Part 14 (2/2)
Along this line alone can progress be made. You cannot end war without changing the international polity which leads to war. The b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sumption 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 {223} 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 pa.s.sions. 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 cla.s.ses are restrained by the community. Honest differences of opinion among nations must be arbitrated; angry pa.s.sions 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 const.i.tution 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-const.i.tute Society and petrify it in peace, our descendants would be far from content. {224} The best heritage that the world can have is not a perfect const.i.tution but a feasible principle of change.
A dynamic pacifism, on the other hand, must a.s.sume 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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.ses by the fact of their position in society are more bellicose than others, that cla.s.ses grow at unequal rates and exert a varying influence, and that certain cla.s.ses 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 a.n.a.logy 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 {225} 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?[4]
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. {226} 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 j.a.panese 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 a.s.sumption 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 {227} 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 a.s.sumes 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 {228} 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 cla.s.s. The {229} 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 j.a.pan would lose. An event in the very recent past ill.u.s.trates this point. On August 1, 1914 the German Secretary of State intimated to the British Amba.s.sador 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 ma.s.ses of troops from all parts of her wide dominions.”[5] In other words, for Germany to give up her greater speed of mobilisation would be to destroy her advantage while a.s.suring that of Russia. Actually, under present circ.u.mstances, 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.
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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 establis.h.i.+ng 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.
[1] For a brief digest of the history of pacifism, see Dr. Edward Krehbiel, ”Nationalism, War and Society,” New York, 1916. See also books cited by him.
[2] ”England and Germany,” p. 56.
[3] P. 58.
[4] The proposal for disarmament also raises the question of the inner stability of each nation. In each country there must be some police force to keep down the anti-social cla.s.ses and prevent revolution.
Such a force might be small in England or the United States; it would have to be large and powerful in Russia and Austria, if the subject nations were to be held down. But a large police force is an army under a different name. If each disarmed nation were permitted to decide its own police needs, the whole principle of disarmament would be whittled away.
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