1. Germany should have been broken up. No peace should have been made with Germany as a whole, but separate treaties of peacewith Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, Prussia, etc. These states should have been provided with separate systems of coinage, postage, tariffs, laws, etc., so as to make the diversity stable and permanent. They should be forbidden ever to unite. Also, France should have annexed a large part of Germany; not up to the Rhine—which was the view of Marshal Foch—but up to the Elbe. The occupation of this territory might impose a burden on France, but burdens must be borne when such important purposes are involved. And after all the cost could be charged to the Germans! . . .
As this simple precaution was not taken, the next best thing is to keep Germany weak. Starve her by the blockade till sheer misery produces a Bolshevik revolution and society collapses in common ruin. Then apply the indefinite indemnity, not from the desire to get money, but to prevent Germany again raising her head.
2. Since France's late allies cannot be relied upon, she must make by diplomacy new allies whose hands she can force, and who occupy aconvenient geographical situation. Poland is in just the right place. Let France help Poland and stimulate Polish ambitions. She too is a nation maddened by suffering and now dazzled by success. A great imperialist Poland, on bad terms with her neighbours, but backed by France, will need a large and effective army, and will be ready to strike at Germany's rear the moment she attempts to move westward. Unfortunately, Poland is apt to be on bad terms with Russia; and as things now are Russia is so much the enemy of the Entente that she is thrown into the arms of Germany. That is deplorable and must not be allowed to continue. The Bolsheviks must be overthrown and a Government set up in Russia which is dependent for its existence on French support. As an additional safeguard, perhaps it will be necessary to secure a pro-French Hungary, to back up the pro-French Poland. But we must not despair yet of overthrowing the Bolsheviks.
3. Lastly, France herself needs more soldiers. And she knows where to get them! The late King Leopold of Belgium once said to M.Hanotaux, "Qu'est-ce que vous cherchez en Afrique, vous autres Français?" and M. Hanotaux replied, "Sire, des soldats!" France during the war established conscription in her African territories and, in spite of a somewhat bloody rebellion by the ignorant savages, who thought the slave trade was being reëstablished, succeeded in importing to France a black army which at one time numbered 600,000 fighting men. With a little more energy and greatly increased territories, that number might be trebled. France is a smaller nation than Germany; but France plus Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, Senegambia, French Congo, and the new German territories is a much larger nation than Germany without colonies. And blacks fortunately have not the same rights as white men!
A permanently wrecked Germany, vast black armies for France, armed allies always ready on Germany's eastern frontier; with these conditions fulfilled, France, it is hoped by these politicians, may at last breathe freely.
What is wrong with this policy? You maycall it devilish, if you will, since it is based on the deliberate and artificial creation of human misery; but is it bad policy? After all, air-bombs and poison gas and the like may be called devilish. But, devilish or not, they have sometimes to be used. If Germany is certainly and confessedly looking out for the next opportunity of escaping from the consequences of the treaty and retrieving her fortunes on the battlefield, is not France bound to take every precaution to see that Germany shall never be strong enough to do so with success? The next war will be far worse than the last. The terms imposed on the beaten party will be even more desolating and destructive. France is probably a less vigorous plant than her enemy. She has failed to kill Germany, but Germany might succeed in killing her.
It seems that Germany is absolutely bound to fight, if there is no other way of recovering her freedom and her right to live, while France is absolutely bound to hold her enemy down mercilessly, if there is no other way of securing her own safety.
But perhaps after all there is. Last among the Fourteen Points came the proposal to found "A general Association of Nations under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to small and great states alike." The Treaty of Versailles has after all two faces. It had to express two great waves of feeling and two international necessities. Mr. Wilson was not so utterly "bamboozled" as Mr. Keynes would have us believe. General Smuts and Lord Robert Cecil were not so utterly without influence on the settlement. The least depressing paragraphs in the Allied Reply to the German delegation are those in which they explain that the terrific severity of the greater part of the treaty applies only to a "transition period" of punishment, of reparation and of trial, at the end of which they see the realization of Mr. Wilson's promises. "The conditions of peace contain some provisions for the future which may outlast the transitionperiod during which the economic balance"—between Germany and the invaded countries—"is to be restored; and a reciprocity is foreseen after that period which is very clearly that equality of trade conditions for which President Wilson has stipulated." The phrasing of the paragraph is awkward, but the main drift is clear. The Fourteen Points are accepted, but adjourned; when Germany has been punished and reparation made, they will come into force. "The Allied and Associated Powers look forward to the time when the League of Nations established by this treaty shall extend its membership to all peoples." "They see no reason why Germany should not become a member of the League in the early future," provided she satisfies certain tests. "It has never been their intention that Germany or any other Power should be indefinitely excluded from the League of Nations." They are convinced that the Covenant of the League "introduces an element of progress into the relations of peoples which will develop and strengthen to the advantage of justice and of peace."
This is as it should be; but the world does not stand still while Germany is making reparation and being taught gradually to love her chastisers. If the League "introduces an element of progress," the sooner it gets to work the better. It is only too clear that every month which passes with the League entirely dominated by England, France, and Italy encourages and deepens the suspicion with which the League is regarded by its critics. I say nothing of American criticisms, in which many factors coöperate. But the Swiss Federal Council, in the very able and persuasive message which it issued to the Assembly on February 17, 1920, in favour of joining the League, has to deal with this suspicion. "One has been tempted at times to consider the League as an alliance of the conquerors against the conquered. The fact that Germany, Austria, and the former Russian Empire remain provisionally excluded from the League may have given a semblance of truth to this manner of thinking." The suspicion is afterwards described as "this apparently accurate criticism." Switzerland as a whole hasfortunately rejected the suspicion and by a small majority joined the League. But in most of Central Europe the League of Nations movement is strangled in its birth by the general feeling that the present League means merely the Entente Powers and their clients, and the elements for starting a counter-league are consolidating month by month. This counter-league would probably not be an open and confessed alliance. But Russia, Germany, and the United States are still outside, and there are many unpaid grudges amongst the Moslems of Asia. The test which is exacted by Article I from any new state desiring to become a member of the League is that "it shall give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to observe its international obligations." Interpreted with theological strictness, this would probably result in the rejection of all candidates, to say nothing of the expulsion of many of the original members. Perfect sincerity in observing unpleasant obligations is not a common characteristic of human societies. But in the ordinary sense of the words the test is already satisfiedby Germany and Austria and most of the succession states. The Assembly of the League meets for the first time on November 15, 1920. It ought not to dissolve without admitting to its membership Germany and Austria, as well as several other candidates who have already applied. At the moment of writing (November, 1920), Lord Grey, Lord Selborne, and Mr. Barnes have issued a joint appeal for the immediate admission of Germany, which has long been the accepted policy of the League of Nations Union. There are many obstacles, but the result will doubtless be known before these words are in print. Fortunately, the admission of new members is decided by a two-thirds majority of the Assembly and does not require a unanimous vote. Once the League is established on a broad base, including the conquered nations on equal terms with the victorious, the prospect of that war of revenge which has hitherto seemed almost inevitable will dwindle and become remote.
The hope expressed above has not beenrealized. Austria, Bulgaria, and many less important states applied for admission to the League and were accepted, but French feeling was known to be very strong, and Germany did not even apply. Had she done so she would probably have had a majority in her favour, and it was considered until the beginning of March, 1921, that she was certain of admission at the next meeting of the Assembly in September. But in the meantime untoward events have taken place.
The French Government, like the English, obtained success at the elections by wild promises to make Germany pay all the costs of the war. As M. Poincaré has observed, "the French people will not understand how the victors in a great war can be on the verge of bankruptcy." Consequently they think their rulers are cheating them. Educated people, in France as in England, have long since ceased to expect much from German indemnities, but the Governments still depend on their appeal to mob-psychology; and it was believed that if M. Briand ventured to make any concessions in thedirection of reason or moderation he would lose his majority in the Chamber. The proposals made at the Inter-Allied Conference at Brussels and drawn up by the French expert, M. Seydoux, had been silently dropped as unsatisfying; the subsequent British proposals made at Boulogne had been rejected for the same reason. It was necessary, however, to make some definite proposals to Germany without much further delay, since the treaty had laid down May 1, 1921, as the time for a settlement. Germany was by that time to have paid a thousand million pounds on account, and was to learn the extent, finite or infinite, of the total bill. Mr. Lloyd George, as might have been expected, showed much sympathy with M. Briand in his awkward position, and agreed to a demand for reparations on a scale which was obviously fantastic. It began, reasonably enough, with a system of annuities, though the first figure was probably too high and the last figures can scarcely have been meant seriously. Germany was to pay £150,000,000 a year for the first five years; then the annual sum was toincrease at intervals for the extraordinary period of forty-two years, towards the end of which time Germany was expected to pay annually £300,000,000, or half as much again every year as the total indemnity exacted from France after the war of 1870. Even that was not enough for a population which had been sedulously fed on lies by a class of politician who at times seem to possess among them no single sane and honest man. And an additional payment was demanded of a yearly sum equivalent to a duty of twelve per centad valoremon all German exports.
Opinion in Germany was sharply divided. All they had to pay with was an enormous deficit on the Budget, with the prospect of presently losing the Silesian coal-mines and having prohibitive duties placed by the Allies upon their exports. One party insisted that the Government should make no promise which it could not expect to perform; another, that what Germany wanted was peace, and that they had better sign anything required of them. The first party, on the whole, carried the day. TheGerman delegation in London made a counter-proposal based, very sensibly, on the idea of finding the present value of the forty-two-year annuities and raising that sum by means of a loan; but as they worked out the idea they favoured Germany on every detailed calculation to an extent which they must have known to be unacceptable. Apparently they expected a long and serious bargaining march. But, to most people's surprise, Mr. George leapt with alacrity at the prospect of a rupture. The proposal was rejected with every semblance of virtuous indignation. No time was allowed for the delegation to consult the German Government. A hurried second proposal, to pay the terms demanded for five years and then have the matter reconsidered, was tossed aside without consideration, and French and British troops proceeded to invade Germany, occupy more territory, and set up a new and artificial customs-barrier in the most unsuitable places, at which they proceeded themselves to collect the German customs.
The plan is very expensive, and utterlyunprofitable. It involves a straining if not a breach of the treaty,[3]and it is likely, if any untoward event occurs, to provoke a war of the most humiliating and embittered kind—the war of a desperate and helpless population trying to rid themselves of foreign oppressors. But it has saved M. Briand's Government. If he had agreed to accept any German terms whatever, he would have been upset for not exacting more. But if he marches French and British troops into the heart of Germany no one can accuse him of lack of spirit. So for the present all is well; and as for the future, it is conceivable that the Germans will give way and makesome impossible promise. That will increase M. Briand's prestige. It is more likely that they will simply sit still and let the Allied armies do their worst. Then there will be a chance of carrying out one of the darling aims of the French chauvinists, and annexing, or at least separating from Germany, all the German provinces which they occupy.
In face of these lunatic proceedings the German Government has behaved with considerable dignity and good sense, though naturally the German newspapers are running a little wild. It has announced its intention of appealing to the Assembly of the League of Nations, and although, not being a member, Germany cannot herself raise the subject, it may be taken as certain that some member will take it up on her behalf. This produces a most critical situation.
According to the Covenant, Article III, the Assembly may be summoned to meet "from time to time as occasion may require." But presumably it is the Council which decides whether occasion does require it or not, and noone can expect the Council to favour Germany's appeal. The appeal will only be considered when the Assembly has its next regular meeting in September. We shall then see whether the Assembly possesses the force and courage necessary to discuss freely and, if necessary, to condemn the actions of the two leading European Powers; or if the two can successfully silence all criticism. For my own part I think the discussion will take place; and that, for the first time since the war, the voice of an impartial third party wilt be heard in discussing the terms imposed on Germany by her conquerors. That does not mean the realization of the "enthronement of public right on the common law of nations," but it is one of the first steps toward it.
The League of Nations is in a position to say to France: "You are afraid of another attack by Germany; and to avert that danger you propose in various ways to follow a policy which will plunge Europe into continued distress. We hereby guarantee you against attack. Thirty-ninenations at present, who will shortly be increased to fifty-one, if not more, have signed a definite and unqualified contract to preserve your 'existing political independence and territorial integrity' against any 'external aggression'; and further, if you are attacked in such a way as not actually to threaten your territory or independence, all the States of the League will consider that an act of war has been committed against themselves, will apply the complete economic boycott to your enemy, and arrange plans for giving you immediate military support. We offer you here a far more effective guarantee of safety than you can possibly attain by your own diplomacy. But we demand in return that your foreign policy shall be frankly and sincerely a League of Nations policy; that you shall not make secret treaties, not set up inequitable tariffs, not plot the ruin of your late enemies or any other people; but work as a loyal member of the League with a view to the welfare of the whole."
The League says to Germany: "You complain of the undue severity of the treaty and theimpossibility of carrying out its economic provisions. Commissions already exist, and you have taken part in them, for discussing these latter and fixing the terms of the reparation which you owe. But, beyond that, if there is any clause in the treaty which appears to any member of the League as 'threatening to disturb international peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends,' it will, under Article XI, be brought before the League and considered. Further, if any clause in the treaty appears to 'have become inapplicable' or to give rise to 'international conditions which might endanger the peace of the world,' under Article XXIII the Assembly of the League may at any time 'advise their reconsideration.' You complain that the terms of the present treaty were imposed upon you, without discussion, by implacable enemies who had you at their mercy; that you have been made a sort of outlaw nation, without freedom, without colonies, without ships, sitting apart while the world is administered by your enemies. But at our Assembly table you will sit as an equaland free member, with the same rights as those who were lately your conquerors. We submit to you that this gives you a far better chance of improving your condition than another war could. Your lot must be for some time a hard one. That is inevitable, and we cannot think it unjust. You challenged the Entente to war, you staked all on victory, and you were beaten. Now you have to make reparation. But the recuperative power of a great nation is immense; and wherever you have been subjected to a definitely unjust or dangerous condition, we offer you a remedy. Wherever you may have a dispute with any other Power, we offer you a Court of Arbitration as impartially constituted as the wit of man could devise."
At present neither party quite believes this guarantee. If they did, it would probably be enough for them. It used to be said of Sir Edward Grey in the Balkan Conferences that he was not only sincere; he had the power of making other people see that he was sincere. If Europe is to be saved from new Great Wars, thePowers of the League must first of all be sincere in their undertakings, and next, they must convince the world in general of their sincerity. To that subject we must return later.
But the world is not merely threatened by the prospect of future wars. It is filled with wars at the present moment. There are quarrels and bickerings between most of the newly liberated states in eastern Europe; there is a war, sometimes avowed and sometimes underground, between Communist Russia and all her neighbours and rivals, a war whose tentacles reach far throughout Europe and Asia; and there are wars against the British and French in various parts of the East. Let us briefly touch upon a few sample cases.
The simplest case is Syria. In 1915, during the war, a Syrian National Committee, including representatives from Damascus and Mosul, negotiated with us through Sherif Husein, and we signed a document promising to "recognize and uphold Arab independence" in an areaincluding the whole of Arabia, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, except (1) Aden and (2) the Syrian coast. Within the independent area we merely claimed for ourselves "a measure of administrative control" in Bagdad and Bosra—not in Mosul—and reserved any special interests of France. The French were informed of the negotiations immediately. They expressed themselves content with the possession of the Syrian coast, and agreed in our promises to Husein. On the strength of this agreement the Hejaz revolted, and Feisul's army, consisting mainly of Syrian and Mesopotamian soldiers who had formerly been in the Turkish service, fought as our allies to the end of the war. An attempted rising in Syria proper was crushed with great severity by the Turks.
In 1918 the Syrians welcomed the Entente armies as liberators, and were again promised their national independence, though this time it was to be under the guidance of one of the Entente Powers as mandatory. They asked that the mandatory should be England, but England had too much on her hands. The Syriansnext asked for America; but America refused all mandates. France, meantime, had always claimed special rights in Syria, and England by a treaty made during the war had recognized Syria as a French interest. If they must be under France, the Syrian representatives specially demanded pledges that the government should be a civil government, that a certain degree of independence should be allowed to the natives, and that the country should not be occupied by French troops. How far these pledges were given and broken by the French; how far it was only we ourselves who gave assurances which we had neither the right nor the power to carry out, and thus unconsciously deceived Feisul, these are questions still in dispute. It seems unfortunately certain that the Syrians considered themselves betrayed. In the end, Syria was occupied by French troops; the native government was not recognized, but dispersed; there were raids and pitched battles, and the Emir Feisul, one of our most popular heroes during the Great War, was expelled from his throne and country. He is now an exile, andwas for a time officially forbidden to land in England.
France so far has neither accepted nor asked for any mandate from the League of Nations, and appears not fully to realize the obligations undertaken by her in signing the Covenant of the League, or the pledge repeated in the Reply of the Allied Powers to Germany, "that the Mandatory Powers, in so far as they may be appointed trustees by the League of Nations, will derive no benefits from such trusteeship."
In Mesopotamia the British established themselves during the war after a long and chequered campaign by defeating the Turks and capturing Bagdad. The Indian soldiers and officials who were in command showed the most praiseworthy zeal and energy in proceeding at once to develop the country: to drain and irrigate, to plant crops, to establish order and good government in regions which had not known such things since a remote antiquity. The English were welcomed as liberators and made explicit promises to set up an independent Arab kingdom under a "measure of Britishadministrative control." So much propagandist literature was poured forth on the glories of the independent Arab nation which the English were to create, that serious discontent was caused in Egypt. "Is a half-naked Arab to have independence, and am I not good enough to have even self-government?" wrote a highly educated Egyptian to a British official. Meantime the actual government of Mesopotamia became more and more severely effective, and remained entirely concentrated in the hands of the British. The expenses were enormous and the rate of taxation per head appears to have risen to four times what it had been under the Turks. The productivity of the country, however, was so great as to hold out a prospect of almost making up the loss, and the important oil-wells at Mosul were expected to do so completely. The native cultivators profited by the improved harvests and the increased area of cultivation, and the expenses of government were in part to be met out of the future oil profits. And the best British administrators were certainly beloved by their people.
The educated classes in Bagdad, the sheikhs and the ex-Turkish officials, became restive at the high taxation and the indefinite delay of "Arab independence." The turbulent desert tribes and the disorderly elements in general were disgusted at the good policing. But there was no general discontent, because personal assurances were given to leading Arabs that the Covenant of the League of Nations, which Great Britain had signed, laid down definitely that Mesopotamia was to be recognized provisionally as an independent nation and that the mandate was to be given to Great Britain. There would be, it was promised, a native Government with a British Resident to advise it, as in an Indian native state. Doubtless the Government would also ask for other help from England, especially in the matter of public works, irrigation, and the engineering of the oil-wells.
But the League issued no mandate. According to rumour, it had offered a scheme of mandate to the Great Powers concerned, and one at least of them had refused the terms. Theprecious oil, it was discovered, had already been divided by a private treaty between France and England, which left only a small fraction for the Mesopotamians and none for the rest of the world. There was no attempt to set up an Arab Government. Some beginnings were occasionally made of associating Arab officials with the Englishmen who did the real work of governing. But they were not whole-hearted. A letter was accidentally divulged in which an English soldier said of the high Arab official attached to him, "I will soon make him lick my boots." There were symptoms of disaffection, non-payment of taxes, the resurgence of old discredited Turkish and German agents, open rebellions. And the Government replied by numerous executions and punitive expeditions. The bombing aeroplane, which had revealed itself as a very convenient weapon of war, proved an utterly disastrous instrument of police. The British liberators, who had come by the special desire of the population to establish a free Arab nation helped by friendly advice from British Residents, ended, accordingto Colonel Lawrence's estimate, in killing ten thousand Arabs and setting the whole country in a blaze of war. An army of over one hundred thousand men is now reconquering it. And at the same time, perhaps at the eleventh hour and perhaps too late altogether, that section in the British Government which believed in the League of Nations and wished scrupulously to carry out in victory the pledges it had given in time of distress, prevailed to bring about a definite change of policy. Sir Percy Cox and Mr. Philby were sent to Mesopotamia with instructions, so it was stated, to reverse the previous policy and try to set up that independent Arab Government which we had promised in 1915 and again in 1917, and ought to have set working before the end of 1919. The "rebellion" will doubtless be crushed, and the native Government may or not be successfully organized. There is a strong desire among the Arab leaders to have it based on a treaty of alliance with Great Britain after the Egyptian model, and not on Article XXII of the Covenant. In any case the task is infinitely more difficult than itwas before so much blood was shed, and the original friendship of the Arabs turned to hatred. On simple men executive action makes a much deeper impression than policy. In Mesopotamia our policy itself was bad because it was not consistent. It was a muddle of two contradictory policies, resulting in confusion and hypocrisy. But the executive action seems to have been such as to make the chances of even the best policy very precarious. A government which multiplies the taxes by four and shoots and hangs its subjects in batches is seldom excused because of its good drainage or its progressive ideas.
The story in Egypt is shorter and perhaps less unhappy, but essentially similar. Early in the war, when Turkey joined the enemy, we declared a British protectorate over Egypt, accompanied by a promise to give the country independence or free institutions at the end of the war. This in itself was a perfectly good and defensible policy, though, to be correct, it should have had the concurrence of Egypt. But in the course of the war Egypt becamefull of discontent. Experienced officials were wanted elsewhere, and inexperienced substitutes made mistakes. Labour in great quantities was required for the Army, and was obtained through native contractors or headmen, who practised the ordinary Oriental methods of extortion and corruption while professing to act by orders of the English. The peasant who was dragged off to forced labour, or compelled to buy his freedom by heavy bribes, blamed the British for both. At one time Egypt was garrisoned by large numbers of Australian troops, who had the habit of thinking of all Asiatics as "blackfellows," and whose ways of dealing with "blackfellows" were not of the gentlest. The seed was thus sown of a passionate hatred, partly just and partly unjust; and feeling was already ripe for explosion when it transpired at the end of the war that the British Government had no apparent intention of fulfilling their promise to confer on Egypt "free institutions." Open rebellion was impossible, owing to the presence of overpowering numbers of British troops; but a time of dangerand infinite trouble, well controlled by Lord Allenby, led at last to the appointment of a Commission under Lord Milner, which grasped its almost desperate problem with great courage and skill.
Among other curious misfortunes, it turned out that the word "protectorate" had been translated into Arabic by a term which denoted the sort of protection that is extended to an outcast or a person with no national rights. The Commissioners were met on their arrival by a universal boycott, and by constant threats of assassination. They lived in considerable danger, and no Egyptian would be seen speaking to them. But tact and patience gradually broke down the boycott; and a much larger measure of agreement was obtained with Zaghlul and the moderate Nationalists than had at the outset seemed possible. After inquiry, the Commission has taken the line of recommending, first, the cancellation of the Capitulations, or special privileges granted to European states, which have paralyzed the progress of Egypt for several generations; theseparation from Egypt of the Canal zone, as a special British interest and of vital importance to the Empire; the retention of British advisers in two posts, the ministries of Justice and of Finance—a safeguard without which the European Powers would not consent to forgo the special protection of the Capitulations; and in other respects the establishment of Egypt as an independent national state. As far as is possible to forecast, it looks as if this settlement would succeed.
The history of recent events in India is too large and complicated a subject to be dealt with here. But in its main outline it has been curiously similar to that of the other regions of the East. A wonderful response from almost the whole continent to the need of Great Britain during the war; blunders of the War Office and reactions of discontent; German propaganda; Turkish and Pan-Islamic intrigue; repressive Press Acts and Conspiracy Acts; passive resistance, dangerous riots, and widespread conspiracies; the severe and sometimes lawless coercion of the Punjab; the savage massacre ofAmritsar, and at last, amid great obstructions and hesitations, the passing of the Montagu-Chelmsford Act and the conferring of a new and liberal constitution upon India. It is the same story as in Egypt and Mesopotamia. So much time was wasted in doing the wrong thing, that when at last resort was had to the right thing the right time was past. The Indian Government was faced with great difficulties and very real dangers. Its errors have been so signal and notorious that public opinion is apt to forget or ignore the admirable skill and patience with which most officials steered their districts through periods of extreme strain. But reforms long promised were delayed until too late. The executive plunged into excesses which will not be forgotten for centuries. And when the long-hoped-for reforms at last have come, it may be that they come to a people too exasperated to give them a fair trial.
The policies here described have been so full of errors that it is hard to derive from them avery clear moral. Government without principle has many conveniences; if life consisted of isolated moments it might be entirely successful. But life is continuous, and human beings have memories and expectations. And almost any policy that is continuous and consistent and true to itself is more likely to succeed in the end than a mixture of momentary expedients and plunges for safety. It is conceivable that a perfectly resolute and unfaltering military coercion of India, Egypt, and Mesopotamia might have succeeded. But such a policy, if it was ever possible, is certainly so no longer; and also it would hardly be a policy for avoiding international strife. And that is the subject we are considering.
If we look below the mistakes of policy and administration committed by the British or French Governments, we find underneath the surface a profound and instinctive resentment of the Moslem East against the Western Powers. The Western Powers, which for convenience we term Christian, have been for some centuries far more efficient than any Moslemstate. The West has increasingly taken charge of the East; beaten it, managed it, "run" it, governed it, and in some cases exploited it. Western government, or at least British government, has been just, incorruptible, impartial, strong, intelligent, far beyond ordinary Eastern standards. It may have been unsympathetic and grossly expensive; it may, in spite of the unexampled personal integrity of the whole governing class, have led to the presence in Eastern countries of undesirable money-seekers. But it has been, on the whole, essentially and undeniably good, efficient government, backed by a military power which committed few excesses, lived on its own pay, and never failed in an emergency. No one who studies even superficially the history of average Oriental governments, from Morocco or Bokhara to Oudh, can be surprised or sorry that they have been superseded by the better governments of the West. The peoples of the East themselves have gained by Western penetration; nay, more, they are conscious of their need of the West. But they have had too muchof it; they resent it, and they are frightened of it. The Moslem nations have lost their independence one after another. At the beginning of the Great War only one Moslem Power remained free and powerful—the Turkish Empire. At the end of the war there was not one.
The Turks were not popular in the East. The Syrians and Arabs hated them almost as much as their Christian subjects did. The Turkish peasants of Anatolia suffered cruelly under the exactions of Constantinople, especially in the matter of military service. But all through the Moslem East ran the consciousness that the Sultan, with all his faults, was their own man. He was the acknowledged Head of the great majority of Moslems in the world. He was, above all, the last barrier that seemed to protect them from the overwhelming flood of Western aggression, and the last great Moslem figure which enabled them to preserve their self-respect.
While the Turkish Empire stood, the Moslem peoples, though fallen on evil days, could thinkof Islam as an independent and even an imperial entity. In places, doubtless, they had to kiss the feet of dogs; but their Caliph still ruled masses of Christian subject populations and still was master of the capital city of the world. With the fall of Turkey, the last free Moslem state was gone. Not here and there, but everywhere throughout the whole world, the faithful were set beneath the heel of these rich, drunken, pork-eating idolaters with their indecent women, their three Gods, and their terrific material civilization. "Pan-Islamism," as Mr. Toynbee says, "is only an extreme example of the feeling at the back of almost any modern Oriental movement we may examine. It may take aggressive forms, but the essence of it is a defensive impulse. Its appeal is to fear, and if the fear of the West could be lifted from off the minds of the Oriental peoples, its mainspring would be gone."
The problem of our Eastern policy is to remove that fear. And that ought not to be so very difficult. The essential fact to grasp is that the East needs us far more than we needthe East. We need markets; but that idea is only suggested to us by the fact that Eastern peoples want our goods. We do almost everything better than they do. They want our textiles, our knives and tools, our engines and ploughs, our books, our learning. They cannot make railways or ships without us. They cannot work their mines or oil-wells except by Western help. They cannot really govern their countries satisfactorily without European advisers. The language of Article XXII of the League of Nations Covenant is quite correct when it says that "Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone." At present "they are not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world."
They ought to want us, and if left alone they would want us. We have frightened them intofighting and hating us by forcing ourselves upon them instead of waiting to be asked. We have conferred incalculable benefits on India: the benefit of protection from invasion, of comparative protection from plague and famine, of social order, of administrative justice, to say nothing of roads and railways, and the enlivening force of Western knowledge. We have immensely increased the prosperity of Egypt, we have put down all kinds of Oriental abuses and protected the fellaheen againstcorvéesand extortions and tortures. We were in process of beginning to perform the same services for Mesopotamia. But in the latter regions at any rate—for in India our roots are far deeper and the problem is more complex—the people did not want us. We only held them and did them good by force. And the chief reason why they did not want us was fear. We came to them with machine guns and bombing planes as conquerors and masters, having destroyed the only free Moslem Power; and they found it difficult to believe in our good intentions. We came to them, most unfortunately, also with speciouspromises which we made in time of need and broke in the days of victory.
The right policy is something very easy to state and extremely difficult to carry out, even for a single-minded and clear-headed Government. It needs first, perhaps, an effort of imaginative understanding more far-reaching than has ever yet in history been demanded of an Imperial Power. Only those who understand the East can win the respect and confidence of the East. But in the meantime, if we cannot fully understand, there is a way at least to make ourselves understood. Justice is the passport to confidence all the world over. And our first business is to act quite simply and sincerely up to all our engagements. We undertook certain obligations when we signed Article XXII of the Covenant. We should make the "wishes of these communities a principal consideration" in deciding whether we should go to them at all. We should really treat them "as independent nations," and should honestly give them "administrative advice and assistance until they shall be able to stand alone." And we should notallow our minds to be confused by thoughts of gain, nor our advice to take the form of horse, foot, and artillery. Two illustrations may make this point clear. An experienced and very successful administrator was asked a few weeks ago whether he would accept the post of adviser to a certain Moslem Government. He said, "Yes, upon one condition. That there is no British army anywhere in the country." That is the right and wise spirit. The second is even simpler. One of the most obvious and matter-of-course obligations laid upon imperial administrators and civil servants is that they shall not embark in trade or in any way make a profit out of the administration of their office. That is the right rule. The Empire should set an example of the behaviour that it expects from its best servants.
When we apportioned to ourselves the German colonies, we specially declined to take over their public debts. And when protest was raised against this proceeding, we stated definitely in our official Reply: "It would be unjust to make this responsibility rest on the MandatoryPowers, which, in so far as they may be appointed trustees by the League of Nations, will derive no benefit from such trusteeship." Is it entirely quixotic and idealist to hope that, even in post-war conditions, a great nation may remain true to her word?
It seems at least as if the only alternative was to hold these Eastern territories by armed force, and that is no longer possible. It might be possible to hold by force India alone, or Egypt alone, or Mesopotamia alone. It is not possible so to hold all three. We must govern by consent of the governed or not all.
Another group of wars and threats of war has its centre in Moscow. All the States on the borders of Russia—Finland, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine, Hungary, Rumania, the new republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and the kingdom of Persia—are either at war or in fear of war or just recovering from war with Russia, or from civil war fomented by Russian agents and propagandists. Inside Russia itself, civil war has never ceased since the first outbreak of the Revolution in 1917. It is true that the civil war has been largely helped by foreign munitions and stirred up by foreign intrigues. But that only shows that—as the world is now organized—there is something in the present Russian Government which makes foreigners as well as Russians wish to take up arms against it. It may have been—I think strongly that it was—exceedinglyunwise for the foreign Governments to intervene in the domestic troubles of Russia, but no one can pretend that the civil war was entirely created by foreigners. The rebellions were there before the foreigners joined in, and it is even thought by good judges that the opposition to the Bolsheviks might by this time have been successful if it had not been damned in Russian eyes by its foreign alliances.
For us the question is how the Russian Revolution has become such a plenteous and intense cause of strife. It is, of course, impossible to pass judgment on the whole of a vast movement with the very inadequate information that is now accessible to an average Englishman about Russia. Even the French Revolution, which has been studied by thousands of observers and historians, is not yet judged. The sum of infamies and high achievements is too complicated to add up. And the Russian Revolution is probably even harder to value than the French.
It would be a mistake to forget the elements of simple early-Christian brotherhood which seem to characterize the Russian peasant. It was well known before the war how the members of a workmen'sartel, or trade community, when trade was bad, would divide their earnings equally and all starve, if need be, together, without any attempt by the luckier workmen to save themselves at the expense of the others. The glowing descriptions of Mr. Stephen Graham cannot be entirely without any basis in fact. And the people of Tolstoy and Dostoievsky have evidently a most rare capacity for sainthood and martyrdom, as well as for aberration of mind. Present-day Russia has been described by an eminent Socialist as "a nation of artists governed by brutes," and the phrase is probably true of the old Russia also, and the Russia of centuries back. Communism comes easily in Russia, and so does submission to tyranny.
It must also be remembered that the GreatWar, among its many aspects, involved the most frightful and bewildering oppression of the poor and weak. As was said quite truly: "Millions of poor men in divers regions of the world have been dragged suddenly and without any previous action of their own into a quarrel which they neither made nor desired nor understood, and in the course of that quarrel have been subjected again and again to the very extremity of possible human suffering." The war naturally and inevitably created in Europe a passionate wish for some revolutionary transformation of a world in which rich and clever people in parliaments and governments had the power of inflicting such pains upon the poor. The peculiarity of the Bolshevik movement was, as one of its rare English admirers puts it, not so much that it wanted a particular kind of Socialism or Communism, but that it wanted itnow. The world has seen many revolutions and many Socialist governments; but they have never really established that paradise of the poor which was advertised in their prospectuses and doubtless nursed in their hopes. Mostfailed altogether. And those which succeeded went wrong. They coöperated with "bourgeois Liberals." They extended the franchise, they improved the condition of the working classes, they established well-to-do workmen and peasants with a stake in the country and a conservative bias; but they never really did what was wanted. They always stopped short. They developed the middle-class virtues. They left still in existence a capitalist class which preached the merits of thrift and hard work and was interested in trade; and of course they left always somewhere an oppressed class. The under dog was still under.
The Bolshevik remedy was very direct and simple. It was to disarm everybody who had any share in prosperity, and distribute firearms to those who had nothing else. Only when he was armed and the rest of the people unarmed could the real proletarian—the man who had no savings, no talent, no education, no notable good qualities, nothing that makes for success in life—hope to beat the men who always outstripped him. It is strange that even in amoment of extreme misery such a theory could have established itself in any country as a principle of government. But the military collapse of Russia gave it a unique chance. The common soldiers, anxious to fight no more, already possessed arms. They had merely to murder their officers and the thing was done. The rest of the population was unarmed and helpless. And meantime the peasants, though almost untouched by revolutionary ideas, were amenable to one particular bribe. The revolutionaries offered all the peasants of Russia their masters' land without any payment. They could simply take the land, and kill or not kill the owner as they pleased. There was no punishment for such killing. According to strict Communist principles, the land was not to remain in the peasants' possession. It was to be the property of the State. But this principle had to be dropped in order to induce the peasants to coöperate with the revolutionary town workmen. Whatever may be said in favour of this revolution, there can at least be no surprise at what Lenin calls "the frantic resistance" of theupper and middle classes of Russia. The policy of the Government was announced on January 23, 1919: "The present is the period of destruction and crushing of the capitalist system of the whole world. . . . In order to establish the dictatorship of the proletariate it is necessary to disarm the bourgeoisie and its agents and to arm the proletariate." It is to be dictatorship in the strict sense: the power of a man with a gun to do what he likes with those who have no guns. There is to be no democracy or representation of the dispossessed classes. If they were represented they might recover power. Only those known to be faithful to the new Government are to vote. All persons of property must be dispossessed, from landlords to small shop-keepers. Rich peasants must go; even "middle peasants" at one time had to go; only the poorest peasants and the poorest town workmen should rule, assisted, of course, by those educated people who would accept the new régime and establish by deeds beyond doubt their hatred of the bourgeoisie.
The control of a country by a small minorityis always difficult. It needs methods of "terror." But this minority had first to acquire the control and then to maintain it. Its task was more difficult and its methods had to be more violent than those of its predecessors. The "terror" of the old Czarist Government or of the French Revolution must be superseded by the more drastic method of what was called "mass terror." The secret police, whose activities had made hideous the record of the Czarist Government, and who had fled for their lives at the first outbreak of the Lvof and Kerensky Revolution, returned from their lurking-places to put themselves at the disposal of the Bolsheviks. This legion of devils had something to sell which the new Government badly needed. On the analogy of theComité de Salut Publicthere was established the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for stamping out all trace of resistance to the new order. Spies were placed everywhere (Proclamation, October 17, 1918). No distinction was to be made between Czarist reactionaries and unorthodox Socialists, such as theMensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (Russkaya Zhizn, May 10, 1919). Enormous numbers of "hostages" were arrested. At any sign of conspiracy outside, large numbers of these were shot. The assassination of the Bolshevik Uritzky was repaid by the execution of five hundred citizens. Yet, just as in the most furious days of the French Revolution, the terrorists were always complaining that there was not enough terror. "The continual discovery of conspiracies in our rear . . . the insignificant extent of serious repressions and mass shootings of White Guards and bourgeoisie on the part of the Soviets, show that notwithstanding frequent pronouncements urging mass terror against the Social Revolutionaries, White Guards, and bourgeoisie, no real terror exists" (Official Weekly of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, No. 1, Moscow, September 21, 1918).
Trotzky in comforting language explained that the object of the mass terror was not really the extermination of all non-communists, or all Russians who did not attain the full standardof poverty and orthodoxy. "The proletariate says: 'I shall break your will because my will is stronger than yours, and I shall force you to serve me.' . . . Terror as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class is historically justified" (Trotzky inIzvestia, January 10, 1919). Eventually, of course, when all Russia was submissive and all Europe Communist, there would be a gentler régime, and the proletariate would show their true beauty of character. And it would be a mistake to ignore the real reforms which seem to have been carried through in certain social services, notably in the care of children, the attempt to develop popular education and the putting down of drink. But in the meantime terror was reënforced by ingenious petty persecutions and indignities, reënforced by starvation. Those who joined the Red Army had three times the ration of food allowed to several categories of the civil population. No one can wonder that suicide—that last irrefutable evidence of unbearable oppression—became extraordinarily common, especially among theeducated classes,[4]and that "frantic resistance" broke out where it had any prospect of success.
But what of the war outside Russia? Why could not the Russians be allowed to conduct their revolution and settle their form of government by themselves? It would be very desirable if they could. And doubtless it is the aim to be striven for. But the trouble is that Bolshevism is to its adherents a revelation and a new gospel, and they have the same zeal for converting the rest of the world as had the French Revolutionaries or the followers of Mohammed. "The program of the Communist Party is not merely a program of liberating the proletariate of one country; it is the program of liberating the proletariate of the world" (authorized pamphlet by N. Bukharin, July 24, 1918). This is to be achieved by "a bloody torturing and heroic fight." The methods are to include every known form of intrigue, corruption,forgery, and the like, and the plan is to be the same in all countries. Revolutionary workmen are to be armed, including common soldiers, tramps, prisoners, and all the utterly dispossessed of the earth, except, of course, those who have Conservative, Liberal, or Labour Party views; and then are to work their proletarian will on the rest of the community. The "national will" is to be disregarded: "The interests of Socialism stand far above the interest of the right of nations to self-determination" (Trotzky,Izvestia, March 8, 1918). "All our hopes for the definitive triumph of Socialism are based on this conviction and on this scientific prevision, i.e. that a revolution like the Russian can be produced in all the nations of Europe" (ib.). In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks were compelled to sign a clause promising not to conduct "any agitation against the State and military institutions of Germany." "But both the Russian Government as a whole and its accredited representative in Berlin never concealed the fact that they were not observing this article, and didnot intend to do so" (Joffe,Izvestia, January 1, 1919).
The belief that by some single violent change in social, political, or economic conditions human life as a whole can be suddenly transfigured is one that clings to many minds, and by no means the stupidest minds, of the present age, in spite of much disillusioning experience. It does seem to them at moments as if only some one thing was wrong with the world, and as if that one flaw must surely be definite and remediable: some one bold step is all that is needed—say, the abolition of the family, or of property, or of competition, or of wages, or of interest, or of compulsory law, or some other of the fundamental institutions of society.
To our ancestors it was the abolition of heresy. To the Turks, the abolition of all Christians in Turkey. To such people at such times the normal method of trying to correct the worst abuses by persuading the majority that they ought to be corrected, and of seeking individually to live a better life and to help one's neighbours, seems tedious and ineffective,if not hypocritical. But one thing that is clear is that revolution means "frantic resistance," and the stronger the faith and energy behind the revolution the more deep-reaching is the resistance likely to be.
Russia's neighbours see what seems to them the infinite misery and impoverishment and retardation inflicted by Bolshevism; and they are naturally indignant and alarmed at the secret propaganda of Bolshevism within their own borders. In normal times perhaps they need not have been afraid. But since the war every state is unstable; every state has a large discontented class. The small republics in the Caucasus, barely able to support themselves in freedom, are maddened to find their constitution threatened by Russian bribes, their malcontents and bad characters armed with Russian rifles and machine guns, and their public men assassinated. Georgia and Armenia are probably doomed. Hungary and Finland have gone Bolshevik and returned, each process being accompanied by hideous persecutions and murders, the reprisals being naturally theworst. Germany, in spite of all treaties, has been exposed to constant propaganda and has had one or two bad outbreaks of violence. Poland has been and still is—whether through her own bad policy or otherwise—on the brink of compulsory Bolshevism. Human nature being what it is, and human politics a little worse than private human nature, it is inevitable that Russia's neighbours should be constantly afraid of her and intensely anxious to see her again under some more normal government; some government which, whatever its political bias, would leave its neighbours to govern themselves and accept the ordinary conventions of civilized society.
Nay, one can even understand anti-Russian policies that seem at first sight intolerably aggressive. The Poles, among other demands, are anxious for the independence of White Russia, the region north of the Pripet, of which Minsk is the chief town. They wish it either annexed to Poland or else made independent, but at any rate cut off from Russia. The claim seems monstrous. But it has its excuse. The WhiteRussian peasantry are said to be peculiarly ignorant and devoid of national feeling; the land-owners and well-to-do classes are mostly Poles. Is it surprising that the Poles of Poland hate the idea of handing their countrymen over to a Russia which will, as a matter of course, set the peasants to burn their houses, destroy their cattle, and hunt them themselves down like vermin? And when that is done, they reflect, Bolshevism will only be nearer to Warsaw.
Like the early Moslems, the true Bolsheviks care more for their faith than for territory. In dealing with Lithuania, which is at present a comparatively quiet little peasant republic, the Russians offered her a large slice of territory beyond what she was entitled to or wanted. Why? Because it was a thoroughly Bolshevized area, and might be expected to spread the faith—or the poison—into all Lithuania. A nation, or a government, in that state of mind cannot be surprised if its neighbours regard it with anxiety.
It is a curious fact that revolutionists so oftenregard themselves as pacifists. Many were even conscientious objectors during the war, and there is no reason to doubt that they were sincere. But they do seem to be confused thinkers. To hate your neighbours, whom you know, and love your neighbours' enemies, whom you do not know, is a consistent and not uncommon frame of mind; though the element of love in it seems less important and prominent than the hate. But to expect European peace and good-will by means of a revolution in all countries argues a lack of understanding not far removed from madness. Every revolutionary outburst since the war has been marked by ferocious cruelties and followed by still more ferocious reprisals. Revolution leads not to peace, but to reciprocal reigns of terror, first Red and then White, till the exhaustion of suffering produces some sort of equilibrium.
The war, among its many evil lessons, has inculcated the gospel of impatience and of force. "When you want a thing, take it from some one, and if he resists, knock him down." It is the doctrine which destroys human societiesas it destroys the peace in men's own hearts. If we want peace, we must simply unlearn that creed and go back to the old Liberal doctrine that is at the root of sound politics everywhere: "If you think something is right, try to persuade your fellow citizens of it; try your hardest, but remember that you may be wrong, and until you succeed, have patience."
The war has left behind it a great number of small wars or guerrillas. Most of them have their explanation in some ordinary excess of nationalism or revenge or greed. The Serbs, intoxicated with their new greatness, are still causing war in Albania and Montenegro. The Rumanians recently invaded Hungary, in spite of all the thunders of the Peace Conference, because they had been robbed by Austria-Hungary and wanted revenge and reparation. The Hungarians have alarmed all their neighbours and forced them into a defensive alliance, which now calls itself the "Little Entente." The Lithuanians and Poles have fought, but been reconciled by the mediation of the League of Nations. The Armenians have been massacred again, under the eyes of the French army of occupation in Cilicia, where they had gatheredunder a repeated guarantee of safety given by France and England. The Turkish Nationalists are holding out very unsuccessfully in the centre of Anatolia against a Greek army carrying out the directions of the Supreme Council. The Turkish peasants are increasingly reluctant to take arms again. The Koreans have helplessly declared their right to independence from Japan, and are apparently being reduced by a terrible persecution.
These are the mere belated effervescence of the passions of the Great War. The hate and pride which are the basis of nationalism and which were so violently stimulated by the events of the war cannot be expected to die out at once. It was calculated a short time ago that there were twenty-seven "wars" of one sort or another in progress. But they will presumably simmer down as social conditions become more normal.
It is interesting to observe that two of the greatest causes of war, according to the judgment of normal times, are now not actively operating. Before 1914, if one was asked toname the main causes of war, the answer would have been, first, competitive armaments, and, second, protective tariffs and the competition for markets. These causes will remain fully as dangerous for the future, but it so happens that none of the existing wars is directly due to either.
In one sense, indeed, armaments are actually operating now as a cause of war. There are far too many firearms lying about. America, England, and France have made very lavish gifts or sales of lethal weapons to various bodies with whom they sympathized. And the arms have by no means always stayed in the place for which they were intended. Guns which we sent to Denikin were sold by corrupt officials to the Bolsheviks, and passed on by them to the Afghans to use against us on the Indian frontier. Such things cause some deaths and some laughter, but are not permanent evils.
No European nation, except those actually compelled, has made much progress towardsdisarmament. It is said that Great Britain has actually made the greatest reduction, but both in numbers of men and in expenditure our standard is fantastically higher than what was forced upon us by German competition in 1914. It is impossible to reduce our forces in a really drastic way as long as our commitments are so large and—perhaps we must add—our policy so inconsistent and provocative. Peace with Russia, a settlement with Mesopotamia and Egypt on the lines laid down by the Covenant and the Milner Report, the evacuation of Ireland, the execution of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms in India, and the extension of similar reforms to Burmah and the much-suffering Ceylon, will permit us really to envisage for the first time a satisfactory measure of disarmament. The air force is already greatly reduced. The vast size of the navy appears to be utterly unjustified, at any rate by conditions in Europe. The French army is far beyond the economic powers of France to support. The same seems to be true of Italy, and is certainly true of Serbia, which is still calling conscriptsto the colours. Greece is vastly overarmed; but Greek policy, though erring on the ambitious side, has probably been more sagaciously guided under M. Venizelos than any in Europe. The fall of that great man, due mainly to the prolonged economic distresses of Greece, will probably cause a resurgence of Mustapha Kemal and the Turkish nationalists. Meantime the Russian conscript army, though apparently ill-armed and ill-supplied, is overwhelming in numbers and is led by officers of the old régime, experienced and not absolutely incompetent. The Russian army is far the greatest and, in a political sense, the most dangerous, in the world.
But it is not the actual armaments, ruinous as they are, that are the essential poison to civilized society. It is the competition in armaments. That has now been abolished throughout Europe. Slowly, unequally, reluctantly, the armaments which, in Lord Grey's words, went uphill under the lead of Germany, are now, under the same lead, groping their way downhill. There is only one great nation which,if words are to be believed, thinks seriously of starting a competition in armaments. It has been announced, more than once, by the American Government that, like Germany in the years before 1914, they have arranged a naval programme which will effectually put an end to the British command of the seas and give the United States "world primacy" (see speech of Mr. Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, in theTimesof September 1, 1920). Since the British Empire is a scattered series of communities dependent for their communications upon the sea, and in particular since the population of Great Britain is absolutely dependent for its food on the free use of sea transport, it has been generally acknowledged in Europe that the sea-power of Great Britain was necessary to its existence. British sea-power has never been challenged except by definite enemies in pursuit of a definite war policy. If the United States were seriously to embark on the same policy as the late German Government, it seems as if all other causes of war must sink into insignificance beside this gigantic and deliberateone. But, in spite of some bewildering symptoms, it can hardly be believed that this conclusion is possible, at any rate until America has definitely and finally refused to be a member of the League of Nations.
Relations between Great Britain and America have of late been dangerously strained, partly owing to causes outside our Government's control, but in part owing to the scandal caused in America by certain developments of the Peace Treaty, and by the excesses of the Government forces in Ireland. A wise policy may help to heal this growing breach, and if America accepts in some form or other membership of the League of Nations, it ought to be possible in friendly discussion to arrive at some understanding on the question of naval armaments.
The problem of armaments is put in the very forefront of the Covenant of the League, immediately after the constitution of the League itself. By Article VIII—