“We believe in association—which is but the reduction to action of our faith in one sole God, and one sole law, and one sole aim—as the only means we possess of realising the truth; as the method of progress; the path leading towards perfection. The highest possible degree of human progress will correspond to the discovery and application of the vastest formula of association.

We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the Peoples as the vastest formula of association possible in our epoch;—in the liberty and equality of the peoples without which no true association can exist; in nationality, which is the conscience of the peoples, and which, by assigning to them their part in the work of association, their function in humanity, constitutes their mission upon earth, that is to say, their individuality, without which neither liberty nor equality is possible; in the sacred Fatherland, cradle of nationality, altar and worship of the individuals of which each people is composed.

And, as we believe in humanity as the sole interpreter of the law of God, so do we believe in the people of every state as the sole master, sole sovereign, and sole interpreter of the law of humanity, which governs every national mission. We believe in the people, one and indivisible, recognising neither castes nor privileges, neither proletariat nor aristocracy, whether landed or financial; but simply an aggregate of faculties and forces consecrated to the well-being of all, to the administration of the common substance and possession, the terrestrial globe.”—

DEMOCRACY can only thrive in a democratic setting; and while any powerful remnants of the dynastic tradition survive in the world, it is unlikely that democracy will be able to reach the full term of its own development. For the dynastic tradition is from the nature of the case of an incurably predatory character; and democracy will be arrested in its self-realisation by so much of the dynastic habit of thought and way of life as it may be necessary to retain in order to gain immunity from attack. It has been one of the commonplaces of the Great War that the democratic countries have been compelled to defend themselves against Prussianism by adopting the familiar Prussian methods of repression and regimentation. And what the war has actually provoked is always potentially present. So long as there are dynastic nations with highly centralised and omnicompetent authority and consequently in a more or less advanced state of preparation for military enterprise, it is not to be expected that their democratic neighbours will leave themselves at their mercy; and the common democratic rights of freedom—whether of the person or of thought—have to be so far permanently subject to curtailment and even entire suspension in the event of war. It is easy to say that once the danger is past, the former liberties will be automatically restored; but it does not so work out in actual fact. For authority is ever loth to relinquish any advantage it has gained; and there are always parties in every community who either on selfish or academic grounds are favourable to the curtailment of democratic rights. The restoration of these rights has commonly to be effected against the opposition of parties interested in their curtailment. It is a matter of common knowledge that powerful interests are already at work, for instance, to secure that the hard-won privileges of the Trade Unions shall not be restored to them; and we may expect to find very considerable and dangerous opposition to the re-establishment of those civil liberties which were suspended “for the duration of the war.” It is not likely, however, that this opposition can be long maintained. But it is certain that it will be some time after the close of the war before the domestic liberties of the democratic countries will be restored to the point which they had reached at the beginning of the war; and by so much democratic advance will have been retarded.

I

So that the development of the democratic principle requires the cessation of war and of preparedness for war. And this to begin with requires the disappearance of the dynastic tradition. But will the disappearance of the dynastic tradition necessarily carry with it the abolition of that preoccupation with national “prestige” and the like out of which it has always drawn its strength? The dynasty may vanish; but nationalism may remain; and the catchwords of national prestige and national honour may conceivably become a menace to peace and therefore to freedom as real as the dynastic tradition.

And at the present time there is, as has been previously shown, a very real possibility that the disappearance of the dynastic tradition may leave the door open to another type of predatory nationalism no less injurious to the cause of democracy. This is that “commercial imperialism” to which reference has already been made. The impression has been deeply made upon this generation that the accumulation of wealth constitutes the primary business of the community. It should aim to become the richest, wealthiest nation. It is not generally perceived that the distribution of this wealth is of a character which robs it of any right to be regarded as a “national” interest. It is the interest only of a comparatively small class within the nation. Yet so sedulously has this illusion of national prosperity been cultivated, and so feeble is the faculty of discrimination in the multitude, that it will yet be possible for commercial adventurers to invoke and receive national endorsement of their projects even to the extent of a guarantee of military support in case of need. The surplus capital of a nation will seek avenues of activity beyond its frontiers and it will move heaven and earth to secure that the nation shall be committed to the business of protecting it when it goes abroad. And it will do this by fostering the illusion that in some mysterious way its profitable foreign excursions bring prosperity to the home community. A moment’s reflection should be sufficient to show that operations of this kind will bring to no nation any compensation that is even remotely commensurate with the cost of guaranteeing them.

Nor is it for their foreign adventures alone that these particular interests will work up national pride and prejudice. They look upon the home market with the same avid eye as the foreign; and it is an affair of common knowledge that they have not hesitated to inflame national feeling in order to secure invidious protective tariffs against other nations. “Keep out the foreigner” is always an effective battlecry; it bears a certain immediate and obvious plausibility to the untutored and uncritical mind. The argument for free trade labours under the disadvantage of not possessing this kind of effective simplicity. Except in cases where free trade has been tried and is supported by experience, the argument for it has to lean upon postulates which are not so easily demonstrable to the crowd and which do not lend themselves to glib catchwords such as the protectionists delight in. It is easy for instance, to show that the prosperity of a particular industry depends upon its security against a foreign competition which apparently starts with the superior advantage of cheap labour; and a case may be fairly made for the protection of a young and struggling industry from unequal competition. The protectionist, however, extends his argument to cover all industry; his concern is not for the growth of a struggling industry but for a monopoly of the home markets—what time he is also actively invading foreign markets. The free trader has in reply to show that a protective tariff is a stranglehold upon all industry. Because, for instance, it renders the capitalist producer immune from foreign competition, it reduces the necessity on his part to improve methods of production; and in so much as his care is for his profits rather than the real development of industry for the good of the social whole, he will tend to remain content with obsolete and antiquated methods of production so long as improvement is not essential to the maintenance of profits. Moreover, it works in the direction of compelling the industries of the nation to utilise the raw materials available within its own borders even though these be inferior in quality to those obtainable elsewhere, with the result that the national industries are seriously handicapped in competition in foreign markets, even in some cases in the home markets. The problem of clothing oneself in the United States of America is a sufficient illustration of the fantastic illusion that a protective tariff makes for the common good. The tariff on woollen goods may be useful to the owners of the woollen industries in America; but the advantage is gained at the expense of the whole people, including the very operatives in woollen mills.

This is, however, not the place to state the whole case as between protection and free trade. Chiefly it is to our point here to emphasise the fact that the advocates of a protective tariff belong mainly to the capitalist class; and that they will plead for a protective tariff on the ground of national prosperity, and that national pride and prejudice will be invoked in support of the argument. They will be careful to abstain from calling undue attention to the point that a protective tariff will discriminate in favour of the classes that are already sufficiently prosperous, and their popular argument will have much to say about the high wages of the worker. “Make the foreigner pay” was the battlecry of the Chamberlainite fiscal reformer in England; and what the foreigner pays we all enjoy together. It sounds fair enough; until it is seen that by no chance whatsoever does the foreigner pay anything. He may lose something in the diminution of his trade; but he pays nothing. The payment is made by the domestic consumer in the higher prices which immediately prevail in respect of “protected” commodities; and this higher price brings an advantage to whom? To the worker? Not at all, if the capitalist can help it. Will the worker get higher wages? Only if he is strong enough to demand it. The empty hypocrisy of this talk about national prosperity should be evident from the fact that the very people who are interested in high prices are those who are equally interested in lowering wages. The increase of the wage rate during the war has not automatically or proportionately followed the rise in prices; it has always to be wrested by main force from those whose interest lies in keeping prices high and wages low. Under a protectionist rÉgime, wages are rarely high enough to compensate for the higher cost of living, and the more dependent a country is upon importation from abroad, the truer is this statement. It is only in countries like the United States of America where the natural resources are large and more or less easily available that protection can effect any substantial appearance of social prosperity, and even in these cases it is scarcely doubtful that the general prosperity would be greatly increased by the removal of a protective tariff. The dividends upon invested capital would no doubt be lower; but the general level of material well-being would be appreciably raised.

Democracy must make up its mind upon this point. It must turn a cold and critical eye upon all plausible talk about national prosperity and ask whether this prosperity is in fact the thing it professes to be. National wealth is so inequitably distributed that the production of wealth as a national concern is a polity pour rire. Protection and commercial imperialism are devices which work in the interests of the already prosperous classes, a very small minority of the community. This is not to say that there are not advocates of protective tariffs who sincerely believe all they say so fluently about “national” prosperity; of these good people it is not the disinterestedness that is to be called into question but the intelligence. But it as sure as anything can very well be that if a statutory limit were set upon profits, incomes and fortunes, we should hear very little about protective tariffs and the need of protecting commercial interests “in partibus infidelibus.” To say that this would immediately crush the incentive to the commercial and industrial enterprise of the nation would be an unworthy reflection upon the patriotism of those who are at present directing the enterprise. In any case the point which is coming up for the decision of democratic communities is whether they are going to identify themselves with, and commit themselves to, the support of enterprises which primarily serve the interests of a class already well enough provided for and which can bring no advantage to the people at large commensurate with the risk involved in endorsing them. With the crumbling of the dynastic tradition, the one substantial cause still outstanding of international misunderstanding is commercial rivalry; but this commercial rivalry is in no sense a rivalry between peoples; it is purely a rivalry between the capitalist interests in the different countries. Are the democracies still prepared to suffer arrest of their own development by retaining a sort of potential war-footing in the interests of what are after all mainly class-adventures?^[45]

But it may be urged that even in the event of the elimination of this type of commercial rivalry, the national feeling would still remain—intrinsically and without the adventitious aid of dynastic or commercial interests—a permanent ground of separation and possible dissension between peoples, even democratic peoples. We are told that there is such a thing as national “honour” which is a sacred trust and which the nation must be prepared to defend against all comers. It may be seriously questioned whether this conception of national “honour” is not an archaism which has lapped over from the age when men still talked of gambling debts as “debts of honour” and gentlemen adjusted their differences by means of “affairs of honour.” It should be evident that no nation has any kind of honour which is subject to real offence save at its own hands, or which can be forfeited save by its own act; and a nation in anything like a mature stage of ethical development should be (in a memorable phrase) “too proud to fight” merely because its amour propre had been pricked by some ill-behaved urchin among the nations. No self-respecting citizen resorts to fisticuffs in order to avenge an insult; and the more self-respecting he is the more effectual is the interior constraint which forbids him to act in that way. And it is equally inconceivable that a self-respecting nation should think it worth while to assert itself in a retaliatory way against what after all can amount to no more than rudeness or impertinence. It is true that there is a good deal of residual superstition in this particular region which is apt to magnify out of all proportion the significance of such improprieties as disrespect to the flag; but a little good humoured realism is all the antidote that is required. Such things as these have no real meaning except where symbolic and formal punctilio still takes precedence over the actualities of life. For the rest, the only possible sources of offence to national honour lies in the region where national honour travels abroad in the persons of official and unofficial individuals of that nation. But at this time of day, it is inconceivable that any issues should arise in this region which are not capable of easy and friendly adjustment. In point of fact, that is what usually happens. Apologies are made; a formula is adopted; and the affair blows over. It will occur to the cynical that in recent times the point of honour has been chiefly insisted upon on such occasions as the pursuit seemed likely to eventuate in some material advantage; in any case the point of honour survives only as an affair of statesmen and diplomats and provokes no more than a languid interest in the remainder of the nation, which has more pressing concerns on hand. National “honour” seems on the whole to be but a frill left over from the day in which the divine right of kings was still a live dogma.

In the fact of nationality itself there is nothing which necessarily tends to a breach of the peace. We know that it represents no fact of organic inheritance which is bound to perpetuate divisions of an unfriendly or unneighbourly kind between peoples. There is no modern “nation” which can claim homogeneity of racial origin, of language, of religion. It describes a political unity within which a people by the simple process of living together has developed and is continuing to develop a particular way of life and quality of culture. The peculiar colour of national life is due of course to some extent to its geographical location, to the circumstances of its history, and to its natural resources, but national unity is achieved in the evolution of a common tradition and a common culture. Nor is it possible to fix any real bounds to the growth of a nation. It is a historical commonplace how the small primitive groupings of man have steadily grown in extent until we have reached the stage of vast aggregations of polyglot peoples comprehended under a single national name—like the British Empire and the United States. The “nation” possesses no fixity, and national feeling undergoes continual change and modification as the result of changing circumstances. There are many like the present writer whose early schooling left them with the impression that there was a necessary and permanent antagonism of interest between the British and French; but since then the Entente Cordiale and other momentous happenings have completely banished that hoary tradition from the British mind. It is, moreover, not open to question that the increase and improvement of means of communication have done much to dispel the ignorance from which national prejudice and international suspicion drew their strength. The biological judgment upon nationality is pertinent to this point: “All the most important agencies producing the divergent modification of the nations are human products and can be altered.”^[46] These agencies are presumably the factors which constitute what Mr. Benjamin Kidd called social heredity; and he has shown with great force how possible it is to “impose the elements of a new social heredity” on a whole people and to change its character accordingly.^[47] The sum of the matter is that nationality is a fluid and changing entity; and its intrinsic nature and its history appear to point to the conclusion that it is a necessary stage in the evolution of human society, by which the caveman is to become at last a citizen of the world. There is nothing to justify the expectation that present national characters and national frontiers will remain as permanent factors in the life of the world.

This does not mean that the world will not continue to be organised on the basis of nationality; it means only that the present national divisions are not permanent. The law of natural variation will operate in producing diversity in the complexion and culture of communities; and the race will contain to the end an infinite variety of social types. Indeed as the dynastic imperial tradition decays, the tendency to induce uniformity among the peoples brought under a common rule will disappear; and the free play of variation will probably be more evident in the future than it has been, at least in the near past. The emphasis upon the rights of small nations and the disruption of Russia and of the Dual Monarchy into their constituent nations both alike indicate that we shall have a considerable accentuation of distinctive national types in the years ahead of us. But this is not in any sense a matter for misgiving; for the larger the variety of typical national cultures, the more varied and rich will the life of the race become. As Lord Bryce said in the early days of the war, the world was already too uniform and was becoming more uniform every day; and a reaction from uniformity is a sign of renewed life.

At the same time it must not be forgotten that without some balancing principle there are dangers inherent in nationality. It has been justly observed that nationality is an admirable thing when it is being struggled for, but that once achieved it is apt to become a peril. The passion for nationality may overshoot its mark. National self-consciousness may breed national self-conceit; and out of this temper especially under the conditions of modern commerce may grow the spirit of aggression. It is useless to hide this fact from ourselves; the recent history of Italy gives ample demonstration of it. The Italy of Garibaldi was hardly recognisable in the Italy of the Tripoli adventure. It is therefore necessary that the nations that have come to new birth in the world-travail of these last five years, should be preserved from the danger of becoming aggressive at the expense of their neighbours, and in this necessity is contained in little the entire problem of international integration which is likely to occupy the minds of statesmen and political thinkers in the coming century. At the same time the ultimate security of the peace which is necessary to the progress of the democratic principle must lie not in external safeguards and checks but in the increasing democratisation of national life. The elimination of those residual predatory interests which still dog the steps of democracy and are still able to pervert it to their own ends may be helped by the creation of international machinery which will limit the area of their opportunities; but it depends most of all upon the progressive disappearance of class and sectional privileges within the nations. For privilege is always predatory; and so long as there still remain privileged classes within the nations no international machinery of adjustment and restraint can do more than preserve a highly precarious equilibrium between conflicting interests.

III

Upon this whole subject there is little to be said which is not already perfectly clear to those who have given it any serious thought. Two courses are open, and only two, to modern democracies. They may choose to retain the traditional dogmas of national sovereignty and “honour,” and the current acceptances of the business system, or they may resolve upon a break with the past. The consequences of the first choice are perfectly evident from the state into which the world has been brought by its operation in the near past. It implies the retention of a privileged class with interests to be defended at home and abroad; it will work out in competitive commerce and as a natural corollary in competitive armaments. And competitive armaments soon or late mean war. It has already been pointed out how the doctrine of military “preparedness” must inevitably retard and arrest the realisation of democratic liberty within the nation, but it must farther be recognised that any general retention of military establishments, under the conditions of modern industry, must eventuate in the total destruction of democracy and civilisation. The other choice means a deliberate and progressive attempt to organise the intercourse of nations upon a basis of reciprocity and co-operation. Even though the consequences of such an attempt may be at present uncertain and problematical, it may at least be asserted that they cannot be worse than those which have so tragically ensued from the former tradition.

Indeed, we have already come to a state of the world in which the former tradition has long ceased to correspond to actuality. So long as the means of communication remained elementary and slow, it was possible for nations to live more or less independent lives and it was in their interest to become self-sufficing and self-contained. They were sufficiently far from one another to meet only in the event of border brawls or of predatory excursions on a large scale on the part of a strong neighbour against a weaker. But with the modern development of the means of communication a policy of isolation has become utterly impossible. The world has become a neighbourhood; and national interests are inextricably intertwined. When President Wilson said in 1916 that the European War was the last great war out of participation in which it would be possible for the United States to remain, he was speaking with this particular circumstance in mind; and not even his foresight was sufficient at that time to see that the day of isolation was already over. In six months, the United States was engulfed in the bloody maelstrom. The policy of national isolation is obsolete; and the persons who advocate military preparedness and protective tariffs are “back numbers.” These atavistic policies are no longer possible except at the cost of the incalculable impoverishment of the nation which adopts them. The nation that shuts others out also shuts itself in and will slowly perish from an inbreeding mind and an ingrowing energy. For the barrier against mutual confidence and goodwill which is military preparedness, and the barrier against reciprocal trade, which is a protective tariff, hinder much more than the exchanges of friendship and trade. They hinder that exchange of spiritual, intellectual and cultural goods which are on any radical analysis more essential to a people’s growth and wealth than its trade.

Even as things are, those barriers are not sufficient to prevent a certain mutuality in trade and in culture. Neither the German tariff could keep Sheffield steel out of Germany, nor does the United States tariff keep Bradford cloth out of America, and in the region of intellectual and cultural interests the commerce has attained in recent times a considerable briskness. But in the present state of the world, why should a nation still cling to the illusion that it is a source of strength to be self-contained? It is simply silly to continue to live on homemade goods and homemade ideas when one’s neighbours are ready to supply those which they are in a position to produce better than ourselves, and to supply them freely on a basis of fair exchange; and it is no compensation for the consumption of second-rate goods that it helps to increase the bank balance of a few of one’s countrymen, especially when these few countrymen who are thus profited can out of their profits procure the superior foreign article which they put out of the reach of the rest.

The organisation of the world upon a basis of international reciprocity becomes a necessity by reason of the proximity into which modern means of communication have thrown the peoples. The process is indeed already afoot and in spite of hindrances will inevitably grow in power and range; and we are only anticipating events when we set out to organise the nations on a foundation of mutuality. The process is, however, not without its difficulties; and the conditions which are necessary in order to create a league of nations bound together by a principle of reciprocity may be passed in brief review.

IV

First of all it is necessary that the last vestige of imperial dominion should disappear. A nation which is held unwillingly within a particular political unity should be emancipated and be set up in independence. Real reciprocity is only possible on a foundation of common freedom, and it is a pre-requisite of any scheme of world federation that any so-called “subject” nation which puts in a claim to independence should have its claim conceded at sight. The whole conception of reciprocity is denied when a nation is dragged into the scheme at the tail of another. At the same time it should be made clear that an independence thus recognised does not carry with it the prerogative of a sovereignty of the traditional kind. Independence is to mean autonomy in domestic affairs but not independent action in external affairs. Reciprocity implies joint action in matters of international interest; and in so much as the working of a reciprocal scheme implies the power of authoritative action by some superior joint council, it is clear that there must be a cession of such portion of national sovereignty as is implied in the joint transaction of international affairs. Nor is this to be a rule merely for the lesser or the newly emancipated nations. Clearly it must be a rule for all nations great or small which enter into the arrangement. It is supposed that the nations will be found unready to make this surrender; in which case it is in no need of demonstration that a League of Nations is impossible save only for the purely negative business of adjusting difficulties and settling disputes. That indeed were a great gain, even though from the nature of the case it would in all probability be only temporary. Nations still boasting sovereignty would soon or late be tempted to take matters into their own hands in the event of adjustments and settlements which proved unsatisfactory. But in point of fact there is no difficulty at all about this cession of sovereignty except in the minds of incurable jingoes or legal doctrinaires. The thing has been done and is in practice on a large scale already. That vast unity called the United States of America became and remains possible only because independent states have voluntarily ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to a federal authority; and there is no objection other than that of chauvinistic prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually prevent the creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a greatly extended United States of America as well.

But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground that it is the organisation of a people in the interests of its material welfare and power;^[48] and insomuch as the nation finds its focus in the sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A league of nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of states, of governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a league would tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and policies rather than the broader matters of human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a league of nations will be able to divest itself from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in the traditional order. No league has any chance of permanence which does not break wholly with the current conventions of international business; and the only hope of such a break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various countries of their own representatives on the council of the league. The league must be democratically controlled; and that with as much direct democratic power as such expedients as proportional representation and recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe are so incurably steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have to do with any future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue, the diplomatic finesse in which they have been expert are incongruous with the democratic principle; and it is necessary in the interest of international understanding that they should be put out of commission with all decent haste. The kind of domestic organisation for foreign business which a league of nations requires differs toto coelo from the existing institution; and it will have to be built from the bottom up.

A league of peoples requires plain dealing in the open; but there is nothing gained even then if there be no public apprehension of the nature of the business in hand. Hitherto, the common man has displayed but a flickering interest in the external affairs of his country; and this vast and important region has been left the monopoly of a comparatively small coterie of people who have made the shunning of publicity a fine art. This circumstance is bound up with the fact that speaking generally these persons have consistently belonged to the prosperous classes; and the conventions of the diplomatic tradition have made it a preserve of people possessing considerable independent incomes. It is needless to observe how inevitably the whole service must be vitiated by this anti-democratic discrimination. The established system is secured by employing in it only those whose upbringing and education have instilled into them the spirit of class superiority and ascendency. The Foreign Offices of Europe have from the nature of the case been the breeding ground of jingoism and chauvinism. The principle of democratic control in foreign affairs, both by the public discussion of international business and by the thorough democratisation of Foreign Offices is a sine qua non not alone of democracy at home but of any such league of peoples as may be established.

It follows as a corollary that there should be a systematic education of the people in foreign affairs. Popular ignorance would nullify any advantage which accrued from the democratisation of the control and the conduct of international business. For the control and conduct would under such conditions pass back into the hands of specialists and experts and interested parties. This popular education does not fail to be considered in detail at this point. But it may be questioned whether it can be effectively sustained unless in some form or another foreign relations can be made a permanent issue of domestic politics. Perhaps we may come to the point of instituting the popular election of the persons in whom the responsibility of foreign business shall be vested. At the present time it is only rarely, and then but in a subordinate way, that questions of foreign policy enter into the issues of an election; and until some means is devised of educating the public mind in the subject-matter of foreign relations, this condition will continue.

V

It is, however, likely that the force of circumstances may expedite this process of education. The articles of the coming peace are guaranteed to contain a provision for general disarmament; and so far as Europe is concerned, this will be a work of necessity and not of supererogation. Professor DelbrÜck, for instance, has come to acknowledge that the “derided notions” of disarmament, hitherto “entertained only by persons of no account,” are likely to be raised to “the position of the ruling principle of our time.”^[49] His conversion is due to the fact that the war will leave the belligerents of Europe in a financial position which will not only make the increase of armaments impossible, but will require the very drastic reduction of their military establishments. The only danger to the process of disarmament lies in the circumstance that two of the belligerent powers, the United States and Japan, have been so little crippled by the war that they are in a position and may get into the mood to maintain large armaments. It is useless to obscure from ourselves the further circumstance that these two powers that are in a position to afford large military establishments look upon one another with a considerable measure of suspicion despite their recent association upon the same side in the war, and the formal professions of mutual good-will that have latterly been made. It must be borne in mind that Japan is still mainly dynastic in government and consequently imperialistic in spirit, that its economic development seems to require an expansion of marketing opportunities, and that its over-population will stimulate emigration. In these matters there is plenty of inflammable stuff; and we should be guilty of not facing the facts of the case, did we not perceive that by reason of the attraction which Western America has for the Japanese emigrant, and of the peculiar interest which America has taken in the welfare of China, situations of very great peril may arise between Japan and the United States. It is upon such a state of the case that the argument for universal military service in America will be based; and indeed must be based; as it is inconceivable that any American in his senses should apprehend any danger from the other side of the Atlantic. The certain democratisation of Europe and the virtual certainty of the impossibility on financial grounds of any considerable war-like enterprise on the part of the European nations make the contingency of a Transatlantic war unthinkable at the present time, or indeed at any future time. This, of course, pre-supposes that the causes of friction likely to arise from the national underwriting of private foreign investments will be removed by a common understanding that the private ventures of capital abroad are made at its own risk.

The possible strain of the situation between the United States and Japan is, however, already alleviated to some extent by the prospect of a democratic movement in the latter country. Japan can in any case hardly expect to keep its institutions intact if it enters into reciprocal relations with democratic communities. Now, for the first time, a commoner is premier of Japan; and the widespread social discontent is likely to stimulate the tendency to popularise the machinery of government. It is probably too much to expect in the present state of Japanese education, that the veneration in which the dynasty is held will speedily disappear. Yet after the swift and dramatic disappearance of “divine rights” in Germany, it is not wise to assume that historical processes of this type are necessarily slow.

Apart, however, from the possible causes of friction between the United States and Japan, there seems to be little insuperable difficulty in reaching an international understanding concerning disarmament.^[50] Upon such an understanding, the whole future of the projected League of Nations hangs. The League will be no more than an empty shell if the constituent nations still continue to go about with loaded fire-arms. Yet even if the League itself were not to come into existence immediately the economic necessity of disarmament would of itself suffice to change international relationships very profoundly. Reduction in armaments will involve a revolution in foreign policy. For the two things go together. A particular kind of foreign policy requires a corresponding scale of armaments; and the state of a nation’s armaments very materially affects the objects and the tone of its foreign policy. In a word the reduction of armaments would compel the nations in some sort to moralise their mutual relations. The old basis of ambition-cum-fear backed by force will have to be displaced by a practice of plain dealing and mutual understanding. Since the nations cannot afford to fight one another for some time to come, there is nothing for it but that they learn to behave themselves properly toward each other. After a while it is permissible to hope that they would not want to fight each other.

VI

But if disarmament is likely to compel a new type of international dealing, it is plain that there must be some kind of international clearing house. We have gone past the stage at which one nation can transact a bargain with another which will not affect the interests of a third party. The shrinkage of the world has thrown the nations too closely together for any of them to suppose that they can determine their policies in isolation and carry them through piece-meal with this one and that, without reference to the rest. Preferential trade agreements, for instance, are not merely an affair of the contrasting parties; they affect all the nations. And it is impossible any longer—in the absence of force majeure—to establish relations of that kind without the consent of the rest of the world. The case for an international clearing house is indeed at this time of day irresistible.

Moreover, the immediate stress of the food-situation throughout the world is certain to require some such organ for the co-ordination and the distribution of the available food-supply. It seems likely that the supply of food for the world will be for some years inadequate to the need without careful distribution; and it will require the most careful organisation and rationing of what food there is if the people of some parts of the world are to escape very great and protracted hardship. For this, a clearing house is necessary. Fortunately we have the foundations of this organisation already laid—on the one hand in the machinery of international distribution created by Mr. Hoover, and on the other in Mr. David Lubin’s far-seeing institution of an international bureau for the survey of the world’s grain resources. From a central organisation of this kind the world will need to receive its food for some time to come.

Nor is the problem of food the only urgent matter of this kind. There will be presently a very great demand for the raw material of industrial production. In the past, raw material has been provided by means of private ventures of all kinds on a competitive basis. Any reversion to such a chaotic and uncoordinated method of providing raw material would be attended by consequences of a most disastrous kind. There would be no guarantee of equitable distribution among the nations; with the result that those unfavourably placed in the matter of capital or credit, would be put in a position of permanent and increasing economic dependence and disability. If the nations now released from ancient tyrannies are to be set upon their feet, it is plain that they must receive supplies of raw material as nearly adequate for their need as possible. Otherwise we may create a number of pauper nations. In addition to this fact, there is also the danger that the private exploitation of the sources of raw material would tend to the subjugation of backward peoples whose lands chanced to be rich in such material. It is an old and a shameful story how the need of civilisation for raw material has led to the laceration and impoverishment of the native population of (say) Africa; and it is necessary that the conscience of the world should refuse to tolerate the system of concessions and the like which made this criminality possible. On both grounds—the need of industrial production among the civilised people, and the rights of the undeveloped peoples—a system of the joint international quest and distribution of raw material is requisite.

This international rationing of raw material may seem a drastic and impracticable proposal; but any consideration of its alternatives must drive us to the conclusion that we cannot escape some experiment however inadequate in this direction. In the present state of the world, the balance is so overwhelmingly in favour of the strong nations that any perpetuation of the private and competitive quest of raw materials will simply lead to a struggle of great commercial imperialisms in which the victims will be the weak nations. Just as the unprivileged classes within the nation have been the victims of the great industrial powers, the weaker nations which start with a handicap in the struggle will be disabled in perpetuity and will be squeezed between their stronger neighbours. It is difficult to see that the economic dependence and subjection of one nation to another differs appreciably in its consequences to the people at large from that political dependence and subjection to destroy which the European war was undertaken and fought at so terrific a cost.

VII

The necessity and the logic of the case leads us therefore, to expect the creation of an international organisation which shall have certain positive functions in addition to the negative task of mitigating the causes of international friction and the adjustment of differences. The hope of the permanence of the League lies in its positive activities rather than in its purely negative offices. Moreover, the just rationing of food and raw material would of itself so considerably diminish the possibility of international misunderstanding, that we may look to the extension of the positive and integrative functions of the League while the need of purely mediatorial activity would naturally decrease. Nor have we exhausted the matters in which the need of the nations requires action and organisation of a constructive and positive kind. At the present time it is plain that some of the peoples newly liberated are not in a position to conduct their affairs without outside assistance. Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, for instance, must be guided and protected for some time to come; and while the peoples of these countries might choose to be placed under the wing of one or other of the existing “great” powers, it is not open to argument that such a connection should be under an arrangement which secured the accountability of the protecting power to an international body. If Great Britain becomes foster-mother to Palestine, or France to Syria, the agreement should be so formulated that this relationship is always subject to revision at the hands of the League of Peoples. The case with the native populations in the former German colonies is still more clear. Africa, in especial, has suffered unspeakable things from the imperialistic rivalries of the European nations; and its whole future development is bound up with a guarantee that its territory and its peoples shall be immune from invasion and exploitation at the hands of nations with selfish purposes. This again points to the institution of a system of international tutelage and supervision. It goes without saying, of course, that any such international action should consist not only of protection and tutelage, but of education into self-government. The question as to the mode in which this international supervision should be exercised is secondary. The proposal that it should be made effective by means of international commissions is met with the objection that international commissions have proved to be a failure in practice. In some cases this is doubtless true; but it is not the whole truth. The Danube Commission and the Postal Union furnish examples of successful management by international commission. But there is no need to mix up the question of international supervision with the method of rendering it effective. There appears to be no inconsistency in maintaining that the method of international commission would be most fruitful in some instances, while the method of devolving the work upon a single nation suitably placed for doing it would be more advantageous in other cases. In those instances, where a weak or backward people is capable of appreciating the alternatives, there is no reason why the choice should not be left to the people themselves.

One of the further consequences of the contraction of the world is that health has become an international question. The days when a plague could be confined to a city are over.^[51] The recent spread of the so-called “Spanish” influenza is an instance which proves how indissolubly bound together the world has come to be. And the system of national quarantines has to be superseded by an international organ for the localisation and the extirpation of diseases which like the bubonic and the pneumonic plagues are capable of easy and destructive diffusion; and for the removal of those conditions of filth and insanitation in any part of the world to which these scourges owe their origin. It is likely, moreover, that the great increase in pulmonary and venereal diseases as by-products of the war require international handling if their worst consequences are to be averted.

51.If, indeed, there ever were any such days. In 1665, the Great Plague was brought from London to Eyam, a little Derbyshire town, in a parcel of cloth consigned to the local tailor!