American World Policies

In Latin America itself such a policy of aggression by the United States is already feared and resented.117 The people to the south of us do not take our professions of disinterestedness with the simple faith of little children, but see in us a virile, formidable, unconsciously imperialistic nation, which has already benefited by its guardianship and hopes to benefit still more. They fear the colour prejudice in the United States and a certain unreasoning contempt for Latin-American civilisation might lead us impatiently to set aside their rights if they conflicted with our own interests. The Latin Americans already speak of a "North American Peril." They remember Texas, Panama, Porto Rico. Indeed, they recognise that the United States, in despite of itself, may be forced to expand southwards. "It is more than probable," writes the Mexican sociologist, F. Bulnes, "that by 1980 the United States will hold a population of 250,000,000 inhabitants. They will then scarcely be sufficient for the needs of this population, and will no longer be able to supply the world with the vast quantity of cereals which they supply to-day. They will therefore have to choose between a recourse to the methods of intensive culture and the conquest of the extra-tropical lands of Latin America, which are fitted, by their conditions, to the easy and inexpensive production of cereals."118

There is a nearer danger. "Sometimes," writes Garcia Calderon, "this North American influence becomes a monopoly, and the United States takes possession of the markets of the South. They aim at making a trust of the South American republics, the supreme dream of their multi-millionaire conquistadors."119 Thus to shut off Latin America, as Spain once did, would, however, injure the Southern republics and create an antagonism that would find its expression in armed resistance. Nor would this resistance be entirely negligible. A century ago, Latin America had a population of fifteen millions; to-day its population is eighty millions and is rapidly increasing. As an ally to European nations, opposed to aggression by the United States, a Latin-American country or group of countries might well exert a decisive influence.

Ill defined and vague, capable of being indefinitely expanded by all sorts of sudden interpretations, the Monroe Doctrine is to-day a peril to Latin America and to ourselves. It is likely to become even more dangerous if turned over to an American plutocracy for its elucidation. If on the other hand, we restrict our policy to the protection of the interests of Latin Americans, Europeans and ourselves, we shall not only be safe-guarding our own peace, but shall be removing a future coveted area from the field of international strife. To adopt such a policy, however, means that we must be better informed and more concrete. It is absurd to lump together all Latin-American countries, as though all were equally advanced in civilisation. To compare the Argentine with San Domingo is to discover differences almost as great as between Holland and Abyssinia. Mexico is far more significant to us politically, economically and in a military sense than Brazil or Chile. Into the question of Panama, Haiti and the West Indian Islands generally, elements enter that are absent from our relations with Venezuela or Ecuador. Our policy towards these countries need not be identical. We should have a Mexican policy, a separate policy for the West Indian Islands, another policy for the Caribbean States, and an individual policy for each South American state. Our interests and obligations differ in these states. We cannot pretend to the same vital interest in the internal peace of Argentina as in that of our next door neighbour. We cannot cover these diverse conditions with the blanket of one vague doctrine.

In our relations to Latin America, moreover, we should not grasp at political sovereignty, if the reasonable economic interests of the world can in any way be secured without political incorporation. We are gradually being forced into a policy of acquiring dominion over certain Caribbean countries. We have a financial guardianship in Haiti and San Domingo; we have "taken" Panama, and it probably needs only a little disorder to give us a quasi-protectorate over other small countries in the same neighbourhood. The United States, however, is on the whole still averse from such interference, wherever avoidable. We have kept faith with Cuba and there is strong opposition to acquiring Mexico, despite the agitation of financiers and instinctive border-line patriots. The problem is not easy, for a measure of peace in these neighbouring states is not only essential to us but is demanded by Europe (who will interfere if we do not) and peace may eventually require intervention. In countries like Haiti, which show at present an invincible distaste for orderly government, abstention is almost impossible.

The chief danger in our relations with certain Latin-American countries lies in this political instability and unripeness that makes property and life unsafe and the administration of justice notoriously corrupt. The result is extortion, bribery and violence clothed in legal form. Investors and creditors plead for intervention to enforce contracts, sometimes of doubtful validity, sometimes obviously dishonest. To meet the problems arising from such claims, we should have more information. Our Bureau of Foreign Commerce should ask for data concerning American investments abroad and especially in Latin America. Such information, supplied in the first instance by the corporations, should be verified by official investigations. There should be full publicity. Our consular representatives should not seek to secure special privileges or business orders, and our governmental influence should guarantee equal economic opportunities to all nations. No claim by Americans should be enforced until it has been reported upon favourably by a court of arbitration composed of representatives of nations with no interest in the controversy.

Whether the United States should seek the aid of England or of some other European power in the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine or should endeavour to internationalise the doctrine by gaining the adhesion of all nations, or should support the doctrine with the aid of the Latin-American countries alone is a question the answer to which will depend upon the future attitude of European nations, and especially upon the relation of the United States to those nations. The difficulty of securing an international guarantee lies in the necessary vagueness of the doctrine. In the present state of mind concerning international guarantees, there is perhaps more immediate advantage in a special guardianship by the United States, the Argentine, Brazil and Chile, especially as in the case of an assault upon the doctrine by one or more European powers, the assistance of other European nations could probably be obtained. The important consideration at present is that the strength of the doctrine will be in direct proportion to the disinterestedness of the United States. The more clearly the doctrine can be made to serve the common interests of the world instead of the special interests of a single country, the more likely is it to secure the support in any crisis of a group of nations possessing a preponderance of world power.

Our relations with Canada present fewer temptations. Our policy should look towards the creation of friendly relations and a nearer economic union, but neither immediately nor ultimately towards a forced annexation. A willing political incorporation of Canada into the United States might be excellent, but an annexation against the opposition of the Canadian people would be a crime and blunder. It would mean an American Alsace-Lorraine upon an immense scale. Economically Canada and the United States are rapidly becoming one. With exports to Canada already more than twice as great as those of all other nations (including Great Britain) we can at will draw upon her immense agricultural and mineral resources by the simple expedient of letting down our tariff wall. We can invest there as safely as Britisher or Canadian, and can benefit by Canada (as Canada benefits by us) as though she were a part of the United States. A growth of the eight million Canadians to twenty or more millions will mean for us an enhanced prosperity. Despite absurd prejudices on both sides of the border the economic union grows stronger.120

If we do not strive for an inside track in Latin America nor for the conquest of Canada, should we be willing to fight for the "open door" in China, for equal privileges in all parts of that Empire?

The phrase the "open door" has a pleasing sound. There can be no doubt that the opening up of China's ports to commerce with all nations on equal terms would be of immediate advantage to us, and probably to China herself. Our interest in the matter, however, is frankly selfish. Though we have a kindly feeling for the Chinese, so long as they stay in China, our "open door" policy is intended in the first instance to benefit our own merchants and investors. The alternative to the open door is to permit other nations to divide up China, a proceeding in which we do not care to take part, and to exclude us from certain trade and investment opportunities.

It is doubtful whether these chances which we should lose by an unaggressive policy, are sufficiently important to justify us in entering upon a conflict with Japan or with Japan and Russia.121 Our losses would be less than is imagined, for whoever opens up China will be compelled to admit other industrial nations upon reasonable terms. Japan cannot finance herself, to say nothing of financing China, and the nations, called upon to supply capital, would necessarily be consulted in essential political and economic arrangements. Even if Japan secured a relatively excessive share of the commerce, it would mean a diversion of other trade, which she formerly possessed, since her own factories would be busy. In the end, we could afford to permit other nations to take upon themselves the burden of policing China, in view of the fact that while our own profits might be less our expenses also would be less.

A deeper problem, however, is involved in this question of China. Just as by the Monroe Doctrine we seek to prevent European powers from conquering, colonising and dividing up America, so in China, our interest, apart from a share of the trade and investment chances, lies in contributing to the world's peace by removing that vast territory from the field of international political competition. What we should mean by "the open door" in China is the integrity of that country and its immunity from conquest, partition and forced exploitation. The plea of an "open door," as a mere tariff policy, comes with ill grace from us, who have closed the door both in Porto Rico and at home, but China's integrity is an issue of a different character.122 It is important to us not so much for immediate economic reasons as because it is likely to promote peace. It is a world, rather than a national, interest.

Because it is a world-interest, it should be secured by the efforts of many nations and not by the United States alone. In principle, therefore, the Six-Power Loan, which in a sense was a joint guarantee, was a step in the right direction. That its specific terms were unreasonable and that the loan was in a degree forced were perhaps sufficient reasons for our withdrawal from the arrangement. Along somewhat similar lines, however, the early development of China should proceed, and it is to our interest to promote any plan that will prevent China from being the bone of contention among the belligerent nations of Europe.123

Our relations to Latin America, Canada and China are perhaps the most immediate of our foreign concerns. These are the lands in which we have the greatest stake and the greatest temptation to pursue an imperialistic policy. The real power in this world, however, lies in Europe. It is Europe that decides the fate of Asia, Africa, Australia, and may in the end decide that of South America. It is from Europe that the fear of war arises, and it is in our dealings with Europe, and in the dealings of European nations with one another, that the hope of peace and of progress in international development must centre.

CHAPTER XVI

PACIFISM STATIC AND DYNAMIC

If at home we have a firm basis for national development, if we grow up as a Great Power beyond the range of fierce conflicts between the nations, the opportunity will be offered us to contribute in some degree to the ultimate establishment of peace, or at least to the limitation of war, in the world outside. Our influence can be cast upon the side of peace and augment the forces making for peace. Our hope lies in a national development, which will permit us while pursuing our larger national interests to work towards a great community of interest among other nations.

In such an international peace the United States has a direct and an indirect interest. It has been recently asserted that we in America might regard the present war with equanimity since it brought us huge profits. Undoubtedly there is money to be made out of the selling of provisions and munitions as well as from trade in countries from which competitors are temporarily excluded. On the other hand, the war means the impoverishment of European nations, who are our main purveyors and customers, and eventually the losses suffered by combatants must be shared to some extent by us who are non-combatants. The war brings about a dislocation of the world industry, a shrinking of capital, and in the end higher prices and a possible reduction in real wages. In the years to come we shall be forced to pay our share of the cost.

Nor is this economic motive our sole reason for desiring international peace. We are linked to the nations of Europe, and however we declaim against "hyphenates," cannot prevent our immigrants from sympathising with the land of their birth. The present straining of loyalties in this country is a sufficient reason for our desiring peace in Europe. Nor do we like bloodshed or the political reaction and the backwash of barbarism that wars entail. Finally, however neutral we remain, there is always the possibility that we may be plunged into a great European conflict, in which in the beginning at least we shall have no direct interest.

Diplomatically also, war in Europe is of no overwhelming advantage to us. In the early days of the Republic, a constant balancing of hostile forces prevented England and France from taking advantage of our weakness. The quarrels of Europe enabled us to preserve our independence by opposing a unitary strength to the enfeebling European dualism; otherwise we might not have dared to use so shrill a tone in admonishing the great powers. But even had the eagle not screeched, we might still have led a satisfactory national existence. Whatever was true in the past, however, we need no longer be so completely defenceless that we must fear that peace in Europe would mean a conquest of America. We should rather have Europe fight itself than us, but—in dollars and cents as in other values—we should prefer to see the world at peace.

We shall not secure peace, however, by merely wishing for it or by merely preaching it. In the midst of war there has always been the longing for peace, and throughout the centuries voices have been raised calling upon mankind to give up its war upon itself. The ideal of peace pervades much of all folklore; it inspires the Old Testament prophets and is everywhere expressed in the New Testament. The religious ideals of the Chinese, Hindus and Persians are suffused with the hope of peace, and Greek and Roman philosophers and poets dreamed of a peaceful commonwealth of peoples and planned the Federation of the World. The Early Church Fathers, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, preached the gospel of peace, and while the Church doctrines later changed in this respect, there reappeared again and again during the Mediæval Period the conception of a World State, presided over by Emperor or Pope, and ending once for all the ceaseless strife among princes. After the Reformation religious sects grew up, like the Mennonites and the Quakers, who preached not only peace but non-resistance. Out of all this longing for peace, out of all these proposals, however, came nothing. Similarly the pacifist writings of the Abbé de St. Pierre, of Rousseau, of Leibnitz, of Montesquieu, of Voltaire, of Kant, of Jeremy Bentham and of hundreds of others did not bring the world a single step nearer to an elimination of war.124

Throughout this long history, pacifism failed because it was in no sense based upon the actual conditions of the world. It was a religious, sentimental, hortatory pacifism. Finding peace desirable, it pleaded with the men who ruled nations to compose their quarrels. It was an appeal not to the interest but to the sentiments of men. It discovered that war was evil and exhorted nations and rulers to refrain from evil.

With the period of enlightenment that began shortly before the French Revolution, the movement for peace was accelerated. The ideas that were once current only among philosophers began to spread among considerable sections of the population. Gradually also pacifism became rationalistic rather than religious or moral. War was attacked not because it was evil in the eyes of God but because, like high taxes, monopolies and tariffs, it was adverse to the economic interests of nations and peoples. The growth of the doctrine of laissez-faire and of free trade gave a new impetus to the pacifist movement. The people of the world were looked upon as a myriad of human atoms, whose welfare did not depend upon the power of the particular State of which they chanced to form a part, but upon the free enterprise of each and the unobstructed exchange of products among all these individuals. It was held that the world would be better if there were no customs barriers, and free trade on equal terms for all the people of the world was predicted as a proximate consummation. There would then be no need for wars or fleets or armies, which cost money and prevented the progress of humanity. Wars were economically inadvisable. They did not benefit the sovereign individual, and therefore could not benefit the nation, which was merely a huge assemblage of individuals.

Like the religious and emotional pacifism which preceded it, this rationalistic pacifism broke down through its sheer inapplicability to the facts of life. While the philosophers of the French Revolution were still proclaiming the advent of peace, the greatest wars until then in all history were already preparing, and again when in 1851 at the first World's Exposition in London men began to hope that the era of peace had at last come, a long period of war was again imminent. Never was there more talk of peace or hope of peace than in the years preceding the great conflict of 1914. No wonder many advocates and prophets of war believe that peace is forever impossible. "There," wrote the late Prof. J. A. Cramb, "in its specious and glittering beauty the ideal of Pacificism remains; yet in the long march of humanity across thousands of years or thousands of centuries it remains still an ideal, lost in inaccessible distances, as when first it gleamed across the imagination."125 "Despite this hubbub of talk down all the centuries war has continued—absolutely as if not a word had been said on one side or the other. Man's dreadful toll in blood has not yet all been paid. The human race bears still this burden. Declaimed against in the name of religion, in the name of humanity, in the name of profit-and-loss, war still goes on."126

But the fact that war still exists does not at all prove that it is inevitable, but merely that it has not yet been avoided. Militarists argue that war is biologically necessary, an ingrained ineradicable instinct, a necessary evil or an inescapable good, a gift of a stern god. There is a curious sentimental fatalism about our war prophets, but in the end their arguments come down to two, that we have always had wars and that we still have them. It was said many years ago that "the poor ye have always with you" and to-day poverty on an immense scale still exists in every part of the planet. Yet we do not despair of limiting or even of eradicating poverty. Tuberculosis has existed for centuries and still exists, but to-day we understand the disease and it is doomed. If war is inevitable it is so for reasons which have not yet been established. Until it is proved that war accompanies life and progress as the shadow accompanies the body, men will strive to eliminate war, however frequent and discouraging their failures.

The cause of these failures of pacifism has been its unreality, its too confident approach to a difficult problem. Many pacifists have tended to exhort about war instead of studying it; they have looked upon it as a thing accursed and irrational, beyond the pale of serious consideration. They have likened the belief that war has accomplished good in the past to a faith in witchcraft and other superstitions. They have tilted at war, as the Mediæval Church tilted at usury, without stopping to consider what relation this war-process bore to the basic facts of social evolution. It was an error to consider war as a thing in itself instead of an effect of precedent causes. Fortunately the newer pacifists, who have been rendered cautious by many bitter disappointments, are changing their approach and seeking to cure war not directly but by removing its causes. They are striving to outflank war.

Along this line alone can progress be made. You cannot end war without changing the international polity which leads to war. The bloody conflicts between nations, being a symptom of a world maladjustment and frequently an attempt to cure that maladjustment, can be averted only by policies which provide some other cure. To destroy war one must find some alternative regulator or governor of societies.

In their failure to provide such a regulator, or even to recognise that such a regulator is necessary, lies the vital defect of many of the peace plans to-day. Pacifism may be either static or dynamic; it may seek to keep things as they are, to crystallise international society in its present forms, or on the other hand may base itself on the assumption that these forms will change. It may address itself to the problem of stopping the world as one stops a clock, of forbidding unequal growth of nations, of discountenancing change, or it may seek to find an outlet and expression for the discontent and unrest which all growth brings. Pacifism that is static is doomed. Our only hope lies in a dynamic, evolutionary pacifism, based on a principle of the ever-changing adjustment of nations to an ever-changing environment.

At the bottom of static pacifism lies a conception somewhat as follows. The nations of the earth have an interest in maintaining peace, but are forced, tricked or lured into war by the tyranny or craft of princes and capitalists or by their own prejudices and sudden passions. Some nations are peaceful and some, by reason of an evil education, hostile; wherefore the hostile nations must be restrained by the peaceful, as the anti-social classes are restrained by the community. Honest differences of opinion among nations must be arbitrated; angry passions must be allowed to cool, and the nations must go about unarmed that there may be no indiscriminate shooting. Given these precautions we shall have peace.

But it is a peace without change, and such a peace, apart from its being impossible, is not even desirable. What the static pacifist does not perceive is that he is hopelessly conservative and stationary in a swiftly moving world. He would like to build a wall against Time and Change, to put down his stakes and bid evolution cease. It is this pathetic clinging to fixity, to a something immutable, that vitiates his proposals. Nations that hate war prefer it nevertheless to the preservation of unendurable conditions, and the best conditions, if they remain unaltered, speedily become unendurable. We should not be satisfied to-day with the best constitution of the world agreed upon a hundred years ago, before there were railroads and telegraphs, and when democracy and nationalism were weaker than to-day. If to-morrow morning our wisest and most forward-looking men were to re-constitute Society and petrify it in peace, our descendants would be far from content. The best heritage that the world can have is not a perfect constitution but a feasible principle of change.