Chapter X: Part II: A League of Peace (2)

The kernel of the proposal, the feature in which it differs from other plans, lies in the third point, obliging all the members of the league to declare war on any member violating the pact of peace. This is the provision that provokes both adherence and opposition; and at first it certainly gives one a shock that a people should be asked to pledge itself to go to war over a quarrel which is not of its making, in which it has no interest, and in which it may believe that substantial justice lies on the other side. If, indeed, the nations of the earth could maintain complete isolation, could pursue each its own destiny without regard to the rest; if they were not affected by a war between two others or liable to be drawn into it; if, in short, there were no overwhelming common interest in securing universal peace, the provision would be intolerable. It would be as bad as the liability of an individual to take part in the _posse comitatus_ of a community with which he had nothing in common. But in every civilized country the public force is employed to prevent any man, however just his claim, from vindicating his own right with his own hand instead of going to law, and every citizen is bound when needed to assist in preventing him, because that is the only way to restrain private war, and the maintenance of order is of paramount importance for every one. Surely the family of nations has a like interest in restraining war between States.

It will be observed that the members of the league are not to bind themselves to enforce the decision of the tribunal or the award of the council of conciliation. That may come in the remote future, but it is no part of this proposal. It would be imposing obligations far greater than the nations can reasonably be expected to assume at the present day; for the conceptions of international morality and fair play are still so vague and divergent that a nation can hardly bind itself to wage war on another, with which it has no quarrel, to enforce a decision or a recommendation of whose justice or wisdom it may not be itself heartily convinced. The proposal goes no further than obliging all the members to prevent, by a threat of immediate war, any breach of the public peace before the matter in dispute has been submitted to arbitration; and this is neither unreasonable nor impracticable. There are many questions, especially of a non-justiciable nature, on which we should not be willing to bind ourselves to accept the decision of an arbitration, and where we should regard compulsion by armed intervention of the rest of the world as outrageous. Take, for example, the question of Asiatic immigration, or a claim that the Panama Canal ought to be an unfortified neutral highway, or the desire by a European Power to take possession of Colombia. But we ought not, in the interest of universal peace, to object to making a public statement of our position in these matters at a court or council before resorting to arms; and in fact the treaty between the United States and England, ratified on November 14, 1914, provides that all disputes between the high contracting parties, of every nature whatsoever, shall, failing other methods of adjustment, be referred for investigation and report to a permanent international commission, with a stipulation that neither country shall declare war or begin hostilities during such investigation and before the report is submitted.

[Sidenote: Would not mean cession of sovereignty.]

What is true of this country is true of others. To agree to abide by the result of an arbitration, on every non-justiciable question of every nature whatsoever, on pain of compulsion in any form by the whole world, would involve a greater cession of sovereignty than nations would now be willing to concede. This appears, indeed, perfectly clear from the discussions at The Hague Conference of 1907. But to exclude differences that do not turn on questions of international law from the cases in which a State must present the matter to a tribunal or council of conciliation before beginning hostilities, would leave very little check upon the outbreak of war. Almost every conflict between European nations for more than half a century has been based upon some dissension which could not be decided by strict rules of law, and in which a violation of international law or of treaty rights has usually not even been used as an excuse. This was true of the war between France and Austria in 1859, and, in substance, of the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866. It was true of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, of the Russo-Turkish War in 1876, of the Balkan War against Turkey in 1912, and of the present war.

[Sidenote: But would reduce probability of hostilities.]

No one will claim that a league to enforce peace, such as is proposed, would wholly prevent war, but it would greatly reduce the probability of hostilities. It would take away the advantage of surprise, of catching the enemy unprepared for a sudden attack. It would give a chance for public opinion on the nature of the controversy to be formed throughout the world and in the militant country. The latter is of great importance, for the moment war is declared argument about its merits is at once stifled. Passion runs too high for calm debate, and patriotism forces people to support their government. But a trial before an international tribunal would give time for discussion while emotion is not yet highly inflamed. Men opposed to war would be able to urge its injustice, to ask whether, after all, the object is worth the sacrifice, and they would get a hearing from their fellow citizens which they cannot get after war begins. The mere delay, the interval for consideration, would be an immense gain for the prospect of a peaceful settlement.

Most people who have been thinking seriously about the maintenance of peace are tending to the opinion that a sanction of some kind is needed to enforce the observance of treaties and of agreements for arbitration. Among the measures proposed has been that of an international police force, under the control of a central council which could use it to preserve order throughout the world. At present such a plan seems visionary. The force would have to be at least large enough to cope with the army that any single nation could put into the field—under existing conditions let us say five millions of men fully equipped and supplied with artillery and ammunition for a campaign of several months. These troops need not be under arms, or quartered near The Hague, but they must be thoroughly trained and ready to be called out at short notice. Practically that would entail yearly votes of the legislative bodies of each of the nations supplying a quota; and if any of them failed to make the necessary appropriation there would be great difficulty in preventing others from following its example. The whole organization would, therefore, be in constant danger of going to pieces.

[Sidenote: The U. S. and the international police.]

But quite apart from the practical difficulties in the permanent execution of such a plan, let us see how it would affect the United States. The amount of the contingents of the various countries would be apportioned with some regard to population, wealth, and economic resources; and if the total were five million men, our quota on a moderate estimate might be five hundred thousand men. Is it conceivable that the United States would agree to keep anything like that number drilled, equipped, and ready to take the field on the order of an international council composed mainly of foreign nations? Of course it will be answered that these figures are exaggerated, because any such plan will be accompanied by a reduction in armaments. But that is an easier thing to talk about than to effect, and especially to maintain. One must not forget that the existing system of universal compulsory military service on the continent of Europe arose from Napoleon’s attempt to limit the size of the Prussian army. He would be a bold or sanguine man who should assert that any treaty to limit armaments could not in like manner be evaded; and however much they were limited, the quantity of troops to be held at the disposal of a foreign council would of necessity be large, while no nation would be willing to pledge for the purpose the whole of its military force. Such a plan may be practicable in some remote future when the whole world is a vast federation under a central government, but that would seem to be a matter for coming generations, not for the men of our day.

Moreover, the nations whose troops were engaged in fighting any country would inevitably find themselves at war with that country.

One cannot imagine saying to some foreign State, “Our troops are killing yours, they are invading your land, we are supplying them with recruits and munitions of war, but otherwise we are at peace with you. You must treat us as a neutral, and accord to our citizens, to their commerce and property, all the rights of neutrality.” In short the plan of an international police force involves all the consequences of the proposal of a league to enforce peace, with other complex provisions extremely hard to execute.

[Sidenote: Objections.]

A suggestion more commonly made is that the members of the league of nations, instead of pledging themselves explicitly to declare war forthwith against any of their number that commits a breach of the peace, should agree to hold at once a conference, and take such measures—diplomatic, economic, or military—as may be necessary to prevent war. The objection to this is that it weakens very seriously the sanction. Conferences are apt to shrink from decisive action. Some of the members are timid, others want delay, and much time is consumed in calling the body together and in discussions after it meets. Meanwhile the war may have broken out, and be beyond control. It is much easier to prevent a fire than to put it out. The country that is planning war is likely to think it has friends in the conference, or neighbors that it can intimidate, who will prevent any positive decision until the fire is burning. Even if the majority decides on immediate action, the minority is not bound thereby. One great Power refuses to take part; a second will not do so without her; the rest hesitate, and nothing is done to prevent the war.

[Sidenote: Advantages of pledges.]

A conference is an excellent thing. The proposal of a league to enforce peace by no means excludes it; but the important matter, the effective principle, is that every member of the league should know that whether a conference meets or not, or whatever action it may take or fail to take, all the members of the league have pledged themselves to declare war forthwith on any member that commits a breach of the peace before submitting its case to the international tribunal or council of conciliation. Such a pledge, and such a pledge alone, can have the strong deterrent influence, and thus furnish the sanction, that is needed. Of course the pledge may not be kept. Like other treaties it may be broken by the parties to it. Nations are composed of human beings with human weaknesses, and one of these is a disinclination to perform an agreement when it involves a sacrifice. Nevertheless, nations, like men, often do have enough sense of honor, of duty, or of ultimate self-interest, to carry out their contracts at no little immediate sacrifice. They are certainly more likely to do a thing if they have pledged themselves to it than if they have not; and any nation would be running a terrible risk that went to war in the hope that the other members of the league would break their pledges.

[Sidenote: The threats of universal war and boycott.]

The same objection applies to another alternative proposed in place of an immediate resort to military force: that is the use of economic pressure, by a universal agreement, for example, to have no commercial intercourse with the nation breaking the peace. A threat of universal boycott is, no doubt, formidable, but by no means so formidable as a threat of universal war. A large country with great natural resources which has determined to make war, might be willing to face commercial non-intercourse with the other members of the league during hostilities, when it would not for a moment contemplate the risk of fighting them. A threat, for example, by England, France, and Germany to stop all trade with the United States might or might not have prevented our going to war with Spain; but a declaration that they would take part with all their armies and navies against us would certainly have done so.

It has often been pointed out that the threat of general non-intercourse would bear much more hardly on some countries than on others. That may not in itself be a fatal objection, but a very serious consideration arises from the fact that there would be a premium on preparation for war. A nation which had accumulated vast quantities of munitions, food, and supplies of all kinds, might afford to disregard it; while another less fully prepared could not.

Moreover, economic pressure, although urged as a milder measure, is in fact more difficult to apply and maintain. A declaration of war is a single act, and when made sustains itself by the passion it inflames; while commercial non-intercourse is a continuous matter, subject to constant opposition exerted in an atmosphere relatively cool. Our manufacturers would complain bitterly at being deprived of dye-stuffs and other chemical products on account of a quarrel in which we had no interest; the South would suffer severely by the loss of a market for cotton; the shipping firms and the exporters and importers of all kinds would be gravely injured; and all these interests would bring to bear upon Congress a pressure well-nigh irresistible. The same would be true of every other neutral country, a fact that would be perfectly well known to the intending belligerent and reduce its fear of a boycott.

[Sidenote: Drastic threats by a League could probably prevent war.]

But, it is said, why not try economic pressure first, and, if that fails, resort to military force, instead of inflicting at once on unoffending members of the league the terrible calamity of war? What do we mean by “if that fails”? Do we mean, if, in spite of the economic pressure, the war breaks out? But then the harm is done, the fire is ablaze and can be put out only by blood. The object of the league is not to chastise a country guilty of breaking the peace, but to prevent the outbreak of war, and to prevent it by the immediate prospect of such appalling consequences to the offender that he will not venture to run the risk. If a number of great Powers were to pledge themselves with serious intent, to wage war jointly and severally on any one of their members that attacked another before submitting the case to arbitration, it is in the highest degree improbable that the _casus fœderis_ would ever occur, while any less drastic provision would be far less effective.

[Sidenote: Object is to lessen chances of war, though the League could not meet all possible contingencies.]

An objection has been raised to the proposal for a league to enforce peace on the ground that it has in the past often proved difficult, if not impossible, to determine which of two belligerents began a war. The criticism is serious, and presents a practical difficulty, grave but probably not insurmountable. The proposal merely lays down a general principle, and if adopted the details would have to be worked out very fully and carefully in a treaty, which would specify the acts that would constitute the waging of war by one member upon another. These would naturally be, not the mere creating of apprehension, but specific acts, such as a declaration of war, invasion of territory, the use of force at sea not disowned within forty-eight hours, or an advance into a region in dispute. This last is an especially difficult point, but those portions of the earth’s surface in which different nations have conflicting claims are growing less decade by decade.

It must be remembered that the cases which would arise are not like those which have arisen in the past, where one nation is determined to go to war and merely seeks to throw the moral responsibility on the other while getting the advantage of actually beginning hostilities. It is a case where each will strive to avoid the specific acts of war that may involve the penalty. The reader may have seen, in a country where personal violence is severely punished, two men shaking their fists in each other’s faces, each trying to provoke the other to strike the first blow; and no fight after all.

There are many agreements in private business which are not easy to embody in formal contracts; agreements where, as in this case, the execution of the terms calls for immediate action, and where redress after an elaborate trial of the facts affords no real reparation. But if the object sought is good, men do not condemn it on account of the difficulty in devising provisions that will accomplish the result desired; certainly not until they have tried to devise them. It may, indeed, prove impossible to draft a code of specific acts that will cover the ground; it may be impracticable to draft it so as to avoid issues of fact that can be determined only after a long sifting of evidence, which would come too late; but surely that is no reason for failure to make the attempt. We are not making a treaty among nations. We are merely putting forward a suggestion for reducing war, which seems to merit consideration.

A second difficulty that will sometimes arise is the rule of conduct to be followed pending the presentation of the question to the international tribunal. The continuance or cessation of the acts complained of may appear to be, and may even be in fact, more important than the final decision. This has been brought to our attention forcibly by the sinking of the _Lusitania_. We should have done very wisely to submit to arbitration the question of the right of submarines to torpedo merchant ships without warning, provided Germany abandoned the practise pending the arbitration; and Germany would probably not have refused to submit the question to a tribunal on the understanding that the practise was to continue until the decision was rendered, because by that time the war would be over. This difficulty is inherent in every plan for the arbitration of international disputes, although more serious in a league whose members bind themselves to prevent by force the outbreak of war. It would be necessary to give the tribunal summary authority to decree a _modus vivendi_, to empower it, like a court of equity, to issue a temporary injunction.

In short, the proposal for a league to enforce peace cannot meet all possible contingencies. It cannot prevent all future wars, nor does any sensible person believe that any plan can do so in the present state of civilization. But it can prevent some wars that would otherwise take place, and if it does that it will have done much good.

[Sidenote: Enough if League meant peace for its members.]

People have asked how such a league would differ from the Triple Alliance or Triple Entente—whether it would not be nominally a combination for peace which might in practise have quite a different effect. But in fact its object is quite contrary to those alliances. They are designed to protect their members against outside Powers. This is intended to insure peace among the members themselves. If it grew strong enough, by including all the great Powers, it might well insist on universal peace by compelling the outsiders to come in. But that is not its primary object, which is simply to prevent its members from going to war with one another. No doubt if several great nations, and some of the smaller ones, joined it, and if it succeeded in preserving constant friendly relations among its members, there would grow up among them a sense of solidarity which would make any outside Power chary of attacking one of them; and, what is more valuable, would make outsiders want to join it. But there is little use in speculating about probabilities. It is enough if such a league were a source of enduring peace among its own members.

How about our own position in the United States? The proposal is a radical and subversive departure from the traditional policy of our country. Would it be wise for us to be parties to such an agreement? At the threshold of such a discussion one thing is clear. If we are not willing to urge our own government to join a movement for peace, we have no business to discuss any plan for the purpose. It is worse than futile, it is an impertinence, for Americans to advise the people of Europe how they ought to conduct their affairs if we have nothing in common with them; to suggest to them conventions with burdens which are well enough for them, but which we are not willing to share. If our peace organizations are not prepared to have us take part in the plans they devise, they had better disband, or confine their discussions to Pan-American questions....

_A. Lawrence Lowell, “A League to Enforce Peace,”
Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1915._

THE CONSTITUTION OF A LEAGUE

[Sidenote: Force for defense vs. force for aggression.]

The problem of the League of Peace is actually the problem of the use of force. Force internationally expressed is measured in armaments. The chief discussion which has been waged for the past decade between the pacifists and militarists has been over the question of armaments. The militarists claim that armaments insure national safety. The pacifists declare they inevitably lead to war. Both disputants insist that the present war furnishes irrefutable proof of their contentions.

As is usual in cases of this kind the shield has two sides. The confusion has arisen from a failure to recognize the threefold function of force:

1. Force used for the maintenance of order—police force.

2. Force used for attack—aggression.

3. Force used to neutralize aggression—defense.

Police force is almost wholly good.

Offense is almost wholly bad.

Defense is a necessary evil, and exists simply to neutralize force employed for aggression.

The problem of the peace movement is how to abolish the use of force for aggression, and yet to maintain it for police purposes. Force for defense will of course automatically cease when force for aggression is abolished.

The chief problem then of a League of Peace is this: Shall the members of the League “not only keep the peace themselves, but prevent by force if necessary its being broken by others,” as ex-President Roosevelt suggested in his Nobel Peace Address delivered at Christiania, May 5, 1910? Or shall its force be exercised only within its membership and thus be on the side of law and order and never on the side of arbitrary will or tyranny? Or shall it never be used at all? Whichever one of these conceptions finally prevails the Great War has conclusively demonstrated that as long as War Lords exist defensive force must be maintained. Hence the League must be prepared to use force against any nations which will not forswear force. Nevertheless a formula must be devised for disarmament. For unless it is a law of nature that war is to consume all the fruits of progress disarmament somehow and some way must take place. How then can the maintenance of a force for defense and police power be reconciled with the theory of disarmament?

[Sidenote: The principles for a League of Peace.]

In this way: Let the League of Peace be formed on the following five principles:

First. The nations of the League shall mutually agree to respect the territory and sovereignty of each other.

Second. All questions that cannot be settled by diplomacy shall be arbitrated.

Third. The nations of the League shall provide a periodical assembly to make all rules to become law unless vetoed by a nation within a stated period.

Fourth. The nations shall disarm to the point where the combined forces of the League shall be a certain per cent. higher than those of the most heavily armed nation or alliance outside of the League. Detailed rules for this pro rata disarmament shall be formulated by the Assembly.

Fifth. Any member of the League shall have the right to withdraw on due notice, or may be expelled by the unanimous vote of the others.

The advantages that a nation would gain in becoming a member of such a league are manifest. The risk of war would be eliminated within the League. Obviously the only things that are vital to a nation are its land and its independence. Since each nation in the League will have pledged itself to respect the territory and the sovereignty of every other, a refusal to do so will logically lead to expulsion from the League. Thus every vital question will be automatically reserved from both war and arbitration. All other questions are of secondary importance and can readily be arbitrated.

By the establishment of a periodical assembly a method would be devised whereby the members of the League could develop their common intercourse and interests as far and as fast as they could unanimously agree upon ways and means. As any law could be vetoed by a single nation, no nation could have any fear that it would be coerced against its will by a majority vote of the other nations. By such an assembly the League might in time agree to reduce tariffs and postal rates and in a thousand other ways promote commerce and comity among its members.

[Sidenote: Rights and duties within the League.]

As a final safeguard against coercion by the other members of the League, each member will have the right of secession on due notice. This would prevent civil war within the League. The right of expulsion by the majority will prevent one nation by its veto power indefinitely blocking all progress of the League.

But it will be said that all these agreements will have no binding effect in a crisis. A covenant is a mere “scrap of paper” whose provisions will be violated by the first nation which fancies it is its interest to do so. In order to show that their faith is backed up by deeds, however, the nations on entering the League agree to disarm to a little above the danger point, and put all their defensive power under a federal authority. This is the real proof of their conversion to the peace idea.

[Sidenote: Co-operation for protection.]

Thus the nations which join the League will enjoy all the economic and political advantages which come from mutual cooperation and the extension of international friendship and at the same time will be protected by an adequate force against the aggressive force of the greatest nation or alliance outside the League. The League therefore reconciles the demand of the pacifists for the limitation of armaments and eventual disarmament and the demand of the militarists for the protection that armament affords. Above all the establishment of such a league will give the liberal parties in the nations outside the League an issue on which they can attack their governments so as sooner or later to force them to apply to the League for membership. As each one enters there will be another pro rata reduction of the military forces of the League down to the armament of the next most powerful nation or alliance outside it; until finally the whole world is federated in a brotherhood of universal peace and armies and navies are reduced to an international police force.

_Hamilton Holt, “The Way to Disarm,” Independent, Sept. 28, 1914._

PACIFISM AND THE LEAGUE OF PEACE

[Sidenote: Peace is not mere non-resistance.]

In short, we have little faith in a pacifism which is mere _laissez-faire_, in the doctrine that peace is the vacuum created by the absence of war. Peace is something more original than that. It is a great construction, of infinite complexity, which will be aided but not consummated by good intentions. It involves dangers, failures, disappointments. The interests of the world are interwoven, and no nation can work for peace by adopting counsels of perfection in a policy of isolation. Yet that is what mere non-resistance implies. It implies an unwillingness to take the risk of participation in world politics, it trusts vaguely that by staying at home and minding our business, we can make our own little cultivated garden bloom in peace and prosperity. There is no internationalism in such a view of things. The real internationalist is one who works first of all to keep his own nation from aggressive action, who infuses his own national policy with a desire for international peace. He works to control his own government so as to make it adopt a humanely constructive foreign policy. He does not refuse to have part in the world’s affairs because the world may soil his hands. He realizes that peace can be created only out of the strength of intelligent people, that even God when he fought the devil had to compromise his own perfection.

[Sidenote: The clear-sighted idealist sees a League of Peace.]

It is more than a century since Thomas Paine proposed to secure the world’s peace forever by a league between Britain, France and the United States. He made the suggestion on the eve of the Napoleonic wars, and it is hardly an accident that the idea was revived with a different trinity a few months before the present struggle. It was Britain, France and Germany that Jean Jaurès would have united in a League of Peace. At the parting of the ways the clear-sighted idealist has always understood that the choice is not between war and that sort of peace which is only a negation of war. The choice in both these crises lay between shattering war and constructive peace, between an open and destructive enmity and a peace based on a common will and an active partnership. Mirabeau had the same vivid perception, and what these three saw is still a vision that haunts us among the mists of war. Of the several proposals that arise inevitably in men’s minds when we think of preventing the renewal of this Continental struggle, there is none which sober thinkers propound so readily and none which has been worked out with greater detail in England than this expedient of the League of Peace. There are, indeed, a few who dare to speak of the United States of Europe, and some who discuss the creation of an international police force to secure the law of nations and repress aggression. But even they do not deny the inordinate difficulties. This war has lasted long enough to teach all but the unteachable that neither side will be able to crush and dominate the other. But short of the compulsion of irresistible might, will any influence suffice to bring the enemies of to-day by their spontaneous choice into a European federation? Is any people, even the most pacific, prepared as yet to accept the surrender of sovereignty which entry into even a loosely-knit federation would involve?

[Sidenote: A practicable dream.]

The League of Peace presents itself to practical men as a dream capable of an early translation into fact. The allies need only agree to join their forces against any power which persisted, after offers of arbitration or mediation (a reservation which no old-fashioned alliance ever made) in attacking any one of them. It would differ from other alliances partly by its insistence on the duty of arbitration, partly by its frank and public constitution, but mainly by the ready welcome which it would offer even to the enemy of yesterday, should he elect to enter it. The United States would rally to it, seeing in it their best hope of safety, and ultimately it might become a genuine Pan-European League. It is sometimes suggested that Paine’s Anglo-Franco-American combination might form its nucleus. More often its advocates base their hopes on the Anglo-Franco-Russian entente, expanded by adhesion of some of the present neutrals. No one suggests, and this is the weakest point of the whole scheme, that Germany and Austria would be likely to join such a League at the start, though no one of this way of thinking would desire to exclude them.

[Sidenote: The League must be more than the old alliances.]

Much would depend on the nucleus of the federation. Crude military considerations render an Anglo-French-American trinity impossible. Without discussing whether the United States would care to enter “the vortex of European militarism,” it is enough to point out that such a combination could not hope to hold the rest of Europe in check, could not even safeguard France against Germany alone, unless one or both of the English-speaking nations adopted compulsory military service. France must ally herself to some first-rate military power; no navy can protect her land frontiers. The Anglo-Franco-Russian combination is open to other objections. It does not represent a homogeneous civilization. Every outbreak of anti-Jewish fanaticism in Russia, every assault on Finland or Persia, every reminder that official Russia still belongs to the Dark Ages, would tend to weaken the moral authority of such a League. It has, moreover, too long a history. It would seem even to charitable Germans a mere perpetuation under a new name of the combination which M. Delcassé and King Edward were accused of forming to “pen Germany in.” It would seem to be nothing better than an alliance to assure the victors in the perpetual possession of the fruits of victory, and the new pacifist façade to the old armed fortress would only aggravate by hypocrisy the sin of success. Germany would never join this League; she would scheme with all the arts of barter and intrigue to detach Russia from it, and the old game of the Balance of Power would go on.

[Sidenote: It must provide for changing conditions.]

The fatal objection to any alliance of this kind is that it does not really meet the difficulty that no State will abandon its sovereignty. This alliance would not be a League of Peace unless it were prepared to exercise a very sharp supervision over the foreign policy of its members. If the old Anglo-Franco-Russian entente had been a genuine League of Peace, it would have had to say, for example, to Serbia, “You may join us, but if you do join us, you must abandon forever your Irredentist ambitions at the expense of Austria. We will protect you against any unprovoked attack by Austria. But you on your side must refrain from any encouragement to those who would dismember her.” It would have had to say with equal decision to France, “Join us by all means, but at the cost of refraining from any expansion in Morocco. You cannot march on Fez without provoking some German reply.” Such a League, in short, would be a mutual insurance society, but the risks would be too high unless the society could prohibit its members from any deliberate playing with fire. It is not enough to say, “We will murder an Archduke once in a way, but when he is dead and buried we will go to The Hague about him”; or, “We will, to be sure, take places in the sun which other people covet, but when we have taken them we shall not wantonly attack any unsuccessful rivals.” The League of Peace would either be the old imperialistic alliance under a dishonest name, or else it would be a highly conservative federation which would keep its members in a very strait pacifist jacket. If great powers would really endure such a control they might as well face at once the limitation of sovereignty implied in a United States of Europe.

[Sidenote: All interests must be reconciled.]

The vice of all such schemes is that they are based too one-sidedly on the idea of preventing wars. They take a static view of the world. They come quite naturally from citizens of satisfied powers, weary of the burden of defending what they have got. They ignore the fact that life is change. They make no provision for any organic alterations in the world’s structure. We can no more prevent war by organizing a defensive league than revolution by creating a police. We must deal with causes, must provide some means alternative to war by which large grievances can be redressed and legitimate ambitions satisfied. To recur to our concrete cases: if it is desired to insure that Serbia shall not again embroil a continent in war, some machinery must be provided by which Austria can be required to treat her subject Serbs reasonably well. When a “place in the sun” like Morocco, one of the few unappropriated parts of the earth fit for settlement by a white race, can no longer maintain its independence, there must be some impartial Power which can say, “This rich potential colony ought not to go to a State like France, with two similar colonies already under its flag and a dwindling population at home, but rather to a State like Germany, with no such colony of her own, despite her teeming population, her great birth-rate, her vigorous and expansive commerce.”

For such problems as this there is no solution in the quasi-legal processes of arbitration. The fundamental fact in the European history of the last twenty years has been the restless search of Germany for colonies and fields of exploitation. She felt her way in South Africa; the British Empire expanded to exclude her. She turned a timid glance to Brazil; the Monroe Doctrine was the flaming sword at the gate of that Paradise. She coveted Morocco; the British navy cleared its decks. She penetrated Turkey down the spine of the Bagdad Railway; she was met at the Gulf with opposing sea-power. A League of the Satisfied might appeal to London and Paris and Petrograd. But Berlin will ask, “What hope does it offer to me that when my population is still denser, my industry still more expansive, my need for markets and fields of exploitation for my capital even more clamant than it is to-day, your League of Peace will provide me with an outlet? You bar the future, and you call it peace.”

[Sidenote: The Philadelphia Conference.]

The recent Philadelphia conference on The League to Enforce Peace was extraordinarily sensible because it recognized so clearly its own limitations. It did not propose to stop the war. It did not urge anybody to act before he was ready to act. It did not try to stampede our government or any European government into some theoretical program. It tried merely to focus the ideas which have been most common in England and America during the last ten months. Under impressive circumstances, in a hall filled with noble memories, it crystallized a number of vague ideas into an hypothesis. The conference was visibly trying to reach some minimum agreement for the purpose of clarifying the thinking of individuals and groups all over the world.

Nobody is expected to act upon the resolutions, but everybody is expected to give what thought and knowledge and imagination he may have towards maturing the intentions which they expressed. The conference did what every person must do constantly for himself whenever he is trying to think out a long and complex problem. It stopped for breath and for a renewal of faith; it made a tentative proposal as a guide for the thought which is to follow. With great sanity it took no doctrinaire position, laid down no rule, such as peace-at-any-price, honor-cannot-be-arbitrated, sovereignty-is-one-and-indivisible, or any of the other assumptions which obscure pacifist and militarist argument. The delegates in Philadelphia were scientific in their spirit; they did not even attempt that over-precise definition of the final end which always results in the misleading use of theory. They were not doctors who begin their study of disease by trying to define the ideal healthy man, they were not political doctrinaires who begin by defining the ideally peaceful world. They were agreed, as doctors are agreed, that a sounder organic constitution is required, and that pain and suffering should be lessened as much as possible, but they did not attempt to say that they would not inflict pain to cure pain, or wage war to preserve the peace.

The idea which the delegates had uppermost in their thoughts was a league of nations that should give power to international law. It is an extension of The Hague plan by which the nations attempt not only to set up a court, but to compel those who have a dispute to go to the court. As we understand the resolutions, they do not take the added step of agreeing to enforce the decision of the court.

The idea is based on a tremendous compromise, as our own history shows. We were once a league of foreign States, suspicious of common action and jealous of each sovereign prerogative. On the greatest issue of our history we fought our greatest war, and the States which represented union and federalism put an end once for all to the unlimited sovereignty of any individual State. Our Civil War established the supremacy of the federal power over the States.

[Sidenote: A League to back international law.]

The United States of the World would face the same problem, though on a much more difficult scale. It will find that a court to adjust mistakes is not enough, for the really important conflicts that provoke war are not “justiciable.” They are matters upon which a policy has to be declared—upon which, in brief, legislation is needed. Some kind of legislature a League of Peace would have to establish, and with a legislature and court would have to go an executive. This would open up the problem of representation, of the large and populous State as against the small ones, of the “satisfied Powers” against the “unsatisfied.” For it is clear that the British Empire will not consent to give to Montenegro equal representation, or the United States to Venezuela. Here will be the question of conflicts between international and national legislation, similar to the conflicts which our Supreme Court is called upon to settle. All the problems of home rule, such as that of Ireland within the Empire, and of Ulster within Ireland, would have to be met in territory like that of the Balkans, by the League of Peace. It would have to determine whether, for example, the sovereignty of a national India was an internal question for the British Empire, or a legitimate subject for international settlement.

[Sidenote: The business of such a League.]

The League would have to work out the problem of unexploited territories, of weaker peoples, and of disorderly States. Just as our original Union had the whole West to organize, so the League would have Africa, large parts of Asia, and the middle Americas as a kind of international domain. It would have to meet those who want merely to exploit, and to support those who are liberal enough to throw about weaker peoples that protection under which they can really grow to freedom. Nor would that be all. The League would have to legislate about concessions, trading rights, tariffs, about spheres of influence, about the use of great ocean and land highways. As soon as it grappled with the economic aspects of diplomacy, it would find, just as our government found, that interstate commerce cannot be regulated satisfactorily by conflicting state interests.

In other words, there is no stopping short at a league to prevent war. Such a league would either grow to a world federalism, or it would break up in civil war. But that, far from being an argument against the League, is the strongest possible argument for it. It is the first step towards a closer world organization, and once that step is taken, the world will have to choose between taking some of the next steps and returning to the anarchy of sovereign nationalities. The vast implications of the League of Peace are what make it important. And its real service to mankind may well be that it will establish the first rallying point of a world citizenship.

[Sidenote: It would mean a new world-federalism.]

The development of such a citizenship is one of the great moral and educational problems of this century. It cannot mean a vague cosmopolitanism. It must mean the training of people who have learned to modify their national policies so that these do not make impossible an international allegiance. This war has offered us an example of such citizenship. The Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders who are fighting in Flanders and at the Dardanelles are living and dying for the largest political organization the world has so far known. Their allegiance in the British Empire is to a State which embraces one-quarter of the human race. Never before in history have men been loyal to so great and so diversified a unit. They have literally come from all the ends of the earth to preserve a union of democracies. They have shown by example what any World League most needs to know, that federalism on a grand scale is not an idle dream.

_The New Republic, March 20 and June 26, 1915._

THE ECONOMIC BOYCOTT

[Sidenote: The nations have a powerful non-military weapon.]

In the discussion of an International Executive entrusted with powers to compel the fulfilment of treaty obligations, it must not be assumed that coercion can only be exercised by the employment of armed force. The boycott is a weapon which could be employed with paralyzing power by a circle of nations upon an offender against the public law of the world. No nation to-day, least of all the great industrial and military Powers, is or can become socially and economically self-sufficient. It depends in countless ways upon intercourse with other nations. If all or most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it would soon be reduced to worse straits than those which Germany is now experiencing. If all diplomatic intercourse were withdrawn; if the international postal and telegraphic systems were closed to a public law-breaker; if all interstate railway trains stopped at his frontiers; if no foreign ships entered his ports, and ships carrying his flag were excluded from every foreign port; if all coaling stations were closed to him; if no acts of sale or purchase were permitted to him in the outside world—if such a political and commercial boycott were seriously threatened, what country could long stand out against it? Nay, the far less rigorous measure of a financial boycott, the closure of all foreign exchanges to members of the outlaw State, the prohibition of all quotations on foreign stock exchanges, and of all dealings in stocks and shares, all discounting and acceptances of trade bills, all loans for public or private purposes, and all payments of moneys due—such a withdrawal of financial intercourse, if thoroughly applied and persisted in, would be likely to bring to its senses the least scrupulous of States.

[Sidenote: But effective use requires co-operation. And a boycott injures also those who apply it.]

Assuming that the members of the League included all or most of the important commercial and financial nations, and that they could be relied upon to press energetically all or even a few of these forms of boycott, could any country long resist such pressure? Would not the threat of it and the knowledge that it could be used form a potent restraint upon the law-breaker? Even the single weapon of a complete postal and telegraphic boycott would have enormous efficiency were it rigorously applied. Every section of the industrial and commercial community would bring organized pressure upon its Government to withdraw from so intolerable a position and to return to its international allegiance. It may be said, Why is it that such a powerful weapon of such obvious efficacy has never been applied? The answer is that the conditions for its rapid and concerted application have never hitherto existed. For in order that it may be effective, a considerable number of nations must have previously undertaken to apply it simultaneously and by common action. And, what is more, each nation must have confidence in the _bona fides_ of the intention of other nations to apply it. For the detailed application of the boycott, in most points, must of necessity remain in the hands of the several national Governments. Here comes the practical difficulty. Every boycott has a certain injurious rebound. It hits back the nation that applies it. The injury of suspended intercourse is, of course, not equal, otherwise the process would be futile. If the whole circle of A’s neighbors boycott him, each suffers half the loss of his separate intercourse with A, but A suffers this loss multiplied by the number of his neighbors. Now if A’s intercourse with all his neighbors is of equal magnitude, each of them can probably afford easily to bear the sacrifice involved in the boycott, trusting to the early effect of their action in bringing A to terms. But if one or two of A’s neighbors are in much closer relations with A than the others, and if, as may be the case, they are getting more advantage from this intercourse than A, the risk or sacrifice they are called upon to undergo will be proportionately greater. They must bear the chief brunt of a policy in the adoption of which they have not the determinant voice.

Take, for example, the case of Germany. An all-round boycott applied to her would evidently cause more damaging reactions to Holland, Belgium, and Denmark than to any of the greater nations whose united voice might have determined its application. The injury to Holland, in particular, might in the first instance be almost as grave as that sustained by Germany, the supposed object of the boycott. It would evidently be necessary to make provision against this unequal incidence by devising a system of compensations or indemnity to meet the case of such a special injury or sacrifice.

A brief allusion to the other side of the objection will suffice, viz., the fact that any such boycott would be far less potent or immediate in its pressure against some nations than against others. While Great Britain would have to yield at once to the threat of such pressure, Russia, or even the United States, could stand out for a considerable time, and China might even regard the boycott as a blessing. But it is pretty evident that in the long run no civilized nation could endure such isolation, and that this weapon is one which the League might in certain cases advantageously employ.

[Sidenote: Other difficulties.]

Other aspects of the social-economic boycott raise other difficulties. While certain modes and paths of intercourse lie directly under the control of the Governments of the cooperating States, others belong to private enterprise. Though postal, railway, and telegraphic intercourse could be cut off easily by agreements between Governments, private trading could not so easily be stopped. It is not found a simple matter to stop all trading between members of nations actually at war when national sentiment sides strongly with the legal prohibition. It might be much more difficult to prevent all commercial intercourse for private gain when there was no special hostility between the two nations in question. But this is, after all, only a minor difficulty. Provided that the respective Governments were prepared to use their normal powers of control over the principal modes of communication and of transport, the potency of the boycott so established would appear exceedingly effective.

It involves, however, a risk which needs recognition. The extreme pressure of the boycott might lead to forcible reprisals on the part of the boycotted State which would, in fact, precipitate a war. Declaring what would be in effect a blockade by sea and land, it might be necessary for the League to patrol the seas in order to stop “illegal traffic,” and to keep some force along the land frontiers for general purposes. A boycotted nation might, in the stress and anger of the case, begin hostilities against those of its neighbors who were most active in the operations of the boycott. In that event the economic boycott would have to be supported by armed pressure. This would also be the case where the breach of international law against which action was taken consisted, not in refusing to arbitrate or conciliate an issue but in an actual opening of hostilities. Such an act of war, directed necessarily against some one or more States, could not be met merely by a boycott. It would involve armed cooperation as well, the economic boycott forming an accompaniment.

[Sidenote: International Bank would strengthen League.]