Part 16 (2/2)

Towards such a change in att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 {254} unrestricted, and that contraband of war shall have an international definition?”[3]

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 antic.i.p.ated that a complete freedom of the sea will be immediately established, but unless the nations, not controlling the ocean, are given reasonable a.s.surances 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 Ca.n.a.l, the Panama Ca.n.a.l, the Kiel Ca.n.a.l, the Straits of Gibraltar, as far as that can be achieved by international agreement.

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(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 s.h.i.+ps 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 friends.h.i.+p. In any case even a naval disaster would not be so utterly crus.h.i.+ng to England nor so great a hards.h.i.+p 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 {256} 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 antic.i.p.ates such action by violating the agreement first.[4] 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 {257} 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 compet.i.tive nationalistic imperialism and the constant threat of war.

[1] Quoted by H. Sidebotham. ”The Freedom of the Seas.” ”Towards a Lasting Settlement,” by various authors; edited by Charles Roden Buxton, London, 1915, p. 66.

[2] H. Sidebotham, _op. cit._, p. 63.

[3] ”The European War of 1914. Its Causes, Purposes and Probable Results,” Chicago, 1915, p. 142.

[4] Some of the German defenders of the Belgian invasion claim that the Germans were convinced that had they not used Belgium as a base for military operations, England or France would have done so at the first convenient moment, though possibly with Belgium's consent (which, however, Belgium had no legal right to give). Whether or not this fear was justified, it is evident that violations and proposed violations of international law by one group of belligerents led to violations by the other, reprisals were answered by counter-reprisals, and grave breaches of international law by all belligerents were defended on the ground that the opponent would do, or had done, the same.

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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 j.a.pan? 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 ill.u.s.trate the difficulty of establis.h.i.+ng a basis of agreement.

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