Most of these plans, a federation of nations, a progressive disarmament, a wider application of the principle of arbitration, and a League to Enforce Peace, have elements of value, once they are divorced from purely static conceptions and are united with proposals to effect some form of progressive adjustment of nations to each other and to the world. In this effort at adjustment lies the real problem of securing international peace. So long as the nations have conflicting economic interests so wide and deep as to make their surrender perilous to the national future, so long will they find some way to escape from the restraints of peace. They will drive their armies through any compact or agreement, adverse to their economic interests, and in the process will smash whatever machinery has been created for establishing peace. A dynamic pacifism, therefore, must take into account this factor of the constantly changing, balancing, opposing economic needs of rival nations. It must devise not only some rudimentary form of international government but also arrangements by which the things for which the nations go to war may peacefully be distributed or utilized in a manner equitable to all.
[1] For a brief digest of the history of pacifism, see Dr. Edward Krehbiel, "Nationalism, War and Society," New York, 1916. See also books cited by him.
[2] "England and Germany," p. 56.
[3] P. 58.
[4] The proposal for disarmament also raises the question of the inner stability of each nation. In each country there must be some police force to keep down the anti-social classes and prevent revolution. Such a force might be small in England or the United States; it would have to be large and powerful in Russia and Austria, if the subject nations were to be held down. But a large police force is an army under a different name. If each disarmed nation were permitted to decide its own police needs, the whole principle of disarmament would be whittled away.
[5] British White Paper, No. 138.
These are three ways in which the United States might conceivably attempt to promote the international adjustments without which peace cannot be secured. We might seek to "go it alone," righting one wrong after another, intervening whenever and wherever our national conscience directed. Or we might enter into an alliance with one or a few selected democratic and enlightened nations to force international justice and comity upon other nations. Finally we might refrain from ubiquitous interventions and peace-propagating alliances and devote ourselves, in conjunction with all other willing nations, to the formulation of principles of international policy, and unite with those nations in the legalisation and enforcement of such principles. In other words we might become the standard about which the peaceful parties and groups of all nations might rally.
The first of these courses is quite impossible. It is grotesque to think of us, or of any country, as a knight-errant, rescuing nations forlorn from evil forsworn powers. There are two things, besides a saving sense of humour, which preclude us from essaying this rôle; we have not the knowledge and we have not the power.
For the making of peace more than good will is required. Nothing is more harmful in international intercourse than a certain sentimentalism and contempt for realities on the part of many of our pacifists.
The difficulty with most plans for intervention by onemoral and infallible power is that they attribute a pikestaff simplicity to international—as, in fact, to all questions. According to certain superlatively well-intentioned people, some nations are wicked and others virtuous; some nations love the clash of arms, some the ways of peace; some nations are greedy, brutal and dishonourable, others are generous, gentle and honourable. It is the absolute bad and the impossible good of the melodrama, in which the human sheep and goats are sundered by an obvious moral boundary line.
In point of fact, no nation is good or bad in this simple sense, but all have a certain justice in their claims, however difficult it is to square these claims with the moral philosophy of the neutral country. The British had a certain justice in their conflict with the Transvaal as had also the Dutch burghers who resisted them. Even in our brutal attack upon Mexico in 1846 we had the justification arising from our greater ability to use the conquered territory. It is easy to find phrases to be used whenever we wish to interfere, but these phrases sometimes conceal an ambiguous meaning and sometimes have no meaning at all. Are we, for instance, to become the defenders of small nationalities, ready to go to war whenever one is invaded? Has a small nation a right to hold its present territory when that right conflicts with the economic advance, let us say, of a whole continent? Should we respect Canada's right to keep New York, had that city originally been settled by Canadians? Should we compel Russia to treat her Poles and Jews fairly and concede to Russia the right to compel us to treat our Negroes fairly? Some extension of the right of interference in what are now called the internal affairs of other nations must be admitted, but it is a precipitous road to travel. The united powers may compel Roumania or Greece tobehave, but the United States, acting alone, would find it irksome to have to constrain or discipline Russia.
By this it is not meant that we should never intervene. It would be futile to fix such a rule for conduct which, in the end, will be determined by circumstances. In any question of interference, however, the burden of proof should rest heavily upon the side which urges a nation to slay in order to secure what it believes to be the eternal principles of justice. The general development will be toward greater interference, but this intervention will be increasingly international, not national.
In actual practice the problem when to interfere is immensely difficult. It is easy to say "let America assume her responsibility for policing the world," but the question arises, "What in particular should we do and what leave undone?" Should we war against Germany because of Belgium, and against France and England because of Greece? Should we fight Japan to aid China? Are we to mete out justice even-handed to the Poles, Finns and Jews of Russia, the Czechs and Southern Slavs of Austria, the Armenians and Alsatians? Should we have interposed to save Persia from benevolent absorption by Russia and England? Clearly we could not do these things alone, and to attempt them would be to strike an impossibly virtuous attitude. Even if we had the wisdom or the sure instinct to save us from error, we should not have a fraction of the power necessary to make our benevolent intervention effective.
To right the wrongs of the world, to build up a firm international policy and thus to create and establish peace seems easier if it be attempted in alliance with two or three other virtuous powers. But if we unite with England, France and Russia, to maintain virtue in the world, may we not, at least hypothetically, be playing a fool'spart in a knave's game of diplomacy? May we not be simply undermining Germany and Austria? To use our army and navy for such purposes would constitute us a part of one great European combination against the other, and our disinterested assistance might be exploited for purposes with which we had no sympathy.
A proposal, at least potentially more popular, is the formation of an Anglo-American Union for the maintenance of peace. It is assumed that the two nations, and the five self-governing British colonies are kindred in blood, inspired by the same ideals and united by a common language. Their white population exceeds one hundred and fifty millions. They are capable, energetic, individualistic peoples, favourably situated on an immense area, and holding dominion over hundreds of millions in various parts of the world. These Britons, Colonials and Americans, by reason of geographical position, are naval rather than military, and if they could hold the sea, would be able to preserve peace in lands not accessible to military powers and to dictate peace even to the military nations. Such an integration of the English-speaking peoples would thus constitute a step towards international peace.
It is not here proposed to discuss the value of this proposal as a means of defending the United States. In general, its defensive value for us would probably be less in the coming decades than for Britain and her colonies. The British Empire has the greater number of enemies and is the more easily assailed. Great Britain cannot protect her colonies without maintaining her naval supremacy not alone in the North Sea, but in the Pacific as well. As for England, she occupies the same position towards us in any attack from the European continent that Belgium occupies towards England. She is an outpost. Our own continental territory could probably be protected inmost cases by a smaller military and naval effort than would be required of us as part-defenders of a British-American Union. It is true that these conditions might change, with the result that we should need Great Britain's help most urgently. For the time being, however, we are discussing a British-American alliance or federation not as a possible protection to us but as an instrument for eliminating war.
In all probability such an instrument would work badly, and to the non-Anglo-Saxon world would look much like a sword. For the fundamental defect of such a proposal lies in the fact that it is a plan for the coercion of other powers by a group of nations, not at all disinterested. If the British and Americans possessed eighty per cent. of the military and naval power of the world, they might establish a peace like that which the Roman Empire was able to establish. It would be a peace dictated by the strong. In fact, however, there would be no such superiority of power. Russia, Germany, Austria, Japan united, would be quite capable of exerting a far superior force. Even if the force opposed were only equal, the result would be a confrontation of peoples in all essential respects like the Balance of Power in Europe, but on a vaster scale. We should not have advanced an inch towards the goal of a world peace or a world economy.
For the United States to enter into such a federation would be to take our part in the world wars to come and the intrigues that precede and accompany such wars. We might be called upon to halt Russia's progress towards Suez, the Persian Gulf, or the Indian border. We might be obliged to defend Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We could not permit any nation to reach a point where British commerce might be assailed. We should cease to be interested inthe freedom of the seas because sharing the dominion of the seas. We should have no leisure and no inclination to seek a more equal utilisation of the backward countries. We should need armies and navies to protect the approaches to England and to hold back the land nations. Against us would work immense potential forces. Strong, growing, ambitious populations, envying our arrogant sea-power and forced by their insecurity to remain militaristic and become navalistic would prepare unceasingly for the day when they could try conclusions with us. The Anglo-Saxon Federation may be an exhilarating conception, but it is not peace.
Parenthetically an agreement or understanding with Great Britain, less ambitious and pretentious than the proposed federation, is in the interest of the two nations. In the more than one hundred years of acrid peace between the two countries, there has been revealed a certain community of interest, which might properly be utilised to prevent future conflicts. While we are not ready to involve ourselves in Britain's European and imperialistic policies, and do not want a whole world in arms against us, we do wish to avoid misunderstandings with England. We should be better off were we to give Great Britain assurances that we would not contest her naval supremacy (however much we may strive to alter its nature), and if we were to obtain from England her unconditional support of the doctrine that the Latin-American countries are not to be colonised or conquered.
In our efforts to secure a basis of international peace, however, we must rely not upon England or any other single nation or group of nations but upon a league, into which all nations may enter upon identical terms. We must depend upon all-inclusive, not upon exclusive alliances.
At this point it may be well to recapitulate the difficulties and inevitable limitations of any such plan. In the first place nationality exists and cannot be exorcised. The several nations, though they have common interests, are also sundered in interest, and in present circumstances may gain more from a given war than they lose. No nation, because of a moral appeal, will surrender its vital interests, and each believes that its own ambitions are morally justified. To pursue these interests the nations arm, and this competitive armament breeds fear, which in turn provokes war. In various parts of the world broken nationalities seek to attain to national independence or autonomy and these nationalistic differences are exacerbated by economic quarrels. Moreover, within the nations certain sections or groups find their true economic interest in policies leading to war, and these groups are able by means of ceaseless propaganda to drive their nation into war-provoking policies. Finally we are faced with the grim fact that in Europe at least no great nation can pursue a consistent policy of peace unless other nations move simultaneously in the same direction. Furthermore the instinctive efforts of each nation to secure its own peace by force constitute a menace to other nations and a danger to the world's peace.
The outlook for peace is thus not cheering; "the war against war," to use William James's expression, "is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party."
Fortunately, however, there are certain factors making for peace, and upon these factors we are able to build. All over the world there is a peace sentiment, a vast, undisciplined, inchoate desire to discover ways and means by which this scourge of war may be lifted. It is not inherently impossible to organise this sentiment, crystallise it, direct it and make it effective. The task is essentiallysimilar to that of organising democracy, for wars increasingly are becoming national wars, in which success depends not upon princes but upon the willingness and enthusiasm of the great slow peoples. The millions who bear the chief burdens of war and derive only its lesser gains are in all countries moving towards self-expression and domination. It is in the end upon these masses, with their inherent prejudices and passions, and not upon diplomats and rulers that any project for peace must be based.
The appeal to these millions though it be couched in terms of morality and sentiment, must be an appeal to interest. What is necessary is to recognise the economic motives that drive such populations to war and to reverse those motives. It does not suffice to preach that wars are never in the interest of the people; the nations know otherwise. It is necessary rather to change conditions so that wars will in actual fact lose their economic value to nations. Peace must be made not only to appear but actually to be in the interest of the peoples of the world.
The popular horror of war, the growing sense of its immense costs, the slowly maturing sympathy between individual members of hostile nations form the substantial groundwork upon which an opposition to warin generalis based. Added to these are the waning of the romanticism of war and the growth of a sense of its mechanical (rather than human) quality. The present war has immensely increased this opposition. It has disenchanted the world. In all countries millions of men now realise that wars must be fought not alone by adventurous youths, who do not put a high value upon life, but by husbands and fathers and middle-aged men, who are somewhat less susceptible to the glamorous appeal of battle. They are beginning to recognise that wars are not won by courage alonebut by numbers, by money, by intimidation, by intrigue, by mendacity and all manner of baseness. The lies spread broadcast throughout the world and the money spent by Germans and Allies to bribe Bulgarian patriots are quite as great factors in deciding the issue of the war as the valour of thepoilusat Verdun. In a moral sense war has committed suicide.
This increasing comprehension of war's real nature and of war's new manifestations is leading the peoples to demand the right to decide for themselves when and how war is to be declared and to take part in negotiations which may lead up to war. The power to provoke wars is the last bulwark of autocracy; when the nation is in danger (and in present circumstances it is always in danger), democracy goes by the board. Let the Socialists and Liberals in all countries declaim as they will against armies, navies, imperialism, colonialism, and international friction, let Members of Parliament ask awkward questions in the House, the answer is always the same, "It is a matter of national safety. To reply to the question of the honourable gentleman is not in the public interest." Against this stone wall the efforts of organisations like the British "Union of Democratic Control" break ineffectually.
The Socialists have also failed, at least externally. Identifying the war-makers and imperialists with those classes to which they were already opposed in internal politics, the Socialists sought to make good their democratic antagonism to war. They opposed armies and proposed disarmament; they threatened national strikes in case aggressive wars were declared; they fought with a sure democratic instinct against every manifestation of militarism. In the crisis, however, they failed. They failed because their conception of war was too narrow,arbitrary and doctrinaire. They perceived the upper class interest in war but failed to recognise, or rather obstinately ignored, the national interest. When at last the nation was threatened, the Socialists and peace-makers not only closed ranks with those who desired war, but even lent a willing ear to proposals of annexation (for purposes of national security) and agreed to other international arrangements likely to be the cause or at least the occasion of future wars.
The general will for peace we have with us already; what is to-day most necessary is the knowledge and insight which will direct this will to the attempted solution of the causes of war. Towards this knowledge the present war has contributed. Never before have so many men recognised the strength of the economic impulses driving nations into the conflict. The war, it is true, has intensified national hatreds by its wholesale breach of plighted agreements; it has increased terror and distrust; it has sown broadcast the seeds of future wars by a series of secret, but known, agreements, creating a new Europe even more unstable than was the Europe of 1914. On the other hand, it has forced men to open their eyes to the real facts of war, and to recognise that wars will continue until the motives for war are reversed, until conditions are created in which nations may realise their more moderate hopes of development without recourse to fighting.
It is upon this recognition, upon this guide to the blind passion for peace, that any league for peace must be based. Such a league can probably not be immediately constructed and permanently maintained. It depends upon the slow growth of an international mind, upon a willingness, not indeed to sacrifice national interests but to recognise that national interests may be made to conform with the larger interests of humanity. It means thefulfilment not the destruction of nationality. It requires for its realisation the breaking of two chains, an inner chain which binds the nation to the will of a selfish minority class, an outer chain which binds its national interest to war.
How such a league will come about it is perhaps premature to discuss. In the immediate future we are likely to have not a true league of peace but rather a league of temporarily satisfied powers, seeking their group interest in thestatus quoand pursuing their common aims at the expense of excluded nations in much the same spirit in which a single nation now pursues its separate interest. Such a grouping of interested nations is likely to be only temporary, as dissensions will arise and new alignments be made comprising the nations formerly excluded. It is bound to break up when thestatus quobecomes intolerable to several of its members. On the other hand the spirit of such an organisation might not impossibly change. The league of satisfied nations might discover that it was to its real interest, or might be compelled by outer pressure, to make concessions to the excluded nations, and finally to admit them on certain terms. Such a development would be comparable to that by which autocracies have gradually become constitutional monarchies and republics.
But, however the League is formed, two things are essential to its continued existence. One is the acceptance of principles of international regulation, tending to reduce the incentive and increase the repugnance to war, in other words a measure of international agreement, secured either by an international body having legislative power, or in the beginning by a series of diplomatic arrangements as at present. The second essential is a machinery for enforcing agreements. Such machinery cannot bedispensed with. Peace cannot come by international machinery alone; neither can it come without machinery.
Peace between nations, like peace within a nation, does not depend upon force alone. Unless the effective majority of the nations (or of the citizens) are reconciled to the system to be enforced, unless they desire peace, whether international or internal, the application of force will be impossible. On the other hand, peace is equally impossible without force. If no compulsion can be applied the smallest minority can throw the world into war.
Such a compulsion of one nation by others does not necessarily mean a bombardment of cities or the shedding of blood. The force to be applied may be economic instead of military. No nation to-day, above all, no great industrial nation, is socially and economically self-sufficient, but all depend upon constant intercourse with other nations. It is therefore true, as one writer says,[1] that "if all or most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it (the offending nation) would soon be reduced to worse straits than those which Germany is now experiencing. If all diplomatic intercourse were withdrawn; if the international postal and telegraphic systems were closed to a public law-breaker; if all inter-State railway trains stopped at his frontiers; if no foreign ships entered his ports, and ships carrying his flags were excluded from every foreign port; if all coaling stations were closed to him; if no acts of sale or purchase were permitted to him in the outside world—if such a political and commercial boycott were seriously threatened, what country could long stand out against it? Nay, the far less rigorous measure of a financial boycott, the closure of all foreign exchanges to members of the outlaw State, the prohibition of allquotations on foreign Stock Exchanges, and of all dealings in stocks and shares, all discounting and acceptances of trade bills, all loans for public or private purposes, and all payments of moneys due—such a withdrawal of financial intercourse, if thoroughly applied and persisted in, would be likely, to bring to its senses the least scrupulous of States. Assuming that the members of the League included all or most of the important commercial and financial nations, and that they could be relied upon to press energetically all or even a few of these forms of boycott, could any country long resist such pressure? Would not the threat of it and the knowledge that it could be used form a potent restraint upon the law-breaker? Even the single weapon of a complete postal and telegraphic boycott would have enormous efficiency were it rigorously applied. Every section of the industrial and commercial community would bring organised pressure upon its government to withdraw from so intolerable a position and to return to its international allegiance."
It cannot be assumed that the attempt to organise such a boycott would be invariably successful. Not all nations would be equally injured, for while a boycott of Italy or Greece would be fatal, the United States or Russia might survive such economic pressure. A boycott would not be easy to enforce. It would be necessary to secure a concert of opinion and action in states, which, however they may agree upon any particular question, have widely divergent interests in other matters. Different boycotting nations would be variously affected. A boycott of Germany, while it might injure the United States or Japan would almost certainly ruin Holland and Belgium. Even were these small countries to be partially reimbursed for their special losses, they might still hesitate. There would also remain the fear that some of the boycotting nations wouldbe detached through economic bribery, with the result that the boycott broken, the nations faithful to their agreements would suffer. Finally, if Holland joined in a boycott of Germany, she might within a few days be compelled to resist a German invasion. An economic boycott might easily lead to war.
This obvious connection between economic and military compulsion is often disregarded by men who dislike war but are willing to commit their nation to participation in economic compulsion. The two, however, are inseparable, though they may not be inseparable for each nation. The boycotting nations must be prepared to prevent reprisals, must be willing if necessary to fight. It is not, however, necessary for each nation upholding international law to contribute equally to this military compulsion. Certain nations might use their armies and fleets while others, more remote from the struggle, might merely continue to boycott.
It would not be possible, to enforce a decision against nations having a preponderance of military power, nor even against a group with a large, though not the preponderant share of military and economic resources. Germany, Austria and Russia combined could not be compelled. The essence of the problem, however, is not the creation of a state of war between coalitions almost equal in size, but the gradual adoption of a policy of peace by securing a unity of interest among so large a group of nations that this group would hold a clearly preponderant power over any other group. Just as peace within a state cannot be secured where the law-breakers are a majority, so international peace cannot be secured unless the preponderance of power is clearly on the side of peace.
Even with a majority of nations agreeing "in principle," the difficulties of actually creating a League ofPeace and International Polity would be great. To carry out such a plan, to work out modes of action which will conform to the world's evolving sense of the necessity for more stable international relations, requires an international machinery, concerning which nations and classes will disagree. Some channel, however, is necessary for the flow of the peace forces resident in the world. A machinery must be created which will approximate in some degree to that by which a nation, composed of conflicting classes and economic groups, manages to secure a degree of common interest and action among such groups. There must be an international executive, an international legislative body and some approach to an international court. That there are immense difficulties in the creation of such a machinery is obvious and admitted. That the machinery cannot work perfectly, that it may repeatedly break down; that it can be perfected only through trial and error, are facts, which though in themselves discouraging, need not lead to the abandonment of the effort. There is nothing inherently impossible in the gradual creation and elaboration of such machinery. The development of the future lies in that direction.[2]
Let the machinery be ever so perfect, however, it is useless unless principles are formulated which meet the requirements of the nations which are to be bound over to keep the peace. A league to enforce peace is a futility unless it is also a league to determine international polity. Peace cannot be negative, a mere abstention from war. It must be a dynamic process, an adjustment of the nations of the world to their international environment.
[1] Hobson (John A.), "Towards International Government," New York (The Macmillan Co.), 1915, pp. 90, 91.
[2] It is not pertinent to this book to discuss in detail the plans which are being formed for the gradual evolution of such international machinery. For readers who desire to secure aprècisof such arrangements, the book of John A. Hobson, "Towards International Government," is recommended.
We have seen that the problem of peace cannot be solved without at the same time avoiding the economic conflicts now sundering the nations. We have seen that these divisive interests which are real and vital, can be accommodated neither by the force of good will alone (although good will is essential), nor by an appeal to national unselfishness nor by proposals which merely mean the perpetuation of thestatus quo. We have also seen that in the last instance force, or at least the threat of force is necessary, that this force cannot be applied by the United States alone or by a group of two or three beneficent powers, but only by an all-inclusive league of nations, acting according to established rules and with a machinery previously elaborated. Only so can a programme of peace be made effective.
Such a programme will consist of three elements. The first is the freedom of the seas; the second is a joint imperialism; the third is the promotion of an economic internationalism.
The freedom of the seas is necessary because without it the other elements cannot be supplied. No division or joint use of colonies will promote peace unless each nation is assured of continuous access to such colonies. A promise of the products and the profits of the backward countries will not satisfy a nation if it believes that at the first outbreak of war it will be deprived not only of colonial but also of all commercial rights.
In recent decades the problem of the freedom of the seas has grown in significance as access to the oceans has become more important and the nations increasingly interdependent. To-day trans-oceanic colonies are worthless, commerce is insecure and a satisfactory economic life at home difficult without such access. In peace the vessels of all nations may travel anywhere, but in war a belligerent's merchant vessels may be seized and confiscated and her shores blockaded. She may even be deprived of the right to import goods through neighbouring neutral countries.
In the advocacy of the freedom of the seas the United States has taken a leading part, while England has pursued a policy of obstruction. In this respect England has been a menace to the world's peace. She has stood fairly consistently against a modernisation of naval law; has insisted on the right of capture of merchant vessels and the right to blockade, and in the present war has reverted, under grave provocation it is true, to the most rigorous maritime repression. It is by means of our influence on England that we can take the first step towards creating a better international system.
If we are to become friends with England, the price must be the freedom of the seas. It may seem incongruous to suggest as a condition of friendship that our friend weaken herself, but as will later be indicated such a surrender of rights by Great Britain might in the end redound to her security and greater strength. The reason is obvious. The insecurity of each nation is the weakness of all. So long as a nation is insecure it will arm. So long as one nation arms all must arm. Moreover, England is peculiarly vulnerable. The British Empire is threatened whenever any nation seeks an outlet to the sea. Nations will build navies against Great Britain so long aswithout navies their commerce and colonies are threatened.
The case of the German-British conflict is in point. England lies on Germany's naval base. It is an unfortunate thing for Germany, and indeed for England, but it is a geographical fact and unalterable. For Germany this situation is tolerable so long as peace endures, but when war breaks out, all her commerce is stopped. The future of Germany depends upon her developing industrially to a point where she can no longer feed her population from her own farms. She needs, if not colonies, at least markets. She requires a foreign base for her industry and uninterrupted access to that foreign base both in war and peace. She can be throttled, strangled, starved under the present usages of sea war. The war may not be of her own making. In other words twenty or fifty years of commercial development may be swept away at a moment's notice in a war, declared, it may be, by England for purely commercial purposes.
To these apprehensions of the Germans, England may answer that in peace times German commerce is secure. But immunity in war as well as in peace is necessary. Therefore, the Germans do what other nations would do in like circumstances, take the matter into their own hands. They build a navy strong enough to make England hesitate to attack their merchant marine. It is an understandable attempt to protect what is an absolutely vital interest. But for Germany to build a navy capable of measuring arms with the British Navy is intolerable to Great Britain. It is useless for Germany to protest that she will not use her fleet aggressively. So long as she can use it aggressively, she is a menace to England's life. England must prevent Germany from buildinga navy equal in power, for if she is defeated at sea, her fate is sealed. Germany must be threatened on land by France and Russia or she will be able to devote her energies exclusively to her navy and thus out-build England. Given this situation, an Anglo-German war is inevitable.
Nor is the situation in the North Sea unique. Once this conflict of interest begins, it spreads everywhere. Germany may not have Morocco or Tripoli because with a foothold and a naval base on the Mediterranean, she could exert pressure there in order to change conditions elsewhere. Similarly the Pacific commerce of Russia is at the mercy of Japan; her Black Sea traffic at the mercy of Turkey, or whoever controls Turkey, her Baltic Sea traffic at the mercy of Germany, Denmark and England. No wonder Russia demands Constantinople, which will at least open the inner doors of the Black Sea. But if she gets Constantinople, she controls the whole Danube traffic of Austria, Hungary and Roumania, and she herself is menaced by British and French fleets at Malta, Gibraltar and Aden.
What is the probable, or at least possible, policy of Russia in such circumstances? Not immediately, not inopportunely, but in the right season? Clearly it is to build a navy which will secure her control of the Mediterranean and thus protect her outgoing trade from Odessa and Batum as well as her incoming trade. Although not pre-eminently a naval power, Russia must ultimately seek to accomplish what Germany tried to do—make it dangerous for England to menace her Mediterranean and Red Sea trade even in war times. But to secure naval supremacy in the Mediterranean means to threaten Egypt and India, thus breaking the neck of theBritish Empire. Given the present unfreedom of the sea, therefore, Great Britain's vital interests oppose those of Russia as they now oppose those of Germany.
This is the meaning of the historic British policy of the right of capture at sea, the right of blockade, the right to use naval power to work injury to the trade of hostile countries and to prevent colonial expansion. The policy is a menace to the British Empire and to the independence of Great Britain herself. It stimulates other nations to outbuild Great Britain. And in the end that is at least a possible contingency. If a generation or two from now Russia and Germany should unite, Russia attacking in the Mediterranean and aiding Germany in the North Sea, the British Empire would be put to a severe test. There might be no way of saving Egypt and India or Holland and Denmark and these outposts gone, Great Britain might be menaced and attacked at leisure. If her navies were defeated she would starve. The rules of naval warfare, which Britain has so long upheld, would be turned against her.
It is thus to Great Britain's real interest to surrender this doctrine. In the present war it has been of value, but only because Germany and Austria were surrounded by powerful enemies, and all adjacent neutral powers with sea bases were small enough to be intimidated. The blockade of a nation is to-day of little value unless adjacent nations can also be blockaded. The railroad unites all land nations. If France had been neutral in this war, Germany could not have been blockaded, for a British threat to blockade France would have thrown her into the arms of Germany. Even if Italy had remained neutral, an effective blockade might have forced Italy into the war on the side of the Teutonic powers. England is using a weaponwhich at the most means a serious loss to her enemies but which effectively turned against her would mean instant death.
There are certain powerful groups in England who are obstinately opposed to any revision of the sea law in favour of neutral and belligerent nations. They feel to-day, as Pitt felt in 1801, when the doctrine was advanced that a neutral flag might protect enemy's property. "Shall we," asked Pitt, "give up our maritime consequence and expose ourselves to scorn, to derision, and contempt? No man can deplore more than I do the loss of human blood—the calamities and distresses of war; but will you silently stand by and, acknowledging these monstrous and unheard-of principles of neutrality, insure your enemy against the effects of your hostility!... Whatever shape it assumes, it (this doctrine) is a violation of the rights of England, and imperiously calls upon Englishmen to resist it, even to the last shilling and the last drop of blood, rather than tamely submit to degrading consequences or weakly yield the rights of this country to shameful usurpation."[1] This doctrine, rather than accept which Pitt was willing that England should fight to the death, was quietly accepted by Great Britain in the Declaration of Paris (1856) and, half a century later (1909), the Declaration of London protected neutral rights even more strongly. But the spirit of Pitt is by no means dead. The Declaration of London failed of ratification in Parliament partly because of mere factional opposition and partly because of ancient pride in England's naval supremacy. It was held that Britain being the strongest naval power should uphold all naval rightsand all necessary naval aggressions both against belligerents and neutrals.
The argument advanced in support of this position is that so long as the enemy disregards international law in land warfare Britain has the right to disregard the laws of sea war. If Germany violates Belgium's neutrality, why should England surrender her power to put the maximum pressure upon her unscrupulous enemy?
This argument, however, begs the whole question, whether it is to Britain's real advantage that the naval law go back to what it was in the days of Pitt and Napoleon instead of being progressively liberalised. Britain is not only the greatest naval but overwhelmingly the greatest maritime nation in the world. She has something to gain and everything to lose from a reaction towards the unregulated sea-warfare of 1801 (and 1916); she has much to gain and little to lose from the establishment of a true freedom of the sea.
So long as England persists in a reactionary naval policy she will be menaced by every nation which feels itself menaced by her, and by every future development of naval warfare. The harshness of the British attitude in this matter of naval warfare leads to such brutal reprisals as that of the German submarine campaign against merchantmen. That campaign was not without its influence in laming the commercial activity of Great Britain; had the war broken out ten years later, with Germany better equipped with submarines, the result might have been far more serious. A future submarine war carried on by France against England might be disastrous to the island kingdom. Even the German campaign, hampered as it was by the fewness and remoteness of the German naval bases, might easily have had a crippling effect upon British industrial life but for the pressure brought to bearupon Germany by the United States. In the long run England cannot have it both ways. She must either defend her commerce from submarines alone or else accept a revision of the naval law.
Fortunately there are men in Great Britain who accept this broader view. "One of the promises of victory," writes the Englishman, H. Sidebotham, "is that Great Britain will be able to review her whole naval policy in the light of the experience gained in the war. Sir Edward Grey has himself indicated that such a review may be appropriate in the negotiations for peace after victory has been won."[2]
Towards such a change in attitude the public opinion of the United States can largely contribute. While the majority of Americans side strongly with Britain and her allies, they make little distinction in their thought between a detested German militarism and a detested British navalism. Our traditional attitude is one of hostility to the pretensions of the mistress of the sea. "How many more instances do we need," writes Prof. J. W. Burgess, "to demonstrate to us that the system of Colonial Empire with the dominance of the seas, and the unlimited territorial expansion which it claims, is not compatible with the freedom and prosperity of the world? Can any American with half an eye fail to see that our greatest interest in the outcome of this war is that the seas shall become free and neutral, and that, shall they need policing, this shall become international; that the open door for trade and commerce shall take the place of colonial restrictions or preferences, or influences and shall, in times of peace, be the universal principle; that private property upon the high seas shall be inviolable; that trade between neutrals in time of war shall be entirelyunrestricted, and that contraband of war shall have an international definition?"[3]
Even if England did not recognise her true national interest in a revision of the sea-law, we could not co-operate with her in any broad attempt to establish the conditions of peace in Europe without such a surrender on her part of rights which have become indefensible. It is not, of course, to be anticipated that a complete freedom of the sea will be immediately established, but unless the nations, not controlling the ocean, are given reasonable assurances of safety for their commerce and colonial development, each new war will merely lay the seeds of new wars.
To establish the freedom of the sea, five things are desirable:
(1) The abolition of the right of capture.
(2) The abolition of the commercial blockade. This would permit the blockading of a naval port or base, the exclusion or destruction of naval vessels, the searching of merchant vessels for absolute and conditional contraband, and the blockade of a city or port where the naval blockade was merely the completion of a land blockade, but it would give to all ordinary merchant vessels, either enemy or neutral, the same access to enemy ports that they enjoy in peace, without any further delay than is necessary for the prevention of non-neutral acts by merchantmen.
(3) The establishment of international prize courts and the submission of controversies to such courts.
(4) The internationalization of such straits as the Dardanelles, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Kiel Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, as far as that can be achieved by international agreement.