American World Policies

A dynamic pacifism, on the other hand, must assume that the world is in change, and that no peace is possible or desirable which does not permit great international transformations. These transformations arise from various causes. Thus a candid consideration of the facts of international life must convince us that in the present era nationality is a potent, vital and probably a growing force, and that many of the ambitions and desires of men are mobilised nationally. The nations, however, grow unequally and are subjected to unequal pressure by their various environments. As a consequence certain nations become increasingly dissatisfied with their place in the world, and naturally, and in the present circumstances wisely, prefer the risks and costs of war to their present position. Such nations have an interest in war, if change cannot be otherwise effected. Moreover, it is clear to the dynamic pacifist that certain classes by the fact of their position in society are more bellicose than others, that classes grow at unequal rates and exert a varying influence, and that certain classes may have a direct and obvious interest in throwing their nation into war.

The neglect of any such dynamic conception of world society is revealed in all the proposals of the static pacifists. For example, the proposal to create a United States of Europe is based on a palpably false analogy with the United States of America, and ignores grossly the living principle of nationality. The states of Europe are either nations or are approaching nationhood. They lack the racial, linguistic and traditional bonds, which made the union of the American colonies not indeed easy but at least possible. These trans-Atlantic nations suffer from being jostled one against the other and their keen sense of national difference is accentuated by economic pressure and by a perpetual fear of foreign military aggression. To unite all these nations into one federal state, with a Senate, a House of Representatives and an impartial Supreme Court, is not only a static but a mechanical proposal. Nations grow; they are not manufactured.

Equally static is the proposal for immediate and universal disarmament. Nations will arm so long as they are afraid and so long as they want something vital that can be obtained only by warfare. Moreover, there is no principle to determine the permitted armament of each nation or to designate the country which shall control the international police that is to enforce disarmament. An unequal disarmament would be unwise because it would take from the more pacific and civilised nations the weapons necessary to restrain unorganised and retrograde peoples. The fundamental defect of the proposal, however, is that it provides no way by which one nation, injured by another, can secure redress. If there is to be neither war nor an effective international regulation, what limits can a nation set to non-military aggression by its neighbour?127

The belief that all wars may be averted by arbitration is equally a static conception. During the last few decades international arbitration has settled many controversies, which could not be adjusted by ordinary diplomatic means. Increasingly cases have been submitted to arbitral decision. The real questions over which nations clash, however, are not arbitrable. One cannot arbitrate whether Russia or Germany should control the Balkans, whether the United States should admit Japanese immigrants, or whether Alsace should go to France or Germany, or Trieste to Italy or Austria. Arbitration has the limitations of judicial processes. It is possible to arbitrate questions concerning the interpretation of treaties and formal agreements or the application of recognised principles of international law, but no nation will arbitrate its right to exist. Moreover, the very fact that arbitration is a judicial process, based upon precedents and the assumption of the status quo renders it unacceptable to the nations which are dissatisfied with present arrangements. The necessity which knows no law respects no arbitration, and no board of arbitration, however impartial, could decide that one nation should have more colonies because she needed them or because she was growing, while another nation must stand aside because feeble and unprogressive. It is probably not in the interest of the world that Portugal and Belgium should retain their colonies in Africa, but on what precedent could these nations be forced to sell? Questions of vital interest therefore are in truth non-justiciable. No powerful nation will accept a subordinate position in the world because some arbitral body decides it may not adopt a certain policy. Arbitration is not a process of adjustment of growing nations to a changing environment.

But if nations will not gladly accept arbitration where supposedly vital interests are concerned, can they not be coerced? Out of the obvious need of such coercion arises a whole series of plans to force recalcitrant nations to accept mediation, to delay hostilities and even to abide by the arbitral award. A League to Enforce Peace is a proposed union of pacific nations to prevent immediate or even ultimate recourse to war, to force combatants to arbitrate justiciable disputes and to place the sanction of force behind the decisions of the nations.

This proposal contains within it an element valuable and indeed essential to international peace. It frankly assumes the right of a group of nations to compel a refractory nation by the use of force. It is far more realistic than the conception of a world peace based upon a sudden conversion of the nations to the iniquity of war, which is at bottom an anarchistic conception. For however we deplore a use of force we cannot rely exclusively upon anything less. Force is not intrinsically immoral, and without force no morality can prevail. The compulsion which the parent exercises over a child, and organised communities over the individual citizen, must equally form the basis of an international system. One cannot base such a system upon mere moral suasion, which, though of value as a precedent and complement to force, is frequently thwarted by the public opinion of each nation, formed within its borders and protected from outside influence by pride and a blinding national interest. Outside nations could not have persuaded Germany that it was unethical to invade Belgium. She would have appealed to her own moral sense and trusted to the future to make good her right to attack. Had Germany realised, however, that an invasion of Belgium would be actively resisted by otherwise neutral nations, overwhelming in force, she might have been willing to debate the question.

The immorality of force lies merely in improper use. All through history compulsion has been exerted for evil as well as for good purposes. The future of international concord lies, therefore, not in refraining from force or potential force, not in a purely laissez-faire policy, but in applying force to uphold a growing body of international ethics, increasingly recognised by the public opinion of the world.

But a League of Peace, unless it is more than a league of peace, suffers from the same defect of not providing an alternative to war. If Italy is not to attack Austria, some way must be found to protect Italian interests in the Trentino and Trieste, and if Germany is not to attack England, some security must be given that German commerce will be safe and German colonial aspirations not entirely disregarded. If the nations believe, rightly or wrongly, that their vital interests are being disregarded in the peace which the League enforces, there will be defections and revolts. Such a league would then become useless or worse, since it can only exert an influence so long as it possesses an immense preponderance of power.

The same defect inheres in a League of Satisfied Powers. Such powers, preferring the status quo to any probable revision of the affairs of the world, are in the beginning united by a common conservative instinct. But no nation is completely satisfied; each wants a "rectification" here and a "compensation" there. The same disagreements over the spoils of the world that would be found outside such a league would also make their appearance within, and in the end one or more of the satiated nations would join the group of the unsatisfied, and the league would cease to be a guarantee of peace. It would die of the endless flux in human affairs.

Similarly static is the proposal that all nations wait, or be compelled to wait, a set term before beginning hostilities. In many cases such a compulsory postponement would be advantageous in that it would favour the mobilisation of the pacific elements in the community and thus tend to prevent wars being suddenly forced upon the nation against the national interest by a small, bellicose social class. The underlying theory, however, is that nations always go to war because they are hot-headed, whereas in very many cases the decision to wage war at the proper time is perfectly deliberate and cold-blooded. Moreover, a compulsory wait before declaring war would alter the balance of power between the groups of powers, and would adversely affect certain ready nations, which could therefore only be coerced into accepting the arrangement. Unless some adequate provision were made (and it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to make it) to prevent a nation from preparing for war during the year's wait, the countries with the largest resources, such as Great Britain, the United States and Russia, would secure an enormous advantage, while nations like Germany and Japan would lose. An event in the very recent past illustrates this point. On August 1, 1914 the German Secretary of State intimated to the British Ambassador that a failure on the part of Russia to demobilise would cause Germany to declare instant war. "Russia had said that her mobilisation did not necessarily imply war, and that she could perfectly well remain mobilised for months without making war. This was not the case with Germany. She had the speed and Russia had the numbers, and the safety of the German Empire forbade that Germany should allow Russia time to bring up masses of troops from all parts of her wide dominions."128 In other words, for Germany to give up her greater speed of mobilisation would be to destroy her advantage while assuring that of Russia. Actually, under present circumstances, such a proposal would tend to preserve the status quo and to aid the satisfied nations. In practice it would take from the dissatisfied nations the power to alter arrangements, which they feel are unjust.

Most of these plans, a federation of nations, a progressive disarmament, a wider application of the principle of arbitration, and a League to Enforce Peace, have elements of value, once they are divorced from purely static conceptions and are united with proposals to effect some form of progressive adjustment of nations to each other and to the world. In this effort at adjustment lies the real problem of securing international peace. So long as the nations have conflicting economic interests so wide and deep as to make their surrender perilous to the national future, so long will they find some way to escape from the restraints of peace. They will drive their armies through any compact or agreement, adverse to their economic interests, and in the process will smash whatever machinery has been created for establishing peace. A dynamic pacifism, therefore, must take into account this factor of the constantly changing, balancing, opposing economic needs of rival nations. It must devise not only some rudimentary form of international government but also arrangements by which the things for which the nations go to war may peacefully be distributed or utilized in a manner equitable to all.

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 rôle; 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 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 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 circumstances. 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 assume 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 Japan 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 attitude. 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 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 constitute us a part of one great European combination against the other, and our disinterested assistance 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 assumed 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 constitute 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 assailed. 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 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, Japan 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 assailed. We should cease to be interested in 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 assurances 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.

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 circumstances 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 competitive 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 constitute 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 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 masses, with their inherent prejudices and passions, and not upon diplomats and rulers that any project for peace must be based.