EDITORIALS
“The World Court”makes its début to-day. It supplants the magazine formerly published by the International Peace Forum, entitledThe Peace Forumbut as will be observed, it undertakes a much larger and far more vastly important work in its ambition to further the creation of a World Court. As a magazine, an effort has been made in this initial issue to give it all the veneer and finesse of the latter-day periodical. As the months proceed, every effort will be made by the men of letters associated with it and its contributors to further its value as a publication of world wide importance. The necessity for such a magazine was made patent at the recent World Court Congress. The delegates and many men of affairs who participated in that epochal Conference realized the enormous importance of an organ to voice the sentiment for this great project.
During the past few months, the work of the International Peace Forum has been specifically directed to the project of furthering the institution of a true International Court of Justice, which was adopted in principle by the forty-four nations composing the Second Hague Conference (1907), including Germany and Great Britain. The suggestion has also met the approval of many State Legislatures, leading Chambers of Commerce and other representative civic, industrial, educational and religious bodies. It received a mighty impulse and enthusiastic endorsement at the recent largely attended World Court Congress, at Cleveland, Ohio.
This project is thus no chimerical scheme or iridescent dream, but a well matured plan which if properly sustained will prove a powerful factor in insuring the future peace of the world. Such a tribunal as is contemplated would not only be able to adjudicate specific disputes but would gradually build up a body of International Law as potent in preserving the peaceful relations of nations as the body of domestic laws is in preserving peaceful relations among the citizens and states of the several nations.
In becoming more specifically the organ and representative of this world-wide movement, this magazine broadens its field and adopts a name more expressive of its larger mission.
The Peace Forum, during the four years of its existence, has steadily grown in circulation and usefulness and influence. It has become the medium through which many of the most distinguished writers and speakers have sought to reach the public.The World Courtwill continue to be the medium of expression of such contributors of national and international reputation. In coöperation with them it will continue to advocate peace in all relations of private and public and international life, with the specific object in view of extending the principle of judicial settlement which now lies at the foundation of the civil authority of nations, until it becomes the foundation of all international relations, when nations will no more think of submitting their differences to a duel between armies and navies than individuals in civilized and well ordered countries would think of resorting to the arbitrament of the private duel.
Not only willThe World Courtadvance the idea of judicial settlement in relation to world disputes, but will strive to establish the principle as the basis of national peace and prosperity. This is a work which should appeal to all business and professional men, indeed, to all toilers whether with hand or head. Laborers in all fields are entitled to the fruits of their toil. The humble worker with his hands is not to be dispossessed by the confiscatory programme, any more than is the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer or the educated specialist. It is a trite saying that the interests of capital and labor are identical,—a truism no one dares formally to dispute; but there is no doubt that in the enactment of legislation and the execution of laws, representativesof these respective interests have acted as if they were antagonistic, and one has sought to get the better of the other. Judicial settlement can alone hold the scales of justice evenly balanced and thereby guarantee fair play. The toiler working with hand or brain is employing a capital given him by nature, and with industry and frugality under the operation of the rule of equal opportunity, he may accumulate the capital of money, goods, machinery, or land, which in effect gives him additional earning power. Thus, one class is constantly merging into the other, and each is equally interested in the integrity, and independence of the courts. Both are equally interested in the preservation of the rights of personal property and in opposing legislative and executive invasion of their rights. Both are equally opposed to bureaucracy in the government and interference with private management. The laborer does not want to be compelled to labor for a wage arbitrarily fixed by a government bureau, nor should a railroad or other industry be compelled to submit to harrassing and paralyzing control. Experience has demonstrated that railroads, telephones, telegraphs and other utilities are more efficiently conducted under private than under public ownership, as are mills, shops, and stores. A multitude of government commissions help to give a multitude of jobs to a multitude of politicians, but they do not reduce the cost of living.
Efficiency is evolved by private effort and not by official meddlesomeness. Law is only beneficially operative when backed by public opinion strong enough to vitalize and enforce it.
The broad platform of “The World Court” is peace at home and abroad, peace in society, in the church, in business and industry; immunity of business and industry from the menace of such malicious inquisition under the protection of a Government Commission as Chairman Walsh attempted in a manner that aroused the protest even of the Commission of which he is the head. We invite all who believe in peace, in law and order and justice, in the reliance upon judicial rather than warlike processes for the defense of the individual and the state, to unite with us in the movement for judicial settlement. What we propose is to place National morality on a plane with the standard of individual morality, which has brought about the reign of law and order in the enlightened nations. This plane of morality would do away with public war as it has done away with private war. International Judicial Settlement will react beneficially upon National Judicial Settlement and lead to the adoption of higher standards, both in National and International life.
Among the most insidious and reckless foes to peace are those who are constantly predicting wars between the United States and other nations. At the present time there is absolutely no reason why the United States should go to war with any nation on earth. The favorite pastime of some alarmists for several years past has been to predict war between this country and Japan. Nobody can show any reason why we should attack Japan, and all the evidence and all the signs of the times go to show that Japan has not the least intention of attacking us.
A Minneapolis journalist who recently returned from a six months’ stay in the Orient, and who was present with the Japanese at the siege of Tsing-tao, gives some cogent reasons why Japan will not seek war with the United States, despite some disputes over the immigration question and possibly in regard to the open door in China.
Japan at the present time is in financial difficulties. The existing war has kept tourists from her shores and curtailed her trade, while putting her to large expenses in war preparation. Not one penny of the war debt incurred in the war with Russia has yet been paid. What is holding Japan together to-day is her export of tea and silks to the United States. Millions of her citizens are dependent upon these trades for their livelihood. Japan doesn’t want the Philippines because shehas now ample territory more geographically and climatically favorable to her needs, and she is not greatly exercised over the emigration question, because she needs immigrants herself. The government would much rather keep the people at home—besides her naval and military experts are wise enough to know that they would stand little chance in attempting to fight the United States across eight thousand miles of ocean.
The talk of war with Germany or England, whichever may be the winner in the European conflict, after that awful contest is finished, is equally pernicious and damnable. There is no reason why we should go to war with either. The United States intends to observe all the obligations of neutrality and so to conduct herself as to win the respect and good will of all the combatants. It would require a supreme act of folly on our part to drive us into war with any European country. So long as we observe our moral obligations we are in no danger of attack.
During the month of June “A League of Peace” was organized in Philadelphia. The tentative proposals of the originators of the movement, as reported in articles in the daily papers, is to obtain “an agreement from the various nations of the world to submit all differences to adjudication or arbitration, to use their military forces to prevent any one of their number from going to war before all questions in dispute shall have been submitted to an international court or council; and that the powers in the agreement codify rules of international law by which they shall abide.” In order to give the movement an appearance of solid backing a formidable list was published of the names of prominent men who had been invited to the Philadelphia conference.
Any careful and intelligent student of the world situation must recognize the fact that an effective agreement of this character among nations is impossible before the conclusion of the great war in Europe and Asia. The most powerful nations of the world are engaged in this Titanic struggle, and it is not supposable that they will enter into an arbitration agreement before the terms of peace are concluded. Any agreement made by any number of nations omitting the now belligerent nations would be futile, for the nations at war command vast armies and navies and stores of war material and military organization against which the now peaceful nations would contend in vain.
The proposition of the Cleveland World Court Congress was practicable and feasible. It was to formulate a plan and have it ready to submit to a world conference after the present war is over, if possible with the moral support of the United States and the other American nations.
Our government could well afford to support a movement of that kind after the war, but it could not afford to join an arbitration league before the war ends, which proposes to back up its demands by military force.
It will be remembered that in signing The Hague Convention the American delegates made the reservation that no provision should be so construed as to require the United States of America to depart from its traditional policy of not intruding upon or interfering with, or entangling itself in the political questions or policy of internal administration of any European state. This was in accordance with the traditional policy of the United States, embodied in Washington’s Farewell Address, which was under no circumstances to interfere in the affairs of Europe. We certainly could not be a party to an agreement to lend our military forces, in combination with the military forces of other nations, to prevent one European nation from going to war with another. We might, after the war, become a party to an agreement to organize a World Court for Judicial Settlement and to contribute our contingent to the posse comitatus of such world court, on the invitation of all the powerful nations of both hemispheres.
The negative part of our Monroe Doctrine is the restraining injunction ofWashington’s Farewell Address. We do not propose to meddle in the affairs of Europe, and President Monroe warned the European nations that we would not permit them to meddle in the political affairs of this hemisphere or to attempt to impose their political systems upon any of the American nations. If we start in to interfere now, in accordance with the so-called “League of Peace” proposition, what becomes of our Monroe doctrine? The war in Europe will have to be fought out to some definite conclusion before any effective and compelling League of Peace is possible.
As indicating the attitude of a portion of the press toward this movement we reproduce the following editorial from the DetroitFree Press.
The new scheme for a League of Peace can make very little appeal to practical minds that give it real attention. Like all such plans it is largely visionary and based upon assumptions and premises which have no basis in fact because they fail to take into account the fundamentally static selfishness of human nature. The leaders of this movement strike ground only at one point and then impotently. They recognize the fact that anything done in the way of working for permanent peace must be accomplished through force and not by moral suasion.
Their scheme is to gather together the powers of the earth into a peace league, the members of which will pool their military and naval strength for the common good. No country will thereafter be permitted to make war upon another until certain measures of prevention have been taken and certain formalities observed, all with a view to settling the trouble in a peaceful way. If a government transgresses, the whole world will immediately jump on its back.
This is an extension of the international police idea of visionaries who only a short year ago were still telling the world that conflicts between great powers were at an end and that establishments for the prosecution of war might henceforth be limited to police armaments for keeping in order the smaller and less civilized nations such as the Balkan states and Mexico. Naturally the European war has smashed this illusion. But it has not discouraged the illusionists.
A very important defect in the League of Peace scheme is that it cannot be guaranteed to work, and a plan of this sort which cannot be guaranteed is likely to become a greater menace to peace through backfire than no agreement at all. It means a close association and conflict of unmixable interests and ambitions which are sure to create friction of a most inflammatory sort.
Suppose the United States and Japan and the great powers of Europe and the A. B. C. alliance join this league. Suppose after the league is duly organized two of the most powerful states, states relatively as strong as Germany and Russia were at the outset of the present war, get into a wrangle. Suppose they disregard their promises and incontinently go to war. How are they to be stopped and disciplined? Only through a general world war beside which the one now in progress might sink into insignificance. The whole population of the globe might be obliged to fight in order to keep the peace.
A great defect in all these schemes of peace promotors and disarmament enthusiasts is that they hope to create an artificial condition of placidity without natural incentive, and fail to take into account the element of self-interest which alone can make a peace pact of practical value. Alliances, ententes and treaties among nations having common interests have played large parts in the history of the world and have led to prolonged periods of peace as well as to bloody wars, but they generally have been enduring and valuable in close proportion to the strength of their appeal to self-interest among the parties concerned.
WAR AND THE IDEALS OF PEACE.ByHenry Rutgers Marshall, L. H. D., D. S. published by Duffield & Co. New York.
“War and the Ideals of Peace,” is rather an abstruse study of the mental and psychological processes which form human character and lead to human action. It is mainly a discussion of the validity of the contention that recurrent wars are inevitable because man is governed by the inexorable laws of nature, which compel him to contend for dominance. The author admits that man is by nature a fighting animal, but contends that he possesses also “creative spontaneity,” and may by his own effortsmould and shape ideals that will enable him to triumph over the natural bent of his disposition. Thus individuals may be led in the ways and thoughts of peace and mould the policy of nations to peace rather than war.
This is obviously true. It is shown in the history of nations, in the fact that through enlightened public sentiment many nations, especially during the past one hundred years, have been impelled to peace when there was temptation to war. The exceptions, when wars have occurred, have been due to the fact that enlightened public sentiment suffered a relapse or reversion and favored war. The antidote for war undoubtedly lies in developing the individual conscience, setting its creative spontaneity to work to formulate peace ideals—in short, to get the mass of men to think peace instead of war. Public sentiment is simply the superior weight of individual opinion, and if public sentiment is decisively for peace, the nation in which such public sentiment prevails will not go to war except to repel aggression.
This leads us to a point of disagreement with the author of the book in his practical application of his theories to the correct policy for this country to pursue. That we should stand at all times for the principles of peace no right-thinking man will deny. But that to realize these principles it is the duty of this nation to disarm without a simultaneous agreement of the other great nations to do likewise, we emphatically deny. Dr. Marshall says:
“We are a specially privileged people, free at present from enemies who might wish to attack us, and able to arm without too long delay should we see signs of growing danger of aggression. If we failed of alertness we might by a bare chance be caught unprepared by some enemy not now in sight, but it were surely better to take this small risk than to waste our energies in what is likely to be uncalled for preparation. Protected as we are by our broad ocean boundaries we have a unique opportunity to show to the world the benefits accruing to a state that does not spend a large proportion of its resources upon implements of the construction of implements of destruction and upon the training of large bodies of citizens to their employment. Did I, as an individual, find living at some distance from me a first class prize fighter, marvelously efficient, but at the time thoroughly exhausted, it would surely appear stupid for me to take my time and energies from the pursuits for which I seem fitted in order to devote myself to the attempt to become what could not at best be more than a second rate prizefighter, really because of fear that the first rate prizefighter might regain his strength and at some future time run amuck and do me injury.”
The present mode of fighting, as developed in the trenches of Belgium and France, which takes all the glamour and romance and glory out of war, and reduces it to a dismal contest of organization and machinery, requires, for its successful prosecution, preparation of forces and machinery which demands much time. The recruiting, organization, training and equipment of men to fight modern battles is also a work of considerable time. In the preparation of naval defense time is still a more essential factor. The ocean which separates us from Europe is no longer a barrier, but a highway. The transportation of men and arms and munitions is far easier and more expeditious by sea than by land. So the broad ocean is no longer our protection.
The analogy of the prizefighter and the private citizen misses the mark. The prizefighter is held in check by the local police force which all governments and municipalities must possess, no matter how peaceful their ideals. If there were an international police force capable of preserving the peace among nations, then it would not be necessary for a nation to arm, any more than it is now necessary for the private citizen to arm. But in the absence of such a protection it is necessary for each nation to look to its own protection.
In the absence of a world Court of Justice empowered by the stronger nations to settle international disputes, and armed with power to enforce its decrees, world peace can only be maintained by a proper adjustment of the balance of power. If all the great nations or groups of nationswere about equally armed and equally prepared, the chance of wars would be minimized. The present conflagration in Europe and Asia is due largely to the fact that rival powers were nowhere nearly equally balanced. One power so amazingly surpassed the others in preparedness that conflicting forces could not be held in check. Had England and France been as prepared for war as Germany, and as efficiently organized, or had Germany been as negligent as England, the war could hardly have occurred. It would not have cost England a tithe of what she has already expended in this war to have been so well prepared as to have enabled her to absolutely hold the balance of power.
The argument that at the close of the present great war any of the belligerent nations will be too exhausted to attack us, will hardly hold water. The victor will have a great organized military establishment, with troops inured to war, and perhaps filled with the spirit of war. To such a power a rich, unarmed nation like ours might be an easy prey. At the conclusion of our civil war this country, although it had been for four years fighting an exhaustive war, was, from a military standpoint, stronger than it ever was before or ever has been since.
We may perhaps in time rely for peace on world ideals of peace, but until such ideals are of universal acceptance we cannot put our trust in them. We hope that our nation may, at the end of this war, be instrumental in organizing a world tribunal for Judicial Settlement, but in order to have weight in the world councils looking to that end, we shall have to speak with a strong voice. We shall have to be strong not only in ideals, but in real and potential force.
Writing in 1889, Hall, the famous English publicist, predicted that the conduct of the next great war would be hard and unscrupulous, but he added: “There can be very little doubt that if the next war is unscrupulously waged it will also be followed by a reaction toward increased stringency of law. I look forward with much misgiving to the manner in which the next great war will be waged, but with no misgiving at all to the character of the rules which will be acknowledged ten years after its termination by comparison with the rules now considered to exist.”
The prediction of the great publicist, made so many years ago, as to the next great war, has come true. The intervening wars have been trifling by comparison and marked by no material increase in severity, but the present war has passed all the bounds of precedent and even of imagination. Let us hope that the prophecy as to the modification of the laws of war after the present conflict is ended will be as measurably fulfilled.
The invention and application of death-dealing machinery and chemicals may even give the prophecy a larger fulfillment by the abolition of war altogether. For this we humbly hope and pray.