The War and Democracy Part 14

But this "Concert of Europe" was the very thing against which the democratic forces on the continent finally rebelled, for the "Concert" took the form of the so-called "Holy Alliance" between the rulers of Europe, whose object was to prevent popular movements from disturbing the neat and orderly peace which they had created. The system created by the Congress of Vienna began to break down in 1848. Since then the warlike nationalist and democratic movements in Europe, followed by the tremendous economic growth of the European nations, have made it almost impossible to secure any stable balance of power, though a more or less successful attempt to establish such a balance in the affairs of south-eastern Europe was made at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 did little but reveal the mutual fears and suspicions of the European nations, though many statesmen, especially English and American, laboured sincerely to make the Hague Conventions the guarantee of a lasting peace.

But it must be observed that the "Balance of Power," which was originally a distinctly European conception, has now become a world-wide conception. In order to secure a balance of power between the European States it is no longer sufficient to settle European frontiers; it is necessary to settle and, as it were, dovetail into each other the economic interests of the European countries in Africa, Asia, and the Southern Pacific. It is also necessary to define the relations of European countries to the States in North and South America.

What is the conclusion to be drawn from this history? The idea of the Balance of Power is unsatisfactory. You cannot really "balance" living forces. Nations are not dead ma.s.ses which can be weighed against each other, but living growths which expand according to obscure natural laws.

Human laws can never stop natural growth; growth can only be stopped by death, and so the Balance of Power seems to necessitate continual conflict.

And so, at least twice in the last two centuries, the attempt to maintain a stable European system by a peaceful "Concert of Europe" has broken down.

Once, in the Holy Alliance, that Concert itself became an intolerable tyranny. Many men to-day hope to secure peace by re-establishing the Concert of Europe on a democratic basis, but it may well be doubted whether any such system can be permanent, unless there be a radical reform in the mind and character not only of European statesmen but of the European peoples. We shall discuss this later, but meanwhile we may say this at least. A balance of power is an imperfect conception. It is a rough and ready--almost barbarous--policy. The best that can be said for it is that no alternative policy has been devised, or at least none has succeeded.

Every one of us who has a spark of idealism believes that the day will come when it shall give place to some more perfect system. But at the present day not only international politics but also home politics are governed by this idea of a balance of power. No democracy has yet been able to establish itself in any country except by virtue of a continual conflict between cla.s.s and cla.s.s, between interest and interest, between capital and labour, and international conflicts are but the reflection of the domestic conflicts within each State; both are continual unsuccessful attempts to reach a stable equilibrium, and they can only be ended by a true fusion of hearts and wills.

--4. _The Estimation of National Forces._--It has been necessary to undertake this long discussion in order to give a more or less clear idea of the work done by diplomacy in maintaining a stable international system.

Arising out of this we have now to consider the fourth cla.s.s of work--and the most difficult--which the Foreign Office has to perform. For want of a better name we may call it--

(4) The estimation of national forces. Nations are not mere agglomerations of individuals; they have each their own character, their own feelings, and their own life. Science has done little to determine the laws of their growth, but, as we have seen, each nation does grow, reaches out slowly--almost insensibly--in this or that direction, and gathers to itself new interests which in their turn give new impulse to its growth. Perhaps the best simile that we can use for the foreign policy of the world is that of a rather tangled garden, where creepers are continually growing and taking root in new soil and where life is therefore always threatening and being threatened by new life. The point is that we are dealing with _life_--with its growth and decay; not with the movements of pieces on a chequer-board.

Now, the Foreign Office largely exists in order to watch this growth and, like a gardener, to train and lead it in directions where it can expand without danger. But for this work intimate knowledge is necessary--knowledge not so much of the personal character or policy of those who govern the different nations, but knowledge of the character, the economic needs, the beliefs, the feelings, and the aspirations of the half-dumb millions who form and ultimately determine the life of each nation. The diplomatist must study every political and social movement which goes on in a nation; he must estimate the effect which the national system of education is having on the mind of the nation; he must form an idea of the lessons which the Government of his own country should learn from the government of other countries, whether it be, for instance, lessons in const.i.tutional government or in munic.i.p.al sanitation; and he must above all be able to warn his Government of the dangers to his own country which the growth of foreign countries seems to entail, in order that peaceful measures may be taken in time to prevent a collision.

This, then, is a rough account of the actual work of diplomacy. It is not a full account. There are many wrong things done which deserve criticism, but which we have not had s.p.a.ce to mention. There is also much self-sacrificing and thankless work done by diplomatists and consuls in distant parts of the world--much seeming drudgery which can hope for no reward--many honourable services rendered to the public of which the public never hears. But the above account will suffice to give a rough idea of the organisation with which we are dealing, and we may now pa.s.s on to consider the question of how this organisation should be managed and controlled.

B. THE DEMOCRATISATION OF FOREIGN POLICY

This phrase is rapidly becoming a political catchword. As such it requires to be approached with the utmost caution. Before going further it is necessary to test the a.s.sumptions underlying it and to inquire how far they really correspond to the facts.

--1. _Democracy and Peace._--First of all, the main a.s.sumption made by Englishmen who advocate the democratisation of foreign policy is that international peace would thereby be a.s.sured. True, the extension of the democratic principle is to many men an end in itself, quite apart from the question whether it tends to peace. But great ma.s.ses of men are not moved to make political demands merely by theoretical considerations; it is the pressure of definite and imminent evils which arouses them to action. In the case of England the demand for greater democratic control in the sphere of foreign policy arose in large measure from the sudden realisation, in the late summer of 1911, at the time of the so-called Agadir crisis, that war between this country and Germany was a possibility with which English statesmen and the English people had to reckon. We had felt the breath of war actually on our cheek, and a large section of English sentiment revolted from it. A demand was raised for a democratic policy of peace.

Three years later, on August 3, 1914, when Parliament met to decide the happiness or sufferings of the quarter of the human race comprised in the British Empire, the same demand was voiced in a series of speeches which accurately expressed the belief that peace was the policy of the people, while war was the secret aim of their rulers. Mr. T. Edmund Harvey, M.P., spoke as follows:

"I am convinced that this war, for the great ma.s.ses of the countries of Europe, and not for our own country alone, is no people's war. It is a war that has been made ... by men in high places, by diplomatists working in secret, by bureaucrats who are out of touch with the peoples of the world, who are the remnant of an older evil civilisation which is disappearing by gradual and peaceful methods."

Mr. Ponsonby, M.P., spoke in the same sense:

"I trust that, even though it may be late, the Foreign Secretary will use every endeavour to the very last moment, disregarding the tone of messages and the manner of Amba.s.sadors, but looking to the great central interests of humanity and civilisation to keep this country in a state of peace."

Democracy means peace;--can we accept this a.s.sumption? Contrasts are sometimes illuminating, and it may be well to turn from the Parliamentary debate of August 3 to an article written sixty-two years ago in an English review by the greatest democrat of his time. In April 1852 Mazzini published in the _Westminster Review_ an appeal to England to intervene on the Continent in favour of the revolutionary movements in progress there since 1848. The following is an extract from that article:

"The menace of the foreigner weighs upon the smaller States; the last sparks of European liberty are extinguished under the dictatorial veto of the retrograde powers. England--the country of Elizabeth and Cromwell--has not a word to say in favour of the principle to which she owes her existence. If England persist in maintaining this neutral, pa.s.sive, selfish part, she will have to expiate it. A European transformation is inevitable.

When it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, the peoples will remember that England had stood by, an inert, immovable, sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts.... England will find herself some day a third-rate power, and to this she is being brought by a want of foresight in her statesmen. The nation must rouse herself and shake off the torpor of her Government."

Mr. Ponsonby appealing in the name of the people to Sir Edward Grey to stand aloof from European war; Mazzini appealing in the name of the people to the respectable, peaceable, middle cla.s.ses of England to forsake Cobden's pacifist doctrines and throw England's sword into the scale of European revolution--it is a strange contrast which serves to remind us that the word "democracy," so lightly bandied about by political parties, has many different meanings and has stood for many different policies. It may be roughly said that it stood for internationalism in 1792, when France claimed as her mission the liberation of all nations under the tricolor; it stood for nationalism in 1848 in the mouth of Mazzini, Kossuth and the German const.i.tutional party; to-day it again stands for internationalism in the more advanced countries of Europe, but are we justified as yet in calling this more than a phase in the development of democratic doctrine?

It is a very difficult question, which it would be presumptuous to try to answer offhand; all we have tried to show here is that, on the whole, the a.s.sumption as to the peaceful tendencies of a democratic foreign policy is a doubtful one, on which we must to some extent reserve our judgment.

--2. _Foreign Policy and Popular Forces._--The above considerations will help us to appreciate at its true value the second main a.s.sumption which lies behind the demand for increased democratic control of foreign policy--namely, the a.s.sumption that the stuff of international politics is at present spun from the designs of individual statesmen, and has no relation to the needs of the peoples they govern. Stated thus, this idea will not bear examination for a moment. The doctrine of the "economic interpretation of history," which has received perhaps its most emphatic expression in the teaching of Marxian socialists, is now in one form or another accepted by all thinking men. But "economics" is after all a rough name for the sum of the ordinary needs and efforts of every single human being, and the economic interpretation of history means that the history of the world is in the long run determined by the c.u.mulative force of these humble needs and efforts. This and this alone is the real stuff of international politics. Statesmen may attempt to found systems, but the only real force in international as in domestic politics is the education of the individual man's desires. It is indeed open to any critic to say that our present capitalist economic system is responsible for war because it dams up and diverts from their true channels the needs and the efforts of the ma.s.s of mankind. But to this an Englishman may fairly answer that the free trade system under which our capitalist organisation has reached its greatest development was built up by the Manchester School with the sincere and avowed object of introducing universal peace. Cobden avowed this object clearly:

"I see," he said, "in free trade that which shall act on the moral world as the law of gravitation in the universe, drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race and creed and language and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace... I believe that the desire and motive for large and mighty empires, for gigantic armies and mighty navies ... will die away."

Yet, in spite of these aspirations, great wars have come to England, not once, but at least three times, since these words were spoken, and armaments are immeasurably larger than ever before.

Let us understand one thing clearly in connection with the present war. Mr.

Ponsonby, in the words already quoted, implored Sir E. Grey to "look to the great central interests of humanity and civilisation," and to preserve the neutrality of England in those interests. But at the moment at which he spoke the eyes of English statesmen were looking at one thing alone. It was not a question of what French statesmen expected them to do. The British Government had explained quite clearly to French statesmen that they must not expect armed support from England. This fact had been made clear to the French Foreign Office long before in a series of conversations between the statesmen, and it had been embodied in a letter from Sir E. Grey to the French Amba.s.sador. But when the shadow of war actually fell on France these conversations and this letter faded into the background. It was no longer a question of what the French President expected from the King of England. It was a question of what Jacques Roturier, artisan in the streets of Paris, knowing that the Germans were on the frontier and might be dropping their sh.e.l.ls into Paris in a fortnight, expected from John Smith, shopkeeper in the East India Dock Road, London, safe behind the English Channel from all the horrors of war. That was, not rhetorically but in all soberness of fact, the real "international obligation" on August 3, 1914; for though treaties are made by statesmen they are in the long run interpreted, not by statesmen, but by the public opinion which becomes slowly centred on them--by the hopes and fears of millions of working men and women who have never read the terms of the treaty but to whom it has become the symbol of a friendship on which they can draw in case of need. The magistrate may write the marriage lines, but the marriage becomes what the husband and wife make it--a thing far deeper and more binding than any legal contract.

In the light of these considerations, we can establish one point of supreme importance in dealing with foreign policy--namely, that the causes of war are very different from the immediate occasions of war. When the British Government, at the outbreak of the present war, published a White Paper containing the diplomatic correspondence between July 20 and August 4, 1914, they were publishing evidence as to the immediate occasion of war--namely the Austrian ultimatum of July 23 to Serbia which brought on the war. In the twelve days which intervened between the delivery of that ultimatum and the declaration of war between England and Germany, the negotiations on which hung the immediate fate of Europe were, it is true, conducted by a few leading statesmen. But it is of little use to argue whether or not these negotiations were conducted ill or well, for they were not the real _cause_ of the war. The cause of the war must be sought in the slow development of forces which can be traced back for years, and even for centuries. It was comparatively futile for Parliament to discuss whether this or that despatch or telegram was wise or unwise; the real questions to be asked were--What produced the crowds in Vienna surging round the Serbian Legation at the end of June, and round the Russian Emba.s.sy at the end of July; what produced the slow, patient sympathy for the Balkan peoples and hatred for Austria in the heart of millions of Russian peasants; what produced the Servian nationalist movement; above all, what produced that strange sentiment throughout Germany which could honestly regard the invasion of Belgium as justifiable? To answer those questions we have to estimate the force of the most heterogeneous factors in history:--for instance, on the one hand, the slow break-up of the Turkish Empire, extending over more than two centuries, which has allowed the cauldron of the Slavonic Balkan peoples to boil up through the thin crust of foreign domination; and on the other hand, the gradual development of the whole system of German State education, and the character of the German newspapers, which have turned the eyes of German public opinion in upon itself and have excluded from public teaching and from the formation of thought every breath of fresh air from the outside world, until at last German public sentiment, through extreme and incessant self-contemplation, has lost the calmness and simplicity which were once the strength of the German character. No man can allot the responsibility for these things, spreading as they do over generations; but a.s.suredly the responsibility does not rest with the half-dozen Ministers for Foreign Affairs who were in power in July 1914.

If we are right in what we have said above, then the phrase "the democratization of foreign policy" takes on a new meaning. It does not mean merely the introduction into foreign policy of any set of democratic inst.i.tutions; it means the realisation by both statesmen and people that foreign policy is already in its essence a fundamentally democratic thing, and that the success or failure of any line of action depends not upon the desires of politicians but upon the mighty forces which move and determine the life of peoples.

At present the statesmen do not realise this sufficiently, and hence comes much futile and aimless talking and writing among politicians who fancy that what they say or write to each other in their studies can determine the course of the world. In order to enable diplomatists to discharge all the duties we have already enumerated under the heading of "the estimation of national forces," they need to have a better training and a fuller knowledge of the life and social movements both of their own country and of foreign countries. The Royal Commission on the Civil Service was still considering, when war broke out, how this could be accomplished. It is too long a question to enter on here, but it may safely be said that the more the problem is examined the more does it appear to be, like the wider problem of the whole body of 200,000 civil servants in the United Kingdom, a question of national education, and not a mere matter of Government regulations and democratic inst.i.tutions. What is required, in the Foreign Office, as in the whole British civil service, has been well expressed by Mr. Graham Wallas in his book _Human Nature in Politics_:

"However able our officials are and however varied their origin, the danger of the narrowness and rigidity which has. .h.i.therto so generally resulted from official life would still remain and must be guarded against by every kind of encouragement to free intellectual development."

--3. _Foreign Policy and Education_.--But if statesmen do not sufficiently realise the strength of existing popular forces in foreign policy, it is equally true that the people themselves do not realise it. The people of every country are inclined to think that they can alter the destiny of nations by ousting one foreign minister from power and setting up another; they think that speeches and the resolutions pa.s.sed by congresses can change fundamental economic facts. They think that mere expressions of mutual goodwill can take the place of knowledge, and they forget that no nation can shake itself free in a moment from the historical development which has formed it, just as no man can wholly shake himself free from the character which he has inherited from his ancestors. Indeed all our phrases--our whole att.i.tude of mind--shows how little we, as a people, realise popular forces. We commonly speak, for instance, of Russia as if nothing in that vast country had any influence on foreign affairs except the opinions of a few bureaucrats in Petrograd. Our sympathy for or hostility to Russia is determined by our opinion of the Russian bureaucracy, and we never spare a thought for the hopes and fears and the dumb but ardent beliefs of millions of Russian peasants. We are apt to dismiss them from our minds as ignorant and superst.i.tious villagers tyrannised over by the Tsar, without troubling to enquire narrowly into the real facts of Russian life. We thus make precisely the same mistake that diplomatists too often make. We forget that the ma.s.ses of peasants who flow every year on pilgrimage to the shrines of their religion const.i.tute a more vital fact in the history of the world than the deliberations of the Duma or the decisions of police magistrates.

Here we have a lesson to learn from Germany, for German statesmen, strangely enough, have taken immense trouble to make their policy a democratic one. The whole German nation is behind them because for years and years they have taught the nation through the schools, the universities, and the press, their own reading of history and their own idea of what true civilisation is. They have adapted their teaching to the fundamental characteristics and to the history of the German people. They have taken pains to ally the interests alike of capital and labour to their policy, and to fuse the whole nation by a uniform national education and by a series of paternal social reforms imposed from above. The real strength and danger of Germany is not what her statesmen or soldiers _do_, but what Germans themselves _believe_. We are fighting not an army but a false idea; and nothing will defeat a false idea but the knowledge of the truth.

When this war is over, whatever its outcome may be, we must try to introduce a new era into the history of the world. But our fathers and our fathers' fathers have tried to do this same thing, and we shall not succeed if we go about the work in a spirit of self-sufficiency and hasty pride.

Only knowledge of the truth will enable us to succeed. Knowledge of the truth is not an easy thing; it is a question of laborious thought, mental discipline, the humility which is content to learn and the moral courage which can face the truth when it is learnt. How are we to gain these things?

First of all, by schools, universities, cla.s.ses--all the machinery of our national and private education.

Then, by the same means as popular government employs in other matters--by discussion, by debates in Parliament, by criticism of the Government. Now, these means are not employed at present partly because it is feared that criticism of the Government in matters of foreign policy will weaken its hands in dealing with foreign nations. This is a just fear if criticism merely springs from the critics' personal likings or prejudices, but no such evil effects need be feared if the criticism springs from deep thought, from knowledge of the facts and from the patience and wisdom which thought and knowledge bring. But partly also effective discussion of foreign politics does not exist because we are more interested in home politics. We really have, if we cared to use it, as much democratic control over the Foreign Office under our const.i.tution as over any Government Department, for the Foreign Office, like every other Department, is under the control of a member of Parliament, elected by the people. But we are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in const.i.tutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and unmake Governments, and when we discuss whether a Conservative or a Liberal Government ought to be in power, we never think what effect the change would have on foreign policy. If the democracy is to take a real part in foreign politics, it must recognise that great responsibilities mean great sacrifices. We must be content to think a little less of our internal social reform, and give more of our attention to the very difficult questions which arise beyond the Channel and beyond the Atlantic Ocean. We must live constantly in the consciousness that the world to-day is one community, and that in everything we do as a people we bear a responsibility not to ourselves alone but to the population of the British Empire as a whole and to the family of nations.

But when we have really set ourselves to understand and discharge the responsibilities of foreign policy, how shall we, the people of this country, make our opinions effective? How can we be sure that the Foreign Office will carry out a policy corresponding to the considered convictions which we as a people have formed?

As already stated, we have in our hands the same means of Parliamentary control over foreign policy as over internal policy. Parliament can overthrow a Government whose policy it disapproves, and it can refuse to grant supplies for the carrying out of such a policy. Short of this, the people can express through Parliament its views as to the way in which foreign policy should be conducted, and generally Ministers will bow, in this as in other matters, to the clearly expressed views of Parliament. We have, in fact, recently seen a striking example of this. When after the international crisis of 1911 the country clearly expressed the opinion that no secret engagements should be entered into with any Power which would force Great Britain to go to war in support of that Power, the Prime Minister stated, and has repeated his statement emphatically on several subsequent occasions, that the Government of this country neither had entered, nor would enter, into any such secret engagements, and that any treaty entailing warlike obligations on this country would be laid before Parliament. This has now become a fixed and recognised fact in British policy, and it is not too much to say that, like other const.i.tutional changes under the British system of government, it is rapidly becoming a part of the unwritten const.i.tution of the country.

But many people would like to go beyond this, and lay down that no treaty between Great Britain and another country shall be valid until it has been voted by Parliament. Many countries have provisions of this kind in their const.i.tutions; for instance, the const.i.tution of the United States provides that all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate, and the French const.i.tution contains the following provision:

"The President of the Republic negotiates and ratifies treaties. He brings them to the knowledge of the Chamber so soon as the interests and the safety of the State permit.

"Treaties of peace and of commerce, treaties which impose a claim on the finances of the State, those which relate to the personal status and property rights of French subjects abroad, do not become valid until they have been voted by the two Chambers. No cession, exchange, or increase of territory can take place except by virtue of a law."

Such const.i.tutional provisions may be good in their way, and it may be that we should copy them. But the question is one of secondary importance.

Whether treaties must actually be ratified by Parliament, or merely laid before Parliament for an expression of its opinion, as is commonly done in this country, the Parliament and people of Great Britain will have control over foreign policy just in the measure that they take a keen interest in it. If they take a keen interest no statesman dependent for his position on the votes of the electorate will dare to embody in a treaty a policy of which they disapprove; while if they do not take an adequate interest, no amount of const.i.tutional provisions will enable them to exercise an intelligent control over the actions of statesmen.

The same may be said of another expedient adopted in many countries; namely, the appointment by Parliament of Committees on Foreign Affairs, with power to call for papers and examine Ministers on their policy.

Democratic government both in foreign and internal affairs has. .h.i.therto rested on the idea that Parliament should have adequate control over the principles on which policy is conducted, but must to a large extent leave the details of administration to the executive departments which are controlled by the Ministers of the Crown. Parliament, whether through committees or otherwise, will never be able to follow or control all diplomatic negotiations, any more than it can control all the details of the administration necessary to carry out a complicated law like the Insurance Act; and Committees of Parliament, however useful, will have no influence unless the people of the country so recognise their responsibilities in foreign politics that they will demand from the men whom they elect to Parliament a judgment and a knowledge of foreign affairs, at least as sound and well based as they now require in the case of internal affairs.

It will be seen that this imposes a very difficult task on the British electorate. How are they to weigh foreign affairs and internal affairs against each other? What are they to do if they approve the internal policy of a Government, but disapprove of its foreign policy, or _vice versa_? Are we, for instance, to sacrifice what we believe to be our duty in foreign affairs in order that we may keep in power a Government which is carrying out what we believe to be a sound policy of internal social reform? It is here, it would seem, that some reform is really needed. There is one solution: namely, to separate the control of domestic affairs on the one hand and foreign affairs on the other, placing domestic affairs in the hands of a Parliament and and a Cabinet who will stand or fall by their internal policy alone, and entrusting foreign affairs to an Imperial Parliament and an Imperial Cabinet formed of representatives not of Great Britain alone but of the whole British Empire. This is an idea which merits the most careful consideration by the people of the United Kingdom, for it may well be doubted whether any real popular control of foreign policy is possible until some such division of functions takes place. One word in conclusion. If it is true that domestic policy and foreign policy are separate functions of Government, it is also true that the domestic policy of a country in the long run determines its foreign policy. International peace can never be attained between nations torn with internal dissensions; international justice will remain a dream so long as political parties and schools of thought dispute over the meaning of justice in domestic affairs. A true ideal of peace must embrace the cla.s.s struggle as well as international war. If we desire a "Concert of Europe" which shall be based on true freedom and not on tyranny, it behoves us to realise our ideal first in England, and to raise our country itself above the political and social conflicts and hatreds which have formed so large and so sordid a part of our domestic history for the last decade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is difficult to give a list of books ill.u.s.trating foreign policy in general. The lists given in other chapters sufficiently ill.u.s.trate the various problems with which foreign policy to-day has to deal.

The diplomacy of a century ago is well ill.u.s.trated by the _Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury_. 4 vols. 1844. (Out of print.) For the diplomacy of the middle of the nineteenth century, when the present national forces of Europe were being created, the following biographies are useful: