IN THE FOURTH YEAR
ANTICIPATIONS OF A WORLD PEACE
By
H. G. Wells
AUTHOR OF "MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH,"
"THE WAR AND THE FUTURE," "WHAT IS COMING?" "THE WAR
THAT WILL END WAR," "THE WORLD SET FREE," "IN THE DAYS OF
THE COMET," AND "A MODERN UTOPIA"
1918
CONTENTS:
PREFACE. 3
I.
THE WAY TO CONCRETE REALIZATION.. 6
II THE
LEAGUE MUST BE REPRESENTATIVE. 11
III
THE NECESSARY POWERS OF THE LEAGUE. 16
IV
THE LABOUR VIEW OF MIDDLE AFRICA.. 21
V
GETTING THE LEAGUE IDEA CLEAR IN RELATION TO IMPERIALISM... 25
VI
THE WAR AIMS OF THE WESTERN ALLIES. 36
VII
THE FUTURE OF MONARCHY.. 38
VIII
THE PLAIN NECESSITY FOR A LEAGUE. 43
IX
DEMOCRACY.. 49
X
THE RECENT STRUGGLE FOR PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION IN GREAT BRITAIN 57
XI
THE STUDY AND PROPAGANDA OF DEMOCRACY.. 64
In the latter half of 1914 a few of us were writing that
this war was a "War of Ideas." A phrase, "The War to end
War," got into circulation, amidst much sceptical comment. It was a phrase
powerful enough to sway many men, essentially pacifists, towards taking an
active part in the war against German imperialism, but it was a phrase whose
chief content was its aspiration. People were already writing in those early
days of disarmament and of the abolition of the armament industry throughout
the world; they realized fully the element of industrial belligerency behind
the shining armour of imperialism, and they denounced the
"Krupp-Kaiser" alliance. But against such writing and such thought we
had to count, in those days, great and powerful realities. Even to those who
expressed these ideas there lay visibly upon them the shadow of
impracticability; they were very "advanced" ideas in 1914, very
Utopian. Against them was an unbroken mass of mental habit and public
tradition. While we talked of this "war to end war," the diplomatists
of the Powers allied against Germany were busily spinning a disastrous web of
greedy secret treaties, were answering aggression by schemes of aggression,
were seeing in the treacherous violence of Germany only the justification for
countervailing evil acts. To them it was only another war for
"ascendancy." That was three years and a half ago, and since then
this "war of ideas" has gone on to a phase few of us had dared hope
for in those opening days. The Russian revolution put a match to that pile of
secret treaties and indeed to all the imperialist plans of the Allies; in the
end it will burn them all. The greatest of the Western Allies is now the United States of America,
and the Americans have come into this war simply for an idea. Three years and a
half ago a few of us were saying this was a war against the idea of
imperialism, not German imperialism merely, but British and French and Russian
imperialism, and we were saying this not because it was so, but because we
hoped to see it become so. To-day we can say so, because now it is so.
In those days, moreover, we said this is the "war to
end war," and we still did not know clearly how. We thought in terms of
treaties and alliances. It is largely the detachment and practical genius of
the great English-speaking nation across the Atlantic
that has carried the world on beyond and replaced that phrase by the phrase,
"The League of Nations," a phrase suggesting plainly the organization
of a sufficient instrument by which war may be ended for ever. In 1913 talk of
a World League of Nations would have seemed, to the extremest pitch,
"Utopian." To-day the project has an air not only of being so
practicable, but of being so urgent and necessary and so manifestly the sane
thing before mankind that not to be busied upon it, not to be making it more
widely known and better understood, not to be working out its problems and
bringing it about, is to be living outside of the contemporary life of the
world. For a book upon any other subject at the present time some apology may
be necessary, but a book upon this subject is as natural a thing to produce now
as a pair of skates in winter when the ice begins to bear.
All we writers find ourselves engaged perforce in some part
or other of a world-wide propaganda of this the most creative and hopeful of
political ideas that has ever dawned upon the consciousness of mankind. With no
concerted plan we feel called upon to serve it. And in no connection would one
so like to think oneself un-original as in this connection. It would be a
dismaying thing to realize that one were writing anything here which was not
the possible thought of great multitudes of other people, and capable of
becoming the common thought of mankind. One writes in such a book as this not
to express oneself but to swell a chorus. The idea of the League
of Nations is so great a one that it may well override the
pretensions and command the allegiance of kings; much more does it claim the
self-subjugation of the journalistic writer. Our innumerable books upon this
great edifice of a World Peace do not constitute a scramble for attention, but
an attempt to express in every variety of phrase and aspect this one system of
ideas which now possesses us all. In the same way the elementary facts and
ideas of the science of chemistry might conceivably be put completely and fully
into one text-book, but, as a matter of fact, it is far more convenient to tell
that same story over in a thousand different forms, in a text-book for boys
here, for a different sort or class of boy there, for adult students, for
reference, for people expert in mathematics, for people unused to the
scientific method, and so on. For the last year the writer has been doing what
he can--and a number of other writers have been doing what they can--to bring
about a united declaration of all the Atlantic Allies in favour of a League of Nations, and to define the necessary nature of
that League. He has, in the course of this work, written a series of articles
upon the League and upon _the necessary sacrifices of preconceptions_ that the
idea involves in the London
press. He has also been trying to clear his own mind upon the real meaning of
that ambiguous word "democracy," for which the League is to make the
world "safe." The bulk of this book is made up of these discussions.
For a very considerable number of readers, it may be well to admit here, it can
have no possible interest; they will have come at these questions themselves
from different angles and they will have long since got to their own
conclusions. But there may be others whose angle of approach may be similar to
the writer's, who may have asked some or most of the questions he has had to
ask, and who may be actively interested in the answers and the working out of
the answers he has made to these questions. For them this book is printed.
H. G. WELLS.
_May_, 1918.
It is a dangerous thing to recommend specific books out of
so large and various a literature as the "League of Nations" idea has
already produced, but the reader who wishes to reach beyond the range of this
book, or who does not like its tone and method, will probably find something to
meet his needs and tastes better in Marburg's "League of Nations," a
straightforward account of the American side of the movement by the former
United States Minister in Belgium, on the one hand, or in the concluding parts
of Mr. Fayle's "Great Settlement" (1915), a frankly sceptical
treatment from the British Imperialist point of view, on the other. An illuminating
discussion, advocating peace treaties rather than a league, is Sir Walter
Phillimore's "Three Centuries of Treaties." Two excellent books from America, that
chance to be on my table, are Mr. Goldsmith's "League to Enforce
Peace" and "A World in Ferment" by President Nicholas Murray
Butler. Mater's "Société des Nations" (Didier) is an able
presentation of a French point of view. Brailsford's "A League of
Nations" is already a classic of the movement in England, and a very full
and thorough book; and Hobson's "Towards International Government" is
a very sympathetic contribution from the English liberal left; but the reader
must understand that these two writers seem disposed to welcome a peace with an
unrevolutionized Germany, an idea to which, in common with most British people,
I am bitterly opposed. Walsh's "World Rebuilt" is a good exhortation,
and Mugge's "Parliament of Man" is fresh and sane and able. The
omnivorous reader will find good sense and quaint English in Judge Mejdell's
"_Jus Gentium_," published in English by Olsen's of Christiania.
There is an active League of Nations Society in Dublin,
as well as the London and Washington ones, publishing pamphlets and
conducting propaganda. All these books and pamphlets I have named happen to lie
upon my study table as I write, but I have made no systematic effort to get
together literature upon the subject, and probably there are just as many books
as good of which I have never even heard. There must, I am sure, be statements
of the League of Nations idea forthcoming from
various religious standpoints, but I do not know any sufficiently well to
recommend them. It is incredible that neither the Roman
Catholic Church, the English Episcopal Church, nor any Nonconformist body
has made any effort as an organization to forward this essentially religious
end of peace on earth. And also there must be German writings upon this same
topic. I mention these diverse sources not in order to present a bibliography,
but because I should be sorry to have the reader think that this little book
pretends to state _the_ case rather than _a_ case for the League
of Nations.
More and more frequently does one hear this phrase, The
League of Nations, used to express the outline idea of the new world that will
come out of the war. There can be no doubt that the phrase has taken hold of
the imaginations of great multitudes of people: it is one of those creative
phrases that may alter the whole destiny of mankind. But as yet it is still a
very vague phrase, a cloudy promise of peace. I make no apology therefore, for
casting my discussion of it in the most general terms. The idea is the idea of
united human effort to put an end to wars; the first practical question, that
must precede all others, is how far can we hope to get to a concrete
realization of that?
But first let me note the fourth word in the second title of
this book. The common talk is of a "League of Nations"
merely. I follow the man who is, more than any other man, the leader of English
political thought throughout the world to-day, President Wilson, in inserting
that significant adjective "Free." We western allies know to-day what
is involved in making bargains with governments that do not stand for their
peoples; we have had all our Russian deal, for example, repudiated and thrust
back upon our hands; and it is clearly in his mind, as it must be in the minds
of all reasonable men, that no mere "scrap of paper," with just a
monarch's or a chancellor's endorsement, is a good enough earnest of fellowship
in the league. It cannot be a diplomatist's league. The League
of Nations, if it is to have any such effect as people seem to
hope from it, must be, in the first place, "understanded of the
people." It must be supported by sustained, deliberate explanation, and by
teaching in school and church and press of the whole mass of all the peoples
concerned. I underline the adjective "Free" here to set aside, once
for all, any possible misconception that this modern idea of a League of
Nations has any affinity to that Holy Alliance of the diplomatists, which set
out to keep the peace of Europe so
disastrously a century ago.
Later I will discuss the powers of the League. But before I
come to that I would like to say a little about the more general question of
its nature and authority. What sort of gathering will embody it? The
suggestions made range from a mere advisory body, rather like the Hague
convention, which will merely pronounce on the rights and wrongs of any
international conflict, to the idea of a sort of Super-State, a Parliament of
Mankind, a "Super National" Authority, practically taking over the
sovereignty of the existing states and empires of the world. Most people's
ideas of the League fall between these extremes. They want the League to be something
more than an ethical court, they want a League that will act, but on the other
hand they shrink from any loss of "our independence." There seems to
be a conflict here. There is a real need for many people to tidy up their ideas
at this point. We cannot have our cake and eat it. If association is worth
while, there must be some sacrifice of freedom to association. As a very distinguished colonial representative said to me the
other day: "Here we are talking of the freedom of small nations and the
'self-determination' of peoples, and at the same time of the Council of the League of Nations and all sorts of international
controls. Which do we want?"
The answer, I think, is "Both." It is a matter of
more or less, of getting the best thing at the cost of the second-best. We may
want to relax an old association in order to make a newer and wider one. It is
quite understandable that peoples aware of a distinctive national character and
involved in some big existing political complex, should wish to disentangle
themselves from one group of associations in order to enter more effectively
into another, a greater, and more satisfactory one. The Finn or the Pole, who
has hitherto been a rather reluctant member of the synthesis of the Russian
empire, may well wish to end that attachment in order to become a free member
of a worldwide brotherhood. The desire for free arrangement is not a desire for
chaos. There is such a thing as untying your parcels in order to pack them
better, and I do not see myself how we can possibly contemplate a great league
of freedom and reason in the world without a considerable amount of such
preliminary dissolution.
It happens, very fortunately for the world, that a century
and a quarter ago thirteen various and very jealous states worked out the
problem of a Union, and became--after an enormous, exhausting wrangle--the
United States of America. Now the way they solved their riddle was by
delegating and giving over jealously specified sovereign powers and doing all
that was possible to retain the residuum. They remained essentially sovereign
states. New York, Virginia,
Massachusetts,
for example, remained legally independent. The practical fusion of these
peoples into one people outran the legal bargain. It was only after long years
of discussion that the point was conceded; it was indeed only after the Civil
War that the implications were fully established, that there resided a sovereignty in the American people as a whole, as
distinguished from the peoples of the several states. This is a precedent that
every one who talks about the League of Nations
should bear in mind. These states set up a congress and president in Washington with strictly
delegated powers. That congress and president they delegated to look after
certain common interests, to deal with interstate trade, to deal with foreign
powers, to maintain a supreme court of law. Everything else--education,
militia, powers of life and death--the states retained for themselves.
To this day, for instance, the federal courts and the federal officials have no
power to interfere to protect the lives or property of aliens in any part of
the union outside the district of Columbia. The state
governments still see to that. The federal government has the legal right
perhaps to intervene, but it is still chary of such intervention. And these
states of the American Union were at the outset so independent-spirited that
they would not even adopt a common name. To this day they have no common name.
We have to call them Americans, which is a ridiculous name when we consider
that Canada, Mexico, Peru,
Brazil are all of them also
in America.
Or else we have to call them Virginians, Californians, New Englanders, and so
forth. Their legal and nominal separateness weighs nothing against the real
fusion that their great league has now made possible.
Now, that clearly is a precedent of the utmost value in our
schemes for this council of the League of Nations.
We must begin by delegating, as the States began by delegating. It is a far cry
to the time when we shall talk and think of the Sovereign People of the Earth.
That council of the League of Nations will be a tie as strong, we hope, but
certainly not so close and multiplex as the early tie of the States at Washington. It will
begin by having certain delegated powers and no others. It will be an "_ad hoc_" body. Later its powers may grow as
mankind becomes accustomed to it. But at first it will have, directly or
mediately, all the powers that seem necessary to restrain the world from
war--and unless I know nothing of patriotic jealousies it will have not a scrap
of power more. The danger is much more that its powers will be insufficient
than that they will be excessive. Of that later. What
I want to discuss here now is the constitution of this delegated body. I want
to discuss that first in order to set aside out of the discussion certain
fantastic notions that will otherwise get very seriously in our way. Fantastic
as they are, they have played a large part in reducing the Hague Tribunal to an
ineffective squeak amidst the thunders of this war.
A number of gentlemen scheming out world unity in studies
have begun their proposals with the simple suggestion that each sovereign power
should send one member to the projected parliament of mankind. This has a
pleasant democratic air; one sovereign state, one vote. Now let us run over a
list of sovereign states and see to what this leads us. We find our list
includes the British Empire, with a population of four hundred millions, of
which probably half can read and write some language or other; Bogota with a
population of a million, mostly poets; Hayti with a population of a million and
a third, almost entirely illiterate and liable at any time to further political
disruption; Andorra with a population of four or five thousand souls. The mere
suggestion of equal representation between such "powers" is enough to
make the British Empire burst into a thousand
(voting) fragments. A certain concession to population, one must admit, was
made by the theorists; a state of over three millions got, if I remember
rightly, two delegates, and if over twenty, three, and some of the small states
were given a kind of intermittent appearance, they only came every other time
or something of that sort; but at The Hague things still remained in such a
posture that three or four minute and backward states could outvote the British
Empire or the United States. Therein lies the clue to
the insignificance of The Hague.
Such projects as these are idle projects and we must put them out of our heads;
they are against nature; the great nations will not suffer them for a moment.
But when we dismiss this idea of representation by states,
we are left with the problem of the proportion of representation and of
relative weight in the Council of the League on our hands. It is the sort of
problem that appeals terribly to the ingenious. We cannot solve it by making
population a basis, because that will give a monstrous importance to the
illiterate millions of India
and China.
Ingenious statistical schemes have been framed in which the number of
university graduates and the steel output come in as
multipliers, but for my own part I am not greatly impressed by statistical
schemes. At the risk of seeming something of a Prussian, I would like to insist
upon certain brute facts. The business of the League of
Nations is to keep the peace of the world and nothing else. No
power will ever dare to break the peace of the world if the powers that are
capable of making war under modern conditions say "_No_." And there
are only four powers certainly capable at the present time of producing the men
and materials needed for a modern war in sufficient abundance to go on
fighting: Britain, France, Germany,
and the United States.
There are three others which are very doubtfully capable: Italy, Japan,
and Austria.
Russia I will mark--it is
all that one can do with Russia
just now--with a note of interrogation. Some day China may be war capable--I hope
never, but it is a possibility. Personally I don't think that any other power
on earth would have a ghost of a chance to resist the will--if it could be an
honestly united will--of the first-named four. All the rest
fight by the sanction of and by association with these leaders. They can
only fight because of the split will of the war-complete powers. Some are
forced to fight by that very division.
No one can vie with me in my appreciation of the
civilization of Switzerland,
Sweden, or Holland, but the plain fact of the case is
that such powers are absolutely incapable of uttering an effective protest
against war. Far less so are your Haytis and Liberias. The preservation of the
world-peace rests with the great powers and with the great powers alone. If
they have the will for peace, it is peace. If they have not, it is conflict.
The four powers I have named can now, if they see fit, dictate the peace of the
world for ever.
Let us keep our grip on that. Peace is the business of the
great powers primarily. Steel output, university graduates, and so forth may be
convenient secondary criteria, may be useful ways of measuring war efficiency,
but the meat and substance of the Council of the League of
Nations must embody the wills of those leading peoples. They can
give an enduring peace to the little nations and the whole of mankind. It can
arrive in no other way. So I take it that the Council of an ideal League of
Nations must consist chiefly of the representatives of the great belligerent
powers, and that the representatives of the minor allies and of the
neutrals--essential though their presence will be--must not be allowed to swamp
the voices of these larger masses of mankind.
And this state of affairs may come about more easily than
logical, statistical-minded people may be disposed to think. Our first impulse,
when we discuss the League of Nations idea, is to think of some very elaborate
and definite scheme of members on the model of existing legislative bodies,
called together one hardly knows how, and sitting in a specially built League
of Nations Congress House. All schemes are more methodical than reality. We
think of somebody, learned and "expert," in spectacles, with a thin
clear voice, reading over the "Projected Constitution of a League of Nations" to an attentive and respectful
Peace Congress. But there is a more natural way to a league than that. Instead
of being made like a machine, the League of Nations
may come about like a marriage. The Peace Congress that must sooner or later
meet may itself become, after a time, the Council of a League
of Nations. The League of Nations
may come upon us by degrees, almost imperceptibly. I am strongly obsessed by
the idea that that Peace Congress will necessarily become--and that it is
highly desirable that it should become--a most prolonged and persistent
gathering. Why should it not become at length a permanent gathering, inviting
representatives to aid its deliberations from the neutral states, and gradually
adjusting itself to conditions of permanency?
I can conceive no such Peace Congress as those that have
settled up after other wars, settling up after this war. Not only has the war
been enormously bigger than any other war, but it has struck deeper at the
foundations of social and economic life. I doubt if we begin to realize how
much of the old system is dead to-day, how much has to be remade. Since the
beginnings of history there has been a credible promise of gold payments
underneath our financial arrangements. It is now an incredible promise. The
value of a pound note waves about while you look at it. What will happen to it
when peace comes no man can tell. Nor what will happen to the mark. The rouble
has gone into the Abyss. Our giddy money specialists clutch their handfuls of
paper and watch it flying down the steep. Much as we may hate the Germans, some
of us will have to sit down with some of the enemy to arrange a common scheme
for the preservation of credit in money. And I presume that it is not proposed
to end this war in a wild scramble of buyers for such food as remains in the
world. There is a shortage now, a greater shortage ahead of the world, and
there will be shortages of supply at the source and transport in food and all
raw materials for some years to come. The Peace Congress will have to sit and
organize a share-out and distribution and reorganization of these shattered supplies.
It will have to Rhondda the nations. Probably,
too, we shall have to deal collectively with a pestilence before we are out of
the mess. Then there are such little jobs as the reconstruction of Belgium and Serbia. There are considerable
rectifications of boundaries to be made. There are fresh states to be created,
in Poland and Armenia for
example. About all these smaller states, new and old, that the peace must call
into being, there must be a system of guarantees of the most difficult and
complicated sort.
I do not see the Press Congress getting through such matters
as these in a session of weeks or months. The idea the Germans betrayed at Brest, that things were going to be done in the Versailles fashion by
great moustached heroes frowning and drawing lines with a large black soldierly
thumbnail across maps, is--old-fashioned. They have made their eastern
treaties, it is true, in this mode, but they are still looking for some really
responsible government to keep them now that they are made. From first to last
clearly the main peace negotiations are going to follow unprecedented courses.
This preliminary discussion of war aims by means of great public speeches, that
has been getting more and more explicit now for many months, is quite
unprecedented. Apparently all the broad preliminaries are to be stated and
accepted in the sight of all mankind before even an armistice occurs on the
main, the western front. The German diplomatists hate this process. So do a lot
of ours. So do some of the diplomatic Frenchmen. The German junkers are dodging
and lying, they are fighting desperately to keep back everything they possibly
can for the bargaining and bullying and table-banging of the council chamber,
but that way there is no peace. And when at last Germany says snip sufficiently to
the Allies' snap, and the Peace Congress begins, it will almost certainly be as
unprecedented as its prelude. Before it meets, the broad lines of the
settlement will have been drawn plainly with the approval of the mass of mankind.
A Peace Congress, growing permanent, then, may prove to be
the most practical and convenient embodiment of this idea of a League of Nations that has taken possession of the
imagination of the world. A most necessary preliminary to a Peace Congress,
with such possibilities inherent in it, must obviously be the meeting and
organization of a preliminary League of the Allied Nations. That point I would
now enlarge.
Half a world peace is better than none. There seems no reason
whatever why the world should wait for the Central Powers before it begins this
necessary work. Mr. McCurdy has been asking lately, "Why not the League of Nations _now_?" That is a question a great
number of people would like to echo very heartily. The nearer the Allies can
come to a League of Free Nations before the Peace Congress the more prospect there is that that body will approximate in nature
to a League of Nations for the whole world.
In one most unexpected quarter the same idea has been endorsed.
The King's Speech on the prorogation of Parliament this February was one of the
most remarkable royal utterances that have ever been made from the British
throne. There was less of the old-fashioned King and more of the modern
President about it than the most republican-minded of us could have
anticipated. For the first time in a King's Speech we heard of the
"democracies" of the world, and there was a clear claim that the
Allies at present fighting the Central Powers did themselves constitute a League of Nations.
But we must admit that at present they do so only in a very
rhetorical sense. There is no real council of empowered representatives, and
nothing in the nature of a united front has been prepared. Unless we provide
beforehand for something more effective, Italy,
France, the United States, Japan, and this country will send
separate groups of representatives, with separate instructions, unequal status,
and very probably conflicting views upon many subjects, to the ultimate peace
discussions. It is quite conceivable--it is a very serious danger--that at this
discussion skilful diplomacy on the part of the Central Powers may open a cleft
among the Allies that has never appeared during the actual war. Have the
British settled, for example, with Italy
and France
for the supply of metallurgical coal after the war? Those countries must have
it somehow. Across the board Germany
can make some tempting bids in that respect. Or take another question: Have the
British arrived at common views with France,
Belgium, Portugal, and South
Africa about the administration of Central
Africa? Suppose Germany
makes sudden proposals affecting native labour that win over the Portuguese and
the Boers? There are a score of such points upon which we shall find the Allied
representatives haggling with each other in the presence of the enemy if they
have not been settled beforehand.
It is the plainest common sense that we should be fixing up
all such matters with our Allies now, and knitting together a common front for
the final deal with German Imperialism. And these things are not to be done
effectively and bindingly nowadays by official gentlemen in discreet
undertones. They need to be done with the full knowledge and authority of the
participating peoples.
The Russian example has taught the world the instability of
diplomatic bargains in a time of such fundamental issues as the present. There
is little hope and little strength in hole-and-corner bargainings between the
officials or politicians who happen to be at the head of this or that nation
for the time being. Our Labour people will not stand this sort of thing and
they will not be bound by it. There will be the plain danger of repudiation for
all arrangements made in that fashion. A gathering of somebody or other approved
by the British Foreign Office and of somebody or other approved by the French
Foreign Office, of somebody with vague powers from America, and so on and so on, will
be an entirely ineffective gathering. But that is the sort of gathering of the
Allies we have been having hitherto, and that is the sort of gathering that is
likely to continue unless there is a considerable expression of opinion in
favour of something more representative and responsible.
Even our Foreign Office must be aware that in every country
in the world there is now bitter suspicion of and keen hostility towards merely
diplomatic representatives. One of the most significant features of the time is
the evident desire of the Labour movement in every European country to take
part in a collateral conference of Labour that shall meet when and where the
Peace Congress does and deliberate and comment on its proceedings. For a year
now the demand of the masses for such a Labour conference has been growing. It
marks a distrust of officialdom whose intensity officialdom would do well to
ponder. But it is the natural consequence of, it is
the popular attempt at a corrective to, the aloofness and obscurity that have
hitherto been so evil a characteristic of international negotiations. I do not
think Labour and intelligent people anywhere are going to be fobbed off with an
old-fashioned diplomatic gathering as being that League of Free Nations they
demand.
On the other hand, I do not contemplate this bi-cameral
conference with the diplomatists trying to best and humbug the Labour people as
well as each other and the Labour people getting more and more irritated,
suspicious, and extremist, with anything but dread. The Allied countries must
go into the conference _solid_, and they can only hope to do that by heeding
and incorporating Labour ideas before they come to the conference. The only
alternative that I can see to this unsatisfactory prospect of a Peace Congress
sitting side by side with a dissentient and probably revolutionary Labour and
Socialist convention--both gatherings with unsatisfactory credentials
contradicting one another and drifting to opposite extremes--is that the
delegates the Allied Powers send to the Peace Conference (the same delegates
which, if they are wise, they will have previously sent to a preliminary League
of Allied Nations to discuss their common action at the Peace Congress), should
be elected _ad hoc_ upon democratic lines.
I know that this will be a very shocking proposal to all our
able specialists in foreign policy. They will talk at once about the
"ignorance" of people like the Labour leaders and myself
about such matters, and so on. What do we know of the treaty of so-and-so that
was signed in the year seventeen something?--and so on. To which the answer is
that we ought not to have been kept ignorant of these things. A day will come
when the Foreign Offices of all countries will have to recognize that what the
people do not know of international agreements "ain't facts." A
secret treaty is only binding upon the persons in the secret. But what I, as a
sample common person, am not ignorant of is this: that the business that goes
on at the Peace Congress will either make or mar the lives of everyone I care
for in the world, and that somehow, by representative or what not, _I have to
be there_. The Peace Congress deals with the blood and happiness of my children
and the future of my world. Speaking as one of the hundreds of millions of
"rank outsiders" in public affairs, I do not mean to respect any
peace treaty that may end this war unless I am honestly represented at its
making. I think everywhere there is a tendency in people to follow the Russian
example to this extent and to repudiate bargains in which they have had no
voice.
I do not see that any genuine realization of the hopes with
which all this talk about the League of Nations is charged can be possible,
unless the two bodies which should naturally lead up to the League of
Nations--that is to say, firstly, the Conference of the Allies, and then the
Peace Congress--are elected bodies, speaking confidently for the whole mass of
the peoples behind them. It may be a troublesome thing to elect them, but it
will involve much more troublesome consequences if they are not elected. This,
I think, is one of the considerations for which many people's minds are still
unprepared. But unless we are to have over again after all this bloodshed and
effort some such "Peace with Honour" foolery as we had performed by
"Dizzy" and Salisbury at that fatal Berlin Conference in which this
present war was begotten, we must sit up to this novel proposal of electoral
representation in the peace negotiations. Something more than common sense
binds our statesmen to this idea. They are morally pledged to it. President
Wilson and our British and French spokesmen alike have said over and over again
that they want to deal not with the Hohenzollerns but with the German people.
In other words, we have demanded elected representatives from the German people
with whom we may deal, and how can we make a demand of that sort unless we on
our part are already prepared to send our own elected representatives to meet
them? It is up to us to indicate by our own practice how we on our side,
professing as we do to act for democracies, to make democracy safe on the
earth, and so on, intend to meet this new occasion.
Yet it has to be remarked that, so far, not one of the
League of Nations projects I have seen have included any practicable proposals
for the appointment of delegates either to that ultimate body or to its two
necessary predecessors, the Council of the Allies and the Peace Congress. It is
evident that here, again, we are neglecting to get on with something of very
urgent importance. I will venture, therefore, to say a word or two here about
the possible way in which a modern community may appoint its international
representatives.
And here, again, I turn from any European precedents to that
political outcome of the British mind, the Constitution of the United States.
(Because we must always remember that while our political institutions in Britain are a
patch-up of feudalism, Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian monarchist traditions and
urgent merely European necessities, a patch-up that has been made
quasi-democratic in a series of after-thoughts, the American Constitution is a
real, deliberate creation of the English-speaking intelligence.) The President
of the United States,
then, we have to note, is elected in a most extraordinary way, and in a way
that has now the justification of very great successes indeed. On several
occasions the United States
has achieved indisputable greatness in its Presidents, and very rarely has it
failed to set up very leaderly and distinguished men. It is worth while,
therefore, to inquire how this President is elected. He is neither elected
directly by the people nor appointed by any legislative body. He is chosen by a
special college elected by the people. This college exists to elect him; it
meets, elects him, and disperses. (I will not here go into the preliminary
complications that makes the election of a President follow upon a preliminary
election of two Presidential Candidates. The point I am making here is that he
is a specially selected man chosen _ad hoc_.) Is there any reason why we
should, not adopt this method in this new necessity we are under of sending
representatives, first, to the long overdue and necessary Allied Council, then
to the Peace Congress, and then to the hoped-for Council of the League of
Nations?
I am anxious here only to start for discussion the idea of
an electoral representation of the nations upon these three bodies that must in
succession set themselves to define, organize, and
maintain the peace of the world. I do not wish to complicate the question by
any too explicit advocacy of methods of election or the like. In the United States
this college which elects the President is elected on the same register of
voters as that which elects the Senate and Congress, and at the same time. But
I suppose if we are to give a popular mandate to the three or five or twelve or
twenty (or whatever number it is) men to whom we are going to entrust our
Empire's share in this great task of the peace negotiations, it will be more
decisive of the will of the whole nation if the college that had to appoint
them is elected at a special election. I suppose that the great British
common-weals over-seas, at present not represented in Parliament, would also
and separately at the same time elect colleges to appoint their
representatives. I suppose there would be at least one Indian representative
elected, perhaps by some special electoral conference of Indian princes and
leading men. The chief defect of the American Presidential election is that as
the old single vote method of election is employed it has to be fought on purely
party lines. He is the select man of the Democratic half, or of the Republican
half of the nation. He is not the select man of the whole nation. It would give
a far more representative character to the electoral college
if it could be elected by fair modern methods, if for this particular purpose
parliamentary constituencies could be grouped and the clean scientific method
of proportional representation could be used. But I suppose the party
politician in this, as in most of our affairs, must still have his pound of our
flesh--and we must reckon with him later for the bloodshed.
These are all, however, secondary considerations. The above
paragraph is, so to speak, in the nature of a footnote. The fundamental matter,
if we are to get towards any realization of this ideal of a world peace
sustained by a League of Nations, is to get
straight away to the conception of direct special electoral mandates in this
matter. At present all the political luncheon and dinner parties in London are busy with
smirking discussions of "Who is to go?" The titled ladies are
particularly busy. They are talking about it as if we poor, ignorant,
tax-paying, blood-paying common people did not exist. "L. G.," they
say, will of course "_insist_ on going," but
there is much talk of the "Old Man."
People are getting quite nice again about "the Old Man's feelings."
It would be such a pretty thing to send him. But if "L. G." goes we
want him to go with something more than a backing of intrigues and snatched
authority. And I do not think the mass of people have any enthusiasm for the
Old Man. It is difficult again--by the dinner-party standards--to know how Lord
Curzon can be restrained. But we common people do not care if he is restrained
to the point of extinction. Probably there will be nobody who talks or
understands Russian among the British representatives. But, of course, the
British governing class has washed its hands of the Russians. They were always
very difficult, and now they are "impossible, my dear, perfectly impossible."
No! That sort of thing will not do now. This Peace Congress
is too big a job for party politicians and society and county families. The
bulk of British opinion cannot go on being represented for ever by President
Wilson. We cannot always look to the Americans to express our ideas and do our
work for democracy. The foolery of the Berlin Treaty must not be repeated. We
cannot have another popular Prime Minister come triumphing back to England with a
gross of pink spectacles--through which we may survey the prospect of the next great war. The League of Free Nations means something very
big and solid; it is not a rhetorical phrase to be used to pacify a restless,
distressed, and anxious public, and to be sneered out of existence when that
use is past. When the popular mind now demands a League of Free Nations it
demands a reality. The only way to that reality is through the direct
participation of the nation as a whole in the settlement, and that is possible
only through the direct election for this particular issue of representative
and responsible men.
If this phrase, "the League of Free Nations," is
to signify anything more than a rhetorical flourish, then certain consequences
follow that have to be faced now. No man can join a partnership and remain an
absolutely free man. You cannot bind yourself to do this and not to do that and
to consult and act with your associates in certain eventualities without a loss
of your sovereign freedom. People in this country and in France do not
seem to be sitting up manfully to these necessary propositions.
If this League of Free Nations is really to be an effectual
thing for the preservation of the peace of the world it must possess power and
exercise power, powers must be delegated to it. Otherwise it will only help,
with all other half-hearted good resolutions, to pave the road of mankind to
hell. Nothing in all the world so strengthens evil as
the half-hearted attempts of good to make good.
It scarcely needs repeating here--it has been so generally
said--that no League of Free Nations can hope to keep the peace unless every
member of it is indeed a free member, represented by duly elected persons.
Nobody, of course, asks to "dictate the internal government" of any
country to that country. If Germans, for instance, like to wallow in absolutism
after the war they can do so. But if they or any other peoples wish to take
part in a permanent League of Free Nations it is only reasonable to insist that
so far as their representatives on the council go they must be duly elected
under conditions that are by the standards of the general league satisfactorily
democratic. That seems to be only the common sense of the matter. Every court
is a potential conspiracy against freedom, and the League cannot tolerate
merely court appointments. If courts are to exist anywhere in the new world of
the future, they will be wise to stand aloof from international meddling. Of
course if a people, after due provision for electoral representation, choose to
elect dynastic candidates, that is an altogether different matter.
And now let us consider what are the powers that must be
delegated to this proposed council of a League of Free Nations, if that is
really effectually to prevent war and to organize and establish and make peace
permanent in the world.
Firstly, then, it must be able to adjudicate upon all
international disputes whatever. Its first function must clearly be that.
Before a war can break out there must be the possibility of a world decision
upon its rights and wrongs. The League, therefore, will have as its primary
function to maintain a Supreme Court, whose decisions will be final, before
which every sovereign power may appear as plaintiff against any other sovereign
power or group of powers. The plea, I take it, will always be in the form that
the defendant power or powers is engaged in proceedings "calculated to
lead to a breach of the peace," and calling upon the League for an
injunction against such proceedings. I suppose the proceedings that can be
brought into court in this way fall under such headings as these that follow;
restraint of trade by injurious tariffs or suchlike differentiations or by
interference with through traffic, improper treatment of the subjects _or their
property_ (here I put a query) of the plaintiff nation in the defendant state,
aggressive military or naval preparation, disorder spreading over the frontier,
trespass (as, for instance, by airships), propaganda of disorder, espionage,
permitting the organization of injurious activities, such as raids or piracy.
Clearly all such actions must come within the purview of any world-supreme
court organized to prevent war. But in addition there is a more doubtful and
delicate class of case, arising out of the discontent of patches of one race or
religion in the dominions of another. How far may the supreme court of the
world attend to grievances between subject and sovereign?
Such cases are highly probable, and no large, vague
propositions about the "self-determination" of peoples can meet all
the cases. In Macedonia,
for instance, there is a jumble of Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek and Rumanian villages always jostling one another and
maintaining an intense irritation between the kindred nations close at hand.
And quite a large number of areas and cities in the world, it has to be
remembered, are not homogeneous at all. Will the great nations of the world
have the self-abnegation to permit a scattered subject population to appeal
against the treatment of its ruling power to the Supreme Court? This is a much
more serious interference with sovereignty than intervention in an external
quarrel. Could a Greek village in Bulgarian Macedonia plead in the Supreme
Court? Could the Armenians in Constantinople, or the Jews in Roumania, or the
Poles in West Prussia, or the negroes in Georgia,
or the Indians in the Transvaal make such an
appeal? Could any Indian population in India appeal? Personally I should
like to see the power of the Supreme Court extend as far as this. I do not see
how we can possibly prevent a kindred nation pleading for the scattered people
of its own race and culture, or any nation presenting a case on behalf of some
otherwise unrepresented people--the United States, for example,
presenting a case on behalf of the Armenians. But I doubt if many people have
made up their minds yet to see the powers of the Supreme Court of the League of
Nations go so far as this. I doubt if, to begin with, it will be possible to
provide for these cases. I would like to see it done, but I doubt if the
majority of the sovereign peoples concerned will reconcile their national pride
with the idea, at least so far as their own subject populations go.
Here, you see, I do no more than ask a question. It is a
difficult one, and it has to be answered before we can clear the way to the
League of Free Nations.
But the Supreme Court, whether it is to have the wider or
the narrower scope here suggested, would be merely the central function of the
League of Free Nations. Behind the decisions of the Supreme Court must lie power. And here come fresh difficulties for patriotic
digestions. The armies and navies of the world must be at the disposal of the
League of Free Nations, and that opens up a new large area of delegated
authority. The first impulse of any power disposed to challenge the decisions
of the Supreme Court will be, of course, to arm; and it is difficult to imagine
how the League of Free Nations can exercise any practical authority unless it
has power to restrain such armament. The League of Free Nations must, in fact,
if it is to be a working reality, have power to define and limit the military
and naval and aerial equipment of every country in the world. This means
something more than a restriction of state forces. It must have power and freedom
to investigate the military and naval and aerial establishments of all its
constituent powers. It must also have effective control over every armament
industry. And armament industries are not always easy to define. Are
aeroplanes, for example, armament? Its powers, I suggest, must extend even to a
restraint upon the belligerent propaganda which is the natural advertisement
campaign of every armament industry. It must have the right, for example, to
raise the question of the proprietorship of newspapers by armament interests.
Disarmament is, in fact, a necessary factor of any League of Free Nations, and
you cannot have disarmament unless you are prepared to see the powers of the
council of the League extend thus far. The very existence of the League presupposes
that it and it alone is to have and to exercise military force. Any other
belligerency or preparation or incitement to belligerency becomes rebellion,
and any other arming a threat of rebellion, in a world League of Free Nations.
But here, again, has the general mind yet thought out all
that is involved in this proposition? In all the great belligerent countries
the armament industries are now huge interests with enormous powers. Krupp's
business alone is as powerful a thing in Germany as the Crown. In every
country a heavily subsidized "patriotic" press will fight desperately
against giving powers so extensive and thorough as
those here suggested to an international body. So long, of course, as the
League of Free Nations remains a project in the air, without body or parts,
such a press will sneer at it gently as "Utopian," and even patronize
it kindly. But so soon as the League takes on the shape its general proposition
makes logically necessary, the armament interest will take fright. Then it is
we shall hear the drum patriotic loud in defence of the human blood trade. Are
we to hand over these most intimate affairs of ours to "a lot of
foreigners"? Among these "foreigners" who will be appealed to to
terrify the patriotic souls of the British will be the "Americans."
Are we men of English blood and tradition to see our affairs controlled by such
"foreigners" as Wilson, Lincoln, Webster and Washington? Perish the
thought! When they might be controlled by Disraelis, Wettins, Mount-Battens,
and what not! And so on and so on. Krupp's agents and the agents of the kindred
firms in Great Britain and France will also be very busy with the national
pride of France.
In Germany they have already
created a colossal suspicion of England.
Here is a giant in the path....
But let us remember that it is only necessary to defeat the
propaganda of this vile and dangerous industry in four great countries. And for
the common citizen, touched on the tenderest part of his patriotic
susceptibilities, there are certain irrefutable arguments. Whether the ways of
the world in the years to come are to be the paths of peace or the paths of war
is not going to alter this essential fact, that the
great educated world communities, with a social and industrial organization on
a war-capable scale, are going to dominate human affairs. Whether they spend
their power in killing or in educating and creating, France, Germany, however
much we may resent it, the two great English-speaking communities, Italy, Japan
China, and presently perhaps a renascent Russia, are jointly going to control
the destinies of mankind. Whether that joint control comes through arms or
through the law is a secondary consideration. To refuse to bring our affairs
into a common council does not make us independent of foreigners. It makes us
more dependent upon them, as a very little consideration will show.
I am suggesting here that the League of Free Nations shall
practically control the army, navy, air forces, and armament industry of every
nation in the world. What is the alternative to that? To do as we please? No,
the alternative is that any malignant country will be free to force upon all
the rest just the maximum amount of armament it chooses to adopt. Since 1871 France, we say,
has been free in military matters. What has been the value of that freedom? The
truth is, she has been the bond-slave of Germany, bound to watch Germany as a
slave watches a master, bound to launch submarine for submarine and cast gun
for gun, to sweep all her youth into her army, to subdue her trade, her
literature, her education, her whole life to the necessity of preparations
imposed upon her by her drill-master over the Rhine. And Michael, too, has been
a slave to his imperial master for the self-same reason, for the reason that Germany and France were both so proudly
sovereign and independent. Both countries have been slaves to Kruppism and
Zabernism--_because they were sovereign and free_! So it will always be. So
long as patriotic cant can keep the common man jealous of international controls
over his belligerent possibilities, so long will he be the helpless slave of
the foreign threat, and "Peace" remain a mere name for the resting
phase between wars.
But power over the military resources of the world is by no
means the limit of the necessary powers of an effective League of Free Nations.
There are still more indigestible implications in the idea, and, since they
have got to be digested sooner or later if civilization is not to collapse,
there is no reason why we should not begin to bite upon them now. I was much
interested to read the British press upon the alleged proposal of the German
Chancellor that we should give up (presumably to Germany)
Gibraltar, Malta,
Egypt,
and suchlike key possessions. It seemed to excite several of our politicians
extremely. I read over the German Chancellor's speech very carefully, so far as
it was available, and it is clear that he did not propose anything of the sort.
Wilfully or blindly our press and our demagogues screamed over a false issue.
The Chancellor was defending the idea of the Germans remaining in Belgium and Lorraine
because of the strategic and economic importance of those regions to Germany, and he was arguing that before we
English got into such a feverish state of indignation about that, we should
first ask ourselves what we were doing in Gibraltar,
etc., etc. That is a different thing altogether. And it is an argument that is
not to be disposed of by misrepresentation. The British have to think hard over
this quite legitimate German _tu quoque_. It is no good getting into a
patriotic bad temper and refusing to answer that question. We British people
are so persuaded of the purity and unselfishness with which we discharge our
imperial responsibilities, we have been so trained in imperial self-satisfaction,
we know so certainly that all our subject nations call us blessed, that it is a
little difficult for us to see just how the fact that we are, for example, so
deeply rooted in Egypt looks to an outside intelligence. Of course the German imperialist
idea is a wicked and aggressive idea, as Lord Robert Cecil has explained; they
want to set up all over the earth coaling stations and strategic points, _on
the pattern of ours._ Well, they argue, we are only trying to do what you
British have done. If we are not to do so--because it is aggression and so on
and so on--is not the time ripe for you to make some concessions to the public
opinion of the world? That is the German argument. Either, they say, tolerate
this idea of a Germany
with advantageous posts and possessions round and about the earth, or
reconsider your own position.
Well, at the risk of rousing much patriotic wrath, I must
admit that I think we _have_ to reconsider our
position. Our argument is that in India,
Egypt, Africa and elsewhere, we stand for order and
civilization, we are the trustees of freedom, the agents of knowledge and
efficiency. On the whole the record of British rule is a pretty respectable
one; I am not ashamed of our record. Nevertheless _the case is altering_.
It is quite justifiable for us British, no doubt, if we do
really play the part of honest trustees, to remain in Egypt and in India
under existing conditions; it is even possible for us to glance at the
helplessness of Arabia, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, as yet incapable of self-government,
helpless as new-born infants. But our case, our only justifiable case, is that
we are trustees because there is no better trustee possible. And the creation
of a council of a League of Free Nations would be like the creation of a Public
Trustee for the world. The creation of a League of Free Nations must
necessarily be the creation of an authority that may legitimately call existing
empires to give an account of their stewardship. For an unchecked fragmentary
control of tropical and chaotic regions, it substitutes the possibility of a
general authority. And this must necessarily alter the problems not only of the
politically immature nations and the control of the tropics, but also of the
regulation of the sea ways, the regulation of the coming air routes, and the
distribution of staple products in the world. I will not go in detail over the
items of this list, because the reader can fill in the essentials of the
argument from what has gone before. I want simply to suggest how widely this
project of a League of Free Nations swings when once you have let it swing
freely in your mind! And if you do not let it swing freely in your mind, it
remains nothing--a sentimental gesture.
The plain truth is that the League of Free Nations, if it is
to be a reality, if it is to effect a real pacification of the world, must do
no less than supersede Empire; it must end not only this new German
imperialism, which is struggling so savagely and powerfully to possess the
earth, but it must also wind up British imperialism and French imperialism,
which do now so largely and inaggressively possess it. And, moreover, this idea
queries the adjective of Belgian, Portuguese, French, and British Central Africa alike, just as emphatically as it queries "German."
Still more effectually does the League forbid those creations of the futurist
imagination, the imperialism of Italy
and Greece,
which make such threatening gestures at the world of our children.
Are these incompatibilities understood? Until people have faced the clear
antagonism that exists between imperialism and internationalism, they have not
begun to suspect the real significance of this project of the League of Free
Nations. They have not begun to realize that peace also has its price.
I was recently privileged to hear the views of one of those
titled and influential ladies--with a general education at about the fifth
standard level, plus a little French, German, Italian, and music--who do so
much to make our England
what it is at the present time, upon the Labour idea of an international
control of "tropical" Africa. She
was loud and derisive about the "ignorance" of Labour. "What can
_they_ know about foreign politics?" she said, with gestures to indicate
her conception of _them_.
I was moved to ask her what she would do about Africa. "Leave it to Lord Robert!" she said,
leaning forward impressively. "_Leave it to the people who know._"
Unhappily I share the evident opinion of Labour that we are
not blessed with any profoundly wise class of people who have definite
knowledge and clear intentions about Africa, that these "_people who
know_" are mostly a pretentious bluff, and so, in spite of a very earnest
desire to take refuge in my "ignorance" from the burthen of thinking
about African problems, I find myself obliged, like most other people, to do
so. In the interests of our country, our children, and the
world, we common persons _have_ to have opinions about these matters. A
muddle-up in Africa this year may kill your
son and mine in the course of the next decade. I know this is not a claim to be
interested in things African, such as the promoter of a tropical railway or an
oil speculator has; still it is a claim. And for the life of me I cannot see
what is wrong about the Labour proposals, or what alternative exists that can
give even a hope of peace in and about Africa.
The gist of the Labour proposal is an international control
of Africa between the Zambesi and the Sahara.
This has been received with loud protests by men whose work one is obliged to
respect, by Sir Harry, Johnston, for example, and Sir Alfred Sharpe, and with
something approaching a shriek of hostility by Mr. Cunninghame Graham. But I
think these gentlemen have not perhaps given the Labour proposal quite as much
attention as they have spent upon the details of African conditions. I think
they have jumped to conclusions at the mere sound of the word
"international." There have been some gross failures in the past to
set up international administrations in Africa and the Near
East. And these gentlemen think at once of some new Congo
administration and of nondescript police forces commanded by cosmopolitan
adventurers. (See Joseph Conrad's "Out-post of Civilization.") They
think of internationalism with greedy Great Powers in the background outside
the internationalized area, intriguing to create disorder and mischief with
ideas of an ultimate annexation. But I doubt if such nightmares do any sort of
justice to the Labour intention.
And the essential thing I would like to point out to these
authorities upon African questions is that not one of them even hints at any
other formula which covers the broad essentials of the African riddle.
What are these broad essentials? What are the ends that _must_
be achieved if Africa is not to continue a
festering sore in the body of mankind?
The first most obvious danger of Africa
is the militarization of the black. General Smuts has pointed this out plainly.
The negro makes a good soldier; he is hardy, he stands
the sea, and he stands cold. (There was a negro in the
little party which reached the North Pole.) It is absolutely essential to the
peace of the world that there should be no arming of the negroes
beyond the minimum necessary for the policing of Africa.
But how is this to be watched and prevented if there is no overriding body
representing civilization to say "Stop" to the beginnings of any such
militarization? I do not see how Sir Harry Johnston, Sir Alfred Sharpe, and the
other authorities can object to at least an international African
"Disarmament Commission" to watch, warn, and protest. At least they
must concede that.
But in practice this involves something else. A practical
consequence of this disarmament idea must be an effective control of the
importation of arms into the "tutelage" areas of Africa.
That rat at the dykes of civilization, that ultimate expression of political
scoundrelism, the Gun-Runner, has to be kept under and stamped out in Africa as everywhere. A Disarmament Commission that has
no forces available to prevent the arms trade will be just another Hague
Convention, just another vague, well-intentioned, futile gesture.
And closely connected with this function of controlling the
arms trade is another great necessity of Africa
under "tutelage," and that is the necessity
of a common collective agreement not to demoralize the native population. That
demoralization, physical and moral, has already gone far. The whole negro population of Africa
is now rotten with diseases introduced by Arabs and Europeans during the last
century, and such African statesmen as Sir Harry Johnston are eloquent upon the
necessity of saving the blacks--and the baser whites--from the effects of trade
gin and similar alluring articles of commerce. Moreover, from Africa there is
always something new in the way of tropical diseases, and presently Africa, if we let it continue to fester as it festers
now, may produce an epidemic that will stand exportation to a temperate
climate. A bacterium that may kill you or me in some novel and disgusting way
may even now be developing in some Congo muck-heap. So here is the
need for another Commission to look after the Health of Africa. That, too,
should be of authority over all the area of "tutelage" Africa. It is no good stamping out infectious disease in
Nyasaland while it is being bred in Portuguese East Africa.
And if there is a Disarmament Commission already controlling the importation of
arms, why should not that body also control at the same time the importation of
trade gin and similar delicacies, and direct quarantine and such-like health
regulations?
But there is another question in Africa
upon which our "ignorant" Labour class is far better informed than
our dear old eighteenth-century upper class which still squats so firmly in our
Foreign and Colonial Offices, and that is the question of forced labour. We
cannot tolerate any possibilities of the enslavement of black Africa.
Long ago the United States
found out the impossibility of having slave labour working in the same system
with white. To cure that anomaly cost the United States a long and bloody
war. The slave-owner, the exploiter of the black, becomes a threat and a
nuisance to any white democracy. He brings back his loot to corrupt Press and
life at home. What happened in America
in the midst of the last century between Federals and Confederates must not
happen again on a larger scale between white Europe and middle Africa. Slavery in Africa,
open or disguised, whether enforced by the lash or brought about by iniquitous
land-stealing, strikes at the home and freedom of every European worker--_and
Labour knows this_.
But how are we to prevent the enslavement and economic
exploitation of the blacks if we have no general watcher of African conditions?
We want a common law for Africa, a general
Declaration of Rights, of certain elementary rights, and we want a common
authority to which the black man and the native tribe may appeal for justice.
What is the good of trying to elevate the population of Uganda and to
give it a free and hopeful life if some other population close at hand is
competing against the Baganda worker under lash and tax? So here is a third
aspect of our international Commission, as a native protectorate and court of
appeal!
There is still a fourth aspect of the African question in
which every mother's son in Europe is closely
interested, and that is the trade question. Africa
is the great source of many of the most necessary raw materials upon which our
modern comforts and conveniences depend; more particularly is it the source of
cheap fat in the form of palm oil. One of the most powerful levers in the hands
of the Allied democracies at the present time in their struggle against the
imperial brigands of Potsdam
is the complete control we have now obtained over these essential supplies. We
can, if we choose, cut off Germany
altogether from these vital economic necessities, if she does not consent to
abandon militant imperialism for some more civilized form of government. We
hope that this war will end in that renunciation, and that Germany will
re-enter the community of nations. But whether that is so or not, whether Germany is or
is not to be one of the interested parties in the African solution, the fact
remains that it is impossible to contemplate a continuing struggle for the
African raw material supply between the interested Powers. Sooner or later that
means a renewal of war. International trade rivalry is, indeed, only
war--_smouldering_. We need, and Labour demands, a fair, frank treatment of
African trade, and that can only be done by some overriding regulative power, a
Commission which, so far as I can see, might also be the same Commission as
that we have already hypothesized as being necessary to control the Customs in
order to prevent gun-running and the gin trade. That Commission might very
conveniently have a voice in the administration of the great waterways of Africa (which often run through the possessions of
several Powers) and in the regulation of the big railway lines and air routes
that will speedily follow the conclusion of peace.
Now this I take it is the gist of the Labour proposal.
This--and no more than this--is what is intended by the "international
control of tropical Africa." _I do not
read that phrase as abrogating existing sovereignties in Africa_. What is
contemplated is a delegation of authority. Every one should know, though
unhappily the badness of our history teaching makes it doubtful if every one
does know, that the Federal Government of the United States of America
did not begin as a sovereign Government, and has now only a very questionable
sovereignty. Each State was sovereign, and each State delegated certain powers
to Washington.
That was the initial idea of the union. Only later did the idea of a people of
the States as a whole emerge. In the same way I understand the Labour proposal
as meaning that we should delegate to an African Commission the middle African
Customs, the regulation of inter-State trade, inter-State railways and
waterways, quarantine and health generally, and the establishment of a Supreme
Court for middle African affairs. One or two minor matters, such as the
preservation of rare animals, might very well fall under the same authority.
Upon that Commission the interested nations, that is to
say--putting them in alphabetical order--the Africander, the Briton, the
Belgian, the Egyptian, the Frenchman, the Italian, the Indian the
Portuguese--might all be represented in proportion to their interest. Whether
the German would come in is really a question for the German to consider; he
can come in as a good European, he cannot come in as an imperialist brigand.
Whether, too, any other nations can claim to have an interest in African
affairs, whether the Commission would not be better appointed by a League of
Free Nations than directly by the interested Governments, and a number of other
such questions, need not be considered here. Here we are discussing only the
main idea of the Labour proposal.
Now beneath the supervision and restraint of such a
delegated Commission I do not see why the existing administrations of tutelage Africa should not continue. I do not believe that the
Labour proposal contemplates any humiliating cession of European sovereignty.
Under that international Commission the French flag may still wave in Senegal and the
British over the protected State of Uganda. Given a new spirit in Germany I do not see why the German flag should
not presently be restored in German East Africa.
But over all, standing for righteousness, patience, fair play for the black,
and the common welfare of mankind would wave a new flag, the Sun of Africa
representing the Central African Commission of the League of Free Nations.
That is my vision of the Labour project. It is something
very different, I know, from the nightmare of an international police of
cosmopolitan scoundrels in nondescript uniforms, hastening to loot and ravish
his dear Uganda and his
beloved Nigeria,
which distresses the crumpled pillow of Sir Harry Johnston. But if it is not
the solution, then it is up to him and his fellow authorities to tell us what is the solution of the African riddle.
§ 1
It is idle to pretend that even at the present time the idea
of the League of Free Nations has secure possession of the British mind. There
is quite naturally a sustained opposition to it in all the fastnesses of
aggressive imperialism. Such papers as the _Times_ and the _Morning Post_
remain hostile and obstructive to the expression of international ideas. Most
of our elder statesmen seem to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing during
the years of wildest change the world has ever known. But in the general mind
of the British peoples the movement of opinion from a narrow imperialism
towards internationalism has been wide and swift. And it continues steadily.
One can trace week by week and almost day by day the Americanization of the
British conception of the Allied War Aims. It may be interesting to reproduce
here three communications upon this question made at different times by the
present writer to the press. The circumstances of their publication are
significant. The first is in substance identical with a letter which was sent
to the _Times_ late in May, 1917, and rejected as being altogether too
revolutionary. For nowadays the correspondence in the _Times_ has ceased to be
an impartial expression of public opinion. The correspondence of the _Times_ is
now apparently selected and edited in accordance with the views upon public policy
held by the acting editor for the day. More and more has that paper become the
organ of a sort of Oxford Imperialism, three or four years behind the times and
very ripe and "expert." The letter is here given as it was finally
printed in the issue of the _Daily Chronicle_ for June 4th, 1917, under the
heading, "Wanted a Statement of Imperial Policy."
Sir,--The time seems to have come for much clearer
statements of outlook and intention from this country than it has hitherto been
possible to make. The entry of America into the war and the banishment of
autocracy and aggressive diplomacy from Russia have enormously cleared the air,
and the recent great speech of General Smuts at the Savoy Hotel is probably
only the first of a series of experiments in statement. It is desirable alike
to clear our own heads, to unify our efforts, and to give the nations of the
world some assurance and standard for our national conduct in the future, that
we should now define the Idea of our Empire and its relation to the world
outlook much more clearly than has ever hitherto been done. Never before in the
history of mankind has opinion counted for so much and
persons and organizations for so little as in this war. Never before has the
need for clear ideas, widely understood and consistently sustained, been so
commandingly vital.
What do we mean by our Empire, and what is its relation to
that universal desire of mankind, the permanent rule of peace and justice in
the world? The whole world will be the better for a very plain answer to that
question.
Is it not time for us British not merely to admit to
ourselves, but to assure the world that our Empire as it exists to-day is a
provisional thing, that in scarcely any part of the world do we regard it as
more than an emergency arrangement, as a necessary association that must give
place ultimately to the higher synthesis of a world league, that here we hold
as trustees and there on account of strategic considerations that may presently
disappear, and that though we will not contemplate the replacement of our flag
anywhere by the flag of any other competing nation, though we do hope to hold
together with our kin and with those who increasingly share our tradition and
our language, nevertheless we are prepared to welcome great renunciations of
our present ascendency and privileges in the interests of mankind as a whole.
We need to make the world understand that we do not put our nation nor our Empire before the commonwealth of man. Unless
presently we are to follow Germany
along the tragic path her national vanity and her world ambitions have made for
her, that is what we have to make clear now. It is not
only our duty to mankind, it is also the sane course
for our own preservation.
Is it not the plain lesson of this stupendous and disastrous
war that there is no way to secure civilization from destruction except by an
impartial control and protection in the interests of the whole human race, a
control representing the best intelligence of mankind, of these main causes of
war.
(1) The politically undeveloped tropics;
(2) Shipping and international trade; and
(3) Small nationalities and all regions in a state of
political impotence or confusion?
It is our case against the Germans that in all these three
cases they have subordinated every consideration of justice and the general
human welfare to a monstrous national egotism. That argument has a double edge.
At present there is a vigorous campaign in America,
Russia,
the neutral countries generally, to represent British
patriotism as equally egotistic, and our purpose in this war as a mere parallel
to the German purpose. In the same manner, though perhaps with less
persistency, France and Italy are also
caricatured. We are supposed to be grabbing at Mesopotamia and Palestine,
France at Syria; Italy is represented as pursuing a Machiavellian policy
towards the unfortunate Greek republicans, with her eyes on the Greek islands
and Greece in Asia. Is it not time that these base imputations were repudiated
clearly and conclusively by our Alliance?
And is it not time that we began to discuss in much more frank and definite
terms than has hitherto been done, the nature of the international arrangement
that will be needed to secure the safety of such liberated populations as those
of Palestine, of the Arab regions of the old Turkish empire, of Armenia, of
reunited Poland, and the like?
I do not mean here mere diplomatic discussions and
"understandings," I mean such full and plain statements as will be
spread through the whole world and grasped and assimilated by ordinary people
everywhere, statements by which we, as a people, will be prepared to stand or
fall.
Almost as urgent is the need for some definite statement
about Africa. General Smuts has warned not
only the Empire, but the whole world of the gigantic threat to civilization
that lies in the present division of Africa
between various keenly competitive European Powers, any one of which will be
free to misuse the great natural resources at its disposal and to arm millions
of black soldiers for aggression. A mere elimination of Germany from Africa
will not solve that difficulty. What we have to eliminate is not this nation or
that, but the system of national shoving and elbowing, the treatment of Africa as the board for a game of beggar-my-neighbour-and-damn-the-niggers,
in which a few syndicates, masquerading as national interests, snatch a profit
to the infinite loss of all mankind. We want a lowering of barriers and a
unification of interests, we want an international
control of these disputed regions, to override nationalist exploitation. The
whole world wants it. It is a chastened and reasonable world we live in to-day,
and the time for white reason and the wide treatment of these problems is now.
Finally, the time is drawing near when the Egyptian and the
nations of India
will ask us, "Are things going on for ever here as they go on now, or are
we to look for the time when we, too, like the Africander, the Canadian and the
Australian, will be your confessed and equal partners?" Would it not be
wise to answer that question in the affirmative before the voice in which it is
asked grows thick with anger? In Egypt,
for example, we are either robbers very like--except
for a certain difference in touch--the Germans in Belgium, or we are honourable
trustees. It is our claim and pride to be honourable trustees. Nothing so
becomes a trustee as a cheerful openness of disposition. Great Britain
has to table her world policy. It is a thing overdue. No doubt we have already
a literature of liberal imperialism and a considerable accumulation of
declarations by this statesman or that. But what is needed is a formulation
much more representative, official and permanent than that, something that can
be put beside President Wilson's clear rendering of
the American idea. We want all our peoples to understand, and we want all
mankind to understand that our Empire is not a net about the world in which the
progress of mankind is entangled, but a self-conscious political system working
side by side with the other democracies of the earth, preparing the way for,
and prepared at last to sacrifice and merge itself in, the world confederation
of free and equal peoples.
§
2
This letter was presently followed up by an article in the
_Daily News_, entitled "A Reasonable Man's Peace." This article
provoked a considerable controversy in the imperialist press, and it was
reprinted as a pamphlet by a Free Trade organization, which distributed over
200,000 copies. It is particularly interesting to note, in view of what follows
it, that it was attacked with great virulence in the _Evening News_, the little
fierce mud-throwing brother of the _Daily Mail_.
The international situation at the present time is beyond
question the most wonderful that the world has ever seen. There is not a
country in the world in which the great majority of sensible people are not
passionately desirous of peace, of an enduring peace, and--the war goes on. The
conditions of peace can now be stated, in general terms that are as acceptable
to a reasonable man in Berlin as they are to a
reasonable man in Paris or London
or Petrograd or Constantinople. There are to
be no conquests, no domination of recalcitrant populations, no bitter
insistence upon vindictive penalties, and there must be something in the nature
of a world-wide League of Nations to keep the
peace securely in future, to "make the world safe for democracy," and
maintain international justice. To that the general mind of the world has come to-day.
Why, then, does the waste and killing go on? Why is not the
Peace Conference sitting now?
Manifestly because a small minority of people in positions
of peculiar advantage, in positions of trust and authority, and particularly
the German reactionaries, prevent or delay its
assembling.
The answer which seems to suffice in all the Allied
countries is that the German Imperial Government--that the German Imperial
Government alone--stands in the way, that its tradition is incurably a
tradition of conquest and aggression, that until German militarism is overthrown,
etc. Few people in the Allied countries will dispute that that is broadly true.
But is it the whole and complete truth? Is there nothing more to be done on our
side? Let us put a question that goes to the very heart of the problem. Why
does the great mass of the German people still cling to its incurably
belligerent Government?
The answer to that question is not overwhelmingly difficult.
The German people sticks to its militarist imperialism as Mazeppa stuck to his
horse; because it is bound to it, and the wolves pursue. The attentive student
of the home and foreign propaganda literature of the German Government will
realize that the case made by German imperialism, the main argument by which it
sticks to power, is this, that the Allied Governments are also imperialist,
that they also aim at conquest and aggression, that for Germany the choice is
world empire or downfall and utter ruin. This is the argument that holds the
German people stiffly united. For most men in most countries it would be a convincing
argument, strong enough to override considerations of right and wrong. I find
that I myself am of this way of thinking, that whether England has
done right or wrong in the past--and I have sometimes criticized my country
very bitterly--I will not endure the prospect of seeing h