Part 15 (2/2)
The nations hold them in trust for humanity. The international force which will inspire respect for that truth it is our business to create.
The only question that remains--and it is a question the future alone will solve--is the particular point at which this ancient and overgrown stronghold of war, now being invested so vigorously from so many sides, will finally be overthrown, whether from within or from without, whether by its own inherent weakness, by the persuasive reasonableness of developing civilization, by the self-interest of the commercial and financial cla.s.ses, or by the ruthless indignation of the proletariat.
That is a problem still insoluble, but it is not impossible that some already living may witness its solution.
Two centuries ago the Abbe de Saint-Pierre set forth his scheme for a federation of the States of Europe, which meant, at that time, a federation of all the civilised states of the world. It was the age of great ideas, scattered abroad to germinate in more practical ages to come. The amiable Abbe enjoyed all the credit of his large and philanthropic conceptions. But no one dreamed of realizing them, and the forces which alone could realize them had not yet appeared above the horizon.[233] In this matter, at all events, the world has progressed, and a federation of the States of the world is no longer the mere conception of a philosophic dreamer. The first step will be taken when two of the leading countries of the world--and it would be most reasonable for the states having the closest community of origin and language to take the initiative--resolve to submit all their differences without reserve to arbitration. As soon as a third power of magnitude joined this federation the nucleus would be const.i.tuted of a world state. Such a state would be able to impose peace on even the most recalcitrant outside states, for it would furnish that ”visible power to keep them in awe,” which Hobbes rightly declared to be indispensable; it could even, in the last resort, if necessary, enforce peace by war. Thus there might still be war in the world. But there would be no wars that were not Holy Wars. There are other methods than war of enforcing peace, and these such a federation of great states would be easily able to bring to bear on even the most warlike of states, but the necessity of a mighty armed international force would remain for a long time to come.
To suppose, as some seem to suppose, that the establishment of arbitration in place of war means immediate disarmament is an idle dream. At Conferences of the English Labour Party on this question, the most active opposition to the proposed strike method for rendering war impossible comes from the delegates representing the workers in a.r.s.enals and dockyards. But there is no likelihood of a.r.s.enals and dockyards closing in the lifetime of the present workers, and though the establishment of peaceful methods of settling international disputes cannot fail to diminish the number of the workers who live by armament, it will be long before they can be dispensed with altogether.
[1] The Abbe de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), a churchman without vocation, was a Norman of n.o.ble family, and first published his _Memoires pour rendre la Paix Perpetuelle a l'Europe_ in 1722. As Siegler-Pascal well shows (_Les Projets de l'Abbe de Saint-Pierre_, 1900) he was not a mere visionary Utopian, but an acute and far-seeing thinker, practical in his methods, a close observer, an experimentalist, and one of the first to attempt the employment of statistics. He was secretary to the French plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht, and was thus probably put on the track of his scheme. He proposed that the various European states should name plenipotentiaries to form a permanent tribunal of compulsory arbitration for the settlement of all differences. If any state took up arms against one of the allies, the whole confederation would conjointly enter the field, at their conjoint expense, against the offending state. He was opposed to absolute disarmament, an army being necessary to ensure peace, but it must be a joint army composed of contingents from each Power in the confederation.
Saint-Pierre, it will be seen, had clearly grasped the essential facts of the situation as we see them to-day. ”The author of _The Project of Perpetual Peace_” concludes Prof. Pierre Robert in a sympathetic summary of his career (Pet.i.t de Julleville, _Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Francaise_, Vol. VI), ”is the precursor of the twentieth century.” His statue, we cannot doubt, will be a conspicuous object, beside Sully's, on the future Palace of any international tribunal.
It is, indeed, so common to regard the person who points out the inevitable bankruptcy of war under highly civilized conditions as a mere Utopian dreamer, that it becomes necessary to repeat, with all the emphasis necessary, that the settlement of international disputes by law cannot be achieved by disarmament, or by any method not involving force.
All law, even the law that settles the disputes of individuals, has force behind it, and the law that is to settle the disputes between nations cannot possibly be effective unless it has behind it a mighty force. I have a.s.sumed this from the outset in quoting the dictum of Hobbes, but the point seems to be so easily overlooked by the loose thinker that it is necessary to reiterate it. The necessity of force behind the law ordering international relations has, indeed, never been disputed by any sagacious person who has occupied himself with the matter. Even William Penn, who, though a Quaker, was a practical man of affairs, when in 1693 he put forward his _Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Diet, Parliament or Estate_, proposed that if any imperial state refused to submit its pretensions to the sovereign a.s.sembly and to abide by its decisions, or took up arms on its own behalf, ”all the other sovereignties, united as one strength, shall compel the submission and performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party, and charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission.” In repudiating some injudicious and hazardous pacificist considerations put forth by Novikov, the distinguished French philosopher, Jules de Gaultier, points out that law has no rights against war save in force, on which war itself bases its rights. ”Force _in abstracto_ creates right. It is quite unimaginable that a right should exist which has not been affirmed at some moment as a reality, that is to say a force....
What we glorify under the name of right is only a more intense and habitual state of force which we oppose to a less frequent form of force.”[234] The old Quaker and the modern philosopher are thus at one with the practical man in rejecting any form of pacification which rests on a mere appeal to reason and justice.
[1] Jules de Gaultier, ”Comment Naissent les Dogmes,” _Mercure de France_, 1st Sept., 1911. Jules de Gaultier also observes that ”conflict is the law and condition of all existence.” That may be admitted, but it ceases to be true if we a.s.sume, as the same thinker a.s.sumes, that ”conflict” necessarily involves ”war.” The establishment of law to regulate the disputes between individuals by no means suppresses conflict, but it suppresses fighting, and it ensures that if any fighting occur the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression. In the same way the existence of a tribunal to regulate the disputes between national communities of individuals can by no means suppress conflict; but unless it suppresses fighting, and unless it ensures that if fighting occurs the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression, it will have effected nothing.
It cannot be said that the progress of civilization has so far had any tendency to render unnecessary the point of view adopted by Penn and Jules de Gaultier. The acts of states to-day are apt to be just as wantonly aggressive as they ever were, as reckless of reason and of justice. There is no country, however high it may stand in the comity of nations, which is not sometimes carried away by the blind fever of war.
France, the land of reason, echoed, only forty years ago, with the mad cry, ”a Berlin!” England, the friend of the small nationalities, jubilantly, with even an air of heroism, crushed under foot the little South African Republics, and hounded down every Englishman who withstood the madness of the crowd. The great, free intelligent people of the United States went to war against Spain with a childlike faith in the preposterous legend of the blowing up of the _Maine_. There is no country which has not some such shameful page in its history, the record of some moment when its moral and intellectual prestige was besmirched in the eyes of the whole world. It pays for its momentary madness, it may valiantly strive to atone for its injustice, but the damaging record remains. The supersession of war is needed not merely in the interests of the victims of aggression; it is needed fully as much in the interests of the aggressors, driven by their own momentary pa.s.sions, or by the ambitious follies of their rulers, towards crimes for which a terrible penalty is exacted. There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself. For every country has sometimes gone mad, while every other country has looked on its madness with the mocking calm of clear-sighted intelligence, and perhaps with a pharisaical air of virtuous indignation.
During the single year of 1911 the process was unrolled in its most complete form. The first bad move--though it was a relatively small and inoffensive move--was made by France. The Powers, after much deliberation, had come to certain conclusions concerning Morocco, and while giving France a predominant influence in that country, had carefully limited her power of action. But France, anxious to increase her hold on the land, sent out, with the usual pretexts, an unnecessary expedition to Fez. Had an international tribunal with an adequate force behind it been in existence, France would have been called upon to justify her action, and whether she succeeded or failed in such justification, no further evils would have occurred. But there was no force able or willing to call France to account, and the other Powers found it a simpler plan to follow her example than to check it. In pursuance of this policy, Germany sent a wars.h.i.+p to the Moroccan port of Agadir, using the same pretext as the French, with even less justification. When the supreme military power of the world wags even a finger the whole world is thrown into a state of consternation. That happened on the present occasion, though, as a matter of fact, giants are not given to reckless violence, and Germany, far from intending to break the world's peace, merely used her power to take advantage of France's bad move. She agreed to condone France's mistake, and to resign to her the Moroccan rights to which neither country had the slightest legitimate claim, in return for an enormous tract of land in another part of Africa. Now, so far, the game had been played in accordance with rules which, though by no means those of abstract justice, were fairly in accordance with the recognized practices of nations. But now another Power was moved to far more openly unscrupulous action. It has long been recognized that if there must be a part.i.tion of North Africa, Italy's share is certainly Tripoli. The action of France and of Germany stirred up in Italy the feeling that now or never was the moment for action, and with brutal recklessness, and the usual pretexts, now flimsier than ever, Italy made war on Turkey, without offer of mediation, in flagrant violation of her own undertakings at the Hague Peace Convention of 1899.
There was now only one Mohammedan country left to attack, and it was Russia's turn to make the attack. Northern Persia--the most civilized and fruitful half of Persia--had been placed under the protection of Russia, and Russia, after cynically doing her best to make good government in Persia impossible, seized on the pretext of the bad government to invade the country. If the Powers of Europe had wished to demonstrate the necessity for a great international tribunal, with a mighty force behind it to ensure the observance of its decisions, they could not have devised a more effective demonstration.
Thus it is that there can be no question of disarmament at present, and that there can be no effective international tribunal unless it has behind it an effective army. A great army must continue to exist apart altogether from the question as to whether the army in itself is a school of virtue or of vice. Both these views of its influence have been held in extreme forms, and both seem to be without any great justification. On this point we may perhaps accept the conclusion of Professor Guerard, who can view the matter from a fairly impartial standpoint, having served in the French army, closely studied the life of the people in London, and occupied a professorial chair in California. He denies that an army is a school of all the vices, but he is also unable to see that it exercises an elevating influence on any but the lowest: ”A regiment is not much worse than a big factory.
Factory life in Europe is bad enough; military service extends its evils to agricultural labourers, and also to men who would otherwise have escaped these lowering influences. As for traces of moral uplift in the army, I have totally failed to notice any. War may be a stern school of virtue; barrack life is not. Honour, duty, patriotism, are feelings instilled at school; they do not develop, but often deteriorate, during the term of compulsory service.”[235]
But, as we have seen, and as Guerard admits, it is probable that wars will be abolished generations before armies are suppressed. The question arises what we are to do with our armies. There seem to be at least two ways in which armies may be utilized, as we may already see in France, and perhaps to some slight extent in England. In the first place, the army may be made a great educational agency, an academy of arts and sciences, a school of citizens.h.i.+p. In the second place, armies are tending to become, as William James pointed out, the reserve force of peace, great organized unemployed bodies of men which can be brought into use during sudden emergencies and national disasters. Thus the French army performed admirable service during the great Seine floods a few years ago, and both in France and in England the army has been called upon to help to carry on public duties indispensable to the welfare of the nation during great strikes, though here it would be unfortunate if the army came to be regarded as a mere strike-breaking corps. Along these main lines, however, there are, as Guerard has pointed out, signs of a transformation which, while preserving armies for international use, yet point to a compromise between the army and modern democracy.
It is feared by some that the reign of universal peace will deprive them of the opportunity of exhibiting daring and heroism. Without inquiring too carefully what use has been made of their present opportunities by those who express this fear, it must be said that such a fear is altogether groundless. There are an infinite number of positions in life in which courage is needed, as much as on a battlefield, though, for the most part, with less risk of that total annihilation which in the past has done so much to breed out the courageous stocks. Moreover, the certain establishment of peace will immensely enlarge the scope for daring and adventure in the social sphere. There are departments in the higher breeding and social evolution of the race--some perhaps even involving questions of life and death--where the highest courage is needed. It would be premature to discuss them, for they can scarcely enter the field of practical politics until war has been abolished. But those persons who are burning to display heroism may rest a.s.sured that the course of social evolution will offer them every opportunity.
FOOTNOTES:
[221] The respective parts of war and law in the const.i.tution of states are clearly and concisely set forth by Edward Jenks in his little primer, _A History of Politics_. Steinmetz, who argues in favour of the preservation of the method of war, in his book _Die Philosophie des Krieges_ (p. 303) states that ”not a single element of the warlike spirit, not one of the psychic conditions of war, is lacking to the civilized European peoples of to-day.” That may well be, although there is much reason to believe that they have all very considerably diminished. Such warlike spirit as exists to-day must be considerably discounted by the fact that those who manifest it are not usually the people who would actually have to do the fighting. It is more important to point out (as is done in a historical sketch of warfare by A.
Sutherland, _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1899) that, as a matter of fact, war is becoming both less frequent and less ferocious. In England, for instance, where at one period the population spent a great part of their time in fighting, there has practically been no war for two and a half centuries. When the ancient Germans swept through Spain (as Procopius, who was an eye-witness, tells) they slew every human being they met, including women and children, until millions had perished. The laws of war, though not always observed, are constantly growing more humane, and Sutherland estimates that warfare is now less than one-hundredth part as destructive as it was in the early Middle Ages.
[222] This inevitable extension of the sphere of law from the settlement of disputes between individuals to disputes between individual states has been pointed out before, and is fairly obvious. Thus Mougins-Roquefort, a French lawyer, in his book _De la Solution Juridique des Conflits Internationaux_ (1889), observes that in the days of the Roman Empire, when there was only one civilized state, any system of international relations.h.i.+ps was impossible, but that as soon as we have a number of states forming units of international society there at once arises the necessity for a system of international relations.h.i.+ps, just as some system of social order is necessary to regulate the relations of any community of individuals.
[223] In England, a small and compact country, this process was completed at a comparatively early date. In France it was not until the days of Louis XV (in 1756) that the ”last feudal brigand,” as Taine calls the Marquis de Pleumartin in Poitou, was captured and beheaded.
[224] France, notwithstanding her military apt.i.tude, has always taken the pioneering part in the pacific movement of civilization. Even at the beginning of the fourteenth century France produced an advocate of international arbitration, Pierre Dubois (Petrus de Bosco), the Norman lawyer, a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. In the seventeenth century Emeric Cruce proposed, for the first time, to admit all peoples, without distinction of colour or religion, to be represented at some central city where every state would have its perpetual amba.s.sador, these representatives forming an a.s.sembly to adjudicate on international differences (Dubois and Cruce have lately been studied by Prof.
Vesnitch, _Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique_, January, 1911). The history of the various peace projects generally has been summarily related by Lagorgette in _Le Role de la Guerre_, 1906, Part IV, chap. VI.
[225] The same points had previously been brought forward by others, although not so vigorously enforced. Thus the well-known Belgian economist and publicist, Emile de Laveleye, pointed out (_Pall Mall Gazette_, 4th August, 1888) that ”the happiest countries are incontestably the smallest: Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, and still more the Republics of San Marino and Val d'Andorre”; and that ”countries in general, even when victorious, do not profit by their conquests.”
[226] Bismarck himself declared that without the deep shame of the German defeat at Jena in 1806 the revival of German national feeling would have been impossible.
[227] D. Starr Jordan, The Human Harvest, 1907; J. Novikov, La Guerre et ses Pretendus Bienfaits, 1894, chap. IV; Novikov here argued that the selection of war eliminates not the feeble but the strong, and tends to produce, therefore, a survival of the unfittest.
[228] ”The most demoralizing features in French military life,” says Professor Guerard, a highly intelligent observer, ”are due to an incontestable progress in the French mind--its gradual loss of faith and interest in military glory. Henceforth the army is considered as useless, dangerous, a burden without a compensation. Authors of school books may be censured for daring to print such opinions, but the great majority of the French hold them in their hearts. Nay, there is a prevailing suspicion among working men that the military establishment is kept up for the sole benefit of the capitalists, and the reckless use of troops in case of labour conflicts gives colour to the contention.”
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