American World Policies

So long as England persists in a reactionary naval policy she will be menaced by every nation which feels itself menaced by her, and by every future development of naval warfare. The harshness of the British attitude in this matter of naval warfare leads to such brutal reprisals as that of the German submarine campaign against merchantmen. That campaign was not without its influence in laming the commercial activity of Great Britain; had the war broken out ten years later, with Germany better equipped with submarines, the result might have been far more serious. A future submarine war carried on by France against England might be disastrous to the island kingdom. Even the German campaign, hampered as it was by the fewness and remoteness of the German naval bases, might easily have had a crippling effect upon British industrial life but for the pressure brought to bear upon Germany by the United States. In the long run England cannot have it both ways. She must either defend her commerce from submarines alone or else accept a revision of the naval law.

Fortunately there are men in Great Britain who accept this broader view. "One of the promises of victory," writes the Englishman, H. Sidebotham, "is that Great Britain will be able to review her whole naval policy in the light of the experience gained in the war. Sir Edward Grey has himself indicated that such a review may be appropriate in the negotiations for peace after victory has been won."132

Towards such a change in attitude the public opinion of the United States can largely contribute. While the majority of Americans side strongly with Britain and her allies, they make little distinction in their thought between a detested German militarism and a detested British navalism. Our traditional attitude is one of hostility to the pretensions of the mistress of the sea. "How many more instances do we need," writes Prof. J. W. Burgess, "to demonstrate to us that the system of Colonial Empire with the dominance of the seas, and the unlimited territorial expansion which it claims, is not compatible with the freedom and prosperity of the world? Can any American with half an eye fail to see that our greatest interest in the outcome of this war is that the seas shall become free and neutral, and that, shall they need policing, this shall become international; that the open door for trade and commerce shall take the place of colonial restrictions or preferences, or influences and shall, in times of peace, be the universal principle; that private property upon the high seas shall be inviolable; that trade between neutrals in time of war shall be entirely unrestricted, and that contraband of war shall have an international definition?"133

Even if England did not recognise her true national interest in a revision of the sea-law, we could not co-operate with her in any broad attempt to establish the conditions of peace in Europe without such a surrender on her part of rights which have become indefensible. It is not, of course, to be anticipated that a complete freedom of the sea will be immediately established, but unless the nations, not controlling the ocean, are given reasonable assurances of safety for their commerce and colonial development, each new war will merely lay the seeds of new wars.

To establish the freedom of the sea, five things are desirable:

(1) The abolition of the right of capture.

(2) The abolition of the commercial blockade. This would permit the blockading of a naval port or base, the exclusion or destruction of naval vessels, the searching of merchant vessels for absolute and conditional contraband, and the blockade of a city or port where the naval blockade was merely the completion of a land blockade, but it would give to all ordinary merchant vessels, either enemy or neutral, the same access to enemy ports that they enjoy in peace, without any further delay than is necessary for the prevention of non-neutral acts by merchantmen.

(3) The establishment of international prize courts and the submission of controversies to such courts.

(4) The internationalization of such straits as the Dardanelles, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Kiel Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, as far as that can be achieved by international agreement.

(5) Establishment of an international naval convention and of an international body to enforce its decisions, to which international body all powers, naval and non-naval, should be admitted.

An Anglo-American agreement to enforce such a convention could be made the corner-stone of an international organisation, open to all nations. A naval force of neutral powers would enforce the freedom of the sea in the interest of England's enemies and in her own interest. With such an agreement in force much of the present naval rivalry would lose its meaning. If German commerce were safe in time of war, if she could not be blockaded and her ships captured, she would have a weaker interest in building against England. She might still desire a fleet to bombard enemy coasts or to invade England, but even without such a navy she would have a large measure of security. She might well prefer to forego some of her naval ambitions in order to secure British friendship. In any case even a naval disaster would not be so utterly crushing to England nor so great a hardship to Germany as under present conditions.

Naturally the value of such an arrangement would depend upon the belief of the nations in its faithful enforcement by all the signatory powers. International promises fall in value as wars come to be fought by powerful coalitions instead of by individual nations, each immensely weaker than the whole group of neutral powers. When all nations of the first rank become engaged actively or by sympathy, the truly neutral powers are too weak to exercise much influence. They cannot compel the belligerents even to live up to their acknowledged agreements. What in such cases is the value of a naval convention between England and Germany, which neither of the nations believes that the other will observe in the day of trial?

The difficulty is a real one as the uncontrolled savagery and the unnumbered violations of international law during the present war amply prove. It is this doubt as to whether opposed groups will live up to their agreements, or whether neutral groups will enforce such agreements, that strikes at the root of international, as also of national cohesion. If we believe that our neighbors will not pay their personal property taxes, it is highly improbable that we will pay ours; a nation, which believes that its enemy will violate an agreement anticipates such action by violating the agreement first.134 Yet without such international agreements no international concert is possible. Moreover the very condition, which made agreements so perishable during the present war (the number and strength of the belligerents and the weakness of the neutrals) is one which itself is likely to be remedied by agreements made in advance. If Germany, England, France, Italy and Russia have even a qualified sense of security concerning their over-sea possessions and their commerce, they will be less likely to enter into these hostile, world-embracing coalitions, which rob such agreements of so much of their value. Especially would this be true if certain terms of the agreement—such as the neutralisation of strategic water-ways—could be effected in peace times. In any case this evolving and increasing half-trust in agreements is one of the fragile instruments with which we must work. If, therefore, an international arrangement were made, or a series of compacts were formed between individual nations, by which, for example, a group of powers promised to attack any nation violating these naval agreements (even if it pleaded counter violations by the enemy) a basis of faith in the new arrangements would be laid.

There would remain, however, the question of colonies. So long as there is no principle by which the colonial opportunities of the world can be distributed, we shall have competitive nationalistic imperialism and the constant threat of war.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HIGHER IMPERIALISM

One of the greatest difficulties in the problem of working out an international colonial policy is our neglect of the immediate and overwhelming influence of colonies, as of other economic outlets, in the provocation of destructive wars. Until the nations recognize that wars are in the main wars of interest, fought for concrete things, and unless such things can be utilised with some regard to the desires of all nations involved, war cannot be avoided.

If these questions of interest were merely a matter of short division, of so much trade to be distributed, the problem, though difficult, would be easier of solution. But in many cases a single, indivisible prize must be awarded. There is only one Antwerp, one Trieste, one Constantinople, and there are many claimants. Is Russia to control the Yellow Sea or is Japan? Is the Persian Gulf to be British, Russian or German? Is the present division of colonial possessions to be maintained or is there to be a new distribution, from which some nations will gain and others lose? What is to decide what colonies shall belong to what nation or what share each nation shall have in the profits of exploitations? These and a hundred other questions indicate the wide range of complicated economic interests which to-day divide nations and illustrate the difficulty of establishing a basis of agreement.

Clearly we cannot solve the problem by permanently maintaining the status quo. For the status quo, being based upon the relative power of nations in the past, does not conform to the power of the same nations to-day or to-morrow. Moreover, the maintenance of the status quo means the perpetuation of absurd anachronisms. It is undesirable as well as impossible. Nations are not static. You can no more assure exclusive economic advantages to a weak and unprogressive nation than you could have preserved the American continent to the aborigines.

Even if there were no single economic principle to apply, it would not follow that some approach to an economic equilibrium would be impossible. As law develops out of an endless chaos of human relations by means of decisions (based on temporary exigencies) until a rule of law is established, as the market-price grows out of the innumerable hagglings of the market, so even without the aid of a fundamental principle, some modus vivendi, some approach to an economic concert, could be attained. Economically considered, war is an attempt to solve the problem of the utilisation of the world's resources. If the world's wealth and income can be so distributed among the world's inhabitants, grouped into nations, as to render those nations, not indeed satisfied, but sufficiently satisfied not to go to war, a basis for peace results, even though the arrangement is not ideal. If, however, the distribution is obviously at variance with the relative power and needs of the nations, then one nation or group seeks to overturn the arrangement by force.

To secure such a distribution requires the establishment of certain canons of international policy and modes of international procedure. The decision must in some degree conform to the median expectations of the powers. Back of any particular economic arrangement also, there must be the force of tradition, a sense of security, a sense of justice. The redistribution must be such that the resulting motive to war will be weaker than the motive to peace.

But before we can even approach such a plan to prevent war by reducing the economic incentive, we must frankly recognise that in certain circumstances a nation may have a direct economic interest in war. To deny such an interest is not only fallacious but even dangerous. For if we believe that nations have no economic motive to war, when in truth they have, we are likely to neglect to do things necessary to reverse such motives. Our international task is to make arrangements which will cause nations to lose their interest in war. It is not that of trying to persuade nations that they have no such interest.

There is much ambiguity and incoherence in most discussions concerning the economic advantages of war. On the whole, while the world does not usually gain by war, but loses through the destruction of capital and through industrial deterioration, an individual nation may clearly gain. England gained from the Seven Years' War, the United States from the war with Mexico, Germany from the war of 1870, Japan from its war with China. By war nations may secure markets, access to raw materials, better opportunities for investment and a firm basis for industrial progress; they may cripple troublesome competitors; they may exact indemnities. Much that is accounted gain on this score may in the end prove to be loss, but it is false to state that there can be no profit at all.

The discussion whether or not a war is profitable often takes the superficial form of a comparison between the indemnity received and the money expended on the war. It is pointed out, for example, that in 1895 Japan received a larger sum from China than had been spent on the war, while on the other hand it is emphasised that thereafter the military expenditures of Japan increased so rapidly that much more than this profit was spent. But the indemnity was the smallest part of Japan's gain and the military expenditures were made necessary, not by the Chinese War nor by the payment of the indemnity but by a concrete military policy, which was largely based on concrete economic needs. Either an expansion into Asia was necessary and in the end possible for Japan or it was not; if it was, the expenditure of a few hundred million dollars on the wars against China, Russia and Germany were a paying investment, irrespective of indemnities; if it was not the wars would have been a bad investment even had they shown a clear balance on the books.

The problem is not whether every war is advantageous to the victor but whether any war is of benefit. It is highly improbable that the war of 1914 will in the end pay most if any of the combatants, but if Germany by a victory as easy as that of 1870 could have secured from France an indemnity of four or five billion dollars and the cession of Northern Africa, it would surely have paid. A war between Germany and Holland, if the other powers held off, would be equally profitable to the stronger power. If a coalition of nations could defeat and blockade Great Britain, they could easily recoup themselves for any expenditures involved. It is true that they could not physically remove British railways and mines, but they could confiscate the navy, the merchant marine, a part of the foreign and colonial investments and a certain part of the profits of business within the kingdom. To assert that a nation can never gain at war is merely to state that nations never have conflicting interests, whereas in truth some nations are cramped economically by other nations, and a large part of the wealth and income of most nations can be diverted by means of physical compulsion.

The problem of internationalism is therefore not solely to teach the nation its own interest but so to change the conditions that the nation's interest in war will disappear. The temptation to war can be overcome only by reversing the motives of the nation, either by making war no longer profitable, or by making the nation harmless. Within the nation the same problem exists with regard to classes. Either the bellicose class must be satisfied in some other way, must have its energies directed to some other task, or it must be made impotent.

The first problem, that of destroying the economic root of war, can be solved only by securing a community of interest among great nations, an economic internationalism. Not, of course, a complete community; there is perhaps no such thing in the world. The inter-class relations within a nation illustrate this point. These social classes, wage-earners and capitalists, industrialists and agriculturalists, are separated by many differences and have no complete community of interest, yet are sufficiently united to prevent a complete dissolution of the state. So, internationally, a community of interest may be partial and tentative if it suffices to give the countries enough, or the promise of enough, to discourage them from easily resorting to the costly and dangerous expedient of war.

In securing this concert, we must work upon the general principle that wherever possible, a joint use of a given resource by various nations is better than an exclusive use by any one nation. The progress of society within the last few centuries has been toward an extension of this principle of joint use. More and more things are held by society for the benefit of the nation. Similarly an increasing number of the things for which nations compete might be held by the nations of the world for the joint use of humanity. While such a joint use is not always possible, especially when it runs counter to long usage, an immense opportunity for such joint use remains.

This principle of joint use might advantageously be applied to the development of backward countries. Nothing has been more difficult than the distribution among industrial nations of the advantages accruing from colonial exploitation. There are three methods by which nations, if they can agree at all, may seek to adjust their rival claims. The first is to do nothing nationally; to permit the backward countries to be exploited at will by individual competitors. The second is to divide the new territories among the rival powers. The third is to secure a joint development by all the great powers.

The first method usually means both a ruthless exploitation of natives and a constant conflict among the interested nations. The nationals of one country conspire against those of another for a control of the native government. If, for example, we were to leave the Philippines entirely alone, various enterprising capitalists would immediately organise and support corrupt native governments, lend money at usurious rates and secure exclusive concessions. To upset these arrangements, financiers of a rival nation would foment revolutions, and the country would be split up into political factions, supported by money from various European capitals. The political leaders though talking grandiloquently of independence and native sovereignty, would be, and perhaps would know that they were, merely pawns in a financial chess game.

The second method, now more or less usual, of establishing national spheres of influence, also leads to friction and the threat of force. The crucial difficulty of this plan lies in the fact that great nations which have come late into the colonial competition are left without a sufficient agricultural base for their industry and live in fear of having the colonies of rival powers shut against them. The whole plan is based upon the assumed right of each nation to monopolise the resources of colonies, in other words, to use exclusively what might be used jointly. As a result of this method the temptation to go to war over colonies is immensely great. If by a single war, Germany could secure enough colonial territory from France to maintain her industry for three or four generations, it might well be worth her while to fight. It is the lives of one or of two million men to-day against tens of millions of lives a generation hence. A nation which would not fight for a somewhat larger share in the exploitation of a given colony would be tempted to fight for a sole and monopolistic possession.

The third plan of distribution is what may be called the internationalisation of colonies. It is a step in the direction of an international imperialism, as opposed to the nationalistic imperialism of to-day. There have been numerous proposals to secure a machinery for such internationalism in colonies. Especially during the last decade or two many men in Europe and America have come to the conclusion that the danger of the present international scramble for colonies is so great that any change, even though not in itself unassailable, is better than the present anarchy. Even among Socialists the belief is now expressed that the colonial problem is to be solved, not by leaving it alone, but by a concerted action of the Great Powers, which will give each nation the assurance of a certain stake in colonial development, and will lessen the temptation to wage imperialistic wars.

Of the various recent plans two concrete proposals are worth citing. Thus Mr. Walter Lippmann135 suggests a permanent international conference of the great powers which would act as a senate to the native legislative body of the backward country, let us say Morocco, and would in time supervise the budget, fix salaries and make appointments. It is hoped by Mr. Lippmann, though not confidently predicted, that such a body would guarantee the open door and give equal opportunities to the investors of all nations in the particular colony. A broader plan, proposed by Mr. H. W. Brailsford136 involves the union into a permanent international syndicate of all companies and individuals seeking railroad, mining and other concessions in a backward country.

Fundamentally the plan of Mr. Brailsford is based on the open door for colonial trade and the equal (and automatic) participation of the great nations in colonial investment. "The remedy," he says, "is so simple that only a very clever man could sophisticate himself into missing it, and it is as old as Cobden. It is not necessary to establish universal free trade to stop the rivalry to monopolise colonial markets; it would suffice to declare free trade in the colonies, or even in those which are not self-governing." "It ought not to be utterly beyond the statesmanship of Europe to decree some limited form of colonial free trade by general agreement—to apply it, for example, to Africa." "For the plague of concession-hunting the best expedient would probably be to impose on all the competing national groups in each area the duty of amalgamating in a permanently international syndicate. If one such syndicate controlled all the railways and another all the mines of China and Turkey, a vast cause of national rivalry would be removed. The interests of China and Turkey might be secured by interposing a disinterested council or arbitrator between them and the syndicate to adjust their respective interests. Short of creating a world State or a European federation, the chief constructive work for peace is to establish colonial free trade and internationalise the export of capital."137

Both the plans mentioned are limited in scope and difficult of application, but each contains the germ of a possible development. That of Mr. Brailsford seems on the whole the more promising. It is likely that a senate such as is proposed by Mr. Lippmann would go to pieces over the question whether a certain valuable and exclusive concession should go to a French or to a German syndicate or whether a punitive expedition should or should not be sent against the tribes in the interior. On the other hand the plan of Mr. Brailsford, which by no means excludes the other, has the advantage of making once and for all a fixed and certain distribution of all eventual profits and thus effecting a real community of interest among the promoters and investors of all nations. It is an economic rather than a political solution, and it is along the line of a present trend, the evolution of international investment and of economic internationalism generally. It would seem easier for the capitalists of six great nations to form a great international trust for specific purposes than for an international senate to make a multitude of decisions each affecting strong national interests.

A difficulty, inhering in all plans, is that there is no rule of law or morals that will decide how much each nation should secure from the profits of exploitation. To what extent shall American, Dutch, Belgian, Austrian or Japanese capitalists contribute to the international syndicate which is to exploit the backward countries? But this problem, though difficult, is less hopeless than that of equitably distributing colonies en bloc. For there is no principle on which to divide such colonies. Neither national wealth nor population nor the strength of the national army and navy will serve as a criterion, though all perhaps would be factors in determining the shares of the different countries. A still greater difficulty however arises from the fact that the most valuable colonies are already distributed. Even if Germany were to receive a share in Moroccan opportunities, might she not still seek by war to obtain the exclusive possession of the immense French colonial empire. Perhaps no arrangement for a joint exploitation of new and presumably less valuable colonies would wholly satisfy the imperialists of great European powers, so long as the old colonies are so unevenly divided. To satisfy the nations without colonies, some arrangements must also be made for a redistribution of rights in colonies already belonging to the great powers.