Chapter VII: Part I: Principles of the Settlement: Economic (3)

The current radiates in an almost infinite variety of interactions. Great Britain, Germany, and India are discharging surplus population into the empty lands of the New World; Great Britain and France are applying surplus wealth to evoke the latent resources of countries with no surplus of their own; Great Britain and Russia are putting forth spiritual energy to inspire primitive peoples with the vitality of civilization.

[Sidenote: How this international organ would function.]

Our international organ can handle no more than a fraction of this world-wide interchange.

(i.) We may exclude at once from its competence every interaction that is confined within the limits of a single sovereign unit. Within the British Empire, for example, it is patently impracticable to “internationalize” the problems of Indian emigration to Vancouver or the Transvaal, of the closure of the Australian labor-market against labor from the British Isles, of commercial exploitation in Nigeria or Rhodesia, of autonomy in Ireland or the Asiatic Dependencies. The Empire may handle its own problems well or ill, but it will never consent to waive its sovereignty in respect of them. We should regard the proposition of international intervention as a menace to the Empire’s existence. We should undoubtedly fight rather than submit to it, and every other sovereign State would do the same under similar circumstances. In purely internal affairs international authority will never obtain a footing at the expense of the individual unit.

(ii.) We may likewise exclude interactions between two or more sovereign States in spheres that fall entirely within their respective sovereignty. The Dominion of Canada or the U. S. A. would never submit to international regulation the question of Japanese immigration along their Pacific seaboard. If Russia wished to float a loan, she would never allow our international organ to decide where and in what proportions it should be placed: she would insist on keeping her hands free, and making the best bargain for herself both from the financial and the political point of view. Italy and the Argentine would never relinquish their respective sovereign rights over the Italian laborers who cross the Atlantic every year to reap the South American harvests. International authority would be flouted as uncompromisingly in these instances as in the former.

[Sidenote: Control of weak States, and of immigration.]

(iii.) There are some units, however, so raw in their growth or so deeply sunk in their decay as to lack the attribute of sovereignty altogether—units which through want of population, wealth, spiritual energy, or all three together are unable to keep the spark of vitality aglow. Such dead units are the worst danger that threatens the peace of the world: each one of them is an arena enticing the living units around to clash in conflict, a vacuum into which the current of life swirls like a maelstrom. In these “no-man’s-lands” where no sovereignty exists, our international organ can and must assert its own sovereignty against the sovereign States outside.

(_a_) In every such area the standing international executive should regulate immigration from over-populated sovereign units—German colonization, for instance, in Anatolia, or Indian settlement on the alluvium of Irak.

(_b_) It should likewise regulate the inflow of capital....

(_c_) In areas where the pressure of spiritual energy is so low that the population cannot save itself by its own efforts from political anarchy, the international executive should be prepared to step in and organize “strong government.”...

Morocco, the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire—the present war is not really being waged to settle these problems: it is being waged because they have been settled already, and settled on such unjust and injudicious lines that all parties concerned have found it worth while to stake their existence for the reversal of the settlement. No one need have been involved by such problems in a struggle for life. They were all problems of expansion, and their solution ought at worst to have disappointed the expectation of immoderate gains: it ought never, as it has done, to have threatened the parties with the loss of what they possessed already before the problems were probed.

[Sidenote: Such an executive could have prevented the war of diplomacy and of arms.]

Why has the contrary occurred? Because, just for lack of that international executive with the sovereign authority we postulate, these issues that were not vital have been fought out, like issues of life and death, by war—not by the war of arms which has descended upon us now like some recurrent plague, into which we relapse at rarer and rarer intervals as we advance in civilization, but by the unobtrusive, unremittent war of diplomacy which is being waged year in and year out between the sovereign States of Europe, and which has increased appallingly in violence during the last generation.

In this disastrous diplomatic warfare our opponents in the present war of arms have been uniformly the aggressors. If Austria-Hungary is now struggling for existence, it is because she deliberately embarked nearly forty years ago upon a diplomatic campaign of aggrandizement against South-Slavonic nationality. If Germany is fighting back to back with her in the same ghastly struggle, it is because Germany has wielded diplomatic weapons still more ruthlessly against her other European neighbors.

[Sidenote: The war of diplomacy.]

For the terrible embitterment of the diplomatic contest Germany herself is entirely responsible, but she has inevitably exposed herself to reprisals as severe as her own provocative blows. She opened the battle over Morocco by forcibly intruding upon a sphere where she had no shadow of claim to expansion: thereby she drew France and Great Britain into diplomatic alliance against her, and laid herself open to the humiliation of 1911, when Franco-British diplomacy mobilized its financial forces and drove her to retreat by cutting off her supplies. In Turkey she might easily have satisfied her needs without any battle at all. The untenanted area was vast, the claims staked out on it were singularly narrow: when German enterprise circumvented the enterprise of Great Britain and France, and secured all the railway-concessions in the virgin hinterland of Anatolia, French and British diplomacy grumbled but did not attempt to open hostilities. Yet instead of reaping her harvest in peace, Germany again precipitated a diplomatic conflict by extending her ambitions to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. The moment she aspired to absorb the whole Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and Russia entered into diplomatic cooperation, and opposed her purpose with all their might. Germany’s Arabian venture has jeopardized her Anatolian gains, and if she is defeated in the present struggle, she will probably be excluded from the Ottoman area altogether.

The diplomatic warfare over three secondary issues, which ought never to have been settled by fighting at all, has thus left none of the combatants unscathed. On the contrary, the wounds inflicted then have festered till their poison has threatened each combatant with the pains of dissolution, and made that quack-physician the diplomatist call out in panic for the knife of that quack-surgeon the war lord.

This diplomatic warfare is the objective of our new international organization. Upon diplomacy we can and must make a direct attack. If we can draw this monster’s teeth, we shall no longer be troubled by its still more monstrous offspring—War.

_Arnold J. Toynbee, “Nationality and the War,” chap. XII._

THE GOVERNMENTAL THEORY

[Sidenote: International politics dominated by a theory.]

The position I intend to put forward and defend is this: War is made—this war has been made—not by any necessity of nature, any law beyond human control, any fate to which men must passively bow; it is made because certain men who have immediate power over other men are possessed by a certain theory. Sometimes they are fully conscious of this theory. More often, perhaps, it works in them unconsciously. But it is there, the dominating influence in international politics. I shall call it the governmental theory, because it is among governing persons—Emperors, Kings, Ministers, and their diplomatic and military advisers—that its influence is most conspicuous and most disastrous. But it is supported also by historians, journalists, and publicists, and it is only too readily adopted by the ordinary man, when he turns from the real things he knows and habitually handles to consider the unknown field of foreign affairs.

Very briefly, and, therefore, crudely expressed, the theory is this: “The world is divided, politically, into States. These States are a kind of abstract beings, distinct from the men, women, and children who inhabit them. They are in perpetual and inevitable antagonism to one another; and though they may group themselves in alliances, that can be only for temporary purposes to meet some other alliance or single power. For States are bound by a moral or physical obligation to expand indefinitely, each at the cost of the others. They are natural enemies, they always have been so, and they always will be; and force is the only arbiter between them. That being so, war is an eternal necessity. As a necessity, it should be accepted, if not welcomed, by all sound-thinking and right-feeling men. Pacifists are men at once weak and dangerous. They deny a fact as fundamental as any of the facts of the natural world. And their influence, if they have any, can only be disastrous to their State in its ceaseless and inevitable contest with other States.”

[Sidenote: Artificiality of the governmental theory.]

Stated thus briefly, and in its most uncompromising terms, this is what I have called the governmental theory. I propose to criticize it in detail. But before doing so I will ask the reader to compare with it the ordinary attitude of the plain men and women who inhabit these States, and who have to bear the burden of the wars in which the theory involves them. These ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think at all in terms of the State. They think about the people they come in contact with, about their business, their friends, and their families. When they come across foreigners, as many of them do, in business or in travel, they may like or dislike them, but they do not regard them as predestined enemies. On the contrary, if they are intelligent, they know themselves to be cooperating with them in innumerable complicated ways, implying mutual advantage. Differences of language and of social habit make it easier for most people to associate with their fellow-countrymen than with foreigners. But that is all. There are, of course, among these men and women real enmities and spontaneous quarrels. But these do not occur because men belong to different States. They occur because they really have injured one another, or hate one another; and they occur, naturally, for the most part, between men of the same State, because it is these who most often come into direct contact with one another. It is not, therefore, these enmities of ordinary men that give rise to wars.

[Sidenote: Governments, not peoples, make wars.]

Wars are made by governments, acting under the influence of the governmental theory. And of this fact—for a fact it is among civilized Western peoples in modern times—no better example could be given than the present war. Before it broke out nobody outside governmental and journalistic circles was expecting it. Nobody desired it. And though, now that it is being waged, all the nations concerned are passionately interested in it, and all believe themselves to be fighting in a righteous cause, yet no ordinary citizen, in the days preceding its outbreak, would have maintained that there was any good reason for war, and few even knew what the reasons alleged were or might be. Even now the different nations have quite opposite views as to which Government was responsible. We believe it was the German Government; and with equal conviction Germans believe it was the British. But nobody believes that it was the mass of the people in any nation. The millions who are carrying on the war, at the cost of incalculable suffering, would never have made it if the decision had rested with them. That is the one indisputable fact. How can such a fact occur? How is it possible for Governments to drag into war people who did not desire war and who have no quarrel with one another?

The immediate answer is simple enough. In no country is there any effective control by the people over foreign policy. That is clear in the case of the great military empires. But it is true also of France and of England, where, in other respects, government is more or less under popular control. The country has no real choice, for it gets its information only after the decisive action has been taken. That is an important truth which ought to lead to important changes in our methods of conducting foreign affairs. But it is only part of the truth. For we have now to notice this further fact: that in all countries, in Germany no less than in England and France, no sooner is the war declared than it is supported by the whole nation. The voice of criticism is silenced, and every one, whatever his opinion about the origin of the war, gives his help to see it through. Why is that? The reason is obvious. As soon as war is made, the people of one country, conscious just before of no cause of enmity, do really become enemies of the people of another country; for armed populations are marching on armed populations to massacre them. Everybody, therefore, is bound to fight in self-defense. It is too late to ask whether there was any real cause of quarrel; for, quarrel or no, there is real and imminent danger. To meet that danger becomes, therefore, the immediate necessity which overbears every other consideration. And that is the deepest reason why wars made by governments without, and even against, the will of peoples, will always be supported by peoples.

[Sidenote: But peoples are also obsessed by the theory.]

But though that is the most powerful reason, it is not the only one. There is a further fact. The ordinary man, though he does not live under the obsession of the governmental theory, is not protected against it by any knowledge or reflection. As far as he is concerned, he knows no reason for war, and, left to himself, would never make it. But he has a blank mind open to suggestion; and he has passions and instincts which it is easy to enlist on the side of the governmental theory. He has been busy all his life; and he has no education, or one that is worse than none, about those issues which, in a crisis like that which has come upon us, suddenly reveal themselves as the issues of life and death. History, no doubt, should have informed him. But history, for the most part, is written without intelligence or conviction. It is mere narrative, devoid of instruction, and seasoned, if at all, by some trivial, habitual, and second-hand prejudice of the author. History has never been understood, though it has often been misunderstood. To understand it is perhaps beyond the power of the human intellect. But the attempt even has hardly begun to be made.

[Sidenote: Press and government poison the public mind.]

Deprived, then, of this source of enlightenment, the ordinary man falls back upon the press. But the press is either an agent of the very governments it should exist to criticize (it is so notoriously and admittedly on the Continent, and, to an extent which we cannot measure, also in England), or else it is (with a few honorable exceptions) an instrument to make money for certain individuals or syndicates. But the easiest way for the press to make money is to appeal to the most facile emotions and the most superficial ideas of the reader; and these can easily be made to respond to the suggestion that this or that foreign State is our natural and inevitable enemy. The strong instincts of pugnacity and self-approbation, the nobler sentiment of patriotism, a vague and unanalyzed impression of the course of history, these and other factors combine to produce this result. And the irony is that they may be directed indifferently against any State. In England, for instance, a hundred years ago, it was France against whom they were marshaled; sixty years ago it was Russia; thirty years ago it was France again; now it is Germany; presently, if governments have their way, it will be Russia again.

The foreign offices and the press do with nations what they like. And they will continue to do so until ordinary people acquire right ideas and a machinery to make them effective....

[Sidenote: We must realize that States are unreal abstractions.]

The governmental theory holds that States are the great realities, and that they are natural enemies. My reply is that States are unreal abstractions; that the reality is the men and women and children who are the members of the States; and that as soon as you substitute real people for the abstract idea that symbolizes them you find that they have no cause of quarrel, no interests or desires of a kind to justify or necessitate aggressive war. And, if there were no aggressive war, there could, of course, be no cause for defensive war....

_G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1915._

THE WAY OUT OF WAR

[Sidenote: No aggrandizement!]

We will to perpetuate European peace. How are we to accomplish it? By keeping in view and putting into effect certain clear principles.

First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating another must be set aside. What we are aiming at is, not that this or that group of States should dominate the others, but that none should in future have any desire or motive to dominate. With that view, we must leave behind the fewest possible sores, the least possible sense of grievance, the least possible humiliation. The defeated States, therefore, must not be dismembered in the hope of making or keeping them weak; and that means, in detail, that, if the Allies win, the English and the French must not take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic Coast, the Balkans, or Constantinople; and that, if Germany wins, she must not dismember or subordinate to her system France or England or the neutral powers. That is the first clear condition of the future peace of Europe.

[Sidenote: No subjugation of small nationalities!]

Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of States—and clearly they must be rearranged—one point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give to all peoples suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to decide whether they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the political system of some other nation. Thus, for example, the people of Alsace-Lorraine should be allowed to choose whether they will remain under Germany, or become an autonomous community, or be included in France. The same principles shall be applied to the Poles. The same to Schleswig-Holstein. The same to the Balkan States. The same to the Slav communities included in Austria-Hungary. There would arise, of course, difficulties in carrying this principle through. For, in the Balkan States, in Bohemia, and elsewhere, there is an almost inextricable tangle of nationalities. But with good-will these difficulties could be at least partially met.

Even the wholesale transference of peoples of one nationality from one location to another is a possibility; and, indeed, it is now going on. In any case the principle itself is clear. Political rule must cease to be imposed on peoples against their will in the supposed interest of that great idol, the abstract state. Let the Germans, who belong together, live together under the same government, pursuing in independence their national ideal and their national culture. But let them not impose that ideal and that culture on reluctant Poles and Slavs and Danes. So, too, let Russia develop her own life over the huge territory where Russians live. But let her not impose that life on unwilling Poles and Finns. The English, in history, have been as guilty as other nations of sacrificing nationality to the supposed exigencies of the State. But of late they have been learning their lesson. Let them learn it to the end. Let no community be coerced under British rule that wants to be self-governing. The British have had the courage, though late, to apply this principle to South Africa and Ireland. There remains their greatest act of courage and wisdom—to apply it to India.

[Sidenote: There must be established an international authority.]

A Europe thus rearranged, as it might be at the peace, on a basis of real nationality instead of on a basis of States, would be a Europe ripe for a permanent league. And by such a league only, in my judgment, can its future peace, prosperity, happiness, goodness, and greatness be assured. There must be an end to the waste upon armaments of resources too scanty, at the best, to give to all men and women in all countries the material basis for a good life. But if States are left with the power to arm against one another they will do so, each asserting, and perhaps with truth, that it is arming in defense against the imagined aggression of the others. If all are arming, all will spend progressively more and more on their armaments, for each will be afraid of being outstripped by the others. This circle is fatal, as we have seen in the last quarter of a century.

To secure the peace of Europe the peoples of Europe must hand over their armaments, and the use of them for any purpose except internal police, to an international authority. This authority must determine what force is required for Europe as a whole, acting as a whole in the still possible case of war against powers not belonging to the league. It must apportion the quota of armaments between the different nations according to their wealth, population, resources, and geographical position. And it, and it alone, must carry on, and carry on in public, negotiations with powers outside the league. All disputes that may arise between members of the league must be settled by judicial process. And none of the forces of the league must be available for purposes of aggression by any member against any other.

With such a league of Europe constituted, the problem of reduction of armaments would be automatically solved. Whatever force a united Europe might suppose itself to require for possible defense would clearly be far less than the sum of the existing armaments of the separate States. Immense resources would be set free for the general purposes of civilization, and especially for those costly social reforms on the accomplishment of which depends the right of any nation to call itself civilized at all. And if any one insists on looking at the settlement from the point of view of material advantage—and that point of view will and must be taken—it may be urged, without a shadow of doubt, that any and every nation, the conquerors no less than the conquered, would gain from a reduction of armaments far more than they could possibly gain by pecuniary indemnities or cessions of territory which would leave every nation still arming against the others with a view to future squandering of resources in another great war. This is sheer common sense of the most matter-of-fact kind.

A League of Europe is not Utopian. It is sound business.

[Sidenote: And we must prepare public opinion for the idea.]

Such a league, it is true, could hardly come into being immediately at the peace. There must be preparation of opinion first; and, not less important, there must be such changes in the government of the monarchic States as will insure the control of their policy by popular opinion; otherwise we might get a league in which the preponderating influence would be with autocratic emperors. But in making peace the future league must be kept in view. Everything must be done that will further it, and nothing that will hinder it. And what would hinder it most would be a peace by which either there should be a return to the conditions before the war—but of that there is little fear—or by which any one power, or group of powers, should be given a hegemony over the others. For that would mean a future war for the rehabilitation of the vanquished.

[Sidenote: View of peoples must supersede view of governments.]

The mood, therefore, which seems to be growing in England, that the British must “punish” Germany by annihilating her as a political force; the mood which seems to be growing in Germany, that she must annihilate the British as the great disturbers of the peace—all such moods must be resolutely discouraged. For on those lines no permanent peace can be made. Militarism must be destroyed, not only in Germany but everywhere. Limitation of armaments must be general, not imposed only on the vanquished by victors who propose themselves to remain fully armed. The view of peoples must be substituted once for all for the view of governments, and the view of peoples is no domination, and, therefore, no war, but a union of nations developing freely on their own lines, and settling all disputes by arbitration.

_G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,”
Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1915._

LOWES DICKINSON’S PLAN

[Sidenote: Mr. Dickinson’s plan lacks hard-headedness.]

Writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Mr. Lowes Dickinson attempts to point the moral of the war and to offer a way out. His theory is that wars are made by governments without the consent and against the interest of their subjects; they are made because the governmental mind is obsessed with the illusion that States are “natural enemies,” that they have always been so and always will be, that force is the only arbiter between them. This fantasy of the governing caste, says Mr. Dickinson, is what rules the State, and through control of foreign policy and the press drags the population to slaughter. The remedy is to shatter the illusion, to assert against the criminal nonsense of the governing mind the humanity and commonsense of ordinary people....

Now peace will have to be built on a very hard-headed basis or it will be fragile and illusory. But it is just this hard-headedness which Mr. Dickinson’s argument seems to lack. In our opinion he himself is building on an illusion, and if his doctrine prevails among the workers for peace their passion will be misdirected, and their disappointment will be as deep as their hopes are high.

[Sidenote: Is political power irrelevant to economic power?]

To prove these assertions, we need not go beyond the example which Mr. Dickinson uses, the case of Russia and her desire to hold Constantinople. Mr. Dickinson dismisses this ambition with the statement that “for all purposes of trade, for all peace purposes, the Dardanelles are open. And it is the interest of all nations alike that they should remain so.” What he is assuming here is that it makes no economic difference whether Constantinople is under one political government or another. This is the center of Mr. Dickinson’s argument, and it rests on the doctrine of Norman Angell that “political power is a consideration irrelevant to economic power.”

Is it irrelevant in a case like that of the Dardanelles? The Black Sea region is already a great agricultural exporting region; it is destined most probably to become the industrial center of Russia. But to carry out goods, Russian ships must pass through a narrow Turkish strait. Mr. Dickinson says that for all “peace purposes” the passage is free. Is it? Let us suppose that Mexico held New York harbor, or that Ecuador held Liverpool. Would these harbors be free to American and English commerce? They would be free if Mexico and Ecuador were highly efficient governments imbued with the doctrine of absolute free trade. Then commerce might pass through easily. But if Mexicans or Ecuadorians took it into their heads to exercise sovereignty by setting up a tariff zone around New York or Liverpool, who would regard political power as irrelevant to economic power? Certainly not the Manchester exporter as he paid his customs tax to the pleasant official from Ecuador.

Although England is in no danger from Ecuador, there are nations in the world which suffer just as fantastically. There is the case of Servia, shut off from a “window on the sea.” Servia exports pigs, when she isn’t fighting for the privilege of exporting them. But to export anything she has to run the gauntlet of an Austrian tariff to the north, Albanian and Greek discrimination to the west and south. Shut off from the sea, she is like a man trying to get out of a restaurant who has still to tip the waiter, the headwaiter, the girl who took care of his hat, and the boy who brushed it.

[Sidenote: No; political power is an instrument for monopolies and concessions.]

Political power is not in the least irrelevant to economic power. Mr. Dickinson has no doubt heard of a thing which we Americans call vulgarly “dollar diplomacy.” European powers do not call it that, but they practise it. They call it staking out “spheres of influence,” and there is nothing sentimental or illusory about it. The nation that can secure political control of an undeveloped country can decide who shall receive the mining rights and the railroad franchises, can fix railroad rates to favor its own manufacturers, can use all the methods which Americans describe as restraint of trade. It may have been dishonest, it certainly wasn’t a delusion, when capitalists in those dreadful early days of this republic bought political power to further economic ends. A legislature or a governor was generally worth the price in this country, and we presume that they would be worth the price in Asia Minor. If German bureaucrats governed Morocco, they would, we suppose, be good to their friends, almost all of whom have at least a nominal residence east of Belgium, and French capitalists might then be prospecting fresh mines and pastures new.

Mr. Dickinson ignores these considerations when he speaks of national antagonisms arising “because a few men of the military and diplomatic caste have a theory about States, their interests and destinies.” He ignores the monopolies, the use of tariffs, the special privileges of which political power is the instrument. He does not face the fact that in every country there are exporters of goods and capital, concession-hunters and traders, who stand to gain by the use of governmental power in half developed territory. To them at least it is not a matter of indifference whether Germany is politically supreme in say India or China. Since Germany has brought the doctrine of protection to its highest point, it would make a very great difference to the commerce of other nations if Germany developed a world-empire.

How little reality there is in Mr. Dickinson’s contention may be seen by analyzing his concrete proposals. Apart from the shattering of the great illusion of the governmental mind by a propaganda, he suggests a settlement of Europe on the basis of nationality, capped by a League of Europe to maintain the peace.

[Sidenote: Governmental theory not mere illusion.]

Now there are all sorts of reasons for trying to found States on nationality, and the only reason against the proposal is the reason on which Mr. Dickinson’s article is built. He tells us on one page that “ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think at all in terms of the state.” Then what difference does it make to people of the same nationality that they should be under different governments, and how is the world’s peace to be assured by gathering into one State people who do not care about the State? Either the people have an interest in the State or they have not, but surely it is futile for Mr. Dickinson to argue in one place against the German contention that their emigrants are “lost,” and in another that the Danes of Schleswig-Holstein should go back to Denmark. And what does he mean by telling us that in the event of an Austro-German victory “Italy and the Balkans will be pillaged to the benefit of Austria, and Russia rolled back—though that would be all to the good—from her ambition to expand in the West.” Is Mr. Dickinson also afflicted with the “governmental mind,” that he should talk of “benefit” to Austria and pronounce it good that “Russia” be rolled back? What does he mean by telling us that “the English and the French must not take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic coast, the Balkans, or Constantinople,” for what difference does it make, except to the “governmental mind,” who exercises political power!

[Sidenote: Mr. Dickinson ignores crucial problems.]

As for the League of Europe, surely no one here would wish to obstruct the plan. But if the League is to be based on nothing more realistic than an absence of governmental thinking, it will be a very precarious league. Every argument advanced by Mr. Dickinson is based on the assumption of absolute free trade in the world, yet in his plan of peace he says not one syllable about how tariffs and discriminations and monopolies are to be wiped out. The conflict between Germany and England is world-wide, yet Mr. Dickinson is thinking only of rectified frontiers in Europe.

When he proposes so readily a League of Europe with a police force to carry out its jurisdiction, has he considered the possibility of civil war within the League? If Germany and Austria rebelled against the League, they would presumably be attacked on all sides. But they are now attacked on all sides. We had on this continent a league of States with a central government, a Supreme Court, and an army. In 1861 some of the States seceded, and the struggle which followed, called a Civil War, was a terrible conflict. Has Mr. Dickinson faced the fact that a League of Europe would be based on the _status quo_, would be a sort of legalization of every existing injustice? And how does he propose to amend peacefully the constitution of Europe if some nation objects too seriously?

_The New Republic, Jan. 2, 1915._

THE MORROW OF THE WAR

OUR PURPOSE

[Sidenote: In time of war, prepare for peace.]

This country (Great Britain) is at war, and has for the moment one overwhelming preoccupation: to render safe our national inheritance.

The Union of Democratic Control has been founded for the purpose of trying to secure for ourselves and the generations that succeed us a new course of policy which will prevent a similar peril ever again befalling our Empire. Many men and women have already joined us holding varying shades of opinion as to the origins of the war. Some think it was inevitable, some that it could and should have been avoided. _But we believe that all are in general agreement about two things: First, it is imperative that the war, once begun, should be prosecuted to a victory for our country. Secondly, it is equally imperative, while we carry on the war, to prepare for peace. Hard thinking, free discussion, the open exchange of opinion and information are the duty of all citizens to-day, if we are to have any hope that this war will not be what most wars of the past have been—merely the prelude to other wars._

[Sidenote: The program.]

Our contribution to this necessary discussion are the principles put forward for consideration by the Union of Democratic Control.

_The Union of Democratic Control has been created to insist that the following policy shall inspire the actual conditions of peace, and shall dominate the situation after peace has been declared_:

_1. No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without consent by plébiscite or otherwise of the
population of such Province._

_2. No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created._

_3. The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance
of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a
Concert of the Powers and the setting up of an International
Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public, part
of the labor of such Council to be the creation of definite
Treaties of Arbitration and the establishment of Courts for
their interpretation and enforcement._

_4. Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement
a plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments
of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy
shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of the
manufacture of armaments, and the control of the export of
armaments by one country to another._

It is the purpose of this pamphlet to elaborate and explain the considerations which underlie the policy outlined above.

I

_No Province shall be transferred from one Government to
another without the consent of plébiscite of the population of
such Province._

[Sidenote: There must be general recognition of principle of plébiscite.]

This condition has been placed first because if adhered to practically and in spirit, and if recognized by the European Powers as a principle that must guide all frontier rearrangements, it would help to put an end to European war.

If no province were retained under a Government’s power against the will of its inhabitants, the policy of conquest and the imposition of political power would lose its _raison d’être_.

The subject as a whole is wrapped up, of course, with the principle of democratic government and is not merely a problem of international but of internal politics, and could not be treated briefly in a mere outline like the present. But any one who reflects carefully on the subject will see that the peace in Europe ultimately depends upon the acceptance of this idea.

It is obvious that there are many difficulties of detail in its application; that a plébiscite may be a mere form and not reflect the real wishes of the population concerned, and under military control it can be used as an instrument for obtaining an apparent sanction for oppression, and that in populations of mixed race it is very difficult of application. But it should not be impossible to guard against the defeat of the principle through defects in the working machinery. Plébiscites, where used at the end of the war, might be carried out under international supervision. The essential is that the principle involved should be clearly enunciated.

Fortunately the Government has already given the country a valuable lead in this matter. For Mr. Churchill, speaking on September 11, said:

“Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany made when she had France prostrate at her feet in 1870. [Cheers.] Let us, whatever we do, fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the European system, and the first of those principles which we should keep before us is the principle of nationality—that is to say, not the conquest or subjugation of any great community, or of any strong race of men, but the setting free of those races which have been subjugated and conquered; and if doubt arises about disputed areas of country we should try to settle their ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe which must follow from this war with a fair regard to the wishes and feelings of the people who live in them.”

[Sidenote: One nation must not be allowed to dominate another.]

We agree with Mr. Churchill that the terms of peace should secure that there shall in the future be no more Alsace-Lorraines to create during half a century resentment, unrest, and intrigues for a _revanche_. The power of the victorious parties must not be used for vindictive oppression and dismemberment of beaten nationalities, but for the creation, by cooperation with all the belligerents, victors and vanquished alike, of a true society of nations, banded together for mutual security. The future relationship of the States of Europe must be not that of victor and vanquished, domination or subserviency, but of partnership. The struggle of one nation for domination over another must be replaced by the association of the people for their common good.

II

_No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered
upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of
Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control
of foreign policy shall be created._

[Sidenote: Secret diplomacy must go.]

The peoples of all constitutionally-governed countries are justified in demanding that diplomatic relations with their neighbors shall be conducted with the main object of maintaining friendly international intercourse. The increasing social and economic interdependence, the ramifications of the credit system, the facility and rapidity of intercommunication, the developing community of intellectual interest, the growth of a collective social consciousness, are combining to minimize the significance of the purely political frontiers which divide civilized States. For these reasons the world is moving towards conferences when political difficulties arise as a substitute for war. The determination to preserve national ideals and traditions offers no real obstacle. But the common interest of civilized democracies cannot be advanced by a secret diplomacy out of touch with democratic sentiment.

The anomaly of such practises in a democratic State has only to be understood to be condemned. All the domestic activities of a constitutional Government are tested in the crucible of public analysis and criticism. But the Government department charged with the supervision of the nation’s intercourse with its neighbors, which if wrongly handled may react with ruinous effect upon the whole field of its domestic activities and upon the future of its entire social economy, _not only escapes efficient public control, but considers itself empowered to commit the nation to specific courses and to involve it in obligations to third parties entailing the risk of war, without the nation’s knowledge of consent_.

[Sidenote: British foreign policy has been autocratic.]

During the past eight years particularly, the management of the Foreign department has become avowedly and frankly autocratic. Parliamentary discussion of foreign policy has become so restricted as to be perfunctory. It is confined to a few hours’ roving debate on one day in each session. The eliciting of information by means of questions, never satisfactory, is rendered extremely difficult by the ingenuity employed in evading the issues it is attempted to raise. Advantage has been taken of the wholesome desire that discussion of foreign policy should not partake of mere party recriminations, to burke discussion altogether, and this process has received the endorsement of both Front Benches. A claim to “continuity” has been further evolved to stifle debate on foreign affairs, whereas in point of fact, if one feature more than another has characterized British foreign policy of recent years, it has been its bewildering fluctuations. Parliamentary paralysis has had its counterpart in the country. The present Government’s tenure of office has been marked by an almost complete abstention from public reference to foreign affairs. The public has been treated as though foreign affairs were outside—and properly outside—its ken. And the public has acquiesced. Every attempt to shake its apathy has been violently assailed by spokesmen of the Foreign Office in the press. The country has been told that its affairs were in the wisest hands, and that mystery and silence are the indispensable attributes to a successful direction of foreign policy. The caste system which prevails in the diplomatic service, and which has survived unimpaired the democratizing of the majority of the public services, facilitates these outworn political dogmatisms. Appointment is made by nomination and selection. Candidates are required to possess an income per annum of £400. The natural result is that the vast bulk of the national intelligence is debarred from the diplomatic field of employment. A study of the Foreign Office list will disclose the fact that over 95 per cent. of the British diplomatic staff is composed of members of the aristocracy and landed gentry.

[Sidenote: Connection between politics and business is ignored.]

Inevitable exile from their country results in our diplomatic representatives abroad losing touch with the center of affairs and living in a mental atmosphere remote from the popular and progressive movements of the time. Another pronounced characteristic of the system is the indifference displayed by the Foreign Office to the business interests of the nation. Our vast commercial interests, so intimately affected by our relations with foreign Powers, are regarded as lying outside the orbit of diplomatic considerations. The connection between politics and business—and by business we mean the entire framework of peaceful commerce upon which the prosperity of this country depends—appears to be ignored, or, at least, treated with indifference and something like contempt. The services of our Consuls abroad are not sufficiently utilized, and the Consular machinery requires complete overhauling. Such questions as, for instance, the effect upon British commercial interest of British diplomacy supporting the acquisition of undeveloped areas of the world’s surface by a Power like France, which imposes differential tariffs upon British goods, and opposing the acquisition of such areas by a Power like Germany, which admits British goods on terms of equality, does not appear to enter into Foreign Office calculations.

[Sidenote: Policy is framed by military experts without Parliamentary control.]

In the last few years also has been added another institution which modifies national policy without coming under Parliamentary control, the Committee of Imperial Defense. Its influence upon the Cabinet is nominally indirect, and its activities confined to the discussion of hypothetical events. But no one can doubt that its recommendations exercise a powerful effect on the executive decisions of the Government. No criticism of the advice given by the Committee is possible in Parliament. Momentous military and naval schemes are prepared there on which hang the issues of peace and war, as in the case of our recent relations to France. It is an intimate and powerful means of framing Government policy according to the ideas of military experts, without the knowledge and control of Parliament.

In the various ways indicated, opportunities of evincing an intelligent concern in its foreign policy has been increasingly withdrawn from the nation. The work of the Department escapes all outside control, loses all sense of contact with national life, and tends more and more to become an autocratic institution, contemptuous of the efforts of a small group of members in the House to acquire information, and utilizing a powerful section of the press to mold public opinion in the direction it considers public opinion should travel.

The nation awoke with a shock to the evils of this state of affairs in the summer of 1911, when it suddenly found itself on the very brink of war with Germany over a Franco-German quarrel about Morocco, and became cognizant of the existence of diplomatic entanglements of which it had no previous intimation.

It is obviously impossible to attempt here a full presentment of the Moroccan crisis of 1911. But the story is inseparably intertwined with the avowals to the House of Commons on August 3rd, 1914, of the secret understanding with France which has played so capital a part in bringing about British intervention in the present war.

[Sidenote: Nation must participate in direction of foreign policy.]

So long as this situation prevails it must be perfectly clear to any man of ordinary intelligence that the system of government under which we live is not a democratic system, but its antithesis. It cannot be too often insisted upon that the domestic concerns of the nation, its constitutional liberties, its social reforms, all its internal activities in short, depend upon the preservation of peaceful relations with its neighbors. War in which this country is involved is certain to prove a serious check to social progress. Hence it is a matter of absolutely vital concern to the nation that the machinery of its Foreign Office should be thoroughly capable of performing its functions, and that the policy pursued by that department should be pursued with the knowledge and the consent of the nation. It is imperative not only that a treaty with a foreign Power should require endorsement by Parliament, but that no agreement or understanding possessing binding force and postulating the use of the national military and naval forces should be valid without the assent of Parliament. The nation should insist upon this essential reform, and should seriously apply itself to considering what other steps are needed to ensure some mechanical means whereby a greater national control of foreign policy can be secured; whether by the establishment of a permanent Committee of the House of Commons, by the adaptation to suit our needs of the American system under which a two-thirds majority of one branch of the Legislature is required for the validity of international agreements, or other procedure. _But real and permanent reforms will not be obtained unless the nation is determined to assert its fundamental right to participate in the formation of its own foreign policy._

III

_The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at
creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance
of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a
Concert of Europe and the setting up of an International
Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public._

[Sidenote: The “Balance of Power.”]

What does the “Balance of Power” mean?

It is popularly supposed to mean that no single Power or group of Powers should, in the interests of international peace, be allowed to acquire a preponderating position in Europe, and that the policy of Great Britain should be directed against such a consummation. British policy during the past few years has been based upon the assumption that Germany had attained, or was seeking to attain, that position of eminence.

It is that idea which, in the minds of masses of our people, justifies the present war.

But if this policy has been right in the past, what prospect does the future hold? The victory of the Allies—which is a vital necessity—must enormously upset the “balance” by making Russia the dominant military power of Europe, possibly the dictator both in this Continent and in Asia.

Russia can draw upon vast sources of human military material, only partly civilized. At present she is governed by a military autocracy which is largely hostile to Western ideas of political and religious freedom. There is hope in the minds of Western Liberals that the war may bring political liberation to Russia. At present that is only a hope. For wars have as often been a prelude to tyranny as to liberty. It is only too likely that after a victorious war our national feeling may revert to its old anti-Russian channel, and we shall again have the “Balance of Power” invoked to protect Europe and India against a new Russian preeminence.

Speaking generally, the “Balance of Power” is little more than a diplomatic formula made use of by the mouthpieces of the interests from whose operations war comes. It signifies nothing more than that, at a given moment, in a given country, there is an effort to hold up to the public gaze the Government and the people of another country as being intent upon the destruction of its neighbors. At one moment it is Russia, at another France, and at another Germany. The “Balance of Power” was invoked for several years and down to within a few weeks of the Crimean War to inflame British public opinion against France. It was invoked against Russia to justify the Crimean War, and France was chosen as the ally with which to fight Russia! No sooner had peace been signed than France became once more the potential threat to the “Balance of Power”; and again during the period of rivalry in West and Central Africa, and in the Far East, in the late nineties.

[Sidenote: The power of the press in making war-opinion.]

Once the ball has been set rolling in the required direction, influences of all kinds are brought to bear for the purpose of permanently fixing this idea in the public mind. A flood of innuendo, denunciation, and distorted information is let loose. Every dishonorable motive and the most sinister of projects are attributed to the Government and the people selected for attack. The public becomes the sport of private ambitions and interests, of personal prejudices and obscure passions, which it can neither detect nor control, and, for the most part, does not even suspect. The power for mischief wielded by these forces is to-day immense, owing to a cheap press and to the concentration of a large number of newspapers, possessing in the aggregate an enormous circulation, under one directing will. At the present moment the editorial and news columns of some fifty British newspapers echo the views of one man, who is thus able to superimpose in permanent fashion upon public thought the dead weight of his own prejudices or personal aims and intentions, and to exercise a potent influence upon the Government of the day.

[Sidenote: How the “Balance of Power” works.]