Part 18 (2/2)

Such developments, however, are slow and generations live their uncertain lives during a period of transition. While waiting for an economic internationalism to develop to maturity the nations remain on guard, armed, threatened and threatening. The change from our present anarchy to a future concord will not be swift.

For the time even an increase of the economic unit to include several nations instead of one is not likely to put an end to all international economic strife. It is not improbable that the proximate economic development will be not internationalism but _supra-nationalism_. Just as the customs union grew from a district to a nation, so it may grow to include a group of nations but not the whole world. The world may come to be divided into a group of five or six vast economic units, each of which would be composed of one or several or indeed many political units. The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United States, China and j.a.pan, South America, one or two economic coalitions of west and central Europe (with their colonial possessions) would furnish a far more stable economic equilibrium for the world than is the present division of the powers. Each of these groups would have both agricultural and manufacturing resources; none of them would be imperatively obliged to fight for new territories. While there would be friction, while one group would have a population in proportion to its resources in excess of a neighbouring group, the sheer brutal necessity of expansion which now forces nations to fight would be largely moderated.

Such a division of the world into seven or six or perhaps fewer economic aggregates though not easy is quite within {285} the bounds of possibility. Three of these aggregates, Britain, Russia and the United States, are already political units; the chief difficulty would consist of western and central Europe. No thoroughgoing political amalgamation of such countries as France, Germany and Italy is at all proximate, but some form of economic unity is not impossible. The bond which would join these countries might be less tight and therefore stronger than the _Ausgleich_, which holds together the kingdoms of Austria and Hungary. In the beginning it might be merely a series of trade conventions terminable on notice; from this it might grow to more permanent trade agreements and finally to a customs union. While the opposition to such an economic union would be strong the forces driving in this direction would also be powerful. As the really great nations emerge, as Russia, the United States and the British Empire increase their population into the hundreds of millions and their wealth into the hundreds of billions, the individual nations of Europe will become economically insignificant and economically unsafe. Only by a pooling of their resources will they be able to escape from the crus.h.i.+ng superiority of the nations with large bulk and from an insecurity which makes for war.

Even with such an economic rearrangement of the world the west European coalitions would be unsafe unless they lessened the rate of increase of their population. Never before has this population grown so rapidly.

In the decade ending 1810 western Europe (including the nations lying to the west of Russia), added 6.3 millions to its numbers; in the decade ending 1900 it added almost 19 millions. Despite a decline in the birth-rate, the mortality has fallen so far that the population is reaching a point where it will be difficult to secure adequate food supplies from abroad. Rather than starve or live under the {286} constraint of scarce food and high food prices, the West European powers will fight for new territory from which to feed their people.

With the industrial development of Asia, and especially of China, this danger will be enhanced. Of the three great nuclei of population in the world, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Western (and Central) Europe, only one has been able to draw upon the surplus food of the world. Eight hundred million Asiatics have been forced to live on their own meagre home resources. As China begins to export coal, iron, textiles and other manufactured products, however, she will be able, whether politically independent or not, to compete with Europe for the purchase of this food supply. Not only will China's population probably increase with the advent of industrialism but the standard of living of her population will rise, and her compet.i.tion with Europe for the sale of manufactured products and the purchase of food will become intense. The cheap, patient, disciplined labour of China's hundreds of millions will be fighting with the Belgian, the German and the Italian wage-earners to secure the food which it will be necessary to import.

It is not a yellow, but a human peril; a mere addition to the hungry mouths that are to be fed. The supply of exportable food that can be raised in the world has of course not reached its maximum, but beyond a certain point every increase in agricultural production means a more than proportional increase in the cost of the product. To feed eight hundred millions costs much more than twice as much as to feed four hundred millions. Even though China secure only a minor part of the exportable food, it will by just so much increase the strain upon the industrial populations of Europe.

It is a crisis for European industrialism, a slowly {287} preparing crisis with infinitely tragic possibilities. What it involves is not a mere re-distribution of wealth and income but an adjustment of population to the available home and foreign resources in food.

Collectivism will not permanently save the European wage-earner from hunger if he continues to multiply his numbers faster than the visible food supply increases. A decline in the rate of population growth is essential.

Fortunately this decline is already in progress. All the nations of Western and Central Europe are moving towards a lower birth-rate and in France this diminution has reached a point where there is no longer a natural increase. In a few decades the birth rate will probably begin to fall everywhere faster than the death rate declines. An adjustment of the population to its probable resources will be in progress.

In this progressive decline in the birth rate is to be found the greatest of all the factors making for internationalism and peace. It is a development which takes away the edge from the present frantic effort of industrial nations to secure a monopolistic control of foreign resources. It permits the gradual creation of an equilibrium between the nation's population and its physical resources at home and abroad.

Powerful forces in the world are at present slowly making for an economic internationalism to supplant the economic nationalism which to-day makes for war. The problem that faces the United States is what shall be its policy and action in view of the present nationalistic strife and of the slowly maturing economic internationalism.

[1] November, 1916.

[2] The proposal to boycott Germany after the war is sometimes based upon weirdly moral rather than economic considerations. ”Is it possible,” writes one C. R. Enoch, ”that trade relations with the nation that has outraged every tenet of international and moral decency, every consideration of humanity, and has committed unspeakable atrocities, as has Germany in her conduct of the war, can be taken up again at the point where they were broken off? ... There is only one procedure compatible with honour and justice--namely, that no ordinary commercial dealings should be carried out with Germany until the _generation of Teutons that did these things has pa.s.sed away_, unless absolute penitence and reparation--if reparation be possible--is done therefor.” ”Can We Set the World in Order.” London, 1916, p. 197.

(My italics.)

[3] The granting of permission to the people of the disputed district to decide their own allegiance is a good general principle, but, unfortunately, does not carry us far. The main difficulty lies in determining what shall be the unit of territory and population which is to decide. If Ireland votes as a unit, all Ireland will have home rule; if each county is to have the right of self direction, Ulster will be detached from the rest of the island. If Alsace-Lorraine votes to become French, whole districts, which will have voted to remain German, will be dissatisfied. Moreover, in the latter case, should all the residents of the two provinces be permitted to vote or only those people and their descendants who were living there in 1870? If the first plan is adopted a premium is placed upon the policy of legally dispossessing the inhabitants of a conquered land and filling their places with loyal _immigres_; if the latter is chosen, the principle of the right of a population to determine its allegiance is abandoned.

Finally, if the decision of the population of the disputed district were adverse to the interests of Europe as a whole, it would be irrational to validate such a result. The interests of Europe are superior to those of any nation, however powerful, and vastly superior to those of a Luxemburg, Ulster or Alsace-Lorraine.

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CHAPTER XXI

AN IMMEDIATE PROGRAMME

To the practical man who wants to know what to do and when and how to do it, general principles seem unreal and valueless. He is interested in the decisions of the next few months, not in a vague general direction of events for the coming century. And so in international politics he would like to decide what the nation shall do _now_ about the British blacklist, the German submarines, the Mexican revolution, the California-j.a.panese situation, and he is not keenly interested in the formulation of a policy which seems to hang high above the difficult concrete problems that must be solved immediately. He may languidly agree with proposals to create a community of interest among colonising nations and to establish the freedom of the sea, but he wishes to know whether in the meanwhile we are to back up Carranza in Mexico and what we are to do if the revolutionists ”shoot up” an American town. While we work for these ideals, are we to allow Germany to sink our liners and j.a.pan to swallow up China, or are we to fight?

This att.i.tude is not unreasonable. A general policy is of little value unless we can make successive decisions conform to it. But it is not easy or always possible to predict these decisions. We can tell approximately how many people in the United States will die next year, but not how many will die in any particular family. We can {289} advise a man who is walking from New York to San Francisco to take a generally westward course, but for any given mile of the road the direction may be north or south or east. A trend of policy is made up of innumerable deflections, small or large; it is an irregular chain of successive actions, which do not all tend in one direction. Even if we narrow our field of vision and seek to elaborate a more immediate policy, we do not escape from the vagueness which inheres in all such general conclusions.

In the main our problem consists in using the influence of the United States to create such an economic harmony among the nations, and to give each nation such a measure of security as to permit them to agree upon an international policy, which will be in the interest of all.

The chief elements of this programme are two in number: to create conditions within the United States which will permit us to exert a real influence; and to use this influence in the creation of an international organisation, which will give each nation a measure of economic and military security, and prevent any nation from wantonly breaking the peace.

How far we can progress towards such an organisation will depend upon the course and uncertain issue of the present war. The war may end with the Central Allies crushed, with Germany reduced in size and Austria and Turkey dismembered. It may end with a lesser defeat for the Central Powers and with lesser penalties. There may be an inconclusive peace, which may either be a mere truce or a new basis of agreement between nations disillusioned by the conflict. Finally the war may end with the partial or even complete victory of the Central Powers, either through their overcoming the united opposition of their enemies or by detaching one or more from their alliances.

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