling the body together and in discussions after it meets. Meanwhile
the war may have broken out, and be beyond control. It is much easier to
prevent a fire than to put it out. The country that is planning war is
likely to think it has friends in the conference, or neighbors that it
can intimidate, who will prevent any positive decision until the fire is
burning. Even if the majority decides on immediate action, the minority
is not bound thereby. One great Power refuses to take part; a second will
not do so without her; the rest hesitate, and nothing is done to prevent
the war.
[Sidenote: Advantages of pledges.]
A conference is an excellent thing. The proposal of a league to enforce
peace by no means excludes it; but the important matter, the effective
principle, is that every member of the league should know that whether
a conference meets or not, or whatever action it may take or fail
to take, all the members of the league have pledged themselves to
declare war forthwith on any member that commits a breach of the peace
before submitting its case to the international tribunal or council of
conciliation. Such a pledge, and such a pledge alone, can have the strong
deterrent influence, and thus furnish the sanction, that is needed. Of
course the pledge may not be kept. Like other treaties it may be broken
by the parties to it. Nations are composed of human beings with human
weaknesses, and one of these is a disinclination to perform an agreement
when it involves a sacrifice. Nevertheless, nations, like men, often do
have enough sense of honor, of duty, or of ultimate self-interest, to
carry out their contracts at no little immediate sacrifice. They are
certainly more likely to do a thing if they have pledged themselves to it
than if they have not; and any nation would be running a terrible risk
that went to war in the hope that the other members of the league would
break their pledges.
[Sidenote: The threats of universal war and boycott.]
The same objection applies to another alternative proposed in place of
an immediate resort to military force: that is the use of economic
pressure, by a universal agreement, for example, to have no commercial
intercourse with the nation breaking the peace. A threat of universal
boycott is, no doubt, formidable, but by no means so formidable as a
threat of universal war. A large country with great natural resources
which has determined to make war, might be willing to face commercial
non-intercourse with the other members of the league during hostilities,
when it would not for a moment contemplate the risk of fighting them. A
threat, for example, by England, France, and Germany to stop all trade
with the United States might or might not have prevented our going to war
with Spain; but a declaration that they would take part with all their
armies and navies against us would certainly have done so.
It has often been pointed out that the threat of general non-intercourse
would bear much more hardly on some countries than on others. That may
not in itself be a fatal objection, but a very serious consideration
arises from the fact that there would be a premium on preparation for
war. A nation which had accumulated vast quantities of munitions, food,
and supplies of all kinds, might afford to disregard it; while another
less fully prepared could not.
Moreover, economic pressure, although urged as a milder measure, is in
fact more difficult to apply and maintain. A declaration of war is a
single act, and when made sustains itself by the passion it inflames;
while commercial non-intercourse is a continuous matter, subject to
constant opposition exerted in an atmosphere relatively cool. Our
manufacturers would complain bitterly at being deprived of dye-stuffs
and other chemical products on account of a quarrel in which we had no
interest; the South would suffer severely by the loss of a market for
cotton; the shipping firms and the exporters and importers of all kinds
would be gravely injured; and all these interests would bring to bear
upon Congress a pressure well-nigh irresistible. The same would be true
of every other neutral country, a fact that would be perfectly well known
to the intending belligerent and reduce its fear of a boycott.
[Sidenote: Drastic threats by a League could probably prevent war.]
But, it is said, why not try economic pressure first, and, if that fails,
resort to military force, instead of inflicting at once on unoffending
members of the league the terrible calamity of war? What do we mean by
“if that fails”? Do we mean, if, in spite of the economic pressure, the
war breaks out? But then the harm is done, the fire is ablaze and can
be put out only by blood. The object of the league is not to chastise
a country guilty of breaking the peace, but to prevent the outbreak
of war, and to prevent it by the immediate prospect of such appalling
consequences to the offender that he will not venture to run the risk.
If a number of great Powers were to pledge themselves with serious
intent, to wage war jointly and severally on any one of their members
that attacked another before submitting the case to arbitration, it is in
the highest degree improbable that the _casus fœderis_ would ever occur,
while any less drastic provision would be far less effective.
[Sidenote: Object is to lessen chances of war, though the League could
not meet all possible contingencies.]
An objection has been raised to the proposal for a league to enforce
peace on the ground that it has in the past often proved difficult, if
not impossible, to determine which of two belligerents began a war. The
criticism is serious, and presents a practical difficulty, grave but
probably not insurmountable. The proposal merely lays down a general
principle, and if adopted the details would have to be worked out very
fully and carefully in a treaty, which would specify the acts that would
constitute the waging of war by one member upon another. These would
naturally be, not the mere creating of apprehension, but specific acts,
such as a declaration of war, invasion of territory, the use of force at
sea not disowned within forty-eight hours, or an advance into a region in
dispute. This last is an especially difficult point, but those portions
of the earth’s surface in which different nations have conflicting claims
are growing less decade by decade.
It must be remembered that the cases which would arise are not like
those which have arisen in the past, where one nation is determined to
go to war and merely seeks to throw the moral responsibility on the
other while getting the advantage of actually beginning hostilities. It
is a case where each will strive to avoid the specific acts of war that
may involve the penalty. The reader may have seen, in a country where
personal violence is severely punished, two men shaking their fists in
each other’s faces, each trying to provoke the other to strike the first
blow; and no fight after all.
There are many agreements in private business which are not easy to
embody in formal contracts; agreements where, as in this case, the
execution of the terms calls for immediate action, and where redress
after an elaborate trial of the facts affords no real reparation. But
if the object sought is good, men do not condemn it on account of the
difficulty in devising provisions that will accomplish the result
desired; certainly not until they have tried to devise them. It may,
indeed, prove impossible to draft a code of specific acts that will cover
the ground; it may be impracticable to draft it so as to avoid issues
of fact that can be determined only after a long sifting of evidence,
which would come too late; but surely that is no reason for failure to
make the attempt. We are not making a treaty among nations. We are merely
putting forward a suggestion for reducing war, which seems to merit
consideration.
A second difficulty that will sometimes arise is the rule of conduct to
be followed pending the presentation of the question to the international
tribunal. The continuance or cessation of the acts complained of may
appear to be, and may even be in fact, more important than the final
decision. This has been brought to our attention forcibly by the sinking
of the _Lusitania_. We should have done very wisely to submit to
arbitration the question of the right of submarines to torpedo merchant
ships without warning, provided Germany abandoned the practise pending
the arbitration; and Germany would probably not have refused to submit
the question to a tribunal on the understanding that the practise was
to continue until the decision was rendered, because by that time the
war would be over. This difficulty is inherent in every plan for the
arbitration of international disputes, although more serious in a league
whose members bind themselves to prevent by force the outbreak of war.
It would be necessary to give the tribunal summary authority to decree
a _modus vivendi_, to empower it, like a court of equity, to issue a
temporary injunction.
In short, the proposal for a league to enforce peace cannot meet all
possible contingencies. It cannot prevent all future wars, nor does any
sensible person believe that any plan can do so in the present state of
civilization. But it can prevent some wars that would otherwise take
place, and if it does that it will have done much good.
[Sidenote: Enough if League meant peace for its members.]
People have asked how such a league would differ from the Triple Alliance
or Triple Entente—whether it would not be nominally a combination for
peace which might in practise have quite a different effect. But in
fact its object is quite contrary to those alliances. They are designed
to protect their members against outside Powers. This is intended to
insure peace among the members themselves. If it grew strong enough, by
including all the great Powers, it might well insist on universal peace
by compelling the outsiders to come in. But that is not its primary
object, which is simply to prevent its members from going to war with one
another. No doubt if several great nations, and some of the smaller ones,
joined it, and if it succeeded in preserving constant friendly relations
among its members, there would grow up among them a sense of solidarity
which would make any outside Power chary of attacking one of them; and,
what is more valuable, would make outsiders want to join it. But there
is little use in speculating about probabilities. It is enough if such a
league were a source of enduring peace among its own members.
How about our own position in the United States? The proposal is a
radical and subversive departure from the traditional policy of our
country. Would it be wise for us to be parties to such an agreement?
At the threshold of such a discussion one thing is clear. If we are
not willing to urge our own government to join a movement for peace,
we have no business to discuss any plan for the purpose. It is worse
than futile, it is an impertinence, for Americans to advise the people
of Europe how they ought to conduct their affairs if we have nothing
in common with them; to suggest to them conventions with burdens which
are well enough for them, but which we are not willing to share. If our
peace organizations are not prepared to have us take part in the plans
they devise, they had better disband, or confine their discussions to
Pan-American questions....
_A. Lawrence Lowell, “A League to Enforce Peace,”
Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1915._
THE CONSTITUTION OF A LEAGUE
[Sidenote: Force for defense vs. force for aggression.]
The problem of the League of Peace is actually the problem of the use
of force. Force internationally expressed is measured in armaments. The
chief discussion which has been waged for the past decade between the
pacifists and militarists has been over the question of armaments. The
militarists claim that armaments insure national safety. The pacifists
declare they inevitably lead to war. Both disputants insist that the
present war furnishes irrefutable proof of their contentions.
As is usual in cases of this kind the shield has two sides. The confusion
has arisen from a failure to recognize the threefold function of force:
1. Force used for the maintenance of order—police force.
2. Force used for attack—aggression.
3. Force used to neutralize aggression—defense.
Police force is almost wholly good.
Offense is almost wholly bad.
Defense is a necessary evil, and exists simply to neutralize force
employed for aggression.
The problem of the peace movement is how to abolish the use of force for
aggression, and yet to maintain it for police purposes. Force for defense
will of course automatically cease when force for aggression is abolished.
The chief problem then of a League of Peace is this: Shall the members
of the League “not only keep the peace themselves, but prevent by force
if necessary its being broken by others,” as ex-President Roosevelt
suggested in his Nobel Peace Address delivered at Christiania, May 5,
1910? Or shall its force be exercised only within its membership and thus
be on the side of law and order and never on the side of arbitrary will
or tyranny? Or shall it never be used at all? Whichever one of these
conceptions finally prevails the Great War has conclusively demonstrated
that as long as War Lords exist defensive force must be maintained.
Hence the League must be prepared to use force against any nations which
will not forswear force. Nevertheless a formula must be devised for
disarmament. For unless it is a law of nature that war is to consume all
the fruits of progress disarmament somehow and some way must take place.
How then can the maintenance of a force for defense and police power be
reconciled with the theory of disarmament?
[Sidenote: The principles for a League of Peace.]
In this way: Let the League of Peace be formed on the following five
principles:
First. The nations of the League shall mutually agree to respect the
territory and sovereignty of each other.
Second. All questions that cannot be settled by diplomacy shall be
arbitrated.
Third. The nations of the League shall provide a periodical assembly to
make all rules to become law unless vetoed by a nation within a stated
period.
Fourth. The nations shall disarm to the point where the combined forces
of the League shall be a certain per cent. higher than those of the most
heavily armed nation or alliance outside of the League. Detailed rules
for this pro rata disarmament shall be formulated by the Assembly.
Fifth. Any member of the League shall have the right to withdraw on due
notice, or may be expelled by the unanimous vote of the others.
The advantages that a nation would gain in becoming a member of such
a league are manifest. The risk of war would be eliminated within the
League. Obviously the only things that are vital to a nation are its land
and its independence. Since each nation in the League will have pledged
itself to respect the territory and the sovereignty of every other, a
refusal to do so will logically lead to expulsion from the League. Thus
every vital question will be automatically reserved from both war and
arbitration. All other questions are of secondary importance and can
readily be arbitrated.
By the establishment of a periodical assembly a method would be devised
whereby the members of the League could develop their common intercourse
and interests as far and as fast as they could unanimously agree upon
ways and means. As any law could be vetoed by a single nation, no nation
could have any fear that it would be coerced against its will by a
majority vote of the other nations. By such an assembly the League might
in time agree to reduce tariffs and postal rates and in a thousand other
ways promote commerce and comity among its members.
[Sidenote: Rights and duties within the League.]
As a final safeguard against coercion by the other members of the League,
each member will have the right of secession on due notice. This would
prevent civil war within the League. The right of expulsion by the
majority will prevent one nation by its veto power indefinitely blocking
all progress of the League.
But it will be said that all these agreements will have no binding effect
in a crisis. A covenant is a mere “scrap of paper” whose provisions will
be violated by the first nation which fancies it is its interest to do
so. In order to show that their faith is backed up by deeds, however,
the nations on entering the League agree to disarm to a little above
the danger point, and put all their defensive power under a federal
authority. This is the real proof of their conversion to the peace idea.
[Sidenote: Co-operation for protection.]
Thus the nations which join the League will enjoy all the economic and
political advantages which come from mutual cooperation and the extension
of international friendship and at the same time will be protected by
an adequate force against the aggressive force of the greatest nation
or alliance outside the League. The League therefore reconciles the
demand of the pacifists for the limitation of armaments and eventual
disarmament and the demand of the militarists for the protection that
armament affords. Above all the establishment of such a league will give
the liberal parties in the nations outside the League an issue on which
they can attack their governments so as sooner or later to force them
to apply to the League for membership. As each one enters there will be
another pro rata reduction of the military forces of the League down to
the armament of the next most powerful nation or alliance outside it;
until finally the whole world is federated in a brotherhood of universal
peace and armies and navies are reduced to an international police force.
_Hamilton Holt, “The Way to Disarm,” Independent, Sept. 28, 1914._
PACIFISM AND THE LEAGUE OF PEACE
[Sidenote: Peace is not mere non-resistance.]
In short, we have little faith in a pacifism which is mere
_laissez-faire_, in the doctrine that peace is the vacuum created by
the absence of war. Peace is something more original than that. It is
a great construction, of infinite complexity, which will be aided but
not consummated by good intentions. It involves dangers, failures,
disappointments. The interests of the world are interwoven, and no
nation can work for peace by adopting counsels of perfection in a
policy of isolation. Yet that is what mere non-resistance implies. It
implies an unwillingness to take the risk of participation in world
politics, it trusts vaguely that by staying at home and minding our
business, we can make our own little cultivated garden bloom in peace
and prosperity. There is no internationalism in such a view of things.
The real internationalist is one who works first of all to keep his own
nation from aggressive action, who infuses his own national policy with
a desire for international peace. He works to control his own government
so as to make it adopt a humanely constructive foreign policy. He does
not refuse to have part in the world’s affairs because the world may soil
his hands. He realizes that peace can be created only out of the strength
of intelligent people, that even God when he fought the devil had to
compromise his own perfection.
[Sidenote: The clear-sighted idealist sees a League of Peace.]
It is more than a century since Thomas Paine proposed to secure the
world’s peace forever by a league between Britain, France and the United
States. He made the suggestion on the eve of the Napoleonic wars, and it
is hardly an accident that the idea was revived with a different trinity
a few months before the present struggle. It was Britain, France and
Germany that Jean Jaurès would have united in a League of Peace. At the
parting of the ways the clear-sighted idealist has always understood that
the choice is not between war and that sort of peace which is only a
negation of war. The choice in both these crises lay between shattering
war and constructive peace, between an open and destructive enmity and a
peace based on a common will and an active partnership. Mirabeau had the
same vivid perception, and what these three saw is still a vision that
haunts us among the mists of war. Of the several proposals that arise
inevitably in men’s minds when we think of preventing the renewal of
this Continental struggle, there is none which sober thinkers propound
so readily and none which has been worked out with greater detail in
England than this expedient of the League of Peace. There are, indeed,
a few who dare to speak of the United States of Europe, and some who
discuss the creation of an international police force to secure the
law of nations and repress aggression. But even they do not deny the
inordinate difficulties. This war has lasted long enough to teach all
but the unteachable that neither side will be able to crush and dominate
the other. But short of the compulsion of irresistible might, will any
influence suffice to bring the enemies of to-day by their spontaneous
choice into a European federation? Is any people, even the most pacific,
prepared as yet to accept the surrender of sovereignty which entry into
even a loosely-knit federation would involve?
[Sidenote: A practicable dream.]
The League of Peace presents itself to practical men as a dream
capable of an early translation into fact. The allies need only agree
to join their forces against any power which persisted, after offers of
arbitration or mediation (a reservation which no old-fashioned alliance
ever made) in attacking any one of them. It would differ from other
alliances partly by its insistence on the duty of arbitration, partly by
its frank and public constitution, but mainly by the ready welcome which
it would offer even to the enemy of yesterday, should he elect to enter
it. The United States would rally to it, seeing in it their best hope of
safety, and ultimately it might become a genuine Pan-European League. It
is sometimes suggested that Paine’s Anglo-Franco-American combination
might form its nucleus. More often its advocates base their hopes on the
Anglo-Franco-Russian entente, expanded by adhesion of some of the present
neutrals. No one suggests, and this is the weakest point of the whole
scheme, that Germany and Austria would be likely to join such a League at
the start, though no one of this way of thinking would desire to exclude
them.
[Sidenote: The League must be more than the old alliances.]
Much would depend on the nucleus of the federation. Crude military
considerations render an Anglo-French-American trinity impossible.
Without discussing whether the United States would care to enter “the
vortex of European militarism,” it is enough to point out that such a
combination could not hope to hold the rest of Europe in check, could
not even safeguard France against Germany alone, unless one or both
of the English-speaking nations adopted compulsory military service.
France must ally herself to some first-rate military power; no navy can
protect her land frontiers. The Anglo-Franco-Russian combination is open
to other objections. It does not represent a homogeneous civilization.
Every outbreak of anti-Jewish fanaticism in Russia, every assault on
Finland or Persia, every reminder that official Russia still belongs to
the Dark Ages, would tend to weaken the moral authority of such a League.
It has, moreover, too long a history. It would seem even to charitable
Germans a mere perpetuation under a new name of the combination which M.
Delcassé and King Edward were accused of forming to “pen Germany in.” It
would seem to be nothing better than an alliance to assure the victors in
the perpetual possession of the fruits of victory, and the new pacifist
façade to the old armed fortress would only aggravate by hypocrisy the
sin of success. Germany would never join this League; she would scheme
with all the arts of barter and intrigue to detach Russia from it, and
the old game of the Balance of Power would go on.
[Sidenote: It must provide for changing conditions.]
The fatal objection to any alliance of this kind is that it does not
really meet the difficulty that no State will abandon its sovereignty.
This alliance would not be a League of Peace unless it were prepared to
exercise a very sharp supervision over the foreign policy of its members.
If the old Anglo-Franco-Russian entente had been a genuine League of
Peace, it would have had to say, for example, to Serbia, “You may join
us, but if you do join us, you must abandon forever your Irredentist
ambitions at the expense of Austria. We will protect you against any
unprovoked attack by Austria. But you on your side must refrain from any
encouragement to those who would dismember her.” It would have had to say
with equal decision to France, “Join us by all means, but at the cost of
refraining from any expansion in Morocco. You cannot march on Fez without
provoking some German reply.” Such a League, in short, would be a mutual
insurance society, but the risks would be too high unless the society
could prohibit its members from any deliberate playing with fire. It is
not enough to say, “We will murder an Archduke once in a way, but when
he is dead and buried we will go to The Hague about him”; or, “We will,
to be sure, take places in the sun which other people covet, but when we
have taken them we shall not wantonly attack any unsuccessful rivals.”
The League of Peace would either be the old imperialistic alliance under
a dishonest name, or else it would be a highly conservative federation
which would keep its members in a very strait pacifist jacket. If great
powers would really endure such a control they might as well face at once
the limitation of sovereignty implied in a United States of Europe.
[Sidenote: All interests must be reconciled.]
The vice of all such schemes is that they are based too one-sidedly on
the idea of preventing wars. They take a static view of the world. They
come quite naturally from citizens of satisfied powers, weary of the
burden of defending what they have got. They ignore the fact that life
is change. They make no provision for any organic alterations in the
world’s structure. We can no more prevent war by organizing a defensive
league than revolution by creating a police. We must deal with causes,
must provide some means alternative to war by which large grievances can
be redressed and legitimate ambitions satisfied. To recur to our concrete
cases: if it is desired to insure that Serbia shall not again embroil a
continent in war, some machinery must be provided by which Austria can be
required to treat her subject Serbs reasonably well. When a “place in the
sun” like Morocco, one of the few unappropriated parts of the earth fit
for settlement by a white race, can no longer maintain its independence,
there must be some impartial Power which can say, “This rich potential
colony ought not to go to a State like France, with two similar colonies
already under its flag and a dwindling population at home, but rather to
a State like Germany, with no such colony of her own, despite her teeming
population, her great birth-rate, her vigorous and expansive commerce.”
For such problems as this there is no solution in the quasi-legal
processes of arbitration. The fundamental fact in the European history
of the last twenty years has been the restless search of Germany for
colonies and fields of exploitation. She felt her way in South Africa;
the British Empire expanded to exclude her. She turned a timid glance to
Brazil; the Monroe Doctrine was the flaming sword at the gate of that
Paradise. She coveted Morocco; the British navy cleared its decks. She
penetrated Turkey down the spine of the Bagdad Railway; she was met at
the Gulf with opposing sea-power. A League of the Satisfied might appeal
to London and Paris and Petrograd. But Berlin will ask, “What hope does
it offer to me that when my population is still denser, my industry still
more expansive, my need for markets and fields of exploitation for my
capital even more clamant than it is to-day, your League of Peace will
provide me with an outlet? You bar the future, and you call it peace.”
[Sidenote: The Philadelphia Conference.]
The recent Philadelphia conference on The League to Enforce Peace was
extraordinarily sensible because it recognized so clearly its own
limitations. It did not propose to stop the war. It did not urge anybody
to act before he was ready to act. It did not try to stampede our
government or any European government into some theoretical program. It
tried merely to focus the ideas which have been most common in England
and America during the last ten months. Under impressive circumstances,
in a hall filled with noble memories, it crystallized a number of vague
ideas into an hypothesis. The conference was visibly trying to reach
some minimum agreement for the purpose of clarifying the thinking of
individuals and groups all over the world.
Nobody is expected to act upon the resolutions, but everybody is
expected to give what thought and knowledge and imagination he may have
towards maturing the intentions which they expressed. The conference
did what every person must do constantly for himself whenever he is
trying to think out a long and complex problem. It stopped for breath
and for a renewal of faith; it made a tentative proposal as a guide
for the thought which is to follow. With great sanity it took no
doctrinaire position, laid down no rule, such as peace-at-any-price,
honor-cannot-be-arbitrated, sovereignty-is-one-and-indivisible, or any
of the other assumptions which obscure pacifist and militarist argument.
The delegates in Philadelphia were scientific in their spirit; they did
not even attempt that over-precise definition of the final end which
always results in the misleading use of theory. They were not doctors who
begin their study of disease by trying to define the ideal healthy man,
they were not political doctrinaires who begin by defining the ideally
peaceful world. They were agreed, as doctors are agreed, that a sounder
organic constitution is required, and that pain and suffering should be
lessened as much as possible, but they did not attempt to say that they
would not inflict pain to cure pain, or wage war to preserve the peace.
The idea which the delegates had uppermost in their thoughts was a
league of nations that should give power to international law. It is an
extension of The Hague plan by which the nations attempt not only to set
up a court, but to compel those who have a dispute to go to the court.
As we understand the resolutions, they do not take the added step of
agreeing to enforce the decision of the court.
The idea is based on a tremendous compromise, as our own history shows.
We were once a league of foreign States, suspicious of common action
and jealous of each sovereign prerogative. On the greatest issue of our
history we fought our greatest war, and the States which represented
union and federalism put an end once for all to the unlimited sovereignty
of any individual State. Our Civil War established the supremacy of the
federal power over the States.
[Sidenote: A League to back international law.]
The United States of the World would face the same problem, though
on a much more difficult scale. It will find that a court to adjust
mistakes is not enough, for the really important conflicts that provoke
war are not “justiciable.” They are matters upon which a policy has
to be declared—upon which, in brief, legislation is needed. Some kind
of legislature a League of Peace would have to establish, and with a
legislature and court would have to go an executive. This would open up
the problem of representation, of the large and populous State as against
the small ones, of the “satisfied Powers” against the “unsatisfied.”
For it is clear that the British Empire will not consent to give to
Montenegro equal representation, or the United States to Venezuela. Here
will be the question of conflicts between international and national
legislation, similar to the conflicts which our Supreme Court is called
upon to settle. All the problems of home rule, such as that of Ireland
within the Empire, and of Ulster within Ireland, would have to be met in
territory like that of the Balkans, by the League of Peace. It would have
to determine whether, for example, the sovereignty of a national India
was an internal question for the British Empire, or a legitimate subject
for international settlement.
[Sidenote: The business of such a League.]
The League would have to work out the problem of unexploited territories,
of weaker peoples, and of disorderly States. Just as our original
Union had the whole West to organize, so the League would have Africa,
large parts of Asia, and the middle Americas as a kind of international
domain. It would have to meet those who want merely to exploit, and to
support those who are liberal enough to throw about weaker peoples that
protection under which they can really grow to freedom. Nor would that
be all. The League would have to legislate about concessions, trading
rights, tariffs, about spheres of influence, about the use of great ocean
and land highways. As soon as it grappled with the economic aspects of
diplomacy, it would find, just as our government found, that interstate
commerce cannot be regulated satisfactorily by conflicting state
interests.
In other words, there is no stopping short at a league to prevent war.
Such a league would either grow to a world federalism, or it would break
up in civil war. But that, far from being an argument against the League,
is the strongest possible argument for it. It is the first step towards
a closer world organization, and once that step is taken, the world will
have to choose between taking some of the next steps and returning to the
anarchy of sovereign nationalities. The vast implications of the League
of Peace are what make it important. And its real service to mankind
may well be that it will establish the first rallying point of a world
citizenship.
[Sidenote: It would mean a new world-federalism.]
The development of such a citizenship is one of the great moral
and educational problems of this century. It cannot mean a vague
cosmopolitanism. It must mean the training of people who have learned
to modify their national policies so that these do not make impossible
an international allegiance. This war has offered us an example of such
citizenship. The Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders who are
fighting in Flanders and at the Dardanelles are living and dying for
the largest political organization the world has so far known. Their
allegiance in the British Empire is to a State which embraces one-quarter
of the human race. Never before in history have men been loyal to so
great and so diversified a unit. They have literally come from all the
ends of the earth to preserve a union of democracies. They have shown by
example what any World League most needs to know, that federalism on a
grand scale is not an idle dream.
_The New Republic, March 20 and June 26, 1915._
THE ECONOMIC BOYCOTT
[Sidenote: The nations have a powerful non-military weapon.]
In the discussion of an International Executive entrusted with powers
to compel the fulfilment of treaty obligations, it must not be assumed
that coercion can only be exercised by the employment of armed force.
The boycott is a weapon which could be employed with paralyzing power
by a circle of nations upon an offender against the public law of the
world. No nation to-day, least of all the great industrial and military
Powers, is or can become socially and economically self-sufficient. It
depends in countless ways upon intercourse with other nations. If all
or most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it 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
interstate railway trains stopped at his frontiers; if no foreign ships
entered his ports, and ships carrying his flag 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 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.
[Sidenote: But effective use requires co-operation. And a boycott injures
also those who apply it.]
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
organized pressure upon its Government to withdraw from so intolerable
a position and to return to its international allegiance. It may be
said, Why is it that such a powerful weapon of such obvious efficacy has
never been applied? The answer is that the conditions for its rapid and
concerted application have never hitherto existed. For in order that it
may be effective, a considerable number of nations must have previously
undertaken to apply it simultaneously and by common action. And, what
is more, each nation must have confidence in the _bona fides_ of the
intention of other nations to apply it. For the detailed application of
the boycott, in most points, must of necessity remain in the hands of
the several national Governments. Here comes the practical difficulty.
Every boycott has a certain injurious rebound. It hits back the nation
that applies it. The injury of suspended intercourse is, of course, not
equal, otherwise the process would be futile. If the whole circle of
A’s neighbors boycott him, each suffers half the loss of his separate
intercourse with A, but A suffers this loss multiplied by the number of
his neighbors. Now if A’s intercourse with all his neighbors is of equal
magnitude, each of them can probably afford easily to bear the sacrifice
involved in the boycott, trusting to the early effect of their action
in bringing A to terms. But if one or two of A’s neighbors are in much
closer relations with A than the others, and if, as may be the case,
they are getting more advantage from this intercourse than A, the risk
or sacrifice they are called upon to undergo will be proportionately
greater. They must bear the chief brunt of a policy in the adoption of
which they have not the determinant voice.
Take, for example, the case of Germany. An all-round boycott applied to
her would evidently cause more damaging reactions to Holland, Belgium,
and Denmark than to any of the greater nations whose united voice might
have determined its application. The injury to Holland, in particular,
might in the first instance be almost as grave as that sustained by
Germany, the supposed object of the boycott. It would evidently be
necessary to make provision against this unequal incidence by devising a
system of compensations or indemnity to meet the case of such a special
injury or sacrifice.
A brief allusion to the other side of the objection will suffice, viz.,
the fact that any such boycott would be far less potent or immediate
in its pressure against some nations than against others. While Great
Britain would have to yield at once to the threat of such pressure,
Russia, or even the United States, could stand out for a considerable
time, and China might even regard the boycott as a blessing. But it is
pretty evident that in the long run no civilized nation could endure such
isolation, and that this weapon is one which the League might in certain
cases advantageously employ.
[Sidenote: Other difficulties.]
Other aspects of the social-economic boycott raise other difficulties.
While certain modes and paths of intercourse lie directly under the
control of the Governments of the cooperating States, others belong to
private enterprise. Though postal, railway, and telegraphic intercourse
could be cut off easily by agreements between Governments, private
trading could not so easily be stopped. It is not found a simple matter
to stop all trading between members of nations actually at war when
national sentiment sides strongly with the legal prohibition. It might
be much more difficult to prevent all commercial intercourse for private
gain when there was no special hostility between the two nations in
question. But this is, after all, only a minor difficulty. Provided that
the respective Governments were prepared to use their normal powers of
control over the principal modes of communication and of transport, the
potency of the boycott so established would appear exceedingly effective.
It involves, however, a risk which needs recognition. The extreme
pressure of the boycott might lead to forcible reprisals on the part of
the boycotted State which would, in fact, precipitate a war. Declaring
what would be in effect a blockade by sea and land, it might be necessary
for the League to patrol the seas in order to stop “illegal traffic,”
and to keep some force along the land frontiers for general purposes.
A boycotted nation might, in the stress and anger of the case, begin
hostilities against those of its neighbors who were most active in the
operations of the boycott. In that event the economic boycott would have
to be supported by armed pressure. This would also be the case where the
breach of international law against which action was taken consisted,
not in refusing to arbitrate or conciliate an issue but in an actual
opening of hostilities. Such an act of war, directed necessarily against
some one or more States, could not be met merely by a boycott. It would
involve armed cooperation as well, the economic boycott forming an
accompaniment.
[Sidenote: International Bank would strengthen League.]
There is another method of bringing financial pressure upon a
law-breaking State which deserves consideration. It is put forward in
the following terms by Mr. F. N. Keen in his able little book, “The
World in Alliance”: “The States comprised in the international scheme
might be required to keep deposited with, or under the control of,
the International Council sums of money, proportioned in some way to
their relative populations or financial resources, which might be made
available to answer international obligations, and an international
bank might be organized, which would facilitate the giving of security
by States to the International Council for the performance of their
obligations and the enforcement of payments between one State and another
(as well as probably assisting in the creation of an international
currency and discharging other useful international functions).”
The organized concentration of international finance by the formation
of an international bank is a line of action which might immensely
strengthen that body of pacific forces the rising importance of which
Mr. Norman Angell has so effectively expounded. It might consolidate to
an almost incalculable degree the effective unity of the International
League by placing under it the solid foundation of world-peace, while
the power which such an institution would wield, either for purposes of
fiscal or financial boycott, would be enormous.
[Sidenote: The international police force.]
But however highly we estimate the potentialities of the boycott as
a valuable adjunct to the pressure of public opinion in compelling
obedience to treaty obligations, it is idle to pretend that the
confidence required to induce the chief nations to rely upon the due
performance of these obligations by all their co-signatories will be
possible without placing at their disposal, for use in the last resort,
an adequate armed force to break the resistance of an armed law-breaking
State. Somewhere behind international law there must be placed a power of
international compulsion by arms. If that force were really adequate, it
is probable that it would never be necessary to employ it for any purpose
save that of repelling invasions or dangerous disorders on the part of
outsiders. Its existence and the knowledge of its presence might suffice
to restrain the aggressive or lawless tendencies which will survive in
members of the League. But in the beginnings of the organization of
international society it is at least possible, perhaps likely, that some
dangerous outbreak of the old spirit of state-absolutism should occur,
and that some arrogant or greedy Power, within the circle of the League,
might endeavor to defy the public law.
For the States entering such a League will be of various grades of
political development: some may enter with reluctance and rather because
they fear to be left out than because they believe in or desire the
success of the League. It is idle to imagine that a society starting with
so little inner unity of status and of purpose can dispense entirely
with the backing of physical force with which the most highly evolved of
national societies has been unable to dispense.
[Sidenote: How constituted.]
What form, then, should the required international force take, and who
should exercise it?
The proposal to endow some executive international body with the power
of levying and maintaining a new land and sea force, superior to that
of any Power or combination it may be called upon to meet, scarcely
merits consideration. Apart from the hopelessness of getting the Powers
to consent to set up a Super-State upon this basis, the mere suggestion
of curing militarism by creating a large additional army and navy would
be intolerable. Nor is it any more reasonable to expect the Powers
to abandon their separate national forces, simply contributing their
quota towards an international force under the permanent control of an
International Executive. No such abandonment of sovereign power, no such
complete confidence in the new internationalism, could for a long time
to come be even contemplated. Each nation would insist upon retaining
within its own territory and at its own disposal the forces necessary to
preserve internal order and to meet at the outset any sudden attack made
from outside. It is evident, in other words, that the forces required
by the International League in the last resort, for the maintenance of
public law and the repression of breaches of the treaty, must be composed
of contingents drawn upon some agreed plan from the national forces
and placed for the work in hand at the disposal of an international
command. Such armed cooperation is, of course, not unknown. Several times
within recent years concerted action has been taken by several European
Powers, and though the Pekin expedition in 1900 cannot be regarded as
a very favorable example, it illustrates the willingness of Powers to
act together for some common end which seems to them of sufficient
importance. Is it too much to expect that the nations entering the
Confederation will realize with sufficient clearness the importance of
preserving the integrity of their international agreement to be willing
to entrust a permanent executive with the duty of commandeering the
forces necessary to achieve this purpose when they may be required?
[Sidenote: Armies and navies must be held in trust for the
world-community. Each nation would get more security at less cost.]
It will doubtless be objected that there is a world of difference between
the occasional willingness of a group of Powers to take concerted action
upon a particular occasion, for which each reserves full liberty of
determination as to whether and to what extent it will cooperate, and
the proposal before us. It is absurd, we shall be told, to expect that
States bred in the sense of sovereignty and military pride will seriously
entertain a proposal which may bring them into war in a quarrel not
specifically theirs and compel them to furnish troops to serve under
an international staff. But many events that have seemed as absurd
are brought to pass. A few decades ago nothing would have seemed more
absurd than to suppose that our nation would be willing to equip an
Expeditionary Force of several million men to operate upon the Continent
under the supreme control of a French general. Whether, in fact, such
cooperation as we here desiderate is feasible at any early period
will depend upon two factors: first, the realization on the part of
Governments and peoples of the civilized world of the supreme importance
of the issue at stake in this endeavor to lay a strong foundation for
the society of nations; secondly, the diminution in the influence of
militarism and navalism as factors in national life that is likely to
occur if sufficient belief in the permanence and efficacy of the new
arrangement is once secured. If nations can be brought to believe that
national armies and navies are too dangerous toys to be entrusted to the
indiscretion of the national statesmen and generals, and are only safe
if they are held in trust for the wider world community, this conviction
will modify the surviving sentiments of national pride and national
pugnacity and make it easier to accept the new international status.
Moreover, if, as the first-fruits of the new order, a sensible reduction
of national armaments can be achieved, this lessening of the part which
armed force plays within each national economy will be attended by a
corresponding increase in the willingness to place the reduced forces
at the international disposal. For the root motive of the international
policy is the desire of each nation to get a larger amount of security
at a smaller cost than under the old order. Those, therefore, who
confidently assert that States will not consent on any terms to entrust
their national forces to an international command for the maintenance of
the treaty obligations under the proposed scheme in effect simply assert
the permanency of the reign of unreason in the relations between States.
For though the general agreement of States to submit their disagreements
to processes of arbitration and conciliation with pledges to abide by
the results would be a considerable advance towards better international
relations, even if no sanction beyond the force of public opinion existed
to enforce the fulfilment of the obligations, it would not suffice to
establish such confidence in future peace as to secure any sensible and
simultaneous reduction of armed preparations. No Government would consent
to any weakening of its national forces so long as there was danger
that some Power might repudiate its treaty obligations. This being the
case, the burdens and the perilous influences of militarism and navalism
would remain entrenched as strongly as before in the European system,
advertising, by their very presence, the lack of faith in the efficacy
of the new pacific arrangements. So long as these national armaments
remained unchecked the old conception of State absolutism would still
survive. There would still be danger of militarist Governments intriguing
for aggression or defense in new groupings, and new efforts to tip the
balance of armed power in their favor.
It is ultimately to the dread and despair of this alternative that I look
for the motive-power to induce nations to make the abatements of national
separatism necessary to establish an international society. Whether the
end of this war will leave these motives sufficiently powerful to achieve
this object will probably depend upon the degree of enlightenment among
mankind at large upon the old ideas of States and statecraft.
_J. A. Hobson, “Toward International Government,” pp. 90-100._
ECONOMIC COERCION
[Sidenote: There must be effective penalties for aggression.]
I want to suggest here that the forces of Europe will not be readily
deterrent of aggression until the following conditions at least are
fulfilled: (a) The forces placed behind a policy the first object of
which shall be to deter aggression; (b) aggression so defined as to have
no reference to the merits of a dispute between two nations or groups,
but to consist simply in taking any belligerent action to enforce a
State’s claim against another without first having submitted that claim
to international enquiry; (c) the economic pressure which is an essential
part of military operations rendered effective by the cooperation of
States which do not necessarily give military aid at all; (d) economic
pressure so organized as to be capable of prolongation beyond the period
of military operations; and (e) the penalties attaching to aggression
made so plain as to be realized beforehand by any people whose government
tends to drift towards aggression.
If the new Congress of Vienna is effective, these conditions will be
fulfilled.
[Sidenote: Offending nation could be outlawed.]
Any arrangement which includes them would partake of the nature of a
league of mutual guarantee of integrity, and would be one in which there
would be fair hope of economic pressure gradually replacing military
force as the compelling sanction. Economic pressure might be that
first felt if the outstanding feature of the arrangement were that any
constituent State resorting to hostilities as the result of a difference
with another, not previously submitted to an international court of
enquiry, by that fact caused boycott or non-intercourse to be proclaimed
and maintained against it by the whole group. This would not prevent
certain members of the group from carrying on military operations, as
well, against it. Some of the group would go to war in the military
sense—all in the economic sense; the respective rôles would be so
distributed as to secure the most effective action. From the moment of
the offending nation’s defiance of the international agreement to which
it had been a party, its ships could enter no civilized ports outside
its own, nor leave them. Payment of debts to it would be withheld; the
commercial paper of its citizens would not be discounted; its citizens
could not travel in any civilized country in the world, their passports
being no longer recognized.
Thus, the outlaw nation could neither receive from nor send to the
outside world material or communication of any kind—neither food nor
raw material of manufacture, nor letters, nor cables. Money due to him
throughout the world would be sequestrated for disposal finally as the
international court’s judgment should direct; and that rule would apply
to royalties on patents and publications, and would, of course, involve
precautionary seizure or sequestration of all property—ships, goods, bank
balances, business—held by that nation’s citizens abroad.
It is doubtful whether at the present stage of international
understanding this arrangement could be carried beyond the point of using
it as a means to secure delay for enquiry in international disputes.
Its use as a sanction for the judgments of international tribunals will
probably require a wider agreement as to the foundations of international
law than at present exists. But a union of Christendom on the basis of
common action against aggression would be a very great step to the more
ambitious plans.
[Sidenote: Terms of outlawry: the Fabian plan.]
It has, however, been suggested (by the Fabian Society) to use this
method as a sanction for the judgment of an international court in the
following terms:
In the event of non-compliance with any decision or decree or injunction
of the International High Court, or of non-payment of the damages,
compensation, or fine within the time specified for such payment, the
Court may decree execution and may call upon the Constituent States or
upon some or any of them, to put in operation, after duly published
notice, for such period and under such conditions as may be arranged, the
following sanctions:
(a) To prohibit all postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and wireless
communication with the recalcitrant State;
(b) To prohibit all passenger traffic (other than the exit of
foreigners), whether by ship, railway, canal, or road, to or from the
recalcitrant State;
(c) To prohibit the entrance into any port of the Constituent States
of any of the ships registered as belonging to the recalcitrant State,
except so far as may be necessary for any of them to seek safety, in
which case such ship or ships shall be interned;
(d) To prohibit the payment of any debts due to the citizens, companies,
or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant State, or to its
national Government; and, if thought fit, to direct that payment of such
debts shall be made only to one or other of the Constituent Governments,
which shall give a good and legally valid discharge for the same, and
shall account for the net proceeds thereof to the International High
Court;
(e) To lay an embargo on any or all ships within the jurisdiction of such
Constituent State or States registered as belonging to the recalcitrant
State;
(f) To prohibit any lending of capital or other moneys to the citizens,
companies, or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant State, or
to its national Government;
(g) To prohibit the issue or dealing in or quotation on the Stock
Exchange or in the press of any new loans, debentures, shares, notes, or
securities of any kind by any of the citizens, companies or subordinate
administrations of the recalcitrant State, or of its national Government;
(h) To prohibit all imports, or certain specified imports, coming from
the recalcitrant State, or originating within it;
(i) To prohibit all exports, or certain specified exports consigned
directly to the recalcitrant State, or destined for it.
[Sidenote: Co-operation must be organized as part of international law.]
It should be noted that if the future European coalition means business
at all in giving permanent effect to its settlement provisions, the chief
Powers would be committed, during any period of war, by virtue of their
military obligations, to everything contained in the plan just outlined.
All that the project under discussion involves in addition is that (1)
certain States interested in the observance of public right, but which,
by their circumstances, are not suited to military cooperation, should
give economic aid by taking part in the embargo arrangements. They should
not be neutral, but should refuse intercourse with the recalcitrant State
while according it to the others. (2) That such cooperation should be
duly organized beforehand by public arrangement and be recognized as
part of the normal measures of international public safety and, being
duly recognized in this way, should become part of international law—an
amended law in so far as the rules of neutrality are concerned. (3) That
the arrangements should include provisions for prolonging embargo or
discrimination against an offending State after the period of military
operations had ceased.
[Sidenote: Boycott would threaten offending nation after the war.]
The first point that occurs to one, of course, in considering such a plan
is that it has proven ineffective in the present war since this condition
of non-intercourse is exactly that in which Germany now finds herself,
and it is not at all effective.
To which I reply:
1. That Germany, as already pointed out, is not yet subject to a
condition of complete non-intercourse, since from the beginning of
the war she has been receiving her mail and cables and maintaining
communication with the outside world, morally an immensely important
factor. Nor is it entirely moral. Large supplies have, despite the naval
blockade, come to her through Scandinavia and Holland.
2. That, though of slow operation, it is the economic factor which in
the end will be the decisive one in the operations against Germany; as
the ring tightens and a necessary raw material like cotton is absolutely
excluded, the time will come when this fact will tell most heavily.
If the non-intercourse had been world-organized the effect would have
operated from the first. Incidentally, of course, America and England,
between them, control the cotton of the world.
3. The effect of the suggested embargo, boycott or economic pressure
would be most decisive as a deterrent to aggression, not so much by what
it might be able to accomplish during a war as by what its prolongation
would mean to the aggressor afterwards.
_Norman Angell, “The World’s Highway,” pp. 318-324._
WORLD-ORGANIZATION AND PEACE
[Sidenote: Types of social organization.]
The end of armed conflict is conceivable as the result of either of two
achievements. Permanent peace may come either upon the establishment of
successful means for the settlement of disputes or upon the elimination
of the causes which produce disputes. This paper is limited to discussion
of the second of these alternatives....
In large-scale organizations purposefully created because of their
utility, history discloses few in which that utility, in its broader
aspect, has been appreciated by all of the cooperating members. Only
in organizations approaching a pure democracy has an approximation to
such conditions been attained. In other forms of organization, force
or reward has been employed to gain the cooperation of persons outside
a limited number of organizers, who alone have appreciated the full
utility of organization. Even in democracies, however, when population
is too large for all to participate in government, it is possible only
for the majority of the members of the organization to exercise control
over general policies; executive functions are of necessity delegated.
Thus three sub-forms of the utility type of organization are to be
distinguished. They may be termed respectively the organizer-force, the
organizer-reward, and the democratic-control-expert-executive forms.
Brief analysis and appeal to history will serve to indicate the relative
stability of these forms, both with respect to each other and to the
sympathy type of organization.
[Sidenote: Peace cannot come from the organizer-force system.]
Of the organizer-force form the slavery system and the militaristic
empire are examples. Neither of these systems, however, has inherent
stability. Both run the danger of revolt. The militaristic empire breaks
down sooner or later because unlikeness of peripheral regions causes
local patriotism to assert itself whenever there is possibility of
success. Slavery does not survive the growth of intelligence. Governments
of the organizer-force form, moreover, have to face the constant threat
of revolution. If Germany be cited as a possible exception, the reply
is, that special conditions have stimulated the loyalty of the Germans
to their sovereign. Germany was unified but recently and then only
by war. Her people have not yet wholly overcome the distrust of one
another engendered by long-standing local differences. Germany has thus
required a strong hand to create and to preserve her unity. In addition,
the Germans, not altogether without reason, have believed themselves
surrounded by hostile nations. These conditions sufficiently account for
the exception. It must not be overlooked, however, that even in Germany
there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the form of organization
of her government. Thus the briefest examination of the organizer-force
form of organization discloses the futility of expecting permanent
international peace to result from an extension of this form throughout
the world. Even in its local manifestations this form exhibits inherent
instability and lack of harmony.
[Sidenote: The organizer-reward and democratic systems.]
The organizer-reward form of organization also appears to have its own
peculiar tendency towards instability. This was true of the feudal
systems of the past, and is true of the great business corporations of
to-day, both of which are examples of the organizer-reward form. In
the feudal system the reward offered by the organizers in return for
service was protection; in modern industry the reward is a money wage. In
both cases, however, when subordinate members of the organization have
been ignorant, there has been some tendency towards the exploitation
as well as the utilization of such members. To the extent, however,
that intelligence has developed, there has been less and less voluntary
continuance of organizations whose utility has been thought by the
subordinate members to be limited to one class in the organization.
Force has been met by force. Since intelligence is increasing, it is not
fortuitous that the great internal problem of advanced nations is the
control of such exploitive industry as exists, while the great political
problem of less advanced nations is the struggle for democracy. In both
cases the struggle is to prevent the organizer-reward form from becoming
the organizer-force form and to replace the instability and the lack of
harmony of these forms by the greater stability and greater harmony of
the democratic-control-expert-executive form. Far more than is the case
in the other utility forms, the democratic form directs its policies with
a view to the welfare of all its members. Minorities are represented
on the executive staff. All members of the organization participate in
control. The danger of dissatisfaction on the part of non-executive
members is reduced to a minimum.
[Sidenote: National homogeneity means strength.]
The most striking fact, however, with respect to the question of the
relative stability and harmony of the various forms of organization
is that the largest and the most permanent relatively harmonious
organizations that have appeared among men are those great modern nations
whose inhabitants live in a unified area of characterization and are
essentially alike in language, race, customs, traditions and religion.
Homogeneity in all these respects, it is true, does not as yet exist
even on a national scale and there is certainly no prospect of such
homogeneity on a world scale in the near future. These considerations
must not blind us to the fact, however, that England, France, Spain,
Germany, Russia, Italy, the Scandinavian nations, the United States,
Japan and China—the largest and internally the most harmonious
organizations yet known to man—are each composed of individuals the
vast majority of whom are relatively alike in language, customs and
traditions, and for the most part in race and religion. Nations that
are markedly heterogeneous in the characteristics mentioned, such as
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Balkan States and European Turkey,
are notoriously unstable. Furthermore, the stability possessed by the
various utility-form organizations that exist within or among the stable
nations of the world is, in large part, the result of the stability and
permanence of the nations themselves. The stability of all three of the
utility forms thus rests upon the inherent stability of the sympathy type
of organization.
If the foregoing analysis be correct, certain propositions of great
importance for the problem of international peace may now be stated.
First, nationality on the basis of sympathy is likely to persist
for an indefinite period. Second, because of the ignorance of the
inhabitants of a number of important nations, the organizer-force and
the organizer-reward forms of government and of business organization
are also likely to persist, for a considerable period, in various parts
of the globe. Third, where the organizer-force or organizer-reward form
of organization is superimposed on nationality, readiness to maintain
harmony with other national groups can exist only when such international
harmony is to the interest of the organizer class in each of such
nations. Where the democratic-control-expert-executive form prevails,
readiness to maintain harmony with other national groups can exist only
when such international harmony is to the interest of each nation so
organized, taken as a whole.
[Sidenote: Peace will follow increasing like-mindedness among the
nations.]
These propositions mean that, under present conditions, permanent
world peace can be produced only if in the organizer-force and in the
organizer-reward nations the organizer is less interested in personal
fame than in the welfare of the whole organization, if the organizing
class does not seek aggrandizement or if the organizing class is
willing to permit a peaceful transition within the nation to the
democratic-control-expert-executive form of organization rather than to
seek perpetuation of its own control through foreign war. They mean also
that such peace can be maintained only if democratic nations can be kept
free from that trooping of emotion which sometimes suddenly sweeps vast
bodies of men into unreasoning demand for aggressive action, and if the
interests of such nations lead them to desire international peace....
_Let there be produced sufficient likeness among the peoples of the
world, and harmonious organization based on sympathy will follow of
itself._ If there be created a sufficient likeness among all peoples in
ideals of progress, in the desire for the betterment of the entire human
race, and in other equally important mental and moral respects, then
world harmony, based on sympathy, will ultimately develop in the same
way that the present harmony within homogeneous nations has resulted, in
large part, from a sympathy spontaneously created by resemblance in race,
language, religion and customs.
That final permanent international peace can come, however, only on the
basis of world-wide like-mindedness is the chief contention of this
essay. If this contention is correct, advocates of international peace
must not only adopt policies calculated to produce like-mindedness,
but must not shrink from the endeavor to produce the central executive
organization—the natural result of like-mindedness, and in itself, if
established, a creator of like-mindedness.
From the standpoint of producing like-mindedness it is of comparatively
small moment what one of a number of possible projects is used for the
initial attempt. It is of supreme importance only that the project chosen
should be the one most likely to succeed in evolving common response and
cooperation.
[Sidenote: Action be taken towards securing this like-mindedness.]
The practical suggestions which follow, therefore, are based on these
two notions: first, the desirability of creating like-mindedness among
the peoples of the world on a plane above race, religion, language and
customs; and second, the desirability of creating a central executive
organization, so far as possible responsible to the peoples behind each
national government, rather than responsible to constituent governments.
They suggest action on the basis of combining the two most stable forms
of harmonious organization, namely, the sympathy form growing out of
like-mindedness, and the democratic-control-expert-executive form of the
utility type.
The first suggestion under the principles thus outlined is that there
be established a world consular staff, to assume some at least of the
functions of the present national consular services. The first duty
undertaken by a world consular service would be to systematize, for
the benefit of business the world over, such investigations as are now
carried on in a somewhat haphazard way by each national consular service.
By centralization, much duplication of effort would be eliminated and a
much more comprehensive plan of investigation carried out. The results,
as now, would be available for all business men of all nationalities.
From the beginning, so far as possible, the chief executives of such a
consular staff should be elected by the people of each nation, rather
than appointed by governments—the purpose of this being to create in each
voter the world over, some sense of participation in a world-undertaking,
and to some extent a sympathy with other voters the world over. The
cost both of the consular service and of the election of the executive
officers of the service should be met, not by appropriations from
national governments, but by a fixed percentage of the revenues of each
nation. The usefulness of the service itself to all the people of the
world would be, eventually, the guarantee that the contribution of this
percentage would be maintained. Proposed changes in the percentage would
ultimately have to be submitted to the voters of all peoples.
[Sidenote: A world consular service.]
The suggestion as thus outlined is an ideal not likely to be soon
realized, but it is possible that some beginning toward a world consular
service could be provided for by the peace treaty to be signed at the
close of the present war. Such a beginning might well be a provisional
world-chamber of commerce, organized on the basis of constituent national
chambers, the character and organization of which should be provided
for in the treaty. The subject will hardly receive notice during the
peace negotiations, however, unless, as the result of previous publicity
and discussion, the possibilities of world organization latent in the
proposition are fully realized.
[Sidenote: World-bureaus for conservation and human betterment.]
The second suggestion for the production of world-wide like-mindedness is
that there be undertaken a world investigation into the natural resources
of the earth, and that a central world-conservation investigation
commission be created. At the present time the conservation movement is
organized on national rather than on world-wide lines, and the natural
result is to strengthen local rather than international sympathy. The
principle of scientific management would become much more effective if
adopted from a world standpoint. Moreover, there is no reason why the
results of a world-wide conservation investigation should not produce
recommendations that, through appeals to the peoples back of the national
governments, the governments themselves would be forced to heed. The
machinery for the conservation investigation might develop out of the
world consular service or become a part of the work of that service.
The third suggestion for the production of world-wide like-mindedness is
that there be established a central bureau of advice and information on
all “human betterment” projects. Thus far we have not advanced beyond
the point of developing national bureaus of commerce and labor, hygiene,
child welfare and other similar interests, and of holding “international
congresses.” A permanent world bureau would be far more systematic in
the dissemination of knowledge of successful experiments. It would also
tend to create world sympathy. With increasing prestige the bureau would
naturally extend its functions to those of recommendation and advice to
national and local governments.
The fourth suggestion is that there be established a permanent world
commission on international migration. At the present time problems of
migration, such, for example, as those of the Japanese and Chinese to the
United States, are settled by the nations primarily interested, without
recognition of the fact that migration is essentially a world problem
in which all humanity has an interest. The local problems of migration
that arise from time to time are but a part of an age-long movement of
population which is gradually producing an equilibrium between density of
population and natural resources in every part of the world. Movements
between two nations, however, will never be settled on reasons other than
local. A world commission would at least work toward a world-policy in
this possibly the most important of world-problems.
[Sidenote: World-publicity, and world monetary-systems.]
The fifth suggestion is that these and all other projects for the
creation of the world-mind and centralized organization be furthered
by utilizing all the modern methods of the commercial “accelerator
of public opinion,” the publicity agent and the advertiser versed
in psychologically efficient methods. There should be an adequate
world-publicity service, the task of which should be to develop
like responses to the proposed projects in the populations back of
governments, and by publicity methods to develop that like-mindedness
which is essential for world-wide organization on the sympathy basis.
The development of many other projects similar to those outlined
above, it is apparent, would inevitably tend toward the production
of centralized organization with many departments. Separate world
organizations for different purposes could not long exist without
integration. The central organization would inevitably assume the duties
of the international postal union; it would create a world monetary
system; and it would assume the functions of an international court.
With increasing prestige, such an organization would gain greater and
greater moral power. Resting on like-mindedness in the populations back
of national governments, it would ultimately develop a world-loyalty
and find its recommendations enforced by the moral sense of the world.
Force, except for local police purposes, would not be needed.
[Sidenote: Peace proposals should inaugurate like-mindedness.]
The final suggestion based on the preceding analysis is that the
principle underlying these projects be adopted as at least one of the
fundamental propositions for the guidance of peace negotiators at the
close of the present war. Peace should be established not upon the
basis of the interests of victorious nations alone, nor even upon the
combined interests of victors and vanquished, but upon the basis of
the future welfare of all peoples. The inauguration of policies for
the production of like-mindedness might well be provided for in the
peace treaty itself. National boundaries should not be set on a basis
which will intensify national self-sufficiency and aloofness, but on a
basis which will encourage inter-communication and the development of
like-mindedness throughout the world. Moreover, the choice of national
representatives for the peace negotiations should include men capable
of taking the world-view rather than the exclusively nationalistic
view. Representatives of the neutral nations should be admitted to the
proceedings. A popular demand that these representatives be of the
world-mind type should be created immediately by publicity methods. So
far as possible, practical projects for the creation of the world-mind
and world-organization should be provided for in the treaty of peace,
and as a guarantee of good faith no indemnity other than a pro-rata
contribution for the maintenance of these projects should be exacted.
Provision should be made also for permanently meeting the cost of such
projects, by agreement that a definite percentage of national taxes
be set aside for the use of the world organizations created by the
treaty. In short, an authoritative and intelligent beginning toward
world-organization should be made at the close of the present war.
_A. A. Tenney, “Theories of Social Organization,
and the Problems of International Peace,”
Political Science Quarterly, March, 1915._
PART III
TOWARDS THE FUTURE
THE NEW OUTLOOK
[Sidenote: The war, a Katharsis for humanity.]
No one dare predict just what the end of this world war will be, or when
that end will come. It is possible, of course, that this cataclysm marks
the end of centuries of progress, and it is possible that man in 1914
crossed over the watershed of civilization and is now to descend on the
other side towards steadily growing barbarism and the steadily extending
rule of force. That I say is possible; but I for one am an unconquerable
optimist. I prefer to read history differently and to see in this
appalling catastrophe what the Greek called a _katharsis_, a cleansing of
the spirit. I prefer to think of it as history’s way of teaching beyond
peradventure or dispute the fallacy and the folly of the old ways and the
old policies. Surely that struggle for the balance of power which the
historian Stubbs described as the principle which gives unity to the plot
of modern history,—surely that struggle has proved its futility. Surely
we can see the vanity of Ententes and Alliances and of a division of the
world into heavily armed camps each waiting for an opportunity or for an
excuse to pounce upon the other. Surely the international politics of a
Palmerston, or a Disraeli, or a Bismarck, striking and splendid as they
were in their own way,—surely those policies are put behind us and are
outgrown forever.
A democratic federated people can teach the world democracy and the
use of the federative principle. A people devoted to civil liberty
and to international honor, no less lightly held than the honor of an
individual—that people can teach the world the foundations upon which to
rebuild the shattered fabric of international law and of broken treaties.
[Sidenote: We must think internationally!]
The outlook before the people of the United States has changed. When
Joseph Chamberlain returned from South Africa his message to the people
of Great Britain was: “You must learn to think imperially.” The message
which any American alive to the world’s situation to-day must bring to
his fellow citizens is, you must learn to think internationally! Domestic
policies and problems are perhaps no less important than they have been
in the past, but by their side and for the immediate future surpassing
them in interest and in importance are the international problems and
the international policies of the people of the United States. For those
problems and for those policies we must prepare—prepare thoughtfully,
seriously, speedily; for when the war shall be ended, we may truly say,
as Gambetta said to the French people forty-five years ago, “Now that the
danger is past, the difficulties begin.”
_Nicholas Murray Butler, Address at 147th Annual Banquet of Chamber
of Commerce of the State of New York, Nov. 18, 1915._
ABOVE THE BATTLE
[Sidenote: The tragedy and heroism of self-sacrificing youth!]
O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving
earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap
under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into
conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be
brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me. Slavs,
hastening to the aid of your race; Englishmen fighting for honor and
right; intrepid Belgians who dared to oppose the Teutonic colossus, and
defend against him the Thermopylæ of the West; Germans fighting to defend
the philosophy and the birthplace of Kant against the Cossack avalanche;
and you, above all, my young compatriots, in whom the generation of
heroes of the Revolution lives again; you, who for years have confided
your dreams to me, and now, on the verge of battle, bid me a sublime
farewell....
O my friends, may nothing mar your joy! Whatever fate has in store, you
have risen to the pinnacle of earthly life, and borne your country with
you. And you will be victorious. Your self-sacrifice, your courage, your
whole-hearted faith in your sacred cause, and the unshaken certainty
that, in defending your invaded country, you are defending the liberty
of the world—all this assures me of your victory, young armies of the
Marne and Meuse, whose names are graven henceforth in history by the side
of your elders of the Great Republic. Yet even had misfortune decreed
that you should be vanquished, and with you France itself, no people
could have aspired to a more noble death. It would have crowned the life
of that great people of the Crusades—it would have been their supreme
victory. Conquerors or conquered, living or dead, rejoice! As one of you
said to me, embracing me on the terrible threshold: “A splendid thing it
is to fight with clean hands and a pure heart, and to dispense divine
justice with one’s life.”
[Sidenote: But have the leaders done their duty by you!]
You are doing your duty, but have others done theirs? Let us be bold
and proclaim the truth to the elders of these young men, to their moral
guides, to their religious and secular leaders, to the Churches, the
great thinkers, the leaders of socialism; these living riches, these
treasures of heroism you held in your hands; for what are you squandering
them? What ideal have you held up to the devotion of these youths so
eager to sacrifice themselves? Their mutual slaughter! A European war! A
sacrilegious conflict which shows a maddened Europe ascending its funeral
pyre, and, like Hercules, destroying itself with its own hands!
And thus the three greatest nations of the West, the guardians of
civilization, rush headlong to their ruin, calling in to their aid
Cossacks, Turks, Japanese, Cingalese, Soudanese, Senegalese, Moroccans,
Egyptians, Sikhs and Sepoys—barbarians from the poles and those from the
equator, souls and bodies of all colors. It is as if the four quarters
of the Roman Empire at the time of the Tetrarchy had called upon the
barbarians of the whole universe to devour each other.
Is our civilization so solid that you do not fear to shake the pillars
on which it rests? Can you not see that all falls in upon you if one
column be shattered? Could you not have learned if not to love one
another, at least to tolerate the great virtues and the great vices of
each other? Was it not your duty to attempt—you have never attempted it
in sincerity—to settle amicably the questions which divided you, the
problem of peoples annexed against their will, the equitable division of
productive labor and the riches of the world? Must the stronger forever
darken the others with the shadow of his pride, and the others forever
unite to dissipate it? Is there no end to this bloody and puerile sport,
in which the partners change about from century to century—no end, until
the whole of humanity is exhausted thereby?
[Sidenote: The cowardice of fatalism!]
The rulers who are the criminal authors of these wars dare not accept
the responsibility for them. Each one by underhand means seeks to lay
the blame at the door of his adversary. The peoples who obey them
submissively resign themselves with the thought that a power higher than
mankind has ordered it thus. Again the venerable refrain is heard: “The
fatality of war is stronger than our wills.” The old refrain of the herd
that makes a god of its feebleness and bows down before him. Man has
invented fate, that he may make it responsible for the disorders of the
universe, those disorders which it was his duty to regulate. There is no
fatality! The only fatality is what we desire; and more often, too, what
we do not desire enough. Let each now repeat his _mea culpa_. The leaders
of thought, the Church, the Labor Parties did not desire war.... That may
be.... What then did they do to prevent it? What are they doing to put an
end to it? They are stirring up the bonfire, each one bringing his fagot.
The most striking feature in this monstrous epic, the fact without
precedent, is the unanimity for war in each of the nations engaged. An
epidemic of homicidal fury, which started in Tokio ten years ago, has
spread like a wave and overflowed the whole world. None has resisted
it; no high thought has succeeded in keeping out of the reach of this
scourge. A sort of demoniacal irony broods over this conflict of the
nations, from which, whatever its result, only a mutilated Europe can
emerge. For it is not racial passion alone which is hurling millions
of men blindly one against another, so that not even neutral countries
remain free of the dangerous thrill, but all the forces of the spirit, of
reason, of faith, of poetry, and of science, all have placed themselves
at the disposal of the armies in every State. There is not one amongst
the leaders of thought in each country who does not proclaim with
conviction that the cause of his people is the cause of God, the cause of
liberty and of human progress. And I, too, proclaim it.
Strange combats are being waged between metaphysicians, poets,
historians—Eucken against Bergson; Hauptmann against Maeterlinck; Rolland
against Hauptmann; Wells against Bernard Shaw. Kipling and D’Annunzio,
Dehmel and de Régnier sing war hymns, Barrès and Maeterlinck chant
pæans of hatred. Between a fugue of Bach and the organ which thunders
_Deutschland über Alles_, Wundt, the aged philosopher of eighty-two,
calls with his quavering voice the students of Leipzig to the holy war.
And each nation hurls at the other the name “Barbarians....”
[Sidenote: Come! Let us make a stand!]
Come, friends! Let us make a stand! Can we not resist this contagion,
whatever its nature and virulence be—whether moral epidemic or cosmic
force? Do we not fight against the plague, and strive even to repair the
disaster caused by an earthquake? Or must we bow ourselves before it,
agreeing with Luzzatti in his famous article that “_In the universal
disaster, the nations triumph_”? Shall we say with him that it is good
and reasonable that “the demon of international war, which mows down
thousands of beings, should be let loose,” so that the great and
simple truth, “love of our country,” be understood? It would seem,
then, that love of our country can flourish only through the hatred of
other countries and the massacre of those who sacrifice themselves in
the defense of them. There is in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a
Neronian dilettantism which repels me to the very depths of my being. No!
Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble
and faithful souls who also love theirs, but rather that I should honor
them and seek to unite with them for our common good....
[Sidenote: We are at heart all brothers!]
There was no reason for war between the Western nations; French,
English, and German, we are all brothers and do not hate one another.
The war-preaching press is envenomed by a minority, a minority vitally
interested in maintaining these hatreds; but our peoples, I know, ask for
peace and liberty and that alone. The real tragedy, to one situated in
the midst of the conflict and able to look down from the high plateaus of
Switzerland into all the hostile camps, is the patent fact that actually
each of the nations is being menaced in its dearest possessions—in its
honor, its independence, its life. Who has brought these plagues upon
them? Brought them to the desperate alternative of overwhelming their
adversary or dying? None other than their governments, and above all,
in my opinion, the three great culprits, the three rapacious eagles,
the three empires, the tortuous policy of the house of Austria, the
ravenous greed of Czarism, the brutality of Prussia. The worst enemy of
each nation is not without, but within its frontiers, and none has the
courage to fight against it. It is the monster of a hundred heads, the
monster named Imperialism, the will to pride and domination, which seeks
to absorb all, or subdue all, or break all, and will suffer no greatness
except itself. For the Western nations Prussian imperialism is the
most dangerous. Its hand uplifted in menace against Europe has forced
us to join in arms against this outcome of a military and feudal caste,
which is the curse not only of the rest of the world but also of Germany
itself, whose thought it has subtly poisoned. We must destroy this
first: but not this alone; the Russian autocracy too will have its turn.
Every nation to a greater or less extent has an imperialism of its own,
and whether it be military, financial, feudal, republican, social, or
intellectual, it is always the octopus sucking the best blood of Europe.
Let the free men of all the countries of Europe when this war is over
take up again the motto of Voltaire: “_Ecrasons l’infâme!_”
[Sidenote: Not revenge, but the re-establishment of justice!]
When the war is over! The evil is done now, the torrent let loose and we
cannot force it back into its channel unaided. Moreover crimes have been
committed against right, attacks on the liberties of peoples and on the
sacred treasuries of thought, which must and will be expiated. Europe
cannot pass over unheeded the violence done to the noble Belgian people,
the devastation of Malines and Louvain, sacked by modern Tillys.... But
in the name of heaven let not these crimes be expiated by similar crimes!
Let not the hideous words “vengeance” and “retaliation” be heard; for a
great nation does not revenge itself, it re-establishes justice. But let
those in whose hands lies the execution of justice show themselves worthy
of her to the end.
It is our duty to keep this before them; nor will we be passive and wait
for the fury of this conflict to spend itself. Such conduct would be
unworthy of us who have such a task before us....
[Sidenote: Take risks for the honor of humanity!]
The neutral countries are too much effaced. Confronted by unbridled force
they are inclined to believe that opinion is defeated in advance, and
the majority of thinkers in all countries share their pessimism. There
is a lack of courage here as well as of clear thinking. For just at this
time the power of opinion is immense. The most despotic of governments,
even though marching to victory, trembles before public opinion and seeks
to court it. Nothing shows this more clearly than the efforts of both
parties engaged in war, of their ministers, chancellors, sovereigns,
of the Kaiser himself turned journalist, to justify their own crimes,
and denounce the crimes of their adversary at the invisible tribunal of
humanity. Let this invisible tribunal be seen at last, let us venture to
constitute it. Ye know not your moral power, O ye of little faith! If
there be a risk, will you not take it for the honor of humanity? What
is the value of life when you have saved it at the price of all that is
worth living for?...
_Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas_....
But for us, the artists and poets, priests and thinkers of all countries,
remains another task. Even in time of war it remains a crime for finer
spirits to compromise the integrity of their thought; it is shameful to
see it serving the passion of a puerile, monstrous policy of race, a
policy scientifically absurd—since no country possesses a race wholly
pure. Such a policy, as Renan points out in his beautiful letter to
Strauss, “_can only lead to zoological wars, wars of extermination,
similar to those in which various species of rodents and carnivorous
beasts fight for their existence. This would be the end of that fertile
admixture called humanity, composed as it is of such various necessary
elements._” Humanity is a symphony of great collective souls; and he who
understands and loves it only by destroying a part of those elements,
proves himself a barbarian and shows his idea of harmony to be no better
than the idea of order another held in Warsaw.
[Sidenote: We are builders of the City of God!]
For the finer spirits of Europe there are two dwelling-places: our
earthly fatherland, and that other City of God. Of the one we are the
guests, of the other the builders. To the one let us give our lives and
our faithful hearts; but neither family, friend, nor fatherland, nor
aught that we love has power over the spirit. The spirit is the light. It
is our duty to lift it above tempests, and thrust aside the clouds which
threaten to obscure it; to build higher and stronger, dominating the
injustice and hatred of nations, the walls of that city wherein the souls
of the whole world may assemble.
I feel here how the generous heart of Switzerland is thrilled, divided
between sympathies for the various nations, and lamenting that it cannot
choose freely between them, nor even express them. I understand its
torment; but I know that this is salutary. I hope it will rise thence to
that superior joy of a harmony of races, which may be a noble example for
the rest of Europe. It is the duty of Switzerland now to stand in the
midst of the tempest, like an island of justice and of peace, where, as
in the great monasteries of the early Middle Ages, the spirit may find a
refuge from unbridled force; where the fainting swimmers of all nations,
those who are weary of hatred, may persist, in spite of all the wrongs
they have seen and suffered, in loving all men as their brothers.
I know that such thoughts have little chance of being heard to-day. Young
Europe, burning with the fever of battle, will smile with disdain and
show its fangs like a young wolf. But when the access of fever has spent
itself, wounded and less proud of its voracious heroism, it will come to
itself again.
Moreover I do not speak to convince it. I speak but to solace my
conscience ... and I know that at the same time I shall solace the
hearts of thousands of others who, in all countries, cannot or dare not
speak themselves.
_Romain Rolland, in Journal de Genève, September 15, 1914._
THE NEW IDEALISM
[Sidenote: Germany wishes lasting peace.]
What wishes may we have for the future? What tasks and what prospects
does the New Year unroll before us? Naturally, our first wish is for a
decisive victory,—a victory which will bring us an honorable peace. A
discussion of how the conditions of peace should be drawn up seems to
us premature, in fact it runs counter to our feeling; for we are still
too much under the tension and excitement of the fight to pursue such
thoughts. However, it may be said that the German people unanimously
desire a settlement which will guarantee a lasting peace and which
will prevent further wars. Moreover, the wish is general that, when it
is time for peace negotiations, not only professional diplomats, but
also representatives of the various professions and industries shall
be consulted. Just as war is an affair of the whole people, so, in its
conclusion, the voice of the whole people should have due weight.
[Sidenote: Life must be reinvigorated after the war.]
Closely bound up with the desire for an honorable peace is the hope
that the mighty spiritual movement, which the war has called forth, may
continue to influence German life after the war. This war must be the
starting-point of a new epoch. The tremendous sacrifices which it entails
will be justified only in case new life comes forth out of loss and death
and the achievements of the moment are transformed into permanent gain.
In this connection we think, first of all, of the wonderful consciousness
of unity which the war has awakened. The long history of the German
people furnishes no counterpart of such a unity of sentiment as we enjoy
to-day. We must now see to it that this unanimity of purpose is deeply
implanted in German life. Since, through common effort, so much has been
accomplished during the war, when peace has been re-established, no one
should be prevented from cooperating in the solution of our common tasks.
In the future there should be no discrimination on account of political
partisanship, whether in the pursuit of a profession or in the holding of
a public office.
But especially must we hope that the sense of belonging together,
the sense of being dependent on each other, the sense of being under
obligation to each other will persist beyond the war into peace. It is,
however, not only for the feelings of the individuals, but also for our
national life, that we should seek to win lasting gain from the storms
of the present. All the earnestness and all the mighty force, which we
have now exerted, must be used in an energetic fight against all that has
threatened to lower our standards of life.
Such a reinvigoration of German idealism parallels a similar movement
which has spread throughout the whole of humanity. Old forms of life have
often been found too narrow; they have, moreover, frequently lost their
basis in our minds. Therefore, the position of man in the universe has
seemed obscure and the purpose of his life has become very uncertain. On
the other hand, there now awakens a deep longing for the restrengthening,
deepening and inner renewal of life.
[Sidenote: German life must not be narrowly national.]
As Germans, we must consider our attitude towards the world of as much
importance as our attitude towards ourselves. We must not allow ourselves
to indulge in a narrow national life. We must not, and shall not, have
a false racial pride. On the contrary, we must ceaselessly broaden our
lives, steadily preserving our inter-relations with all mankind. Our
great nation cannot attain its proper level without keeping the whole
of humanity in mind. We wish to think highly enough of ourselves to
believe that we are capable of drawing to ourselves everything great and
good, that has arisen or shall arise anywhere, so that we may use it
in building up the ethical civilization (Wesenkultur) which our nature
demands.
_Rudolf Eucken, “German Thoughts and Wishes for the New Year, 1915.”_
THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM
[Sidenote: Patriotism is a retreat to what seems secure and protecting.]
There is another way of looking at this matter which will appeal to those
who are speculating upon the future of mankind. Any one who thinks about
the possibility of a world state is stopped to-day by the fact that there
is no world patriotism to support it. How are we to transfer allegiance
from the national to the international State?
The answer depends upon an analysis of nationality. I have described it
as a retreat to the authority and flavor of our earliest associations, as
a defensive-offensive reaction to what seems to us secure. Our loyalty
turns to what we associate with our protection and our ambitions. The
reason we are not loyal to mankind in general or to The Hague or to
internationalism is that these conceptions are cold and abstract beside
the warmth of the country and place where we were born. Impressed by
the fear of Russian invasion, the internationalism of German socialists
vanished. Internationalism offered no protection. The German army did.
To be a German was to be part of a tangible group with power; to be a
citizen of the world was to be homeless everywhere.
[Sidenote: Patriotism cries to-day for expansion.]
And yet we find Canadians and Australians and New Zealanders fighting
and dying for a thing called the British Empire, a vague, formless
organization of one-quarter of the human race. What is it that has
produced this super-national patriotism? Nothing less, it seems to me,
than a realization that the protection and growth of the Dominions is
bound up with the strength of the Empire. Home is the place where you are
safe; loyalty reaches back to the source of your security. That is why
danger has welded the British Empire instead of disintegrating it.
Imagine the Empire shattered, its navy gone, and the Dominions left to
fetch for themselves. What would Canada and Australia do? They would, it
seems to me, develop a great loyalty to the United States. They would
not face the world alone. They would have to find some larger political
organization in which they could feel secure.
In other words, loyalty overflows the national State because in the world
to-day the national State is no longer a sufficient protection. People
have got to a point in their development where isolation terrifies them.
They want to be members of a stronger group. In Europe they turned to
a system of alliances because no nation dared to stand alone. We have
turned in this country in part to an understanding with Great Britain, in
part to the Latin-American States. All of which proves that patriotism is
not a fixed quantity, that it is not attached to the map as it was drawn
when we were at school, and that it is not only capable of expansion, but
is crying for it.
Fear has almost always played a large part in welding States together.
The fear of England was a great argument for federal union under our
Constitution; the sense of weakness in the presence of unfriendly
neighbors undoubtedly helped to break down the separatism of the little
German principalities. Just as the appearance of an enemy tends to blot
out political differences within a nation, so it will often unite a
number of nations. The rise of Germany had that effect on the Great
Powers of Europe; the fear of her created a league almost coextensive
with western civilization. It covered up the feud between France and
England which comes down through the centuries; it jolted together an
understanding with Russia, the great bogy of liberals.
It is not pleasant to think of fear as one of the most powerful forces
that unify mankind. It would be more gratifying to think that cooperation
was always spontaneous and free. But the facts will not justify this
belief. The inner impulse to compose differences seems often to work
most actively when there is pressure from without. Forced by danger
to cooperate, men seem to discover the advantages of cooperation. The
Germans are daily discovering good qualities in the Turks; the British
are seeing deeper into the souls of Russians....
The only way in which, world organization can command a world patriotism
is by proving its usefulness. If it affords a protection and produces a
prosperity such as the national State cannot produce, it will begin to
draw upon the emotions of men. If they are capable of loving anything
so abstract and complicated as the British Empire, or even the United
States, they are not incapable of attaching themselves to a still larger
State. For the moment it was evident that patriotism could embrace
something more extensive and abstract than a village which a man might
know personally, world organization ceased to be an idle dream. If men
could be citizens of an empire scattered over all the seas, there was
no longer anything inconceivable about their becoming citizens of a
State which covered modern civilization. The idea has ceased to be a
psychological impossibility.
[Sidenote: Problem is to broaden the basis of loyalty.]
Our problem is to broaden the basis of loyalty. And for that task we have
considerable experience to guide us. Within a hundred and twenty-five
years we have seen the welding together of the United States, Germany,
Italy, and Austria-Hungary. We have seen small rival States converted
into members of federal unions. We have watched patriotism expand from
the local unit to the larger one. We have seen Massachusetts patriots
converted into American patriots, Bavarians into Germans, Venetians into
Italians. In the last few years we have been witnessing the growth of an
imperial patriotism within the British Empire.
[Sidenote: Loyalty will not stop at existing frontiers.]
There is, so far as I can see, not the least ground for supposing that
the broadening of loyalty must stop at the existing frontiers. The task
of the great unifiers, like Hamilton, Cavour, and Bismarck, looked just
as difficult in their day as ours does now. They had States’ rights,
sovereignty, traditional jealousy, and economic conflicts to overcome.
They conquered them. Who dares to say that we must fail?...
Loyalty is a fluctuating force, not attached by any necessity to some one
spot on the map or contained within some precise frontier. Loyalty seeks
an authority to which it can be loyal, and when it finds an authority
which gives security and progress and opportunity it fastens itself
there. The problem of world organization is to attach enough loyalty to
the immature World State to enable it to weather the inevitable attacks.
_Walter Lippmann, “The Stakes of Diplomacy,” pp. 172-188._
THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION
[Sidenote: Our task is to extend the sphere of Law.]
What hopes dare we cherish, in this hour of conflict, for the future of
civilization?
The great, the supreme task of human politics and statesmanship is to
extend the sphere of Law. Let others labor to make men cultured or
virtuous or happy. These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and
the common man. The statesman’s task is simpler. It is to enfold them in
a jurisdiction which will enable them to live the life of their soul’s
choice. The State, said the Greek philosophers, is the foundation of
the good life; but its crown rises far above mere citizenship. “There
where the State ends,” cries Nietzsche, echoing Aristotle and the great
tradition of civilized political thought, “there _men begin_. There,
where the State ends, look thither, my brothers! Do you not see the
rainbow and the bridge to the Overman?” Ever since organized society
began, the standards of the individual, the ideals of priest and teacher,
the doctrines of religion and morality, have outstripped the practise
of statesmanship. For the polestar of the statesman has not been love,
but law. His not the task of exhorting men to love one another, but the
simpler duty of enforcing the law, “Thou shalt not kill.” And in that
simple, strenuous, necessary task statesmen and political thinkers have
watched the slow extension of the power of Law, from the family to the
tribe, from the tribe to the city, from the city to the nation, from the
nation to the Commonwealth. When will Law take its next extension? When
will warfare, which is murder between individuals and “rebellion” between
groups of citizens, be equally preventable between nations by the common
law of the world?
The answer is simple. When the world has a common will, and has created a
common government to express and enforce that will.
[Sidenote: The World is already one great Society.]
In the sphere of science and invention, of industry and economics, as
Norman Angell and others have taught us, the world is already one Great
Society. For the merchant, the banker, and the stockbroker political
frontiers have been broken down. Trade and industry respond to the
reactions of a single, world-wide, nervous system. Shocks and panics
pass as freely as airmen over borders and custom-houses. And not “big
business” only, but the humblest citizen, in his search for a livelihood,
finds himself caught in the meshes of the same world-wide network.
“The widow who takes in washing,” says Graham Wallas, in his deep and
searching analysis of our contemporary life, “fails or succeeds according
to her skill in choosing starch or soda or a wringing machine under the
influence of half a dozen competing world-schemes of advertisement....
The English factory girl who is urged to join her Union, the tired old
Scotch gatekeeper with a few pounds to invest, the Galician peasant when
the emigration agent calls, the artisan in a French provincial town whose
industry is threatened by a new invention, all know that unless they
find their way among world-wide facts, which only reach them through
misleading words, they will be crushed.” The Industrial Revolution of the
past century, steam-power and electricity, the railway and the telegraph,
have knit mankind together, and made the world one place.
[Sidenote: But it lacks a common will and emotion.]
But this new Great Society is as yet formless and inarticulate. It is
not only devoid of common leadership and a common government; it lacks
even the beginnings of a common will, a common emotion, and a common
consciousness. Of the Great Society, consciously or unconsciously,
we must all perforce be members; but of the Great State, the great
World-Commonwealth, we do not yet discern the rudiments. The economic
organization of the world has outstripped the development of its
citizenship and government—the economic man, with his far-sighted vision
and scientific control of the resources of the world, must sit by and
see the work of his hands laid in ashes by contending governments and
peoples. No man can say how many generations must pass before the
platitudes of the market and the exchange pass into the current language
of politics.
In the great work which lies before the statesmen and peoples of the
world for the extension of law and common citizenship and prevention of
war there are two parallel lines of advance.
[Sidenote: The ideal of Inter-State Law must be revived.]
One road lies through the development of what is known as International,
but should more properly be called _Inter-State Law_, through the
revival, on a firmer and broader foundation, of the Concert of Europe
conceived by the Congress of Vienna just a hundred years ago—itself
a revival, on a secular basis, of the great medieval ideal of an
international Christendom, held together by Christian Law and Christian
ideals. That ideal faded away forever at the Reformation, which grouped
Europe into independent sovereign States ruled by men responsible
to no one outside their own borders. It will never be revived on an
ecclesiastical basis. Can we hope for its revival on a basis of modern
democracy, modern nationality, and modern educated public opinion? Can
Inter-State Law, hitherto a mere shadow of the majestic name it bears,
almost a matter of convention and etiquette, with no permanent tribunal
to interpret it, and no government to enforce it, be enthroned with the
necessary powers to maintain justice between the peoples and governments
of the world?
Such a Law the statesmen of Great Britain and Russia sought to impose on
Europe in 1815, to maintain a state of affairs which history has shown to
have been intolerable to the European peoples. There are those who hope
that the task can be resumed, on a better basis, at the next Congress.
“Shall we try again,” writes Professor Gilbert Murray, “to achieve
Castlereagh’s and Alexander’s ideal of a permanent Concert, pledged to
make collective war upon the peace-breaker? Surely we must. We must, at
all cost and in spite of all difficulties, because the alternative means
such unspeakable failure. We must learn to agree, we civilized nations
of Europe, or else we must perish. I believe that the chief counsel of
wisdom here is to be sure to go far enough. We need a permanent Concert,
perhaps a permanent Common Council, in which every awkward problem can be
dealt with before it has time to grow dangerous, and in which outvoted
minorities must accustom themselves to giving way.”
[Sidenote: Peace will be based on Law.]
Other utterances by public men, such as Mr. Roosevelt and our own Prime
Minister, might be cited in the same sense; but Professor Murray’s has
been chosen because he has the courage to grasp the nettle. In his
words the true position is quite clearly set forth. If Inter-State Law
is to become a reality we must “be sure to go far enough.” There is
no half-way house between Law and no Law, between Government and no
Government, between Responsibility and no Responsibility. If the new
Concert is to be effective it must be able to compel the submission of
all “awkward problems” and causes of quarrel to its permanent Tribunal
at The Hague or elsewhere; and it must be able to enforce the decision
of its tribunal, employing for the purpose, if necessary, the armed
forces of the signatory Powers as an international police. “Outvoted
minorities must accustom themselves to giving way.” It is a bland and
easy phrase; but it involves the whole question of world-government. “Men
must accustom themselves not to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth,” the earliest law-givers might have said, when the State first
intervened between individuals to make itself responsible for public
order. Peace between the Powers, as between individuals, is, no doubt,
a habit to which cantankerous Powers “must accustom themselves.” But
they will be sure to do so if there is a Law, armed with the force to be
their schoolmaster towards peaceable habits. In other words, they will do
so because they have surrendered one of the most vital elements in the
independent life of a State—the right of conducting its own policy—to the
jurisdiction of a higher Power. An Inter-State Concert, with a Judiciary
of its own and an army and navy under its own orders, is, in fact, not
an Inter-State Concert at all; it is a new State: it is, in fact, the
World-State. There is no middle course between Law and no Law: and the
essence of Statehood, as we have seen, is a Common Law....
In discussing proposals for a European Council, then, we must be quite
sure to face all that it means. But let us not reject Professor Murray’s
suggestion off-hand because of its inherent difficulties: for that men
should be discussing such schemes at all marks a significant advance
in our political thought. Only let us be quite clear as to what they
presuppose. They presuppose the supremacy, in the collective mind of
civilized mankind, of Law over Force, a definite supremacy of what may
be called the civilian as against the military ideal, not in a majority
of States, but in every State powerful enough to defy coercion. They
presuppose a world map definitely settled on lines satisfactory to the
national aspirations of the peoples. They presuppose a _status quo_
which is not simply maintained, like that after 1815, because it is a
legal fact and its disturbance would be inconvenient to the existing
rulers, but because it is inherently equitable. They presuppose a similar
democratic basis of citizenship and representation among the component
States. They presuppose, lastly, an educated public opinion incomparably
less selfish, less ignorant, less unsteady, less materialistic, and less
narrowly national than has been prevalent hitherto. Let us work and hope
for these things: let us use our best efforts to remove misunderstandings
and promote a sense of common responsibilities and common trusteeship for
civilization between the peoples of all the various sovereign States;
but meanwhile let us work also, with better hopes of immediate if less
ambitious successes, along the other parallel road of advance.
[Sidenote: We must work for “The Principle of the Commonwealth.”]
The other road may seem, in this hour of dreams and disaster, of extremes
of hope and disillusionment, a long and tedious track: it is the old slow
high road of civilization, not the short cut across the fields. It looks
forward to abiding results, not through the mechanical cooperation of
governments, but through the growth of an organic citizenship, through
the education of the nations themselves to a sense of common duty and
a common life. It looks forward, not to the definite establishment, in
our day, of the World-State, but only to the definite refutation of the
wicked theory of the mutual incompatibility of nations. It looks forward
to the expression in the outward order of the world’s government of
what we may call “the Principle of the Commonwealth,” of Lord Acton’s
great principle of the State composed of free nations, of the State as
a living body which lives through the organic union and free activity
of its several national members. And it finds its immediate field of
action in the deepening and extension of the obligations of citizenship
among the peoples of the great, free, just, peace-loving, supra-national
Commonwealths whose patriotism has been built up, not by precept and
doctrine, but on a firm foundation of older loyalties.
[Sidenote: This is a world-principle.]
The principle of the Commonwealth is not a European principle: it
is a world-principle. It does not proceed upon the expectation of a
United States of Europe; for all the Great Powers of Europe except
Austria-Hungary (and some of the smaller, such as Holland, Belgium, and
Portugal) are extra-European Powers also. Indeed if we contract our view,
with Gladstone and Bismarck and the statesmen of the last generation, to
European issues alone, we shall be ignoring the chief political problem
of our age—the contact of races and nations with wide varieties of social
experience and at different levels of civilization. It is this great and
insistent problem (call it the problem of East and West, or the problem
of the color-line) in all its difficult ramifications, political, social,
and, above all, economic, which makes the development of the principle
of the Commonwealth the most pressing political need of our age. For
the problems arising out of the contact of races and nations can never
be adjusted either by the wise action of individuals or by conflict and
warfare; they can only be solved by fair and deliberate statesmanship
within the bosom of a single State, through the recognition by both
parties of a higher claim than their own sectional interest—the claim of
a common citizenship and the interest of civilization. It is here, in the
union and collaboration of diverse races and peoples, that the principle
of the Commonwealth finds its peculiar field of operation. Without this
principle, and without its expression, however imperfect, in the British
Empire, the world would be in chaos to-day.
We cannot predict the political development of the various Great Powers
who between them control the destinies of civilization. We cannot
estimate the degree or the manner in which France, freed at last from
nearer preoccupations, will seek to embody in her vast dominion the great
civilizing principles for which her republic stands. We cannot foretell
the issue of the conflict of ideas which has swayed to and fro in Russia
between the British and the Prussian method of dealing with the problem
of nationality. Germany, Italy, Japan—here, too, we are faced by enigmas.
One other great Commonwealth remains besides the British. Upon the United
States already lies the responsibility, voluntarily assumed and, except
during a time of internal crisis, successfully discharged, of securing
peace from external foes for scores of millions of inhabitants of the
American continent. Yet with the progress of events her responsibilities
must yearly enlarge: for both the immigrant nationalities within and
the world-problems without her borders seem to summon her to a deeper
education and to wider obligations.
[Sidenote: The responsibility of the British Commonwealth to hold the
scales of Peace, and to bring home to all the meaning of Law.]
But upon the vast, ramifying, and inchoate Commonwealth of Great Britain
lies the heaviest responsibility. It is a task unequally shared between
those of her citizens who are capable of discharging it. Her task within
the Commonwealth is to maintain the common character and ideals and
to adjust the mutual relations of one quarter of the human race. Her
task without is to throw her weight into the scales of peace, and to
uphold and develop the standard and validity of inter-State agreements.
It is a task which requires, even at this time of crisis, when, by
the common sentiment of her citizens, the real nature and purpose of
the Commonwealth have become clear to us, the active thoughts of all
political students. For to bring home to all within her borders who bear
rule and responsibility, from the village headman in India and Nigeria,
the Basutu chief and the South Sea potentate, to the public opinion
of Great Britain and the self-governing Dominions, the nature of the
British Commonwealth, and the character of its citizenship and ideals,
and to study how those ideals may be better expressed in its working
institutions and executive government—that is a task to which the present
crisis beckons the minds of British citizens, a task which Britain owes
not only to herself but to mankind.
_Alfred E. Zimmern, “The War and Democracy,” pp. 371-382._
TOWARDS THE PEACE THAT SHALL LAST
[Sidenote: War must pass away like human sacrifice.]
At every stage of warfare in the past, men and women in all nations have
endeavored to abate and lessen it. Their repeated endeavors have been
answered by repeated wars, until the present war in Europe completes the
works of death, desolation, and tyranny.
In spite of this, these protests against war are destined to succeed; as
once before in the history of the race, the sentiment of pity, of respect
for human life, called a halt to senseless slaughter.
There came a time in the history of the Greek and Jewish people when a
few set their faces against _human sacrifice as a religious rite_ of
their highest faith,—bound up, like our wars, with old fealties and
solemn customs and with their most desperate fears. Humble men and women,
out of sheer affection for their kind, revolted. In face of persecution
and ridicule, they warned their countrymen that in pouring human blood
upon altars to the gods, they wrought upon their kind more irreparable
wrong than any evil against which they sought to forefend. Finally, there
came to be enough people with courage and pity sufficient to carry a
generation with them; and human sacrifice became a thing of the past.
It took the human race many centuries to rid itself of human sacrifice;
during many centuries more it relapsed again and again in periods of
national despair. So have we fallen back into warfare, and perhaps
will fall back again and again, until in self-pity, in self-defense, in
self-assertion of the right of life, not as hitherto, a few, but the
_whole people of the world_, will brook this thing no longer.
OUR RIGHT TO PROTEST
[Sidenote: We have a right to protest against war.]
By that opportunity, now ours as never before, to weigh the case against
war and to draw the counts from burning words spoken by those who
protest and who are of all peoples—_we make single judgment and complete
indictment_.
By that good fortune which has placed us outside the conflict; by that
ill fortune by which the belligerent and his rights have heretofore
bestrode the world; by mine-strewn channels, and by international codes
which offer scant redress—_we speak as people of a neutral nation_.
By the unemployed of our water-fronts, and the augmented misery of our
cities; by the financial depression which has curtailed our school
building and crippled our works of good-will; by the sluicing of human
impulse among us from channels of social development to the back-eddies
of salvage and relief—_we have a right to speak_.
By the hot anger and civil strife that we have known; by our pride,
vain-glory, and covetousness; by the struggles we have made for national
integrity and defense of our hearthstones; by our consciousness that
every instinct and motive and ideal at work in this war, however lofty or
however base, has had some counterpart in our national history and our
current life—_we can speak a common language_.
By that comradeship among nations which has made for mutual
understanding; by those inventions which have bound us in communication
and put the horrors of war at our doors; by the mechanical contrivances
which multiply and intensify those horrors; by the quickening human
sympathies which have made us sensitive to the hurts of others—_we can
speak as fellow-victims of this great oppression_.
By our heritage from each embattled nation; by our debt to them for
languages and faiths and social institutions; for science, scholarship
and invention; by the broken and desolated hearts that will come to us
when the war ends; by our kinships and our unfeigned friendships—_we can
speak as brothers_.
By all these things, we hold the present opportunity for
conscience-searching and constructive action to be an especial charge
upon us; upon the newcomers among us from the fatherlands; and upon the
joint youth of all the peoples of the two Americas.
WHAT WAR HAS DONE AND IS DOING
_Its Blights_
[Sidenote: War has blighted Life.]
War has brought low our conception of the _preciousness of human life_ as
slavery brought low our conception of human liberty.
It has benumbed our growing sense of the _nurture of life_; and at a time
when we were challenging Reichstag, Parliament, and Congress with the
needlessness of infant mortality and child labor, it entrenches a million
youths with cold and fever and impending death.
[Sidenote: It has violated humanity.]
It has thwarted the chance of our times toward the _fulfilment of life_,
and scattered like burst shrapnel the hands of the sculptors and the
violinists, the limbs of the hurdlers and swimmers, the sensitive muscles
of the mechanics and the weavers, the throats of the singers and the
interpreters, the eyes of the astronomers and the melters—every skilled
and prescient part of the human body, every type of craft and competence
of the human mind.
It has set back our promptings toward the _conservation of life_; and
in a decade when England and France and Russia, Germany and Austria and
Belgium, have been working out social insurance against the hazards of
peace, it throws back upon the world an unnumbered company of the widowed
and the fatherless, and of aged parents left bereft and destitute.
It has blocked our way toward _the ascent of life_, and in a century
which has seen the beginnings of effort to upbuild the common stock, has
cut off from parenthood the strong, the courageous and the high-spirited.
_Its Injuries_
It has in its development of armaments, pitted human flesh against
machinery.
It has wrested the power of self-defense from the hands of free-men who
wielded lance and sword and scythe, and has set them as machine-tenders
to do the bidding of their masters.
[Sidenote: It has turned effort into destruction.]
It has brought strange men to the door-sills of peaceful people; men like
their own men, bearing no grudges one against another; men snatched away
from their fields and villages where their fathers lie buried, to kill
and burn and destroy till this other people are driven from their homes
of a thousand years or sit abject and broken.
It has stripped farms and ruined self-sustaining communities, and poured
into a bewildered march for succor, the crippled and aged and bedridden,
the little children and the women great with child unborn.
It has razed the flowing lines in which the art and aspiration of earlier
generations expressed themselves, and has thus waged war upon the dead.
It has tortured and twisted the whole social fabric of the living.
It has burdened our children and our children’s children with a
staggering load of debt.
It has inundated the lowlands of the world’s economy with penury and
suffering unreckonable, hopelessly depressing standards of living already
much too low.
It has rent and trampled upon the net-work of world cooperation in trade
and craftsmanship which had made all men fellow-workers.
It has whetted a lust among neutral nations to profit by furnishing the
means to prolong its struggles.
It has blasted our new internationalism in the protection of working
women and children.
It has distracted our minds with the business of destruction and stayed
the forward reach of the builders among men.
It has conscripted physician and surgeon, summoning them from research
and the prolongation of life to the patchwork of its wreckage.
It has sucked into its blood and mire our most recent conquests over
the elements—over electricity, and air and the depths of ocean; and has
prostituted our prowess in engineering, chemistry and technology, to the
service of terror and injury.
It has bent our achievements in transportation into runways, so that
neither volcanoes nor earthquakes, nor the rat-holes of famine, but only
the plagues can match war in unbounded disaster.
_Its Wrongs_
It has in its compulsory service made patriotism a shell, empty of
liberty.
It has set up the military independent of and superior to the civil
power.
It has substituted arbitrary authority and the morals of foot-loose men
who escape identity in the common uniform, for the play of individual
conscience, and that social pressure which in household and village, in
neighborhood and State, makes for individual responsibility, for decency,
and fair play.
It has battened on apathy, unintelligence and helplessness such as
surrender the judgment and volition of nations into a few hands; and has
nullified rights and securities, such as are of inestimable value to the
people and formidable to tyrants only.
It has threatened the results of a hundred martyrdoms and revolutions,
and put in jeopardy those free governments which make possible still
newer social conquests.
It has crushed under iron heels the uprisings of civilization itself.
_Its Evils_
[Sidenote: It has poisoned intelligence.]
It has turned the towers of art and science into new Babels, so that our
philosophers, and men of letters, our physicists and geographers, our
economists and biologists and dramatists, speak in strange tongues, and
to hate each other has become a holy thing among them.
It has made were-wolves of neighboring peoples, in the imaginations of
each other.
It has put its stamp upon growing boys and girls, and taught them to hate
other children who have chanced to be born on the other side of some
man-made boundary.
It has massed and exploded the causes of strife, fostering religious
antagonisms and racial hates, inbreeding with the ugliest strains of
commercialism, perverting to its purposes the increase of over-dense
populations and their natural yearning for new opportunities for
enterprise and livelihood.
It has not only shattered men’s breasts, but loosened the black fury of
their hearts; so that in rape, and cruelty, and rage, we have ancient
brutishness trailing at the heels of all armies.
It has found a world of friends and neighbors, and substituted a world of
outlanders and aliens and enemies.
It has lessened the number of those who feel the joys and sorrows of all
peoples as of their own.
It has strangled truth and paralyzed the power and wish to face it, and
has set up monstrous and irreconcilable myths of self-justification.
It has mutilated the human spirit.
It has become a thing which passeth all understanding.
STRIKING HANDS
[Sidenote: We must join in throwing off this tyranny.]
We have heard the call from overseas of those who have appealed to men
and women of good-will in all nations to join with them in throwing off
this tyranny upon life.
We must go further; we must throw open a peace which shall be other than
a shadow of old wars and a prelude to new. We do more than plead with men
to stay their hands from killing. We hail living men. As peace-lovers, we
are charged with the sanctity of human life; as democrats and freemen we
are charged with its sovereignty.
By the eight million natives of the warring States living among us
without malice or assault one upon another, let us leave the occasions of
fighting no longer for idle war boards to decide.
By the blow our forebears struck at barbarism when they took vengeance
out of private hands, let us wrest the manufacture of armaments and
deadly weapons from the gun-mongers and powder-makers who gain by it.
By those electric currents that have cut the ground from under the old
service of diplomacy, and spread the new intelligence, let us put the ban
upon intrigue and secret treaties.
For we hold that not soldiers, nor profit-takers, nor diplomats, but the
people who suffer and bear the brunt of war should determine whether war
must be; that with ample time for investigation and publicity of its
every cause and meaning, with recourse to every avenue for mediation
and settlement abroad, war should come only by the slow process of
self-willing among men and women who solemnly publish and declare it to
be a last and sole resort.
[Sidenote: America must lead the nations.]
With our treated borderland, 3000 miles in length without fort or trench
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which has helped weld us for a century
of unbroken peace with our neighbors to the north, we would spread faith
not in entrenched camps but in open boundaries.
With the pacts of our written constitutions before us which bind our own
sovereign States in amity, we are convinced that treaty-making may be
lifted to a new and inviolable estate, and lay the foundations for that
world organization which for all time shall make for peace upon earth and
good-will among men.
With our experience in lesser conflicts in industrial life, which have
none the less embraced groups as large as armies, have torn passions and
rasped endurance to the uttermost, we can bear testimony that at the end
of such strife as cleaves to the heart of things, men are disposed to lay
the framework of their relations in larger molds than those which broke
beneath them.
With our ninety million people drawn from Alpine and Mediterranean,
Danubean, Baltic, and Slavic stocks; with a culture blended from these
different affluents, we hold that progress lies in the predominance of
none; and that the civilization of each nation needs to be refreshed by
that cross-breeding with the genius and the type of other human groups,
that blending which began on the coast lands and islands of the Ægean Sea
where European civilization first drew its sources from the Euphrates and
the Nile.
[Sidenote: We must lead through our own ideals in the war on war.]
With memories of the tyranny which provoked our Revolution, with
the travail still upon us by which we in our turn have paid for the
enslavement of a people, with the bitterness only now assuaged which
marked our period of mistrust and reconstruction, we bear witness that
boundaries should be set where not force, but justice and consanguinity
direct; and that, however boundaries fall, liberty and the flowering-out
of native cultures should be secure.
With our fair challenge to the spirit of the East and to the chivalry of
the West in standing for the open door in China when that Empire, now
turned Republic, was threatened by dismemberment, we call for the freeing
of the ports of every ocean from special privilege based on territorial
claims, throwing them open with equal chance to all who by their ability
and energy can serve new regions to their mutual benefit.
With the faith we have kept with Cuba, the regard we have shown for the
integrity of Mexico and our preparations for the independence of the
Philippine Islands, we urge the framing of a common colonial policy which
shall put down that predatory exploitation which has embroiled the West
and oppressed the East and shall stand for an opportunity for each latent
and backward race to build up according to its own genius.
By our full century of ruthless waste of forest, ore and fuel; by the
vision which has come to us in these latter days of conserving to the
permanent uses of the people, the water power and natural wealth of our
public domain, we propose the laying down of a planetary policy of
conservation.
[Sidenote: For the sake of freedom.]
By that tedium and monotony of life and labor for vast companies of
people, which when war drums sound, goads the field worker to forsake
his harvest and the wage-earner to leap from his bench, we hold that the
ways of peace should be so cast as to make stirring appeal to the heroic
qualities in men, and give common utterance to the rhythm and beauty of
national feeling.
By the joy of our people in the conquest of a continent; by the rousing
of all Europe, when the great navigators threw open the new Indies and
the New World, we stand for such a scheming-out of our joint existence
that the achieving instincts among men, not as one nation against
another, nor as one class against another, but as one generation after
another, shall have freedom to come into their own.
_Jane Addams_,
_Lillian Wald_,
_Paul U. Kellogg_.
APPENDIX
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
1. INTERNATIONAL
NEUTRAL CONFERENCE FOR CONTINUOUS MEDIATION, STOCKHOLM
[Sidenote: Ford Neutral Conference at Stockholm.]
_To the Governments, Parliaments and Peoples of the Warring Nations_:
A conference composed of delegates from six neutral countries—Denmark,
Holland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States—has been
convened at Stockholm upon the initiative of Henry Ford to work for the
achievement of an early and lasting peace, based upon principles of
justice and humanity. This conference represents no government. It has
no official sanction. It represents the good will of millions throughout
the civilized world who cannot stand idly by while the deadly combat
rages unchecked. It does not attempt to impose its judgment upon the
belligerents, but its members, as private individuals, unhampered by
considerations which restrain governments, have resolved to do everything
within their power to promote such discussion as may tend to bring the
belligerents together on just and reasonable terms.
Through a thousand channels utterances have already reached the
conference pleading that a long continuance of the struggle will mean
ruin for all, but as both sides believe that only complete victory can
decide the issue, ever new sacrifices of blood and treasure are made,
exhausting the present and impoverishing the future. Still, we are
convinced that an agreement between the warring nations might even now be
reached were certain universal principles to be accepted as a basis of
discussion; principles which cannot be violated with impunity, whatever
the military results of the war.
The first duty of a neutral conference, then, is to call attention to
those universal principles and concrete proposals upon which agreement
seems possible, and upon which there may be founded a peace that will not
only satisfy the legitimate demands of the warring nations themselves,
but also advance the welfare of humanity at large. The neutral conference
does not propose to discuss all the issues at stake. Nor does it desire
to set forth a plan for the construction of a perfect world. But it
emphasizes the universal demand that peace, when it comes, shall be real,
insuring mankind against the recurrence of a world war. Humanity demands
a lasting peace.
In presenting this appeal to governments, parliaments and peoples for
discussion and comment the neutral conference hopes that no formal
objection may prevent its sympathetic consideration both by those in
authority and by the people whom they represent.
(_A_) _Right of Nations to Decide Their Own Fate._—History demonstrates
that dispositions contrary to the wishes of the peoples concerned bring
with them the danger of future wars of liberation. Hence the acceptance
of these principles appears generally to be regarded as an essential
prerequisite to the satisfactory settlement of this war; namely, that
no transfer of territory should take place without the consent of the
population involved, and that nations should have the right to decide
their own fate.
It follows that the restoration of Belgium must first be agreed upon
before there can be an understanding between the belligerent powers.
Furthermore, the occupied French territory should be returned. A
reconsideration of the difficult Alsace-Lorraine question is also an
absolute necessity. The independence of Serbia and Montenegro should be
assured.
In its wider interpretation, the principle of the right of nations to
decide their own fate postulates the solution of a problem like the
Polish question by guaranteeing the union of the Polish nation as an
independent people. Further applications would be the adjustment of the
frontiers between Austria and Italy, as far as possible, according to
the principle of nationality; autonomy for Armenia under international
guarantee, and the solution of various national questions in the Balkans
and in Asiatic Turkey by international agreement.
(_B_) _Economic Guarantees._—Economic competition is generally admitted
to be one of the causes of the present war. Hence the demand becomes
more and more insistent that the economic activity of all peoples
should be afforded development on equal terms. The recognition of the
principle of the open door in the colonies, protectorates, and spheres
of influence would be an important step in this direction, as would also
the internationalization of certain waterways, e. g., the Dardanelles and
the Bosphorus. The German colonies ought to be returned, the exchange of
colonies made possible by satisfactory compensation, and Germany’s access
to the Near East guaranteed.
(_C_) _Freedom of the Seas._—The principle of the freedom of the seas
should be recognized.
(_D_) _Parliamentary Control of Foreign Policy._—Effective parliamentary
control of foreign policy should be established, so that secret treaties
and secret diplomacy may no longer endanger the most vital interests of
the nation.
(_E_) _International Organization._—Far more important, however, for
the welfare of humanity than the solutions thus far suggested is the
creation of an international organization, founded, upon law and justice,
which would include an agreement to submit all disputes between States
for peaceful settlement. Hence the almost universal opinion that in the
coming treaty of peace the principle of such an international order of
justice must be accepted.
(_F_) _Disarmament._—Equally important with the insistence upon an
international organization is the demand that disarmament be brought
about by international agreement.
(_G_) _A World Congress._—In order to bring about the creation of an
international order of justice it will be necessary to secure the
adherence thereto of both belligerents and neutrals. The difficulties
that result from the present catastrophe do not affect the warring
nations alone. They affect the whole world. In their settlement the
whole world should participate. A world congress should therefore be
called together. Such a congress should concern itself with more than
the immediate questions arising out of this war. Problems like that of
guaranteeing political and spiritual freedom to special nationalities
united with other peoples, though not direct issues of this war, are
nevertheless of vital importance to the future maintenance of peace.
In the foregoing an attempt has been made to suggest a possible approach
to the task of uniting again the international bonds that have been torn
asunder in this fratricide war. Whatever may be the ultimate solution,
there is abundant evidence of the growing conviction among belligerents
and neutrals alike that the hope of the world lies in the substitution
of law and order for international anarchy. The neutral conference,
therefore, feels justified in hoping that the end of this war will
witness the institution of an international order of justice which shall
make possible an enduring peace for all mankind.
Easter, 1916.
CENTRAL ORGANIZATION FOR A DURABLE PEACE
The Hague.
[Sidenote: Central Organization for Durable Peace.]
An important international gathering was held at The Hague from the
seventh to the tenth of April, 1915. The meeting, for which arrangements
had been made by the “Dutch Anti-War Council,” who sent invitations to
a limited number of persons, was composed of more than thirty people,
belonging to the following countries: United States of America, Austria,
Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden and
Switzerland. Letters of sympathy were also received from Denmark, France,
Italy, Russia and Spain.
The object of the meeting was not to suggest steps to bring the war to
an end, but to consider by what principles the future peace of the world
could be best guaranteed. After full discussion a minimum program was
unanimously adopted.
MINIMUM-PROGRAM
1. No annexation or transfer of territory shall be made contrary to the
interests and wishes of the population concerned. Where possible their
consent shall be obtained by plebiscite or otherwise.
The States shall guarantee to the various nationalities, included in
their boundaries, equality before the law, religious liberty and the free
use of their native languages.
2. The States shall agree to introduce in their colonies, protectorates
and spheres of influence, liberty of commerce, or at least equal
treatment for all nations.
3. The work of the Hague Conferences with a view to the peaceful
organization of the Society of Nations shall be developed.
The Hague Conference shall be given a permanent organization and meet at
regular intervals.
The States shall agree to submit all their disputes to peaceful
settlement. For this purpose there shall be created, in addition
to the existent Hague Court of Arbitration (a) a permanent Court
of International Justice; (b) a permanent international Council of
Investigation and Conciliation. The States shall bind themselves to take
concerted action, diplomatic, economic or military, in case any State
should resort to military measures instead of submitting the dispute to
judicial decision or to the mediation of the Council of Investigation and
Conciliation.
4. The States shall agree to reduce their armaments. In order to
facilitate the reduction of naval armaments, the right of capture shall
be abolished and the freedom of the seas assured.
5. Foreign policy shall be under the effective control of the Parliaments
of the respective nations.
Secret treaties shall be void.
UNION OF INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS: BRUSSELS
_Secretary-General_: Paul Otlet.
[Sidenote: Union of International Associations.]
Project of World-Charter (“Charte Mondiale”), by M. Paul Otlet.
1. Court of arbitration and court of justice.
2. Council of inquiry and conciliation.
3. Council of States, taking in concert diplomatic, economic and military
measures. International armed force consisting of national contingents
under an international general staff.
4. International Parliament with two houses—the lower composed of
delegates from the various Parliaments; upper, of delegates from the
international associations representing the fundamental social forces.
5. No annexation and no right of conquest. Guarantee of rights of
minorities. Freedom of nationalities.
6. Democratic control of foreign policy. Suppression of alliances and of
secret treaties.
7. Considerable reduction of armies, and application of war budgets to
education, etc.
8. Freedom of commerce, at least in colonies.
9. Woman suffrage. Reform of education and of the press.
INTERNATIONAL BUREAU OF PEACE (BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DE LA PAIX)
_President_: H. La Fontaine.
[Sidenote: International Bureau of Peace.]
1. Neutral States should be called to participate in the peace
negotiations, because a permanent peace ought to be guaranteed by the
signature of all the powers of the world.
2. No annexations must take place without the consent of the populations
concerned. In all the States of diverse nationalities the rights of
minorities must be guaranteed.
3. There should be established an international organization of States,
with permanent bodies and especially an international tribunal before
which will be brought international disputes.
4. Armaments must be reduced according to general agreement and placed
under an international control. All industrial establishments occupied
with the manufacture of munitions must be expropriated.
5. Diplomacy in all the nations must be put under the control of
parliaments and public opinion. All treaties and agreements which are not
made public and have the ratification of the representative bodies of the
nation are to be considered null and void.
6. All alliances, offensive or defensive, are to be prohibited.
7. To all colonies without distinction must be applied the principle of
the “open door.” No State shall be able to impose a tariff system on
another. The development of free trade through international agreements
must be furthered.
8. The public institutions and the honor of each nation are to be
protected against foreign insult by penal regulations internationally
devised and guaranteed by an international judicial body.
9. A new peace conference is to be called with the object of establishing
the permanent character of the institution and ensuring its automatic
reunion.
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF WOMEN
The Hague, Holland, April 28th, 29th, 30th, 1915
[Sidenote: International Congress of Women.]
In a preparatory meeting of English, German, Belgian and Dutch women,
held at Amsterdam (February, 1915), the following resolutions were drawn
up to be put before the International Congress:
I. _Plea for definition of terms of peace._
Considering that the people in each of the countries now at war believe
themselves to be fighting, not as aggressors but in self-defense and for
their national existence, this International Congress of Women urges the
Governments of the belligerent countries, publicly to define the terms on
which they are willing to make peace and for this purpose immediately to
call a truce.
II. _Arbitration and conciliation._
This International Congress of Women, believing that war is the negation
of all progress and civilization, declares its conviction that future
international disputes should be referred to arbitration or conciliation;
and demands that in future these methods shall be adopted by the
governments of all nations.
III. _International pressure._
This International Congress of Women urges the Powers to come to an
agreement to unite in bringing pressure to bear upon any country which
resorts to arms without having referred its case to arbitration or
conciliation.
IV. _Democratic control of foreign policy._
War is brought about not by the peoples of the world, who do not desire
it, but by groups of individuals representing particular interests. This
International Congress of Women demands therefore that Foreign Politics
shall be subject to Democratic Control; and at the same time declares
that it can only recognize as democratic a system which includes the
equal representation of men and women.
V. _Transference of territory._
This International Congress of women affirms that there should be no
transference of territory without the consent of the men and women in it.
VI. _Women’s responsibility._
This International Women’s Congress is convinced that one of the
strongest forces for the prevention of war will be the combined influence
of the women of all countries and that therefore upon women as well
as men rests the responsibility for the outbreak of future wars. But
as women can only make their influence effective if they have equal
political rights with men, this Congress declares that it is the
duty of all women to work with all their force for their political
enfranchisement.
VII. _Women delegates in the conference of the powers._
Believing that it is essential for the future peace of the world that
representatives of the people should take part in the Conference of the
Powers after the war, this International Women’s Congress urges, that
among the representatives women delegates should be included.
VIII. _Woman suffrage resolution._
This International Women’s Congress urges, that in the interests of
civilization the Conference of the Powers after the war should pass
a resolution affirming the need in all countries of extending the
parliamentary franchise to women.
IX. _Promotion of good feeling between nations._
This International Congress of Women, which in itself is evidence of the
serious desire of women to bring together mankind in the work of building
up our common civilization, considers that every means should be used for
promoting mutual understanding and good will between the nations and for
resisting any tendency to hatred and revenge.
RESOLUTIONS OF WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONGRESS AT THE HAGUE
I.—WOMEN AND WAR
1. _Protest._
We women, in International Congress assembled, protest against the
madness and the horror of war, involving as it does a reckless sacrifice
of human life and the destruction of so much that humanity has labored
through centuries to build up.
2. _Women’s Sufferings in War._
This International Congress of Women opposes the assumption that women
can be protected under the conditions of modern warfare. It protests
vehemently against the odious wrongs of which women are the victims in
time of war, and especially against the horrible violation of women which
attends all war.
II.—ACTION TOWARD PEACE
3. _The Peace Settlement._
This International Congress of Women of different nations, classes,
creeds and parties is united in expressing sympathy with the suffering of
all, whatever their nationality, who are fighting for their country or
laboring under the burden of war.
Since the mass of the people in each of the countries now at war believe
themselves to be fighting, not as aggressors but in self-defense and
for their national existence, there can be no irreconcilable difference
between them, and their common ideals afford a basis upon which a
magnanimous and honorable peace might be established. The congress
therefore urges the governments of the world to put an end to this
bloodshed and to begin peace negotiations. It demands that the peace
which follows shall be permanent, and therefore based on principles of
justice, including those laid down in the resolutions adopted by this
congress—namely:
That no territory should be transferred without the consent of the men
and women in it, and that the right of conquest should not be recognized.
That autonomy and a democratic parliament should not be refused to any
people.
That the governments of all nations should come to an agreement to refer
future international disputes to arbitration or conciliation, and to
bring social, moral and economic pressure to bear upon any country which
resorts to arms.
That foreign politics should be subject to democratic control.
That women should be granted equal political rights with men.
4. _Continuous Mediation._
This International Congress of Women resolves to ask the neutral
countries to take immediate steps to create a conference of neutral
nations which shall without delay offer continuous mediation. The
congress shall invite suggestions for settlement from each of the
belligerent nations, and in any case shall submit to all of them,
simultaneously, reasonable proposals as a basis of peace.
III.—PRINCIPLES OF A PERMANENT PEACE
5. _Respect for Nationality._
This International Congress of Women, recognizing the right of the people
to self-government, affirms that there should be no transference of
territory without the consent of the men and women residing therein, and
urges that autonomy and a democratic parliament should not be refused to
any people.
6. _Arbitration and Conciliation._
This International Congress of Women, believing that war is the negation
of progress and civilization, urges the governments of all nations
to come to an agreement to refer future international disputes to
arbitration and conciliation.
7. _International Pressure._
This International Congress of Women urges the governments of all nations
to come to an agreement to unite in bringing social, moral and economic
pressure to bear upon any country which resorts to arms instead of
referring its case to arbitration or conciliation.
8. _Democratic Control of Foreign Policy._
Since war is commonly brought about not by the mass of the people, who
do not desire it, but by groups representing particular interests, this
International Congress of Women urges that foreign politics shall be
subject to democratic control, and declares that it can only recognize as
democratic a system which includes the equal representation of men and
women.
9. _The Enfranchisement of Women._
Since the combined influence of the women of all countries is one of the
strongest forces for the prevention of war, and since women can only
have full responsibility and effective influence when they have equal
political rights with men, this International Congress of Women demands
their political enfranchisement.
IV.—INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
10. _Third Hague Conference._
This International Congress of Women urges that a third Hague Conference
be convened immediately after the war.
11. _International Organization._
This International Women’s Congress urges that the organization of
the Society of Nations should be further developed on the basis of a
constructive peace, and that it should include:
(a) As a development of The Hague Court of Arbitration, a permanent
International Court of Justice to settle questions or differences of a
justiciable character, such as arise on the interpretation of treaty
rights or of the law of nations.
(b) As a development of the constructive work of The Hague Conference,
a permanent international conference holding regular meetings, in which
women should take part, to deal not with the rules of warfare but
with practical proposals for further international cooperation among
the States. This conference should be so constituted that it could
formulate and enforce those principles of justice, equity and good-will
in accordance with which the struggles of subject communities could
be more fully recognized and the interests and rights not only of the
great Powers and small nations, but also those of weaker countries and
primitive peoples, gradually adjusted under an enlightened international
public opinion.
The International Conference shall appoint: A permanent council of
conciliation and investigation for the settlement of international
differences arising from economic competition, expanding commerce,
increasing population and changes in social and political standards.
12. _General Disarmament._
This International Congress of Women, advocating universal disarmament
and realizing that it can only be secured by international agreement,
urges as a step to this end that all countries should, by such an
international agreement, take over the manufacture of arms and munitions
of war and should control all international traffic in the same. It sees
in the private profits accruing from the great armament factories a
powerful hindrance to the abolition of war.
13. _Commerce and Investments._
The Congress urges that in all countries there shall be liberty of
commerce, that the seas shall be free and the trade routes open on equal
terms to the shipping of all nations.
Inasmuch as the investment by capitalists of one country in the resources
of another and the claims arising therefrom are a fertile source of
international complications, this congress urges the widest possible
acceptance of the principle that such investments shall be made at the
risk of the investor, without claim to the official protection of his
government.
14. _National Foreign Policy._
This International Congress of Women demands that all secret treaties
shall be void, and that for the ratification of future treaties the
participation of at least the legislature of every government shall be
necessary.
This International Congress of Women recommends that national commissions
be created and international conferences convened for the scientific
study and elaboration of the principles and conditions of permanent
peace which might contribute to the development of an international
federation. These commissions and conferences should be recognized by the
governments and should include women in their deliberations.
15. _Women in National and International Politics._
This International Congress of Women declares it to be essential, both
nationally and internationally, to put into practise the principle that
women should share all civil and political rights and responsibilities on
the same terms as men.
V.—THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
16. This International Congress of Women urges the necessity of so
directing the education of children that their thoughts and desires may
be directed toward the ideal of constructive peace.
VI.—WOMEN AND THE PEACE SETTLEMENT CONFERENCE
17. This International Congress of Women urges that in the interests of
lasting peace and civilization the conference which shall frame the peace
settlement after the war should pass a resolution affirming the need in
all countries of extending the parliamentary franchise to women.
18. This International Congress of Women urges that representatives of
the people should take part in the conference that shall frame the peace
settlement after the war, and claims that among them women should be
included.
VII.—ACTION TO BE TAKEN
19. _Envoys to the Governments._
In order to urge the governments of the world to put an end to this
bloodshed and to establish a just and lasting peace, this International
Congress of Women delegates envoys to carry the message expressed in the
congress resolutions to the rulers of the belligerent and neutral nations
of Europe and to the President of the United States.
These envoys shall be women of both neutral and belligerent nations,
appointed by the international committee of this congress. They shall
report the result of their missions to the International Women’s
Committee for Constructive Peace as a basis for further action.
20. _Women’s Voice in the Peace Settlement._
This International Congress of Women resolves that an international
meeting of women shall be held in the same place and at the same time
as the conference of the Powers which shall frame the terms of the
peace settlement after the war, for the purpose of presenting practical
proposals to that conference.
CONFERENCE OF SOCIALISTS OF THE ALLIED NATIONS
London, Feb. 14, 1915.
I
[Sidenote: Socialists of Allied Nations.]
This conference cannot ignore the profound general causes of the European
conflict, itself a monstrous product of the antagonisms which tear
asunder capitalist society and of the policy of colonial dependencies
and aggressive imperialism, against which international Socialism has
never ceased to fight, and in which every government has its share of
responsibility.
The invasion of Belgium and France by the German armies threatens the
very existence of independent nationalities, and strikes a blow at
all faith in treaties. In these circumstances a victory for German
imperialism would be the defeat and the destruction of democracy and
liberty in Europe. The Socialists of Great Britain, Belgium, France, and
Russia do not pursue the political and economic crushing of Germany; they
are not at war with the people of Germany and Austria, but only with the
governments of those countries by which they are oppressed. They demand
that Belgium shall be liberated and compensated. They desire that the
question of Poland shall be settled in accordance with the wishes of the
Polish people, either in the sense of autonomy in the midst of another
State, or in that of complete independence. They wish that throughout
all Europe, from Alsace-Lorraine to the Balkans, those populations that
have been annexed by force shall receive the right freely to dispose of
themselves.
While inflexibly resolved to fight until victory is achieved to
accomplish this task of liberation, the Socialists are none the less
resolved to resist any attempt to transform this defensive war into a
war of conquest, which would only prepare fresh conflicts, create new
grievances, and subject various peoples more than ever to the double
plague of armaments and war.
Satisfied that they are remaining true to the principles of the
International, the members of the Conference express the hope that
the working class of all the different countries will before long
find themselves united again in their struggle against militarism and
capitalist imperialism. The victory of the Allied Powers must be a
victory for popular liberty, for unity, independence, and autonomy of the
nations in the peaceful federation of the United States of Europe and the
world.
II
On the conclusion of the war the working classes of all the industrial
countries must unite in the International in order to suppress secret
diplomacy, put an end to the interests of militarism and those of the
armament makers and establish some international authority to settle
points of difference among the nations by compulsory conciliation and
arbitration, and to compel all nations to maintain peace.
III
The Conference protests against the arrest of the deputies of the Duma,
against the suppression of Russian Socialist papers and the condemnation
of their editors, as well as against the oppression of Finns, Jews, and
Russian and German Poles.
CONFERENCE OF SOCIALISTS FROM SWEDEN, NORWAY, DENMARK AND HOLLAND, HELD
AT COPENHAGEN
[Sidenote: Socialists of Neutral Nations.]
The Conference states that Capitalism, in its imperialistic form,
expressed by the constantly increasing armaments, and by arrogant
politics of aggrandizement, supported by the secret and irresponsible
diplomacy of the Great Powers, have now led the world to the catastrophe
predicted and always warned against by the Social Democracy.
In this moment, when the world is struck with terror at the horrible
devastation this war has caused, the Conference desires to give
expression to the firm and strong will to peace, existing within the
nations represented at the Conference.
The delegates are of opinion that the chief aim of the conference is to
be the strengthening and uniting of that public will which, undoubtedly,
in all countries, demands the end of the war in such a way that a
permanent peace may be secured. To realize this aim, the conference
addresses itself to the democratic workmen, particularly to those of the
belligerent countries, pointing at the same time to those principles of
international solidarity and proletarian conception of justice which have
been sanctioned at all our international congresses. These principles
were expressed by the Congress of Copenhagen, 1910, in the following way:
The parliamentary representatives of the Social Democracy are bound to
work in order to realize the following aims:
1. International compulsory arbitration.
2. Restriction of the preparations for war ending in final disarmament.
3. Abolition of secret diplomacy with full parliamentary responsibility
as to foreign politics.
4. Recognition of the right of self-determination of nations, of
resistance to oppression and war-intrigues.
The Conference considers it the duty of all socialistic parties to be
active in order to render possible an early conclusion of peace, and to
work energetically in favor of such conditions of peace as may form a
basis of international disarmament and of the democratization of foreign
politics.
The Conference protests against the infringement of international right
in the case of Belgium and expresses a hope that the Social Democracy in
all belligerent countries will in the strongest way possible oppose every
violent annexation at variance with the right of self-determination of
the peoples.
The Conference, thus, reiterates the principles of peace of the
International, and summons the International Bureau to convoke the social
democratic parties to joint deliberation, if not earlier, at least at
the beginning of the negotiations of peace, in order to examine the
conditions of peace, because the Conference considers it absolutely
necessary that the conditions of peace be not stipulated without the
collaboration of the working men and women, or against their will, and
summons the working class in all countries to concentrate their efforts
in order to realize a permanent peace throughout the world. This war,
with all its horrors, has only been possible, because the Capitalist
class of the different countries still holds the power in its hands. The
Conference hence summons the Socialists to work with the greatest energy
in order to conquer the political power, so that Imperialism may be
ruined, and that the International Social Democracy may fulfil its great
mission of emancipating the people.
Copenhagen, Jan. 17-18, 1915.
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
2. UNITED STATES
LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE
OBJECTS
[Sidenote: League to enforce Peace.]
1. An International Court to try all justiciable questions.
2. A Council of Conciliation for consideration of non-justiciable
questions.
3. Use of joint economic pressure and military force against signatory
beginning hostilities contrary to terms of alliance.
4. Formulation and adoption of a code of international law.
The League’s proposal is that economic pressure and military force
shall be used to compel signatory Powers to take their international
differences to the court for adjudication rather than to the battlefield.
It frankly hopes to promote peace and aid its establishment by using
economic and military force.
NATIONAL PEACE CONVENTION,
HELD UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE EMERGENCY PEACE FEDERATION, CHICAGO,
February 27 and 28, 1915.
[Sidenote: National Peace Convention.]
1. Foreign policies of nations should not be aimed at creating alliances
for the purpose of maintaining the “balance of power,” but should be
directed to the establishment of a “Concert of Nations,” with
(_a_) An international court for the settlement of all disputes
between nations;
(_b_) An international congress, with legislative and
administrative powers over international affairs, and with
permanent committees in place of present secret diplomacy;
(_c_) An international police force;
(_d_) The embodiment in international law of the principle
of non-intercourse, as the sanction and enforcement of
international obligations.
2. The gradual reduction and final abolition of national armaments should
be accomplished upon the adoption of this peace program by a sufficient
number of nations, or by nations of sufficient power to ensure protection
to those disarmed; such reduction should be graduated in each nation
according to the degree of disarmament elected in other nations, and
should be progressive until complete abolition is finally attained.
3. The manufacture of armaments for private profit should be prohibited,
and the export of munitions of war from one country to another should be
directly under governmental control.
4. The protection of private property at sea, of neutral commerce and of
communications should be secured by the neutralization of the seas, and
of such maritime trade routes as the Dardanelles and the Panama and Suez
Canals.
5. National and international action should be aimed at the removal of
inequitable trade barriers and other more fundamental economic causes of
war.
6. The democracies of the world should be extended and reinforced by
general application of the principles of self-government and of universal
adult suffrage.
7. No province should be transferred from one government to another
without the consent of the population of such province.
8. No treaty, alliance, or other arrangement should be entered upon
by any nation, unless ratified by the representatives of the people;
treaties for securing delay before commencing hostilities, and adequate
machinery for insuring democratic control of foreign politics should be
created.
WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION
Boston, Mass.
[Sidenote: World Peace Foundation.]
1. No territory should be transferred from one nation to another in
disregard of the inhabitants, nor any readjustment be made of which the
effect would necessarily be to sow the seeds of future war.
2. As the alliances and ententes of Europe have proved their incapacity
to safeguard the welfare of the people, the nations of that continent
should establish and maintain a representative council in order to insure
mutual conference and concerted action.
3. Competition in armaments should end. The nations should agree to
abandon compulsory military service and to limit military force to
purposes of police and international defense.
4. All manufactures of arms, armaments and munitions for use in war
should hereafter be national property. No private citizen or corporation
should be permitted to engage in such manufacture. The export of such
goods for use in armies and fleets should be prohibited.
5. No neutral nation should permit its citizens to make loans to
belligerents for war purposes. As our own State Department has said:
“Loans by American bankers to any foreign nation which is at war are
inconsistent with the true spirit of neutrality.”
AMERICAN SCHOOL PEACE LEAGUE
[Sidenote: American School Peace League.]
1. _A Concert of Europe._ The surest method of establishing permanent
peace is to bring about a Concert of Europe, based upon the knowledge
that, with nations as with individuals, cooperation and not conflict is
the law of progress. In order to insure mutual conference and concerted
action, there should be organized a representative Council whose
deliberations and decisions would be public. This would mark the end of
offensive alliances and ententes which have proved their inability to
safeguard the real and permanent interests of the people.
2. _Nationality Must be Respected._ No territory should be transferred
from one nation to another against the will of the inhabitants, nor
should any readjustments be made which might breed fresh wars. National
boundaries should coincide as far as possible with national sentiment.
No terms of settlement should be regarded as satisfactory if they impose
upon any nation such harsh and humiliating terms of peace as would be
inconsistent with its independence, self-respect, or well-being. All idea
of revenge should, of course, be rooted out.
3. _Limitation of Armaments._ Since the policy of huge national armaments
has lamentably failed to preserve peace, competition in armaments should
end. The nations should agree to have no military forces other than those
maintained for international police duty. Militarism should be abandoned
by all nations, because they recognize the absolute futility of force as
a means of advancing the moral or material well-being of any country. To
facilitate the elimination of militarism, the conditions of peace should
stipulate that all manufactories of arms, armaments, and munitions for
use in war shall hereafter be national property. No private citizen or
corporation should be permitted to engage in such manufacture.
PROGRAM OF WOMEN’S PEACE PARTY
Organized in Washington, January 10, 1915.
[Sidenote: Women’s Peace Party.]
1. The immediate calling of a convention of neutral nations in the
interest of early peace.
2. Limitation of armaments, and the nationalization of their manufacture.
3. Organized opposition to militarism in our own country.
4. Democratic control of foreign policies.
5. The further humanizing of governments by the extension of the
franchise to women.
6. “Concert of Nations” to supersede balance of power.
7. Action toward the gradual organization of the world to substitute law
for war.
8. The substitution of an international police for rival armies and
navies.
9. Removal of the economic causes of war.
10. The appointment of our Government of a commission of men and women,
with an adequate appropriation, to promote international peace.
PROGRAM OF WOMEN’S PEACE PARTY
Washington, January, 1916.
1. That no increased appropriations for war preparations be voted during
the present session.
2. That a joint committee be appointed to conduct a thorough
investigation with public hearings, and report within the next six months
upon the following matters:
a. The condition of our military and naval defenses with
special reference to the expenditures of past appropriations;
b. The probability of aggressive action by other nations
against the United States by reason of antagonism with respect
to race, trade, national expansion, property holding in foreign
lands and other causes of war;
c. The possibility of lessening by legislative or diplomatic
action the sources of friction between this country and other
nations.
3. That action be taken to secure by our Government the immediate calling
of a conference of neutral nations in the interest of a just and early
peace. (To that end we endorse the principles embodied in House Joint
Resolution 38.)
4. That action be taken to provide for the elimination of all private
profit from the manufacture of armaments.
5. That action be taken which shall provide Federal control over
unnaturalized residents.
6. That action be taken to bring about the creation of a joint commission
of experts representing Japan, China, and the United States to study
the complex and important question at issue between the Orient and
the United States and make recommendations to the various governments
involved.
7. That action be taken to convene the Third Hague Conference at the
earliest possible moment and that all voting American delegates shall
be civilians who represent various important elements in the country,
including if possible the business, educational and labor interests
and women, and that the delegates from the United States be instructed
to advocate world organization and a peaceful settlement of all
international difficulties.
One change was made in the platform adopted by the party a year ago.
Economic pressure, instead of an international police, was urged as a
substitute for rival armies and navies.
NEW YORK PEACE SOCIETY
[Sidenote: New York Peace Society.]
In the platform of the New York Peace Society appear these five
“conditions of a permanent peace”:
1. A union of a sufficient number of Powers to guarantee permanent peace
by the maintenance of military force which can be used at need as a
police against any Power which threatens hostilities.
2. A treaty which shall not only arrange the boundaries of the States and
their colonies, but also guarantee the territories so established against
attack either from within or without the league.
3. The removal of enmities. (a) By making peace in a generous spirit at
the close of the present war, and before the forces on either side shall
have been completely crushed. (b) By respecting racial affiliations in
the adjustments of territory made in the treaty of peace.
4. A renewal of the conferences at The Hague, the meetings to be held
so frequently as to constitute a Standing Committee of the nations
for promoting measures of common interest, and for removing in their
incipient stages causes of contention.
5. A treaty agreement to refer all differences within the league for
adjudication either to arbitration or to a permanent court.
“The present war,” says the platform in part, “has made it clear that
the arming of all nations menaces the peace of all. A common reduction
of armaments under an international agreement seems to present itself
as the sole condition of tolerable security and welfare of all. Such a
consummation would give to humanity its own possible compensation for the
unparalleled tragedy of the war.”
SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA
[Sidenote: Socialist Party of America.]
I. _Terms of peace at close of present war_ must be such as to protect
the nations from future wars and conserve the identity of the smaller
nations.
1. No indemnities.
2. No transfer of territory, except upon consent and by vote of the
people within the territory.
II. _International Federation—United States of the World._
1. Court or courts for the settlement of all disputes between nations.
2. International congress, with legislative and administrative powers
over international affairs, and with permanent committees in place of
present secret diplomacy.
3. International police force.
III. _National disarmament._
1. National disarmament shall be effected immediately upon the adoption
of the peace program by a sufficient number of nations, or by nations of
sufficient power so that the international police force developed by the
terms of the program shall be adequate to insure the protection of the
disarmed.
2. No increase in existing armaments under any circumstances.
3. Pending complete disarmament the abolition of the manufacture of
armaments and munitions of war for private profit.
4. International ownership and control of strategic waterways, such as
the Dardanelles, Straits of Gibraltar, and the Suez, Panama and Kiel
Canals.
5. Neutralization of the seas.
IV. _Extension of democracy._
1. Political democracy.
(_a_) The declaration of offensive war to be made only by
direct vote of the people.
(_b_) Abolition of secret diplomacy and the democratic control
of foreign policies.
(_c_) Universal suffrage, including woman suffrage.
2. Industrial democracy.
_Radical social changes in all countries to eliminate the economic causes
of war_, such as,
(_a_) Federation of the working classes of the world in a
league of peace.
(_b_) Socialization of the national resources, public utilities
and fundamental equipment of industry of the nations.
(_c_) Elimination of all unearned income.
(_d_) Immediate and progressive amelioration of the conditions
of labor.
V. _Immediate action._
1. Efforts to be made in every nation to secure the official adoption
of the above program, by the governing bodies at the earliest possible
date. The adoption of the program (contingent upon its acceptance by a
sufficient number of the nations to ensure its success) to be immediately
announced to the world as a standing offer of federation.
2. The federation of all the possible peace forces that can be united in
behalf of the above program for active propaganda among all nations.
3. Efforts through the international and the national organizations of
the Socialist party of all nations to secure universal cooperation of all
socialist and labor organizations in the above program.
DAVID STARR JORDAN’S RESOLUTIONS AS TO RATIONAL TERMS OF PEACE
[Sidenote: David Starr Jordan.]
Whereas, The Great War in Europe is working havoc without parallel among
the best racial elements in all nations concerned, thereby exhausting the
near future and bringing subsequent impoverishment to the race;
Whereas, An intolerable burden of sorrow and misery is thrown on the
women and children of Europe, those who had no part in bringing on the
war and no possible interests to be served by it;
Whereas, No possible gain, economic or political (the restoration of
Belgium being secured), can compensate any nation for the loss, distress
and misery involved in this war and aggravated by each day of its
continuance;
Whereas, No probability appears that military operations in any quarter
can of themselves bring the war to its end;
Whereas, A sweeping victory tends to leave an increasing legacy of hate,
with seeds of future wars;
Resolved, That the rational interests of the civilized world demand that
the war be brought to a speedy close; and
Resolved, That a way to honorable and lasting peace may be possible along
the following lines:
1. Recognition of the fact that no nation can establish rule or dominion
over any other civilized nation, large or small, that peace cannot be
maintained by the overruling power of any one nation, but rather by
international agreements of those nations which reject aggressive war.
2. Guaranteed security to the small States of Europe, with relief of
peoples held in unnatural allegiance.
3. The freedom, under international guarantees, of the High Seas and of
the channels of trade, with immunity of commerce from belligerent attack.
4. The removal of hampering tariff restrictions.
5. Compensation to Belgium, as determined by impartial arbitration.
6. The neutralization of Constantinople, with adequate safeguarding of
the rights of Christian and Jewish peoples within the Ottoman Empire.
7. An international conference to secure terms of peace; with reduction
of national armament, the establishment of a supreme international
tribunal, the maintenance of an international police force, accompanied
by recognition of the stability of International Law.
May 13, 1915.
SIX LESSONS OF THE WAR
[Sidenote: Nicholas Murray Butler.]
First.—That the various Hague Conventions, solemnly entered into in
1899 and in 1907, have been violated frequently since the outbreak of
hostilities, and that, obviously, some greater and more secure sanction
for such Conventions must be provided in the future.
Second.—That in not a few instances the rules and usages of international
law have been thrown to the winds, to the discredit of the belligerents
themselves and to the grave distress, physically and commercially, of
neutral powers.
Of course every one understands that international law is merely a series
of conventions without other than moral sanction. If, however, the world
has gone back to the point where a nation’s plighted faith is not moral
sanction enough, then that fact and its implications ought to be clearly
understood and appropriate punitive action provided for.
Third.—That any attempt to submerge nationalities in nations other than
their own is certain to result in friction and conflict in the not
distant future. Any attempt to create new nations, or to enlarge or
diminish the area of nations, without having regard to nationality, is
simply to organize a future war.
Fourth.—That the transfer of sovereignty over any given district or
people without their consent, is certainly an unwise, and probably an
unjust, action for any government to take, having regard for the peace
and happiness of the world.
Fifth.—That the international organizations which had been carried so
far in such fields as maritime law, postal service, railway service,
and international arbitration, should be taken up anew and pursued more
vigorously, but upon a sounder and a broader foundation, and made a
certain means of protecting the smaller and the weaker nations.
Sixth.—That competitive armaments, instead of being an assurance against
war, are a sure cause of war and an equally certain preventive of those
policies of social reform and advance that enlightened peoples everywhere
are eager to pursue.
_Nicholas Murray Butler, quoted in N. Y. Times, May 16, 1915._
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES
[Sidenote: Chamber of Commerce of the U. S.]
1. A more comprehensive and better-defined sea-law.
2. An international court.
3. A council of Conciliation.
4. International conferences for the better establishment and progressive
amendment of international law.
5. Power to enforce agreement: The organization of a system of commercial
and financial non-intercourse, to be followed by military force if
necessary, to be applied to those nations entering into the foregoing
arrangements and then going to war without first submitting their
differences to an agreed-upon tribunal.
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
3. GREAT BRITAIN
UNION OF DEMOCRATIC CONTROL
[Sidenote: Union of Democratic Control.]
1. No Province shall be transferred from one Government to another
without the consent by plebiscite or otherwise of the population of such
Province.
2. No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered upon in the
name of Great Britain without the sanction of Parliament. Adequate
machinery for ensuring democratic control of foreign policy shall be
created.
3. The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at creating
Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the Balance of Power; but shall
be directed to concerted action between the Powers, and the setting up
of an International Council, whose deliberations and decisions shall be
public, with such machinery for securing international agreement as shall
be the guarantee of an abiding peace.
4. Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement a plan for
the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments of all the belligerent
Powers, and to facilitate that policy shall attempt to secure the general
nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, and the control of the
export of armaments by one country to another.
FABIAN SOCIETY
London, July 17, 1915.
PROPOSED ARTICLES OF SETTLEMENT
[Sidenote: Fabian Society.]
The signatory States, desirous of preventing any future outbreak of
war, improving international relations, arriving by agreement at an
authoritative codification of international law and facilitating the
development of such joint action as is exemplified by the International
Postal Union, hereby agree and consent to the following Articles:
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A SUPERNATIONAL AUTHORITY
1. There shall be established as soon as possible within the period of
one year from the date hereof (_a_) an International High Court for the
decision of justiciable issues between independent Sovereign States;
(_b_) an International Council with the double function of securing, by
common agreement, such international legislation as may be practicable,
and of promoting the settlement of non-justiciable issues between
independent Sovereign States; and (_c_) an International Secretariat.
_The Constituent States_
2. The independent Sovereign States to be admitted as Constituent States,
and hereinafter so described, shall be:
(_a_) The belligerents in the present war;
(_b_) The United States of America;
(_c_) Such other independent Sovereign States as have been
represented at either of the Peace Conferences at The Hague,
and as shall apply for admission within six months from the
date of these Articles; and
(_d_) Such other independent Sovereign States as may hereafter
be admitted by the International Council.
_Covenant Against Aggression_
3. It is a fundamental principle of these Articles that the Constituent
States severally disclaim all desire or intention of aggression on any
other independent Sovereign State or States, and that they agree and
bind themselves, under all circumstances, and without any evasion or
qualification whatever, never to pursue, beyond the stage of courteous
representation, any claim or complaint that any of them may have against
any other Constituent State, without first submitting such claim or
complaint, either to the International High Court for adjudication and
decision, or to the International Council for examination and report,
with a view to arriving at a settlement acceptable to both parties.
_Covenant Against War Except as a Final Resource_
4. The Constituent States expressly bind themselves severally under
no circumstances to address to any Constituent State an ultimatum, or
a threat of military or naval operations in the nature of war, or of
any act of aggression; and under no circumstances to declare war, or
begin military or naval operations of the nature of war, or violate the
territory or attack the ships of another State, otherwise than by way of
repelling and defeating a forcible attack actually made by military or
naval force, until the matter in dispute has been submitted as aforesaid
to the International High Court or to the International Council, and
until after the expiration of one year from the date of such submission.
On the other hand, no Constituent State shall, after submission of the
matter at issue to the International Council and after the expiration
of the specified time, be precluded from taking any action, even to
the point of going to war, in defense of its own honor or interests,
as regards any issues which are not justiciable within the definition
laid down by these Articles, and which affect either its independent
sovereignty or its territorial integrity, or require any change in its
internal laws, and with regard to which no settlement acceptable to
itself has been arrived at.
THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL
5. The International Council shall be a continuously existing
deliberative and legislative body composed of representatives of the
Constituent States, to be appointed in such manner, for such periods and
under such conditions as may in each case from time to time be determined
by the several States.
Each of the eight Great Powers—viz., Austria-Hungary, the British
Empire, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States of
America—may appoint five representatives. Each of the other Constituent
States may appoint two representatives.
_Different Sittings of the Council_
6. The International Council shall sit either as a Council of all the
Constituent States, hereinafter called the Council sitting as a whole,
or as the Council of the eight Great Powers, or as the Council of the
States other than the eight Great Powers, or as the Council for America,
or as the Council for Europe, each such sitting being restricted to the
representatives of the States thus indicated.
There shall stand referred to the Council of the eight Great Powers
any question arising between any two or more of such Powers, and also
any other question in which any of such Powers formally claims to be
concerned, and requests to have so referred.
There shall also stand referred to the Council of the eight Great Powers,
for consideration and ratification, or for reference back in order that
they may be reconsidered, the proceedings of the Council for America, the
Council for Europe, and the Council of the States other than the eight
Great Powers.
There shall stand referred to the Council for Europe any question arising
between two or more independent Sovereign States of Europe, and not
directly affecting any independent Sovereign States not represented in
that Council, provided that none of the Independent Sovereign States not
so represented formally claims to be concerned in such question, and
provided that none of the eight Great Powers formally claims to have
it referred to the Council of the eight great Powers or to the Council
sitting as a whole.
There shall stand referred to the Council for America any question
arising between two or more independent Sovereign States of America,
not directly affecting any independent Sovereign State not represented
in that Council, provided that none of the independent Sovereign States
not so represented formally claims to be concerned in such question, and
provided that none of the eight Great Powers formally claims to have
it referred to the Council of the eight Great Powers or to the Council
sitting as a whole.
There shall stand referred to the Council for the States other than the
eight Great Powers any question between two or more of such States,
not directly affecting any of the eight Great Powers and which none of
the eight Great Powers formally claims to have referred to the Council
sitting as a whole.
The Council shall sit as a whole for—
(_a_) General legislation and any question not standing
referred to the Council of the eight Great Powers, the Council
of the States other than the eight Great Powers, the Council
for Europe or the Council for America respectively;
(_b_) The appointment and all questions relating to the
conditions of office, functions and powers of the International
Secretariat, and of the President and other officers of the
International Council;
(_c_) The settlement of Standing Orders, and all questions
relating to procedure and verification of powers;
(_d_) The financial affairs of the International Council and
International High Court, the allocation of the cost among the
Constituent States, and the issue of precepts upon the several
Constituent States for the shares due from them;
(_e_) The admission of independent Sovereign States as
Constituent States; and
(_f_) Any proposal to alter any of these Articles, and the
making of such an alteration.
_Membership of the Council and Voting_
7. All the Constituent States shall have equal rights to participation in
the deliberations of the International Council. Any Constituent State may
submit to the International Council sitting as a whole any proposal for
any alteration of International Law, or for making an enactment of new
law; and also (subject to the provisions of these Articles with regard
to the submission of justiciable issues to the International High Court)
may bring before the Council any question, dispute or difference arising
between it and any other Constituent State.
When the International Council is sitting as the Council of the eight
Great Powers or as the Council of the States other than the eight Great
Powers each of the States represented therein shall have one vote only.
When the International Council is sitting as a whole or as the Council
for Europe or as the Council for America, the number of votes to be given
on behalf of each State shall be as follows:
As agreed to by the Hague Conference, the relative position of the States
works out into the following scale of votes:
Austria-Hungary, the British Empire, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United
States of America 20 votes each
Spain 12 ”
The Netherlands 9 ”
Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Norway, Portugal,
Sweden, China, Roumania, Turkey 6 ” ”
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico 4 ” ”
Switzerland, Bulgaria, Persia 3 ” ”
Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Serbia, Siam 2 ” ”
The other Constituent States 1 vote ”
_Legislation Subject to Ratification_
8. It shall be within the competence of the International Council to
codify and declare the International Law existing between the several
independent Sovereign States of the world; and any such codifying
enactment, when and in so far as ratified by the Constituent States,
shall be applied and enforced by the International High Court.
It shall also be within the competence of the International Council from
time to time, by specific enactment, to amend International Law, whether
or not this has been codified; and any such enactment when and in so
far as ratified by the several Constituent States shall be applied and
enforced by the International High Court.
Whenever any Constituent State notifies its refusal to ratify as a whole
any enactment made by the International Council, it shall at the same
time notify its ratification of such part or parts of such enactment
as it will consent to be bound by; and the International Council shall
thereupon reenact the parts so ratified by all the Constituent States,
and declare such enactment to have been so ratified, and such enactment
shall thereupon be applied and enforced by the International High Court.
When any enactment of the International Council making any new general
rule of law has been ratified wholly or in part by any two or more
Constituent States, but not by all the Constituent States, it shall,
so far as ratified, be deemed to be binding on the ratifying State or
States, but only in respect of the relations of such State or States with
any other ratifying State or States; and it shall be applied and enforced
accordingly by the International High Court.
_Non-Justiciable Issues_
9. When any question, difference or dispute arising between two or more
Constituent States is not justiciable as defined in these Articles, and
is not promptly brought to an amicable settlement, and is of such a
character that it might ultimately endanger friendly relations between
such States, it shall be the duty of each party to the matter at issue,
irrespective of any action taken or not taken by any other party, to
submit the question, difference or dispute to the International Council
with a view to a satisfactory settlement being arrived at. The Council
may itself invite the parties to lay any such question, difference or
dispute before the Council, or the Council may itself take any such
matter at issue into its own consideration.
The Constituent States hereby severally agree and bind themselves under
no circumstances to address to any other Constituent State an ultimatum
or anything in the nature of a threat of forcible reprisals or naval or
military operations, or actually to commence hostilities against such
State, or to violate its territory, or to attack its ships, otherwise
than by way of repelling and defeating a forcible attack actually made
by naval or military force, before a matter in dispute, if not of a
justiciable character as defined in these Articles, has been submitted to
or taken into consideration by the International Council as aforesaid for
investigation, modification and report, and during a period of one year
from the date of such submission or consideration.
The International Council may appoint a Permanent Board of Conciliators
for dealing with all such questions, differences or disputes as they
arise, and may constitute the Board either on the nomination of the
several Constituent States or otherwise, in such manner, upon such
conditions and for such term or terms as the Council may decide.
When any question, difference or dispute, not of a justiciable character
as defined in these Articles, is submitted to or taken into consideration
by the International Council as aforesaid, the Council shall, with the
least possible delay, take action, either (1) by referring the matter
at issue to the Permanent Board of Conciliators, or (2) by appointing a
Special Committee, whether exclusively of the Council or otherwise, to
enquire into the matter and report, or (3) by appointing a Commission of
Enquiry to investigate the matter and report, or (4) by itself taking the
matter into consideration.
The Constituent States hereby agree and bind themselves, whether or
not they are parties to any such matter at issue, to give all possible
facilities to the International Council, to the Permanent Board of
Conciliators, to any Committee or Commission of Enquiry appointed by
either of them, and to any duly accredited officer of any of these
bodies, for the successful discharge of their duties.
When any matter at issue is referred to the Board of Conciliation, or to
a Special Committee, or to a Commission of Enquiry, such Board, Committee
or Commission shall, if at any time during its proceedings it succeeds
in bringing about an agreement between the parties upon the matter at
issue, immediately report such agreement to the International Council;
but, if no such agreement be reached, such Board, Committee or Commission
shall, so soon as it has finished its enquiries, and in any case within
six months, make a report to the International Council, stating the facts
of the case and making any recommendations for a decision that are deemed
expedient.
When a report is made to the International Council by any such Board,
Committee or Commission that an agreement has been arrived at between the
parties, the Council shall embody such agreement, with a recital of its
terms, in a resolution of the Council.
When any other report is made to the Council by any such Board, Committee
or Commission, or when the Council itself has taken the matter at issue
into consideration, the Council shall, after taking all the facts into
consideration, and within a period of three months, come to a decision
on the subject, and shall embody such decision in a resolution of the
Council. Such resolution shall, if necessary, be arrived at by voting,
and shall be published, together with any report on the subject, in the
Official Gazette.
A resolution of the Council embodying a decision settling a matter at
issue between Constituent States shall be obligatory and binding on all
the Constituent States, including all the parties to the matter at issue,
if either it is passed unanimously by all the members of the Council
present and voting; or where the proposed enactment does not affect the
independent sovereignty or the territorial integrity, nor require any
change in the internal laws of any State, and where such enactment shall
have been assented to by a three-fourths majority of the votes given by
the representatives present and voting.
_The International Secretariat_
10. There shall be an International Secretariat, with an office
permanently open for business, with such a staff as the International
Council may from time to time determine.
It shall be the duty of the International Secretariat to make all
necessary communications on behalf of the International Council to
States or individuals; to place before the President to bring before
the Council any matter of which it should have cognizance; to organize
and conduct any enquiries or investigations ordered by the Council; to
maintain an accurate record of the proceedings of the Council; to make
authentic translations of the resolutions and enactments of the Council,
the report of the proceedings, and other documents, and to communicate
them officially to all the Constituent States; and to publish for sale an
_Official Gazette_ and such other works as the Council may from time to
time direct.
Subject to any regulations that may be made by the International Council,
the International Secretariat shall take charge of and be responsible
for (_a_) the funds belonging to or in the custody of the International
Council and the International High Court; (_b_) the collection of all
receipts due to either of them; and (_c_) the making of all authorized
payments.
THE INTERNATIONAL HIGH COURT
11. The International High Court shall be a permanent judicial tribunal,
consisting of fifteen Judges, to be appointed as hereinafter provided.
Subject to these Articles it shall, by a majority of Judges sitting and
voting, control its own proceedings, determine its sessions and place of
meeting, settle its own procedure, and appoint its own officers. It may,
if thought fit, elect one of its members to be President of the Court for
such term and with such functions as it may decide. Its members shall
receive an annual stipend of ——, whilst if a President is elected he
shall receive an additional sum of ——. The Court shall hear and decide
with absolute independence the issues brought before it in conformity
with these Articles; and shall in each case pronounce, by a majority
of votes, a single judgment of the Court as a whole, which shall be
expressed in separate reasoned statements by each of the Judges sitting
and acting in the case. The sessions of the Court shall be held, if so
ordered, notwithstanding the existence of a vacancy or of vacancies among
the Judges; and the proceedings of the Court shall be valid, and the
decision of a majority of the Judges sitting and acting shall be of full
force, notwithstanding the existence of any vacancy or vacancies or of
the absence of any Judge or Judges.
_The Judges of the Court_
12. The Judges of the International High Court shall be appointed for
a term of five years by the International Council sitting as a whole,
in accordance with the following scheme: Each of the Constituent
States shall be formally invited to nominate one candidate, who need
not necessarily be a citizen or a resident of the State by which he is
nominated. The eight candidates severally nominated by the eight Great
Powers shall thereupon be appointed Judges by the International Council
sitting as the Council of the eight Great Powers. The remaining seven
Judges shall be appointed by the International Council sitting as a
whole, after selection by exhaustive ballot from among the candidates
nominated by the Constituent States other than the eight Great Powers. On
the occurrence of a vacancy among the Judges nominated by the eight Great
Powers, the State which had nominated the Judge whose seat has become
vacant shall be invited to nominate his successor, and the candidate
so nominated shall thereupon be appointed by the International Council
sitting as the Council of the eight Great Powers. On the occurrence of
a vacancy among the other Judges, each of the Constituent States other
than the eight Great Powers shall be invited to nominate a candidate to
fill the vacancy; and the International Council sitting as a whole shall,
by exhaustive ballot, choose from among the candidates so nominated the
person to be appointed.
A Judge of the International High Court shall not be liable to any legal
proceedings in any tribunal in any State, and shall not be subjected to
any disciplinary action by any Government, in respect of anything said
or done by him in his capacity as Judge; and shall not during his term
of office be deprived of any part of the emoluments or privileges of
his office. A Judge of the International High Court may be removed from
office by a resolution of the International Council sitting as a whole,
carried by a three-fourths majority.
_The Court Open Only to State Governments_
13. The International High Court shall deal only with justiciable
questions, as defined in these Articles, at issue between the national
Governments of independent Sovereign Sates, and shall not entertain
any application from or on behalf of an individual person, or any
group or organization of persons, or any company, or any subordinate
administration, or any State not independent and Sovereign. The
International High Court may, if it thinks fit, deal with a suit brought
by a Constituent State against an independent Sovereign State which is
not a Constituent State; or with a suit between two or more such States.
_Justiciable Issues_
14. The justiciable questions with which the International High Court
shall be competent to deal shall be exclusively those falling within one
or other of the following classes, viz.:
(_a_) Any question of fact which, if established, would be a
cause of action within the competence of the Court;
(_b_) Any question as to the interpretation or application
of any international treaty or agreement duly registered as
provided in these Articles, or of International Law, or of
any enactment of the International Council; together with any
alleged breach or contravention thereof;
(_c_) Any question as to the responsibility or blame attaching
to any independent Sovereign State for any of the acts,
negligences or defaults of its national or local Government
officers, agents or representatives, occasioning loss or
damage to a State other than their own, whether to any of the
citizens, companies or subordinate administrations of such
State, or to its national Government; and as to the reparation
to be made, and the compensation to be paid, for such loss or
damage;
(_d_) Any question as to the title, by agreement, prescription,
or occupation, to the sovereignty of any place or district;
(_e_) Any question as to the demarcation of any part of any
national boundary;
(_f_) Any question as to the reparation to be made, or the
amount of compensation to be paid, in cases in which the
principle of indemnity has been recognized or admitted by all
the parties;
(_g_) Any question as to the recovery of contract debts
claimed from the Government of an independent Sovereign State
by the Government of another independent Sovereign State, as
being due to any of its citizens, companies or subordinate
administrations, or to itself;
(_h_) Any question which may be submitted to the Court by
express agreement between all the parties to the case.
The question of whether or not an issue is justiciable within the meaning
of these Articles shall be determined solely by the International
High Court, which may determine such a question whether or not formal
objection is taken by any of the litigants.
If any State, being a party to any action in the International High
Court, objects that any point at issue is not a justiciable question as
herein defined, the objection shall be considered by the Court; and the
Court shall, whether or not the objecting State enters an appearance, or
argues the matter, pronounce upon the objection, and either set it aside
or declare it well founded.
It shall be within the competence of the International High Court, with
regard to any justiciable question in respect of which it may be invoked
by one or more of the parties, summarily to enjoin any State, whether or
not a party to the case, to refrain from taking any specified positive
action or to discontinue any specified positive action already begun,
or to cause to be discontinued any specified positive action begun by
any person, company or subordinate administration within or belonging to
such State, which in the judgment of the Court is designed or intended,
or may reasonably be expected to change the _status quo_ with regard to
the question at issue before the Court, or seriously to injure any of the
parties to the case. Any such injunction of the International High Court
shall be binding, and shall be enforceable, in the same way as a judgment
of the Court, in the manner hereinafter described.
_Immediate Publicity for All Treaties, Existing and Future_
15. No treaty or agreement between two or more independent Sovereign
States shall be deemed to confer any right to invoke the International
High Court, or shall be treated as valid, or be in any way recognized
by the International Council or the International High Court, or
shall be held to confer any rights, to impose any obligations, or to
change the status or legal rights of any person, company, subordinate
administration, district or State, unless a duly authenticated copy of
such Treaty or Agreement has been deposited by one or all of the States
that are parties to it, in the Registry of the International High Court,
within twelve months from the date of these Articles, in accordance
with any rules that may from time to time be made by the Court for this
purpose; or in the case of a Treaty or Agreement hereafter made, within
three months from the date of such Treaty or Agreement.
It shall be the duty of the officer in charge of the Registry
immediately after deposit to allow the duly accredited representative
of any Constituent State to inspect and copy any Treaty or Agreement
so deposited; and promptly to communicate a copy to the International
Secretariat for publication in the _Official Gazette_.
_Undertaking to Submit All Justiciable Questions to the International
High Court_
16. The Constituent States severally undertake and agree to submit to
the International High Court for trial and judgment every question,
difference or dispute coming within the definition of a justiciable
question as laid down by these Articles that may arise between themselves
and any other independent Sovereign State or States; and at all times to
abstain, in respect of such questions, from anything in the nature of an
ultimatum; from any threat to take unfriendly or aggressive action of any
kind with a view to redressing the alleged grievance or punishing the
alleged wrongdoing; and from any violation of the territory of any other
State or attack on the ships of such State or other military or naval
operations, or other action leading or likely to lead to war.
_Enforcement of the Decrees of the Court_
17. When in any case upon which judgment is given by the International
High Court, the Court finds that any of the parties to the case has,
by act, negligence, or default, committed any breach of international
obligation, whether arising by Treaty or Agreement, or by International
Law, or by enactment of the International Council in accordance with
these Articles, the Court may simply declare that one or other litigant
State is in default, and leave such State voluntarily to make reparation;
or the Court may, in the alternative, itself direct reparation to be
made or compensation to be paid for such wrong, and may assess damages
or compensation, and may, either by way of addition to damages or
compensation, or as an alternative, impose a pecuniary fine upon the
State declared in default, hereinafter called the recalcitrant State;
and may require compliance with its decree within a specified time under
penalty of a pecuniary fine, and may prescribe the application of any
such damages, compensation, or fine.
In the event of non-compliance with any decision or decree or injunction
of the International High Court, or of non-payment of the damages,
compensation, or fine within the time specified for such payment, the
Court may decree execution, and may call upon the Constituent States,
or upon some or any of them, to put in operation, after duly published
notice, for such period and under such conditions as may be arranged, any
or all of the following sanctions—viz.:
(_a_) To lay an embargo on any or all ships within the
jurisdiction of such Constituent State or States registered as
belonging to the recalcitrant State;
(_b_) To prohibit any lending of capital or other moneys to
the citizens, companies, or subordinate administrations of the
recalcitrant State, or to its national Government;
(_c_) To prohibit the issue or dealing in or quotation on the
Stock Exchange or in the press of any new loans, debentures,
shares, notes or securities of any kind by any of the citizens,
companies or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant
State, or of its national Government;
(_d_) To prohibit all postal, telegraphic, telephonic and
wireless communication with the recalcitrant State;
(_e_) To prohibit the payment of any debts due to the citizens,
companies or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant
State, or to its national Government; and, if thought fit, to
direct that payment of such debts shall be made only to one or
other of the Constituent Governments, which shall give a good
and legally valid discharge for the same, and shall account for
the net proceeds thereof to the International High Court;
(_f_) To prohibit all imports, or certain specified imports,
coming from the recalcitrant State, or originating within it;
(_g_) To prohibit all exports, or certain specified exports
consigned directly to the recalcitrant State, or destined for
it;
(_h_) To prohibit all passenger traffic (other than the exit
of foreigners), whether by ship, railway, canal or road, to or
from the recalcitrant State;
(_i_) To prohibit the entrance into any port of the Constituent
States of any of the ships registered as belonging to the
recalcitrant State, except so far as may be necessary for any
of them to seek safety, in which case such ship or ships shall
be interned;
(_j_) To declare and enforce a decree of complete non-intercourse
with the recalcitrant State, including all the above-mentioned
measures of partial non-intercourse;
(_k_) To levy a special export duty on all goods destined for
the recalcitrant State, accounting for the net proceeds to the
International High Court;
(_l_) To furnish a contingent of war-ships to maintain a
combined blockade of one or more of the ports, or of the whole
coastline of the recalcitrant State.
The International High Court shall arrange for all the expenses incurred
in putting in force the above sanctions, including any compensation
for loss thereby incurred by any citizens, companies, subordinate
administrations or national Governments of any of the Constituent
States other than the recalcitrant State, to be raised by a levy on all
the Constituent States in such proportions as may be decided by the
International Council; and for the eventual recovery of the total sum by
way of additional penalty from the recalcitrant State.
When on any decree or decision or injunction of the International High
Court execution is ordered, or when any sanction or other measure ordered
by the Court is directed to be put in operation against any Constituent
State, it shall be an offense against the comity of nations for the State
against which such decree, decision, injunction or execution has been
pronounced or ordered, or against which any sanction or other measure
is directed to be enforced, to declare war, or to take any naval or
military action, or to violate the territory or attack the ships of any
other State or to commit any other act of aggression against any or all
of the States so acting under the order of the Court; and all the other
Constituent States shall be bound, and do hereby pledge themselves, to
make common cause with the State or States so attacked, and to use naval
and military force to protect such State or States, and to enforce the
orders of the International High Court, by any warlike operations that
may for the purpose be deemed necessary.
[See _New Statesman_, special supplement, July 17, 1915,
for program, with notes and queries, here omitted.]
INDEPENDENT LABOR PARTY
Annual Conference, Norwich, April 5 and 6, 1915.
[Sidenote: Independent Labor Party.]
_Drafted Resolutions_:
This Conference calls upon the workers to guard against allowing elements
to enter the peace settlement which would be a pretext and excuse for
future devastating wars; in order that the peace may be just and
lasting, the Conference demands:
1. That the people concerned shall give consent before there is transfer
of territory:
2. No future treaty, agreement or understanding be entered into without
the knowledge of the people and the consent of Parliament, and machinery
to be created for the democratic control of foreign policy:
3. Drastic all-round reduction of armaments, by international agreement,
together with the nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, and
the national control of the export of armaments, by one country to
another:
4. British foreign policy to be directed in future toward establishing
a federation of the nations, and the setting up of an International
Council, whose decisions shall be public, together with the establishment
of courts for the interpretation and enforcement of treaties and
International Law.
5. This Conference is of opinion that an International Arbitration Court
should be established, with power, as an alternative to war, to enforce
its decisions by declaring a postal, commercial, transport and financial
boycott against any dissenting nation.
6. This Conference is of opinion that no war should be declared without
the consent of Parliament.
7. Recognizing that a permanent peace must be based upon mutual
confidence and goodwill between the nations, which can only be shown
effectively by the abandonment of all material preparations for war, this
Conference urges the abolition of armaments, the disbanding of military
and naval forces, and the prohibition of the manufacture and import or
export of munitions of war.
NATIONAL PEACE COUNCIL: FEDERATION OF BRITISH PEACE SOCIETIES
[Sidenote: National Peace Council.]
1. Establishment of an international peace commission such as those
already established between the United States and certain other Powers.
2. Peace commission to extend its functions to include both those of a
commission of inquiry and of a permanent Hague court of arbitration.
3. Formation of a permanent Congress of Nations composed of delegates
appointed by the Parliaments, to settle important international affairs
which might give rise to war; further elaboration by the Congress of the
Hague Conventions regulating the conduct and methods of warfare.
4. No territorial change without consent of the population involved.
5. Foreign policies and treaties subject to parliamentary control.
6. Armament question to be put before Congress of Nations.
7. Congress to seek to remove obstacles to freedom of trade.
WOMEN’S MOVEMENT FOR CONSTRUCTIVE PEACE
London
_Object_: to organize public union and to bring its pressure to bear upon
the Governments of the world to the furtherance of the following ends:
PROPOSITIONS
1. The reinforcement of the Democracies of the world by the inclusion
of the mother-half of the human race into the ranks of articulate
citizenship.
2. The creation of some constitutional machinery, where none at present
exists, by which the Democracies may exercise some control over foreign
policy.
3. That all treaties and alliances on the part of any Democratic nation
shall be ratified by the representatives of the people.
4. That the manufacture of armaments shall be nationalized and that the
export of ammunition from one country to another shall be vetoed.
5. That the allies shall be held to their slogan that this is a war to
end war.
6. That at the conclusion of peace no province shall be transferred
from one Government to another without the consent of the population
concerned; that this consent shall be obtained by plebiscite and that
women, who have suffered equally with men, shall be included in the
plebiscite.
7. That women as well as men should be sent as representatives of their
nation to the Hague Conference.
8. That the Democracies shall press for some kind of international
agreement by which all the nations shall put themselves at the back of
any one lawabiding nation that is aggressively attacked, or of any small
country that is menaced by a stronger Power.
9. That the idea be brought to the front and the possibility discussed
of the formation of an European Senate composed of representatives of
every European nation. That this Senate exist for the discussion of
international concerns and in this way a means may be constructed whereby
nations can seek to obtain what is necessary to the development of their
national life by bargain and by exchange, instead of by secret treachery
or open slaughter and loot.
SUGGESTED ADDENDA
That the Hague Conference which regulates the rules of war is based upon
a pernicious principle in that it treats as natural the existence of
war, and only aims to prune off some features regarded as objectionable,
instead of trying to render war impossible.
AUSTRALIAN PEACE ALLIANCE
[Sidenote: Australian Peace Alliance.]
1. The establishment of an effective and permanent international
arbitration court elected on a democratic basis, including women
delegates.
2. The setting up of adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy.
3. The general reduction of armaments and the nationalization of their
manufacture.
4. The organization of the trades unions and workers’ associations, with
a definite view of ending war.
5. The termination of the present war at the earliest possible moment,
and the following principles to govern the terms of peace:
(I.) No Province or Territory in any part of the world shall be
transferred from one Government to another without the consent
by plebiscite of the population of such Province.
(II.) No treaty, arrangement or undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created.
(III.) The foreign policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed
at creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the
“Balance of Power,” but shall be directed to the establishment
of a concert of Europe and the setting up of an international
council, whose deliberations and decisions shall be public.
(IV.) Great Britain shall propose as part of the peace
settlement a plan for the drastic reduction of armaments by the
consent of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that
policy shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of
the manufacture of armaments and the prohibition of the export
of armaments by one country to another.
(V.) The universal abolition of conscription or compulsory
military training.
MR. CHARLES RODEN BUXTON ON PEACE TERMS
[Sidenote: Charles Roden Buxton.]
1. Total evacuation by Germany of Belgium, France, Poland and Baltic
provinces, and by Germany and Austria of Serbia.
2. No indemnity, of course, from Great Britain, but compensation to
Belgium by Germany for damage done.
3. The special demands of France against Germany, of Italy and Serbia
against Austria, and of Russia against Turkey to be agreed upon with
Great Britain by the States concerned. This country to use its influence
to secure that such demands are in harmony with the principle of
nationality.
4. Germany’s right to a colonial empire to be recognized, though
not necessarily to exactly the same territories as those previously
possessed.
POINTS FOR A CONFERENCE
The following points might be referred to a conference representing
neutral and belligerent States:
_a._ The repartition of Africa, with a view to more convenient frontiers
and to the interests of the native population.
_b._ The question of equal economic opportunities, including the open
door, in all colonial possessions.
_c._ The discussion and definition of immunity from capture of goods
other than contraband and the modification of commercial blockade,
whether by submarine warfare or otherwise.
_d._ As a condition of the preceding point the question of equal,
comprehensive, and effective guarantees against future war on land as
well as on sea; binding Germany as well as other nations, including
ourselves.
BRAILSFORD ON A PEACE BY SATISFACTION
[Sidenote: H. N. Brailsford.]
A peace in which neither side could dictate the settlement might aim
either at general frustration or general satisfaction. A sullen peace, in
which each side used up the remnants of its military strength to veto the
claims of the adversary, would be of all peaces the worst, for it would
leave standing all the old causes of unrest. This war came about because
Europe had evolved in peace no machinery by which demands for large and
necessary changes could be met without war. Each people postponed its
larger ambitions until war should come, and the knowledge of each that
only war offered a chance of satisfaction made our universal strife.
The claims of the Entente Powers for certain satisfactions for the
principle of nationality, are to us familiar and sympathetic. It must be
realized that the German demand for economic expansion is deeply rooted,
and in the modern world inevitable. For Manchuria, Morocco, Egypt and
Tripoli, the Entente Powers made, or were ready to make war. The German
craving for “a place in the sun” may be condemned by those of us who have
opposed Imperialism at home, but the ruling classes cannot consistently
censure it. For twenty years past, the unsolved problem for European
statecraft was to find an outlet for these tremendous German energies,
to cut a canal in which the broad river could flow without floods. The
peace of Europe will never be secure until this passion for Imperial work
overseas, which is to-day the strongest ambition in Germany, finds its
useful satisfaction. The forges are there. If they cannot make rails,
they will make cannon.
The formula of an enduring peace must be to remove all the causes of
strife in Europe, and we shall succeed only if we can satisfy the enemy’s
legitimate claims while we secure justice for our friends. The general
idea must be, win from him the largest recognition of the idea of
nationality, while conceding to him the economic opportunities which he
requires. The more, by the ordinary working of barter that we concede,
the more shall we obtain. Let us attempt to sketch what the main lines of
such an exchange might be.
(A)—ACTS OF RESTORATION
1.—Belgium must be restored, Serbia re-instated, and French territory
evacuated.
2.—The German colonies must either be restored, or equivalent territories
provided.
(B)—CLAIMS OF NATIONALITY
3.—The ideal solution for Poland, in a political sense, would be
independence. But could a land-locked State, between three great military
empires, ever be secure? The Poles, themselves, are not averse to the
idea of their re-union as a State within the Austrian Empire. If they
had the same status as Hungary, they would be internally independent.
But if Europe consented to allow this accession of territory to Austria,
conditions might be laid down. It might be stipulated that a like status
should be given to Bohemia, and to the Serbo-Croats of Croatia, Bosnia
and Dalmatia. Thus Austria would become a quintuple Federal Empire
(Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Jugoslavia), and one of the main
problems of the war, the liberation of the Western Slavs, would be
satisfactorily solved.
In return for this extension of territory Austria might be required to
cede the Eastern (Ruthenian) part of Galicia to Russia, and the Trentino
to Italy.
4.—The chief difficulty lies in Alsace-Lorraine. Let us make the bold
claim that it must be restored to France (or such parts of it as desire
this change). What can we offer as a _quid pro quo_? The following
economic concessions suggest themselves (5, 6, and 7).
(C)—ECONOMIC CLAIMS
5.—That Germany be allowed to complete that closer economic union
with her Allies, and especially Austria, which seems to be her chief
objective. We cannot prevent the creation of “Mid-Europe” as an economic
unity, but we might reply to it by a boycott. An amiable regulation of
tariff questions is a necessity for peace.
6.—We might further agree not to oppose such economic expansion (railway
and irrigation schemes) in Turkey as Germany can arrange. Turkey would
become a German economic sphere, but there must be guarantees for the
fair treatment of the trade in goods of other Powers.
7.—A general measure by which all Powers renounced differential tariffs
in their tropical colonies would ease the struggle for territory. France
would be reluctant to agree to this, but the condition is that she
secures Alsace.
(D)—OTHER ISSUES
8.—The greater part of Macedonia, in accordance with the principle of
nationality, must go to Bulgaria.
9.—Russia might acquire the Armenian provinces of Turkey. It lies
with us to accord her an ice-free port on the Persian Gulf. A Russian
protectorate over Persia might in the end be less fatal to Persian
nationalism than the present partition and condominium.
10.—Finally, the whole bargain must rest upon Germany’s assent to some
scheme of permanent conciliation and the reduction of armaments, and upon
our consent to consider a revision of certain usages of sea-warfare.
_H. N. Brailsford._
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
4. GERMANY
GERMAN AND AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN SOCIALISTS
Vienna, April 12-13, 1915.
[Sidenote: Socialists of Central Powers.]
1. Development of the international arbitration courts.
2. Recognition of the right of every people to determine its own destiny.
3. All treaties to be under democratic parliamentary control.
4. International agreement to limit armament with general disarmament as
the ultimate goal.
BUND NEUES VATERLAND
[Sidenote: Bund Neues Vaterland.]
1. Development of international organization.
2. Further development of international law by future Hague conferences.
3. No annexation.
4. No secret treaties.
5. Open door. Freedom of the seas.
MANIFESTO OF THE “DEUTSCHE FRIEDENSGESELLSCHAFT”
[Sidenote: German Peace Society.]
Notwithstanding the prohibition of the Government, demands for annexation
are being more or less publicly advocated. Six large agricultural
associations go especially far in these ideas; indeed for one petition
signatures are collected among those who because of “their rank and
education consider themselves the spiritual leaders of public opinion.”
This movement has evidently the support of important circles. The worst
of this is that those demands are known to the neutrals and to hostile
countries, who make them the foundation of their accusations of German
desires of conquest. Besides they kindle ill-feeling against Germany, as
the Government and the whole German nation are held responsible for all
this.
There is no doubt that the Imperial Government is unjustly accused in
this respect, whatever may be her attitude towards other questions.
Should such tendencies be publicly criticized, then the world would soon
see that the greater part of the German nation is strongly opposed to
them.
The prohibition to discuss the aims of the war, which is strictly
maintained with respect to ourselves, prevents us from criticizing
this question thoroughly; and from organizing our opposition to such
tendencies.
So far we have gladly obeyed the order not to discuss these questions.
After our experience, however, of the way in which this prohibition and
the above-mentioned agitation are exploited abroad to the detriment of
German interests, we think it our duty to appeal to the Government to
grant “free speech to a free nation.”
Until this has been granted, the German Peace Association can do no more
than utter a general protest against the danger of such annexation ideas.
When such ideas are considered the aim of war, the war will be prolonged
indefinitely, for months, perhaps for years. Their realization would not
strengthen, but weaken Germany, abroad as well as at home, in peace and
in future wars. A new war would be inevitable shortly after such a peace.
The German Peace Association and all friends of the people desire that
the military supremacy of the Central Powers, which we hope will decide
the peace, shall be turned towards the consolidation of Germany’s
position in the world, towards the development of the economical and
national forces of the German nation. But they hope also, that the coming
peace may contain the elements of a durable peace and lay the foundation
for a lasting community of justice and culture between the nations, which
must be restored after the peace, howsoever bitter their hostility may be
at present. The association is convinced that a sensible consideration of
the vital interests of the German nation will prevail over empty phrases
and private interests, when the conditions of peace shall be drawn up.
L. QUIDDE,
O. UMFRID,
Stuttgart.
MANIFESTO BY 88 GERMAN PROFESSORS AND STATESMEN
[Sidenote: Manifesto of Professors and Statesmen.]
_Germany has not entered upon this war with the idea of conquering
foreign territory_, but in order to defend her existence, her internal
unity, and her culture, which were threatened by a hostile coalition.
When peace shall be discussed, those objects alone should be Germany’s
care. Some petitions laid before Your Excellency go against them: so
we consider it our duty energetically to resist such endeavors and to
declare publicly that we think their realization a political error,
which may produce dangerous consequences, and not a strengthening but an
ominous weakening of the German Empire.
_Practically we lay down the principle that annexation or conquest
of nations, which so far have been politically independent, is not
advisable._ The German Empire is the result of the idea of national
unity, of national kinship. Foreign elements have been amalgamated only
slowly and incompletely; so we object to events, persons or tendencies
which may be easily influenced one way or another, disturbing the leading
principles of the creation of our Empire, and destroying the character of
our national State.
Of course we cannot allow a territory which we should evacuate according
to our conditions of the peace to become a stronghold for our enemies,
we cannot allow the adversaries of Germany to settle there. There should
not be any possibility of the hostile feelings of the inhabitants
revealing themselves in hostile actions, which might threaten the peace
and security of our border-provinces. Such dangers can be averted and we
trust that suitable and effective measures will be chosen and applied
to accomplish this. _But those measures should not after all lead to
annexation in any form._
With our whole nation we share the conviction that this war will end in
a complete victory of Germany. All those heroic deeds, those endless
sacrifices and labors, all this military glory and all the sorrow borne
in mute heroism, entitle Germany to a price of victory corresponding—as
far as that is possible—to what she has sacrificed.
The highest price will be the proudly acquired knowledge that Germany
need not fear a world full of enemies, and the unprecedented display
of strength she has shown before all the nations of the earth and the
generations yet to come.
The German nation can only conclude a peace which assures the foundations
of the strategical wants, of the political and economic interests of the
country and the unimpeded development of its strength and its energy
at home and on the free seas. We trust that with the help of the bodies
indicated by the Constitution Your Excellency may succeed in obtaining
such a peace resolutely, while we are in the zenith of our military
successes.
PROPOSALS OF SOUTH GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS
[Sidenote: South German Social Democrats.]
1 a. Restitution of status quo ante, or
1 b. Plebiscite in disputed territories (Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig,
Poland, Baltic Provinces, Finland, Trentino). International possession of
Bosphorus, Dardanelles, Suez Canal, Gibraltar, and Kiel Canal.
2. No indemnifications.
3. Confederacy of all European States.
4. Limitations of armies and navies. People’s army for defense only.
5. Alliance of all against aggression.
6. International Parliaments and permanent international committees in
place of diplomacy.
7. International police. International law-courts for minor international
offenses.
8. Guarantees of democratic government: equality of electoral district,
ten-year redistribution, proportional representation, payment of members.
PEACE AIMS OF GERMAN SOCIALISTS: CONFERENCE OF PARTY’S MEMBERS IN
REICHSTAG WITH MEMBERS OF PARTY COMMITTEE.
(Reported in New York _Times_, August 26, 1915.)
[Sidenote: Socialist Joint Committee.]
1. Peace must be a permanent one, leading the nations to closer relations.
2. Germany’s opponents must not be permitted to acquire any German
territory.
3. “Most favored nation” clauses should be introduced into peace terms
with all belligerents.
4. Tariff walls should be removed.
5. So far as possible, freedom of the seas should be established, the
right of capture abolished, and the straits, important for the world’s
commerce, should be internationalized.
6. Austria and Turkey should not be weakened.
7. Annexations of foreign territories violate the rights of peoples to
self-rule, and weaken internal strength and harmony in the German nation.
Therefore, all plans of short-sighted politicians favoring conquest are
opposed.
8. Finally, the party demands the establishment of an international court
to which all future conflicts of nations shall be submitted.
THE GERMAN SOCIALISTS’ PEACE MANIFESTO
[Sidenote: German Socialists.]
The manifesto was published June 26, 1915, in the form of a full page
advertisement in the Berlin _Vorwaerts_. The paper was promptly suspended
but not until its message had crossed the German frontier. The New York
_Times_ publishes a translation in full as follows:
“For nearly a year the world has been devastated by the fury of war.
Hundreds of thousands of human lives have been cut off in their prime,
works of incalculable value to civilization have been destroyed, and
there has been an appalling weakening of human forces. Millions of
mothers, wives, and children are weeping for their lost sons, husbands
and fathers. Want and hardship heighten the misery now oppressing the
nations. Must this terrible drama, which has no precedent in the history
of the world, go on indefinitely?
“The Socialist Party foresaw this world catastrophe and predicted it.
It has consistently fought, therefore, against the policies of imperial
expansion and against the fatal competition in armaments, which in the
last instance is the cause of this war. It has worked unceasingly for
a good understanding among the nations, for the cause of our common
civilization, and for the welfare of mankind. When last year threatening
war clouds were gathering on the horizon the German Socialists up to the
very last moment bent all their energies to preserving peace. But, to the
misfortune of mankind, they were unable to avert the catastrophe.
“Then when the Czar’s Cossacks came across the border, pillaging and
burning, the Socialists made good the promise that had been given by
their leaders—they put themselves at the service of the Fatherland
and voted the means for its defense. They not only did their duty in
defending Germany’s national independence, but they worked with all their
might to safeguard its internal interests in the matter of food supplies,
in relieving the needy, and in protecting the working classes against
avaricious tradesmen and narrow-minded bureaucrats.
“Faithfully observing the obligations which all Socialist parties are
bound to respect, the German Socialist Party, from the very first days of
this awful tragedy, has striven to further the cause of a speedy peace.
When the first war loan was voted, in August, 1914, the Socialist group
in the Reichstag, through its spokesman, Herr Haase, said: ‘We demand
that as soon as guarantees of national safety are secured and the enemy
shows an inclination to make peace, the war be brought to an end on
conditions admitting of friendly relations with neighboring nations.’
“This demand, which was accompanied by an expression disapproving any
policy of conquest, was repeated when the new war loan was voted on
December 2. On May 29, after Italy had intervened, the statement was
made in the Reichstag in behalf of the Socialist Party that the desire
for peace was increasing and that the Socialists wanted no policy of
conquest. At a meeting in Vienna on April 12 and 13 representatives
of the German and Austro-Hungarian Socialist Parties again adopted a
resolution in favor of peace. But the German Socialists have not been
content with such measures. In spite of opposition and suspicion,
they have striven for a renewal of international relations with the
Social-Democrats of all countries, and when the executive committee
of the international Socialist organization made a proposal to hold a
meeting at The Hague to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations,
the German Socialist leaders agreed, under condition that the French
Socialist Party participate. All efforts at an international agreement,
however, were thwarted by the attitude of the French Socialists.
“We recognize with satisfaction that in England, as well as in France,
there are Socialists who are working for peace. That cannot blind us
to the deplorable fact that the majority of the Socialists, both in
England and France, favor continuing the war until Germany is completely
conquered.
“The Socialists in the Reichstag and the official leaders of the
Socialist Party have constantly and unitedly fought against a policy of
conquests and annexation. We protest again with all possible emphasis
against all efforts looking to the annexation of foreign territory and
the oppression of other peoples—measures now demanded by the great
business organizations and influential political leaders. The mere fact
that such efforts are being made tends to postpone the day of peace,
which the whole public is now so earnestly awaiting.
“The people want no conquest of land, they want peace. If the war is not
to go on indefinitely until all the nations are completely exhausted,
some one of the Powers involved must stretch out the hand of peace. Upon
Germany, which has successfully defended itself against superior forces,
and which has frustrated the plan to bring it to starvation, rests the
duty of taking the first steps toward peace. In the name of humanity and
civilization, and recognizing the favorable military position which our
brave troops have won, we urge the Government to try to end the struggle.
We expect of our fellow Socialists in other belligerent countries that
they will make the same demand upon their own governments.”
GERMAN PROPOSALS FOR PEACE
Letter of Dr. Bernhard Dernburg to American Newspapers, April 18, 1915.
[Sidenote: Dr. Dernburg.]
1. The peace must be of a permanent nature.
2. The world is one interlocking family of nations. World dominion is
possible only with dominion on high seas. All the seas and narrows must
be neutralized permanently by common and effective agreement guaranteed
by all the Powers.
3. The free sea is useless without free cables. Cables must be jointly
owned by the interested nations, with a world mail-system. Customs duties
must be equal for all exports and imports, for whatever destination and
from whatever source. Preferential tariffs with colonies are the basis of
world-empire, and must not be permitted.
4. International law should be codified, with guarantees to save all
neutrals from implication in wars in which they do not wish to take part.
5. A natural commercial relationship between Germany and Belgium must be
established in workable form.
6. Germany should be permitted industrial expansion in such foreign parts
as need or wish for development.
Dr. Dernburg’s Speech at City Club, Cleveland, May 8, 1915.
1. Asks recognition of the truth that strong nations showing great
vitality and large increase are entitled to enough soil, air and water to
maintain and advance their growing population. The lack of such proper
adjustment of the conditions of the European Powers during the last fifty
years has been one of the primary causes for unrest in Europe, and one of
the principal dangers to the peace of the world.
2. Since no readjustment of the kind can take place in Europe on national
lines, it is necessary to seek the solution, first, by the apportioning
of all uncivilized parts of the globe, that is, by a readjustment of
colonial possessions, then by the creation of spheres of influence and
non-interference with nations who are willing to take and to concede
such spheres; further, by an open door and equal opportunity policy all
over the globe; and finally, by the neutralization of all the seas and
narrows, cables and overseas mails of the world. This readjustment must
be sanctioned by a simple and codified international law, safeguarded
so that it cannot be broken without putting the infractor outside the
pale of international relationships, not only with the party attacked,
but also with all the parties remaining neutral. England must give up
her rule of the seas, which must be placed definitely in the hands of
all the Powers of the world. World trade must be free and all colonies
neutralized. The decision whether there is to be a free and neutralized
sea or a Chinese wall will also be decisive regarding the fate of
Belgium. If the sea remains fortified, there can be no choice for Germany
except to have her own sea fortresses as well, and since the only way of
getting out into the high sea would be by way of Belgium, there would
be no possibility of Germany’s considering the return of Belgium to its
former status.
PROF. DR. L. QUIDDE ON REAL GUARANTEES FOR A DURABLE PEACE
[Sidenote: Prof. Dr. L. Quidde.]
I. _The annexation of Belgium would prolong the war indefinitely._
II. _The strength of the German Empire would decrease instead of increase
by the annexation of Belgium, in times of peace as well as during the
war._
_The annexation of Belgium would destroy every outlook of a better
understanding between Germany and her present enemies, after the war.
It would make almost the whole rest of the world remain our enemies
and would call forth a coalition of all against one. Germany need not
foster illusions in this respect, if she only considers the effect of
the invasion into Belgium upon public opinion throughout the world,
especially in those neutral countries who were originally Germany’s
friends._
_He who wishes to annex Belgium must have the courage to face the fact
that annexation will make the whole world our enemy for an indefinite
space of time and will completely isolate Germany politically, so far as
the feelings of the nations are to bring about such isolation._
III. _The annexation of Belgium is bound to bring about a new war._
It is evident that neither England nor France can allow Belgium to
be annexed by Germany as long as they do not wish to be annihilated
themselves. Especially England would have to prepare retaliation with
all the force that she can display, and it would be easy enough for her
to find allies to support her. One may differ vastly on the subject
of annexation, its advantages and drawbacks, but one cannot deny that
durable peace and annexation of Belgium are two things absolutely
incompatible.
Finally Prof. Quidde asks how it will be possible to make a durable peace
which at the same time guarantees the welfare of Germany. This will be
first of all a general removal of the causes that have led to the war,
followed by a thorough reorganization of Europe on lines offering a
better security for peace.
The first essentials for that reorganization are the “open-door” and the
“free sea,” which will have to be guaranteed by international treaties.
One of the best grounded charges against International Law is, that
International Law is in many cases so hopelessly rudimentary that the
lack of precision forms a temptation to violate it. It is necessary
that a strong agitation for the development, perfection and sanction of
International Law should result from the experiences, the causes and the
course of this war.
ED. BERNSTEIN ON PEACE TERMS
I
[Sidenote: Ed. Bernstein.]
It is the vital interest of the majority of the German nation, that
the present war should end by a peace treaty which, as to the rights
and the relations of the nations, is in conformity with the principles
laid down in the program of the German Social-Democrat Party and in the
resolutions adopted by their party-meetings and by the International
Social-Democratic Congresses.
Only a peace based on these principles will result in renewing the
friendly relations between Germany and the nations she is now at war
with, as soon and as thoroughly as possible.
II
The supreme principle, insisted upon in the program and the resolutions
of the Social-Democratic Party is the right of peoples to decide their
own fate, within the limits of international law.
The German Socialists consider it their duty to defend this principle
by all available means against any attack from any side whatsoever. No
nation or part of a nation having so far enjoyed national independence,
may be deprived of this right or see it impaired; no territory may be
annexed, when the annexation would deprive the inhabitants of that right.
The Social-Democratic Party do not admit the right of conquest of one
nation over any other.
III
In the case of countries of European civilization, which have lived
under foreign rule, no territorial changes shall take place without a
referendum being taken of the inhabitants. This referendum should be
arranged and supervised by representatives of neutral States, so as to
insure perfect freedom in voting. Any inhabitant, who is of age and has
lived in the country for at least a year before the outbreak of the war,
shall have the right to vote.
In the interests of peace, all peoples of European civilization living
under foreign rule in sufficient numbers to form a community in the
international Concert, shall obtain political independence.
When a sufficient number out of subject peoples incorporated by force in
one State, desire to belong to another, they shall be given the right to
decide by vote as to which State they will belong.
IV
Transfer of territory outside of Europe shall only take place under such
conditions, as guarantee that the legal and material conditions of such
native population shall not be injured.
V
Nations can only be safeguarded against a renewal of war or wars of
retaliation by developing and strengthening international law.
In this respect the following means should be emphasized:
_a._ Development of the Hague Conference into a Permanent International
Conference for the Codification of International Law and for
International Arbitration. Concentration of the various Hague
institutions into a permanent international court, suitably divided into
branch courts.
_b._ All States to bring those differences they cannot themselves
peaceably solve, before the Court of Justice to be instituted by the
Hague Conference, where they will be settled either by mutual agreement,
conciliation or arbitration.
_c._ All signatory States to refrain from war or warlike measures till
the Court of Justice has examined the cause of war and till all attempts
to settle the difference in a peaceful manner, have proved useless. Any
State or Union resorting to hostilities contrary to these rules to be
treated as an enemy by all the others.
_d._ The Parliaments to decide about war and peace. Secret treaties to be
abolished.
_e._ Development of International Law relating to the conduct of war
and the protection of the civil population. Abolition of the right of
capture at sea and of the right to levy war-contributions. No hostages
to be taken. Abolition of the system of reprisals against inhabitants
of an invaded country for acts of self-defense or defense of other
non-combatants. Permanent committees to watch the actions of belligerents
in occupied territories and the treatment of prisoners of war and of
civil prisoners interned in the enemy’s country.
_f._ Internationalization of transcontinental railways and of all
waterways connecting seas or lakes surrounded by different countries,
with the ocean.
_g._ Adoption of the principle of the Open Door for all Colonies,
Protectorates and for every territory which lies in the sphere of
influence of an European State.
_h._ These principles to be inserted into the constitutions of the Powers.
BELGIUM
Whereas, Art. 2 already excludes any forcible annexation of Belgian
territory or any attack on the independence of Belgium by another State,
Germany has moreover invaded Belgium, overpowered its army and occupied
its territory without any provocation from the side of Belgium and as
the Chancellor has himself admitted violating the neutrality of Belgium
in defiance of the law of nations. Germany having thus made her way
into Belgium to satisfy her own designs, beat down the resistance of
the army and occupied the country by force, Germany is therefore bound
in honor to evacuate Belgium immediately on the conclusion of peace, in
accordance with the solemn declaration, made on August 4, 1914, by the
German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, to the English Secretary of State,
Sir Edward Grey, and to pay a full and ample indemnity to the people of
Belgium for the material and moral injury which they have suffered.
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
5. FRANCE
FRENCH GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR
[Sidenote: C. G. T.]
1. Federation of nations.
2. Compulsory arbitration of international disputes.
3. Independence of nationalities. Right of all peoples to dispose of
themselves to be safeguarded.
4. Suppression of secret diplomacy.
5. End of competitive armament.
6. Conference of organized labor forces of the world at same time as
conference of diplomats.
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
6. SWITZERLAND
RESOLUTIONS OF SWISS PEACE SOCIETY
At Annual Meeting, May 17, 1915.
[Sidenote: Swiss Peace Society.]
1. The avoidance of any annexation or territorial changes which are in
opposition to the interests and wishes of a population; a guarantee of
religious liberty, free speech and equality before the law, for the
minority.
2. The creation of a permanent organization in which all European States
shall be equally represented, for the purpose of safeguarding the order,
peace and safety of our portion of the earth.
3. The development of an international law organization by continual
Hague Conferences.
SWISS COMMITTEE FOR THE STUDY OF THE PRINCIPLES OF A DURABLE TREATY OF
PEACE
_President_: Prof. Otto Nippold, Bern.
[Sidenote: Swiss Committee for Study of Peace.]
1. Participation of neutral nations in the settlement.
2. Prohibition of secret treaties and agreements between nations.
3. Participation of popular representative bodies in control of foreign
policy.
4. No annexation except after plebiscite of populations concerned.
5. Limitation of armaments to point of mere protection.
6. Manufacture of armaments to become State monopoly.
7. The States which participate in the settlement are to mutually
guarantee each other’s territories.
8. Since the best guarantee for the preservation of world peace lies
in the creation of international law and custom, arbitration must be
substituted for war.
9. Disputed regions of the earth should be neutralized.
10. Free trade in all colonies.
PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS
7. HOLLAND
NEDERLANDSCHE ANTI-OORLOG RAAD
The Hague
Founded on the 8th of October, 1914
[Sidenote: Dutch Anti-War Council.]
The Council is of opinion that the following principles are indispensable
to attain a lasting peace:
1. Concert of the Powers instead of mutually opposed Alliances;
2. Limitation of armaments by international regulations;
3. Influence of the different Parliaments on the peace-treaty;
4. Avoidance of the dangers engendered by annexation or by transfer of
territory against the will of the population;
5. Removal of the obstructions to commerce or at least of difference in
treatment of the various nations in colonies and settlements, according
to international regulations.
6. New endeavors to promote compulsory arbitration and compulsory inquiry
of international differences.
DIFFERENTIAL NEUTRALITY FOR AMERICA
One would prefer to think otherwise, but the truth probably is that the
future peace of the world, and the nature of international organization
depends a good deal less upon definitely conceived plans like that of
the League to Enforce Peace (however admirable and desirable it may be
to promote definite projects of that kind) than upon the nature of the
foreign policy which each nation individually pursues. Disagreements
between nations arise generally in situations in which both sides
honestly believe themselves to be in the right. Most nations are honestly
in favor of peace in general, and would go to The Hague and assist in
drawing up plans to maintain it; yet each may be persisting in a line of
conduct which, in its own view entirely defensive and defensible, appears
to another unwarrantably aggressive. And when that is the case paper
arrangements for avoiding conflict are apt to break down.
So the most practical question for each of us for some time is likely
to be this: what will be the effect of our own country’s conduct in its
relations with other countries, upon the future peace and international
condition of the world? Or, to put the question in another form: What can
our country _do_, irrespective of what others may do, to contribute to a
more orderly international condition, saner world politics?
America is of course concerned in the present war whether she will or no.
She may, by her material resources in supplies, ammunition, credit, be
largely influencing its decision. As part of the problem of protecting
her own rights, incidentally menaced by the operations of the war, she
has taken very solemnly a certain position in international affairs.
She has declared, for instance, that she stands irrevocably for the
protection of innocent non-combatant life at sea in war time. She would
undoubtedly stand as decisively for certain lesser rights of trade and
free communication on the seas as well (in the past she has gone to war
in their defense) but for the fact that doing so against one belligerent
would aid the cause of the other guilty of still greater offenses.
And if we look beneath diplomatically expressed claims into unofficial,
but unmistakably expressed public opinion, we find America standing
strongly for certain other rules of life between nations—the right of
each nation to national existence for instance—like those violated in the
invasion of Belgium.
Is America really serious in the stand thus made? Or is she going to avow
by her future policy, if not in words, that she will take no real risk
nor assume any real obligation in support of the principles she has been
maintaining diplomatically and by her clearly expressed public opinion.
Is she going to submit lamely, to the indignities and violation of right
involved in the massacre of her innocent non-combatant citizens at sea?
I put the question in that form because it is generally a rhetorical
prelude to the demand for warlike action. And yet the American who is
moved by his country’s dignity and right to have thought this thing out,
as well as to have become angry about it, knows that warlike action is
perhaps the very last thing—though it may be the last thing—which the
situation calls for; and that warlike action alone would be a betrayal
of his country’s highest interests in the matter. If America is really
serious she must prepare herself—in public opinion, in political
education—for action of a different kind: for the abandonment of certain
traditions about freedom from entangling alliances, for the assumption of
risks and obligations which to most Americans is to ask a great deal more
than the mere act of going to war.
Why will war of itself not suffice?
Suppose this country goes to war, over, for instance, the submarine
issue; and is finally entirely successful, so far as defeating Germany
is concerned. How do we then know that America has got what she has been
fighting for? Our demands at the end of the war will be that American
rights at sea shall be respected; that, most particularly, non-combatants
shall not be drowned by attacks on merchantmen. Very good. Germany gives
us her promise. She has given it before. How do we know that it will be
kept—either by her or any other nation that in a future war may find a
ruthless use of the submarine the only weapon left to it against a power
commanding the sea? Can we hope that if we show now that we are ready to
fight “at the drop of the hat,” in future a hard-pressed belligerent will
be overawed by the great American navy? Then why is not the belligerent
we now propose to deal with held in check by the combined navies of Great
Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan and Portugal? Again, when we have
that promise at the end of our victorious war how do we know that it will
be kept, that we shall have got what we have been fighting for?
And what of the American case against the Allies? Is America now to
surrender rights upon which she has insisted ever since she became an
independent State and which she once fought a war and twice very nearly
came to war to defend? Is America, in fighting Germany to make the
British Order in Council the basis of future sea law, so that when say
Japan goes to war with some other nation America will have to submit to
Japanese control of her trade and communication with neutral States—even
to mail and banking correspondence—as she now submits to British control?
It is quite obvious that American claims have this difference from those
of the Allies: they, in so far as they are territorial can at the peace
be satisfied on the spot. America’s cannot. Hers depend absolutely upon
the establishment, after the war, of a different and better international
order; upon agreement as to what shall constitute international law and
some method of ensuring its observance.
Now has it not become evident that the present German-American situation
contains the elements of a great opportunity for America: not only of
putting an end to a situation humiliating for herself but of creating
a new state of world affairs out of which might grow—would almost
inevitably grow—the restoration of general peace on conditions that
civilization could accept?
But that result is certainly conditional on one thing: that American
diplomacy is great enough to make precedent, to be dangerously honest
to the point of dropping diplomatic make-believe and breaking with
diplomatic usage.
Germany says in effect that she will make military sacrifices for the
purpose of respecting American neutral right, if America on her side
will reciprocally fulfil neutral obligation by insisting on the military
sacrifice from _both_ belligerents; so that American rights are not made
a means of handicapping one party as against the other; are not invoked
in what Germany regards as so one-sided a fashion as to become an arm for
the use of one belligerent against the other.
Now it is quite within precedent, right and usage, to reply, as in the
past, to such a demand by diplomatic punctilio: “America cannot discuss
the behavior of one belligerent with the other,” and so forth and so
forth. The American government could make excellent debating points and
be diplomatically entirely correct.
But suppose, instead, it were undiplomatically honest and unprecedentedly
bold and said bluntly what every one knows to be the truth: that because
of the slowly acquired American conviction of the badness of the German
cause—the danger to civilization and ourselves which this country has
come to believe inherent in that cause—it is impossible for America to
enforce the law—or what America holds to be the law—sharply against
England, to take any action which would seriously add to the chances of
German victory; to be, in other words, really neutral. Suppose America
bold and honest enough to avow the quite simple obvious truth that we are
not indifferent as to the outcome of the war and that in the long run
our conduct won’t be guided as though we were; that so long as we have
reason to believe German policy a menace it will encounter in one form or
another (not excluding necessarily even the military form) our active or
latent opposition.
And then, suppose that on top of that impossibly bold and honest
stand this country were further to announce that it can only act
effectively for the sea law Germany desires, and otherwise withdraw its
opposition, if Germany is prepared to reassure us as to her cause by
stating definitely that the terms upon which she is prepared to discuss
peace include such things as the evacuation of Belgium and France and
indemnification for damage done; the acceptance of the international
principles involved in the American claims; recognition of the absolute
right to existence of all States great and small; readiness to enter,
at least to the extent that others are ready, into European or world
arrangements for the guarantee of that right and the mutual discussion
and limitation of armaments; together with such minor details as
agreement to the appointment of an international commission to enquire
into the violation of the laws of war on land and sea and the punishment
of the individuals convicted by that commission.
Once convinced that Germany stands for a policy such as peace on those
terms would imply, America could on her side (so this impossibly honest
diplomacy might make plain) stand effectively for the freedom of the sea
as against England if needs be at least to the extent of upholding the
Declaration of London; could assure Germany that this country would never
be reckoned among her enemies, but on the contrary would co-operate with
her in defense of that equality of commercial opportunity in the world of
which Germany accuses her enemies of trying to deprive her.
Such a “Declaration of America’s International Position” as that which I
am here imagining would, in more precise terms, be about as follows:
1. Though America since the outbreak of the war has done
everything possible to observe the form of neutrality which
international practise had heretofore imposed upon States not
actively participating in a war, the circumstances of the
present conflict have shown that the future protection of her
own particular interests are so identified with the maintenance
of certain general rules of international intercourse that in
all future wars she will differentiate in her treatment of
the combatants. Thus in no case will American resources be
available for the military purposes of a belligerent who had
entered upon a war refusing to submit his case to enquiry and
the necessary delay, and to adhere to certain rules necessary
for the safeguarding of innocent non-combatant life.
The United States could not in consequence feel that her
relations with Germany could be placed upon a really sound
foundation of friendly cooperation until that country had
(a) accepted the international principles (as for instance the
sanctity of non-combatant life) involved in the American claims
and the further principle that their violation is an unfriendly
act towards America whether American life and property are
concerned or not;
(b) undertaken to evacuate Belgium, France and Serbia and
indemnify Belgium for damage done;
(c) agreed to the appointment of an international commission of
inquiry into the violation of the rights of non-combatants on
land and sea, with authority to assess damages, and to payment
of any damages in which Germany may be cast, and to punishment
of individuals convicted of offenses against the laws of war.
On the acceptance of these terms by Germany, America would undertake:
A. Not to furnish military or naval aid to Germany’s enemies in
this war.
B. To become one of the guarantors of the integrity of Belgium.
C. In the event of the creation of new buffer States, to assist
in the maintenance of their inviolability by refusing to allow
American citizens to furnish their invader with supplies of
any nature: by the application, that is, of the principle of
differential neutrality above indicated.
D. To accord to German citizens in protectorates subject
to American control, commercial access on equal terms
with American citizens and to support by the differential
neutrality already indicated the policy of the open door in
all protectorates and non-self-governing territories. That
is to say America would undertake not to furnish military or
naval aid to any power or group of powers that refused to apply
the principle of the open door in their protectorates, and to
prohibit the export of supplies or munitions to such powers in
their military operations.
E. To join, _pari passu_, with other powers in any arrangement
for enforcing the submission of international disputes to
enquiry.
Now whatever followed that announcement America and the world would
gain. If Germany refused she would by that prove that she was still
unchastened, not ready to surrender or modify her policy of world
hegemony. America then knows that her fears are justified. She is
definitely warned of a fact which sooner or later she will have to face
if it is really a fact. And it is obviously far better that it should
become patent to America (and the world) now, than later (after a
possibly patched up peace). Indeed, on grounds simply of sheer national
security America should attempt by some such means to establish now, when
Germany is relatively helpless so far as damaging us is concerned, where
she stands, what America faces. It would enable her to make her future
policy definite and objective.
But suppose Germany, realizing at last that it is impossible to maintain
a national policy which during the next generation or two will have to
meet not only the opposition of the Western democracies of Europe and the
potential forces of Russia, but all that North America might during the
next generation develop into, accepts? What if the German government were
pushed by the best elements of the German people to take the opportunity
thus so publicly offered for putting themselves right with the world and
starting afresh on a more workable basis?
If that happened—which after all is the most probable thing of
all—America, without striking a blow, would have secured from Germany
the main thing for which the Western democracies are now fighting. Not
only would she have laid the foundation for the future protection of her
own sea rights in the only way in which finally they can be protected—by
an international law that is a reality because rooted in a real
international order—but she would have helped win the battle of democracy
by bringing about a discussion of terms before the democratic nations
have bled themselves white.
Never in history had a nation such an opportunity. But to take it means
breaking with routine, employing a new method, a new manner; great
governmental boldness, great political honesty. And all that is, perhaps,
too much to ask.
But that is no reason why we should not face the fact that on those
conditions the opportunity is there. Nor why those most responsible for
the direction of American public opinion should not help the nation to
realize it.
NORMAN ANGELL.
INDEX
Algeciras, 30.
Alliances, 135 ff, 144, 166;
prohibited, 94, 250, 266.
Alsace-Lorraine, autonomy of, 245, 260.
American School Peace League, program of, 267.
Angell, Norman, 33, 34, 82, 326.
Annexation, 76, 249, 306, 308, 311, 316, 322, 325.
Arbitration, 249, 251, 254, 262, 271, 306, 324;
compulsory, 262, 322, 325.
Armaments, export of, 266;
limitation of, 99, 124, 246, 248, 249, 250, 256, 262, 265, 266,
267, 271, 276, 277, 297, 300, 301, 306, 310, 322, 323, 325;
national manufacture of, 102 ff, 250, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 271,
277, 299, 300, 301, 324.
Armed Peace, 121.
Australian Peace Alliance, program of, 300.
Autonomy, 249, 254, 262, 275, 306, 318, 322.
Backward peoples, 22.
Balance of Power, 94 ff, 124, 265, 277, 301.
Bauer, Otto, 35.
Belgium, restoration of, 245, 260, 262, 274, 301, 320;
indemnity, 321;
and Germany, 58, 316, 320.
Berlin Conference of 1885, 29.
Bernstein, Ed., 317.
Bosphorus, neutralization of, 245.
Boycott, economic, 155, 174 ff, 186.
Brailsford, H. N., 302.
Bund Neues Vaterland, program of, 306.
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 275.
Buxton, Charles Roden, 301.
Capital, export of, 14, 21, 256.
Causes of war, 3, 5, 109, 265, 268.
Central “human betterment bureau,” 196.
Central Organization for a Durable Peace, program of, 247.
Chamber of Commerce of U. S., program of, 276.
Charte Mondiale, 248.
Citizen Army, 310.
Coercion, international, 130, 133, 134, 155, 160, 174, 184, 251, 255,
264, 270, 276, 293.
Concert of nations, 98, 106, 267, 268, 322, 325.
Commercial privilege as cause of war, 5.
Commission on International Migration, World, 196.
Concessions, 24.
Conference of organized labor, 322.
Conservation Commission, World, 195.
Constantinople, neutralization of, 274.
Consular Service, World, 194.
Council of Investigation and Conciliation, 128, 248, 249, 264, 276,
285, 298.
Council of States, 225, 249.
Court of International Justice, 248, 249, 264, 265, 271, 276, 297,
300, 311, 319.
Dardanelles, neutralization of, 245.
David Starr Jordan, program of, 273.
Democracy, political, 310; industrial, 272, 300.
Democratic Control of foreign policy, 89 ff, 109, 245, 248, 249, 250,
251, 254, 255, 257, 262, 266, 268, 271, 277, 297, 298, 299,
300, 306, 319, 323, 325.
Dernburg, Dr. Bernhard, 314.
Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft, program of, 306.
Dickinson, G. Lowes, 82.
Diplomacy, 22, 67 ff;
secret, 90, 245, 261, 262, 322.
Drago Doctrine, 19.
Dutch Anti-War Council, program of, 325.
Economic Imperialism, 7, 15 ff, 23 ff, 35.
Education, reform of, 249, 257.
Fabian Society, program of, 186, 278.
Far East, commission to study problems of, 269.
Federation of nations, 106, 114, 172, 203, 265, 267, 268, 271, 310,
322, 323, 325.
Ford, Henry, 243.
Foreign policy, democratic control of, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254,
255, 257, 262, 266, 268, 271, 277, 297, 298, 299, 300, 306,
319, 323, 325.
Freedom of nationalities, 50, 249, 254, 262, 275, 306, 318, 322.
Freedom of the seas, 7, 10, 245, 248, 256, 274, 306.
Freedom of trade, 6, 11, 250, 265, 274, 298, 311, 314, 315, 324, 325.
General Confederation of Labor, program of, 322.
German policy, 111 ff.
Great Britain, as example of federalism, 114, 228.
Great Society, the, 222.
Guarantees, 57, 60, 245, 270, 324.
Hague Conference, 150, 248, 256, 270, 323.
Haase, 312.
Imperialism, 7, 15, 23, 35, 110.
Indemnities, 271, 310, 321.
Industrial democracy, 272, 300.
International Congress of Women, program of, 250.
International Bureau of Peace, program of, 249.
International Council, 277, 278, 280.
International Government, 18, 31, 64, 120, 179 ff, 246, 249, 256,
265, 271, 274, 278, 299, 310.
International High Court, 186, 278, 288.
Independent Labor Party, program of, 33, 296.
International law, 221 ff, 264, 265, 268, 276, 306, 314, 319, 320,
323.
International Parliament, 161, 249.
International Peace Commission, 298.
International organization, 29, 194, 276, 306.
International police force, 152, 181, 249, 264, 265, 268, 271, 310.
International Secretariat, 278, 287.
Justiciable issues, 290.
Kautsky, Karl, 40.
Language, guarantee of, 248.
League of Peace, 78, 79, 85, 120, 131, 135 ff, 143 ff, 165, 169, 270.
League to Enforce Peace, 148, 160, 264.
Like-mindedness, 193.
Loans for war, prohibition of, 186, 267.
Mediation, continuous, 243, 254.
Militarism, 123.
Military service, 109, 152, 266, 301.
Minorities, rights of, 61, 249, 275.
Monetary System, World, 197.
“Most favored nation,” 311.
Nationality, 47, 192, 217;
freedom of, 249, 254, 262, 275, 306, 318, 322;
respect for, 254, 267.
National Peace Convention, program of, 264.
National Peace Council, program of, 298.
Naturalization, 269.
Neutral Conference for Continuous Mediation, program of, 243.
Neutralization of straits and canals, 10, 265, 271, 310, 311, 314,
315, 320;
of disputed regions, 324;
of Constantinople, 274;
of colonies, 315.
Neutral States in peace negotiations, 249, 268, 269, 323.
Non-intercourse, 265.
“Open Door,” the, 4, 250, 306, 320 (see Freedom of trade).
Patriotism, 217 ff.
Pacifism, 164.
Peaceful penetration, 23.
Permanent Credit Bureau, 20.
Persia, guarantees for, 60.
Philadelphia Conference of League to Enforce Peace, 170.
Plebiscite in transferred territory, 76, 87, 244, 247, 249, 251, 254,
266, 267, 271, 277, 297, 298, 299, 300, 310, 318, 323.
Preparedness, 269.
Poland, autonomy of, 245, 260.
Press, reform of, 74, 249.
“Principle of the Commonwealth,” 227.
Private property at sea, 265.
Publicity organization, World, 197.
Quidde, Dr. L., 316.
Reform Club of New York, memorandum, 4, 10.
Religious liberty, 248.
Rights-of-way, economic, 60.
Scandinavia, guarantees for, 60.
Serbia, autonomy of, 245.
Slovene Unit, guarantees for, 60.
Small States, security of, 77, 143, 274, 275.
Socialism, 35, 272.
Socialists, allied nations, program, 259;
German and Austro-Hungarian, program, 306;
South-German, program, 310;
German party, program, 310, 311;
neutral nations, program, 261;
American party, program, 271;
and imperialism, 33, 38.
Social organization, forms of, 189.
“Spheres of influence,” 15, 83.
State, theory of the, 70.
Status quo ante, 310.
Straits, neutralization of, 245, 265.
Suffrage, universal adult, 266;
woman, 249, 251, 254, 255, 257, 268, 271, 298.
Swiss Committee for Study of a Durable Peace, program, 323.
Swiss Peace Society, program, 323.
Switzerland, example of federalism, 114.
Tariff restrictions, 6, 82.
Trade as cause of war, 9.
Trades unions, organized against war, 300.
Transfer of territory, 76, 87, 244, 247, 249, 251, 254, 266, 267,
271, 275, 277, 297, 298, 299, 300.
Treaties, secret, 245, 248, 249, 250, 257, 306, 323.
Union of Democratic Control, program, 33, 86 ff, 277.
Union of International Associations, program of, 248.
United States, example of federalism, 114, 228.
Vorwaerts, 36.
Walling, Wm. English, 39.
West African Conference, 29.
Women, as delegates to peace conference, 251, 258, 259;
Committee for Constructive Peace, program, 259;
International Congress of, 250;
suffrage, 249, 251, 254, 255, 257, 268, 271, 298.
Women’s Peace Party, program of, 33, 268.
World Congress, 246, 298.
World Peace Foundation, program of, 266.
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