American World Policies Part 15

[5] British White Paper, No. 138.

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CHAPTER XVII

TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT

These are three ways in which the United States might conceivably attempt to promote the international adjustments without which peace cannot be secured. We might seek to "go it alone," righting one wrong after another, intervening whenever and wherever our national conscience directed. Or we might enter into an alliance with one or a few selected democratic and enlightened nations to force international justice and comity upon other nations. Finally we might refrain from ubiquitous interventions and peace-propagating alliances and devote ourselves, in conjunction with all other willing nations, to the formulation of principles of international policy, and unite with those nations in the legalisation and enforcement of such principles. In other words we might become the standard about which the peaceful parties and groups of all nations might rally.

The first of these courses is quite impossible. It is grotesque to think of us, or of any country, as a knight-errant, rescuing nations forlorn from evil forsworn powers. There are two things, besides a saving sense of humour, which preclude us from essaying this role; we have not the knowledge and we have not the power.

For the making of peace more than good will is required. Nothing is more harmful in international intercourse than a certain sentimentalism and contempt for realities on the part of many of our pacifists.

The difficulty with most plans for intervention by one {232} moral and infallible power is that they attribute a pikestaff simplicity to international--as, in fact, to all questions. According to certain superlatively well-intentioned people, some nations are wicked and others virtuous; some nations love the clash of arms, some the ways of peace; some nations are greedy, brutal and dishonourable, others are generous, gentle and honourable. It is the absolute bad and the impossible good of the melodrama, in which the human sheep and goats are sundered by an obvious moral boundary line.

In point of fact, no nation is good or bad in this simple sense, but all have a certain justice in their claims, however difficult it is to square these claims with the moral philosophy of the neutral country.

The British had a certain justice in their conflict with the Transvaal as had also the Dutch burghers who resisted them. Even in our brutal attack upon Mexico in 1846 we had the justification arising from our greater ability to use the conquered territory. It is easy to find phrases to be used whenever we wish to interfere, but these phrases sometimes conceal an ambiguous meaning and sometimes have no meaning at all. Are we, for instance, to become the defenders of small nationalities, ready to go to war whenever one is invaded? Has a small nation a right to hold its present territory when that right conflicts with the economic advance, let us say, of a whole continent? Should we respect Canada's right to keep New York, had that city originally been settled by Canadians? Should we compel Russia to treat her Poles and Jews fairly and concede to Russia the right to compel us to treat our Negroes fairly? Some extension of the right of interference in what are now called the internal affairs of other nations must be admitted, but it is a precipitous road to travel. The united powers may compel Roumania or Greece to {233} behave, but the United States, acting alone, would find it irksome to have to constrain or discipline Russia.

By this it is not meant that we should never intervene. It would be futile to fix such a rule for conduct which, in the end, will be determined by circ.u.mstances. In any question of interference, however, the burden of proof should rest heavily upon the side which urges a nation to slay in order to secure what it believes to be the eternal principles of justice. The general development will be toward greater interference, but this intervention will be increasingly international, not national.

In actual practice the problem when to interfere is immensely difficult. It is easy to say "let America a.s.sume her responsibility for policing the world," but the question arises, "What in particular should we do and what leave undone?" Should we war against Germany because of Belgium, and against France and England because of Greece?

Should we fight j.a.pan to aid China? Are we to mete out justice even-handed to the Poles, Finns and Jews of Russia, the Czechs and Southern Slavs of Austria, the Armenians and Alsatians? Should we have interposed to save Persia from benevolent absorption by Russia and England? Clearly we could not do these things alone, and to attempt them would be to strike an impossibly virtuous att.i.tude. Even if we had the wisdom or the sure instinct to save us from error, we should not have a fraction of the power necessary to make our benevolent intervention effective.

To right the wrongs of the world, to build up a firm international policy and thus to create and establish peace seems easier if it be attempted in alliance with two or three other virtuous powers. But if we unite with England, France and Russia, to maintain virtue in the world, may we not, at least hypothetically, be playing a fool's {234} part in a knave's game of diplomacy? May we not be simply undermining Germany and Austria? To use our army and navy for such purposes would const.i.tute us a part of one great European combination against the other, and our disinterested a.s.sistance might be exploited for purposes with which we had no sympathy.

A proposal, at least potentially more popular, is the formation of an Anglo-American Union for the maintenance of peace. It is a.s.sumed that the two nations, and the five self-governing British colonies are kindred in blood, inspired by the same ideals and united by a common language. Their white population exceeds one hundred and fifty millions. They are capable, energetic, individualistic peoples, favourably situated on an immense area, and holding dominion over hundreds of millions in various parts of the world. These Britons, Colonials and Americans, by reason of geographical position, are naval rather than military, and if they could hold the sea, would be able to preserve peace in lands not accessible to military powers and to dictate peace even to the military nations. Such an integration of the English-speaking peoples would thus const.i.tute a step towards international peace.

It is not here proposed to discuss the value of this proposal as a means of defending the United States. In general, its defensive value for us would probably be less in the coming decades than for Britain and her colonies. The British Empire has the greater number of enemies and is the more easily a.s.sailed. Great Britain cannot protect her colonies without maintaining her naval supremacy not alone in the North Sea, but in the Pacific as well. As for England, she occupies the same position towards us in any attack from the European continent that Belgium occupies towards England. She is an outpost. Our own continental territory could probably be protected in {235} most cases by a smaller military and naval effort than would be required of us as part-defenders of a British-American Union. It is true that these conditions might change, with the result that we should need Great Britain's help most urgently. For the time being, however, we are discussing a British-American alliance or federation not as a possible protection to us but as an instrument for eliminating war.

In all probability such an instrument would work badly, and to the non-Anglo-Saxon world would look much like a sword. For the fundamental defect of such a proposal lies in the fact that it is a plan for the coercion of other powers by a group of nations, not at all disinterested. If the British and Americans possessed eighty per cent.

of the military and naval power of the world, they might establish a peace like that which the Roman Empire was able to establish. It would be a peace dictated by the strong. In fact, however, there would be no such superiority of power. Russia, Germany, Austria, j.a.pan united, would be quite capable of exerting a far superior force. Even if the force opposed were only equal, the result would be a confrontation of peoples in all essential respects like the Balance of Power in Europe, but on a vaster scale. We should not have advanced an inch towards the goal of a world peace or a world economy.

For the United States to enter into such a federation would be to take our part in the world wars to come and the intrigues that precede and accompany such wars. We might be called upon to halt Russia's progress towards Suez, the Persian Gulf, or the Indian border. We might be obliged to defend Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We could not permit any nation to reach a point where British commerce might be a.s.sailed. We should cease to be interested in {236} the freedom of the seas because sharing the dominion of the seas. We should have no leisure and no inclination to seek a more equal utilisation of the backward countries. We should need armies and navies to protect the approaches to England and to hold back the land nations. Against us would work immense potential forces. Strong, growing, ambitious populations, envying our arrogant sea-power and forced by their insecurity to remain militaristic and become navalistic would prepare unceasingly for the day when they could try conclusions with us. The Anglo-Saxon Federation may be an exhilarating conception, but it is not peace.

Parenthetically an agreement or understanding with Great Britain, less ambitious and pretentious than the proposed federation, is in the interest of the two nations. In the more than one hundred years of acrid peace between the two countries, there has been revealed a certain community of interest, which might properly be utilised to prevent future conflicts. While we are not ready to involve ourselves in Britain's European and imperialistic policies, and do not want a whole world in arms against us, we do wish to avoid misunderstandings with England. We should be better off were we to give Great Britain a.s.surances that we would not contest her naval supremacy (however much we may strive to alter its nature), and if we were to obtain from England her unconditional support of the doctrine that the Latin-American countries are not to be colonised or conquered.

In our efforts to secure a basis of international peace, however, we must rely not upon England or any other single nation or group of nations but upon a league, into which all nations may enter upon identical terms. We must depend upon all-inclusive, not upon exclusive alliances.

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At this point it may be well to recapitulate the difficulties and inevitable limitations of any such plan. In the first place nationality exists and cannot be exorcised. The several nations, though they have common interests, are also sundered in interest, and in present circ.u.mstances may gain more from a given war than they lose.

No nation, because of a moral appeal, will surrender its vital interests, and each believes that its own ambitions are morally justified. To pursue these interests the nations arm, and this compet.i.tive armament breeds fear, which in turn provokes war. In various parts of the world broken nationalities seek to attain to national independence or autonomy and these nationalistic differences are exacerbated by economic quarrels. Moreover, within the nations certain sections or groups find their true economic interest in policies leading to war, and these groups are able by means of ceaseless propaganda to drive their nation into war-provoking policies.

Finally we are faced with the grim fact that in Europe at least no great nation can pursue a consistent policy of peace unless other nations move simultaneously in the same direction. Furthermore the instinctive efforts of each nation to secure its own peace by force const.i.tute a menace to other nations and a danger to the world's peace.

The outlook for peace is thus not cheering; "the war against war," to use William James's expression, "is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party."

Fortunately, however, there are certain factors making for peace, and upon these factors we are able to build. All over the world there is a peace sentiment, a vast, undisciplined, inchoate desire to discover ways and means by which this scourge of war may be lifted. It is not inherently impossible to organise this sentiment, crystallise it, direct it and make it effective. The task is essentially {238} similar to that of organising democracy, for wars increasingly are becoming national wars, in which success depends not upon princes but upon the willingness and enthusiasm of the great slow peoples. The millions who bear the chief burdens of war and derive only its lesser gains are in all countries moving towards self-expression and domination. It is in the end upon these ma.s.ses, with their inherent prejudices and pa.s.sions, and not upon diplomats and rulers that any project for peace must be based.

The appeal to these millions though it be couched in terms of morality and sentiment, must be an appeal to interest. What is necessary is to recognise the economic motives that drive such populations to war and to reverse those motives. It does not suffice to preach that wars are never in the interest of the people; the nations know otherwise. It is necessary rather to change conditions so that wars will in actual fact lose their economic value to nations. Peace must be made not only to appear but actually to be in the interest of the peoples of the world.

The popular horror of war, the growing sense of its immense costs, the slowly maturing sympathy between individual members of hostile nations form the substantial groundwork upon which an opposition to war _in general_ is based. Added to these are the waning of the romanticism of war and the growth of a sense of its mechanical (rather than human) quality. The present war has immensely increased this opposition. It has disenchanted the world. In all countries millions of men now realise that wars must be fought not alone by adventurous youths, who do not put a high value upon life, but by husbands and fathers and middle-aged men, who are somewhat less susceptible to the glamorous appeal of battle. They are beginning to recognise that wars are not won by courage alone {239} but by numbers, by money, by intimidation, by intrigue, by mendacity and all manner of baseness. The lies spread broadcast throughout the world and the money spent by Germans and Allies to bribe Bulgarian patriots are quite as great factors in deciding the issue of the war as the valour of the _poilus_ at Verdun.

In a moral sense war has committed suicide.

This increasing comprehension of war's real nature and of war's new manifestations is leading the peoples to demand the right to decide for themselves when and how war is to be declared and to take part in negotiations which may lead up to war. The power to provoke wars is the last bulwark of autocracy; when the nation is in danger (and in present circ.u.mstances it is always in danger), democracy goes by the board. Let the Socialists and Liberals in all countries declaim as they will against armies, navies, imperialism, colonialism, and international friction, let Members of Parliament ask awkward questions in the House, the answer is always the same, "It is a matter of national safety. To reply to the question of the honourable gentleman is not in the public interest." Against this stone wall the efforts of organisations like the British "Union of Democratic Control" break ineffectually.

The Socialists have also failed, at least externally. Identifying the war-makers and imperialists with those cla.s.ses to which they were already opposed in internal politics, the Socialists sought to make good their democratic antagonism to war. They opposed armies and proposed disarmament; they threatened national strikes in case aggressive wars were declared; they fought with a sure democratic instinct against every manifestation of militarism. In the crisis, however, they failed. They failed because their conception of war was too narrow, {240} arbitrary and doctrinaire. They perceived the upper cla.s.s interest in war but failed to recognise, or rather obstinately ignored, the national interest. When at last the nation was threatened, the Socialists and peace-makers not only closed ranks with those who desired war, but even lent a willing ear to proposals of annexation (for purposes of national security) and agreed to other international arrangements likely to be the cause or at least the occasion of future wars.

The general will for peace we have with us already; what is to-day most necessary is the knowledge and insight which will direct this will to the attempted solution of the causes of war. Towards this knowledge the present war has contributed. Never before have so many men recognised the strength of the economic impulses driving nations into the conflict. The war, it is true, has intensified national hatreds by its wholesale breach of plighted agreements; it has increased terror and distrust; it has sown broadcast the seeds of future wars by a series of secret, but known, agreements, creating a new Europe even more unstable than was the Europe of 1914. On the other hand, it has forced men to open their eyes to the real facts of war, and to recognise that wars will continue until the motives for war are reversed, until conditions are created in which nations may realise their more moderate hopes of development without recourse to fighting.

It is upon this recognition, upon this guide to the blind pa.s.sion for peace, that any league for peace must be based. Such a league can probably not be immediately constructed and permanently maintained. It depends upon the slow growth of an international mind, upon a willingness, not indeed to sacrifice national interests but to recognise that national interests may be made to conform with the larger interests of humanity. It means the {241} fulfilment not the destruction of nationality. It requires for its realisation the breaking of two chains, an inner chain which binds the nation to the will of a selfish minority cla.s.s, an outer chain which binds its national interest to war.

How such a league will come about it is perhaps premature to discuss.

In the immediate future we are likely to have not a true league of peace but rather a league of temporarily satisfied powers, seeking their group interest in the _status quo_ and pursuing their common aims at the expense of excluded nations in much the same spirit in which a single nation now pursues its separate interest. Such a grouping of interested nations is likely to be only temporary, as dissensions will arise and new alignments be made comprising the nations formerly excluded. It is bound to break up when the _status quo_ becomes intolerable to several of its members. On the other hand the spirit of such an organisation might not impossibly change. The league of satisfied nations might discover that it was to its real interest, or might be compelled by outer pressure, to make concessions to the excluded nations, and finally to admit them on certain terms. Such a development would be comparable to that by which autocracies have gradually become const.i.tutional monarchies and republics.

But, however the League is formed, two things are essential to its continued existence. One is the acceptance of principles of international regulation, tending to reduce the incentive and increase the repugnance to war, in other words a measure of international agreement, secured either by an international body having legislative power, or in the beginning by a series of diplomatic arrangements as at present. The second essential is a machinery for enforcing agreements.

Such machinery cannot be {242} dispensed with. Peace cannot come by international machinery alone; neither can it come without machinery.

Peace between nations, like peace within a nation, does not depend upon force alone. Unless the effective majority of the nations (or of the citizens) are reconciled to the system to be enforced, unless they desire peace, whether international or internal, the application of force will be impossible. On the other hand, peace is equally impossible without force. If no compulsion can be applied the smallest minority can throw the world into war.

Such a compulsion of one nation by others does not necessarily mean a bombardment of cities or the shedding of blood. The force to be applied may be economic instead of military. No nation to-day, above all, no great industrial nation, is socially and economically self-sufficient, but all depend upon constant intercourse with other nations. It is therefore true, as one writer says,[1] that "if all or most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it (the offending nation) would soon be reduced to worse straits than those which Germany is now experiencing. If all diplomatic intercourse were withdrawn; if the international postal and telegraphic systems were closed to a public law-breaker; if all inter-State railway trains stopped at his frontiers; if no foreign ships entered his ports, and ships carrying his flags were excluded from every foreign port; if all coaling stations were closed to him; if no acts of sale or purchase were permitted to him in the outside world--if such a political and commercial boycott were seriously threatened, what country could long stand out against it? Nay, the far less rigorous measure of a financial boycott, the closure of all foreign exchanges to members of the outlaw State, the prohibition of all {243} quotations on foreign Stock Exchanges, and of all dealings in stocks and shares, all discounting and acceptances of trade bills, all loans for public or private purposes, and all payments of moneys due--such a withdrawal of financial intercourse, if thoroughly applied and persisted in, would be likely, to bring to its senses the least scrupulous of States.

a.s.suming that the members of the League included all or most of the important commercial and financial nations, and that they could be relied upon to press energetically all or even a few of these forms of boycott, could any country long resist such pressure? Would not the threat of it and the knowledge that it could be used form a potent restraint upon the law-breaker? Even the single weapon of a complete postal and telegraphic boycott would have enormous efficiency were it rigorously applied. Every section of the industrial and commercial community would bring organised pressure upon its government to withdraw from so intolerable a position and to return to its international allegiance."

It cannot be a.s.sumed that the attempt to organise such a boycott would be invariably successful. Not all nations would be equally injured, for while a boycott of Italy or Greece would be fatal, the United States or Russia might survive such economic pressure. A boycott would not be easy to enforce. It would be necessary to secure a concert of opinion and action in states, which, however they may agree upon any particular question, have widely divergent interests in other matters.

Different boycotting nations would be variously affected. A boycott of Germany, while it might injure the United States or j.a.pan would almost certainly ruin Holland and Belgium. Even were these small countries to be partially reimbursed for their special losses, they might still hesitate. There would also remain the fear that some of the boycotting nations would {244} be detached through economic bribery, with the result that the boycott broken, the nations faithful to their agreements would suffer. Finally, if Holland joined in a boycott of Germany, she might within a few days be compelled to resist a German invasion. An economic boycott might easily lead to war.

This obvious connection between economic and military compulsion is often disregarded by men who dislike war but are willing to commit their nation to partic.i.p.ation in economic compulsion. The two, however, are inseparable, though they may not be inseparable for each nation. The boycotting nations must be prepared to prevent reprisals, must be willing if necessary to fight. It is not, however, necessary for each nation upholding international law to contribute equally to this military compulsion. Certain nations might use their armies and fleets while others, more remote from the struggle, might merely continue to boycott.

It would not be possible, to enforce a decision against nations having a preponderance of military power, nor even against a group with a large, though not the preponderant share of military and economic resources. Germany, Austria and Russia combined could not be compelled. The essence of the problem, however, is not the creation of a state of war between coalitions almost equal in size, but the gradual adoption of a policy of peace by securing a unity of interest among so large a group of nations that this group would hold a clearly preponderant power over any other group. Just as peace within a state cannot be secured where the law-breakers are a majority, so international peace cannot be secured unless the preponderance of power is clearly on the side of peace.

Even with a majority of nations agreeing "in principle," the difficulties of actually creating a League of {245} Peace and International Polity would be great. To carry out such a plan, to work out modes of action which will conform to the world's evolving sense of the necessity for more stable international relations, requires an international machinery, concerning which nations and cla.s.ses will disagree. Some channel, however, is necessary for the flow of the peace forces resident in the world. A machinery must be created which will approximate in some degree to that by which a nation, composed of conflicting cla.s.ses and economic groups, manages to secure a degree of common interest and action among such groups. There must be an international executive, an international legislative body and some approach to an international court. That there are immense difficulties in the creation of such a machinery is obvious and admitted. That the machinery cannot work perfectly, that it may repeatedly break down; that it can be perfected only through trial and error, are facts, which though in themselves discouraging, need not lead to the abandonment of the effort. There is nothing inherently impossible in the gradual creation and elaboration of such machinery.

The development of the future lies in that direction.[2]

Let the machinery be ever so perfect, however, it is useless unless principles are formulated which meet the requirements of the nations which are to be bound over to keep the peace. A league to enforce peace is a futility unless it is also a league to determine international polity. Peace cannot be negative, a mere abstention from war. It must be a dynamic process, an adjustment of the nations of the world to their international environment.

[1] Hobson (John A.), "Towards International Government," New York (The Macmillan Co.), 1915, pp. 90, 91.

[2] It is not pertinent to this book to discuss in detail the plans which are being formed for the gradual evolution of such international machinery. For readers who desire to secure a _precis_ of such arrangements, the book of John A. Hobson, "Towards International Government," is recommended.

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