LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY NORMAN ANGELL THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY SOME NOTES ON AMERICA'S RELATION TO SEA POWER AND NON-MILITARY SANCTIONS FOR THE LAW OF NATIONS BY NORMAN ANGELL AUTHOR OF THE GREAT ILLUSION "ARMS AND INDUSTRY," "AMERICA AND THE WORLD STATE," ETC. NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1915 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PREFACE THESE notes have certainly no pretension of treating exhaustively the questions with which they deal ; still less of being a lawyer's dis- cussion of details of international law: prize, blockade, contraband, search. However impor- tant those things may be, this country's final policy will be, or should be, settled by considera- tions that go rather beyond them. What I have attempted, therefore, in the selec- tion and arrangement of these notes, is to bring into relief the more important aspects of the gen- eral principles that underlie international polity in so far as it affects Americans. The book in fact may be regarded as an attempt to furnish an introduction to the study of American foreign policy ; a contribution to national preparedness in that respect. A country can as little dispense with pre- paredness in policy as in arms. The idea that the former can be neglected if only the latter are efficient, that we can attain security by military force alone, is one of those errors against which Bismarck warned his countrymen vainly thirty years ago. He then pointed out that mili- vi PREFACE tary efficiency, coupled with an absence of definite policy means finally the triumph of the wrong policy; and consequent disaster. America is not exempt from this rule. The idea that American military force can have no relation to anything but the repulsion of preda- tory raids upon American territory is only made possible by ignoring certain very patent facts in modern politics. Every great nation de- fends, and is compelled to defend with its armed forces, not merely its territory, but a policy. And this is particularly true of America where the policies that she seems to be developing are likely to come into contact with other, if not rival policies, throughout the world. The elasticity of the Monroe Doctrine, pos- sible intervention in Mexico, some sort of suze- rainty over Central America, Pan-Americanism, the future status of the Panama Canal, of the Philippines, the attitude of Japan thereto, Japan- ese immigration, the integrity of China, the Open Door in Asia, America's relation to the Asiatic races generally and to the three great Asiatic powers, including the greatest, Britain ; the ques- tion of the future freedom of the seas, and the protection of American lives and trading rights as against naval belligerency these are only a few of the questions concerning which she will have to frame a policy to be defended in the last PREFACE vii resort by her military power. If it is ill framed, swayed first in one direction, then in another, according to the nature of the passing incident of foreign intercourse, these things will become sources of recurring conflict which the very fact of possessing large forces makes dangerous. That is not an argument against military preparedness ; it is an argument for knowing just what the pre- paredness is for, to what general policy the coun- try stands committed; who its allies are to be, what role it is to play in the community of nations. To leave these things to chance, to the influence of passing catch words, remnants of ill defined prejudices, is to make military power an instru- ment for the creation of muddle and disaster; and to expose the country to the risk of duplicat- ing the bad instead of the good side of European experience. If that experience is to warn us, it is obvious that we must subject certain accepted doc- trines of European statecraft to pretty ruth- less interrogation. Certainly the fruits which Europeans are now gathering, are not the result of mere errors of detail in policy: consequences so vast can only arise from defects somewhere in the foundations. I have tried, therefore, to go to the founda- tions and provoke examination of them. In cer- tain cases these notes are notes mainly of inter- viii PREFACE rogation as in the discussion of the doctrine of neutrality, where I suggest that possibly a solu- tion of our difficulty may be found in a fulfilment of the anticipation of Grotius on that subject. It is neither unscientific nor futile to be prepared to push investigation into channels that may pos- sibly prove barren: indeed that is at times an essential part of the scientific method. It is in this spirit also that I have enquired how far in certain circumstances the policy of resistance by other than military means might not prove a remedy for evils that seem otherwise irremediable. With grave doubts in my own mind as to the morality of non-resistance as a general principle in politics, however much may be said for it in certain international cases on the ground of prac- tical expediency, it is at least possible that con- certed social and economic pressure may prove in many cases superior to military means, both on grounds of morality and effectiveness. It is a proof of how little original thinking and re- search is brought to the field of international politics that the possibilities of this form of pressure as a means of international coercion have been so little investigated. I have attempted to give a hint of some of those possibilities. Possibly the method of ruthless interroga- tion may give to some of these pages an air of pro-Germanism. Yet I happen to have written PREFACE ix against Prussianism long before it was fash- ionable so to do; when, for instance, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was advocating an Anglo- German alliance. At that time, 1 writing from Paris, I found, to my cost, that it was not per- mitted to an author or journalist to say anything good of France which I tried hard to say or anything bad of Germany. Times change. I still preserve my anti-Prussianism ; which this war has justified. I think that Germans must carry the main burden of blame for an extent not merely of suffering which sometimes may dignify and ennoble men, and which is not the highest cost of war but for implanting seeds of evil and wickedness of which even distant generations will gather the fruit. But one wants to understand this thing; because we can't deal with it unless we do. And while believing the Germans to be en- tirely wrong in this matter I realise that they may honestly believe themselves to be entirely right. And this simple distinction surely not very intricate or abstruse very many, perhaps most, who deal with this subject refuse to make. Certain critics have insisted upon accusing me of pro-Germanism because I recognise the quite evident truth that even wicked people may be mis- Cowards the close of the Dreyfus case and beginning of the Boer War. x PREFACE taken ; and that the wrongness of a conviction has nothing whatever to do with the obstinacy or sincerity with which it may be held. It is not sufficient, apparently, to believe that the Germans are wrong; one must also believe that they know themselves to be wrong. Which is to underesti- mate altogether man's capacity for self-deception and ignore some of the simplest facts concerning the working of human nature. I can hardly hope, however, that mere prefa- tory caution of this kind will suffice to save a book from misunderstanding or misrepresenta- tion. In an earlier work, 2 anticipating the con- fusions to which that kind of literature seems subject in the minds of some critics, I wrote in the preface these words : "The argument of this book is not that war is impossible, but that it is futile." The first paragraph of the first chapter was a forecast of the inevitable collision between Eng- land and Germany unless there were a change in European policy; in the last paragraph of the book the warning as to recurring disasters in Europe, unless the problem of policy were tackled, was reiterated; three whole chapters were de- voted to showing why the uselessness of war would never of itself prevent war. And the result of it all is that to-day most critical refer- ences to the book imply its thesis to be the "im- 3 The Great Illusion, PREFACE xi possibility of war"; and that the present war dis- proves its arguments. This, parenthetically, not by way of personal vindication. It rightly matters very little to the serious reader whether this or that author should have been misrepresented. It matters a very great deal, if we are to do better than in the past in the management of our society, whether dis- tortion and misrepresentation are to continue to fortify prejudices which already stand so strongly in the way of any general realisation of certain truths essential to that better management. The nature of American influence on world politics which in any case, good or bad, will be enormous will be determined mainly by feel- ing and opinion on general principles and broad issues. Democratic judgment obviously cannot be based on induction from a mass of detail. It is to those broader issues that the discussion here for the most part is directed. The notes are in considerable part a reproduc- tion of comment that has appeared in Europe and America; and in some cases I could wish that there had been time to recast the form for the purposes of this book. But events in the inter- national field are moving rapidly, and it is now, within the next few months perhaps, that Amer- ican opinion will crystallise on very essential points of policy. It may be worth while therefore, Xll PREFACE if the thing has value at all, to sacrifice something in form to timeliness. If ever there is an excuse for haste in workmanship I hope it may be ex- tended to me on that ground. I am indebted to the editors of "The North American Review," "The Saturday Evening Post," and "The New Republic" for permission to reprint matter which has appeared in their publications ; and to my excellent friend, Mr. C. E. Fayle (author of "The Great Settlement"), for helping me with the data used in chapter IV. Indeed that chapter, mainly a summary of the conclusions of modern strategists as to the mechanism of command of the sea, rather than conclusions of my own, is largely his work. NORMAN ANGELL. New York, September, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. AMERICA, THE SEA AND THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS 3 Why the world does not fear British "marinism" and does fear German militarism. "Marinism" does not encroach on social and political freedom and militarism does. The difference between the character of British and German political ex- pansion. Is it in America's best interest to attempt in defense of neutral trading right to limit British Sea Power? Relative unimportance of the trade interests out of which the dispute has arisen. The alternative courses of action before the United States. The course here suggested and an indica- tion of the grounds upon which it will be defended in this book. II. AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN EU- ROPE: WHAT WOULD RESULT? 31 America could not achieve the objects for which she is contending in her disputes with Germany and Britain merely by ensuring the military victory of the Allies since "the goods could not be delivered" at the Peace. The mere destruction of Austro- German military power could neither be permanent nor give any assurance that future re-groupings of European alliances would not take place, creating a situation as unsatisfactory in the future as in the past. The impermanence of the destruction of a nation's military power and the mutability of mili- tary alliances belong to the few unquestionable lessons of history. III. AN ANGLO-SAXON OR A PRUSSIAN WORLD? 57 What are Anglo-Saxon and Prussian ideals? In . setting out to destroy the one and protect the other we must be able to recognize which is which. Is Europe Prussianising itself as part of the pro- xiv CONTENTS cess of increasing its military efficiency? If mili- tary conflict is to continue military efficiency will determine its issue, and that implies the req- uisite form of national organisation and code of morals. The highest price of war is the Prus- sianisation of the people who wage it, however good their cause may be. The process is not the result of race, but of doctrine acting upon human qualities which are latent in all of us. Thus though the flag may be Anglo-Saxon the society of the future will be Prussianised if we have to beat the Prussian at his own game. Is there any other way of beating him? IV. THE MECHANISM OF SEA POWER.... 119 If "marinism" has not the special political and social dangers connected with militarism (as in the first chapter we saw that it has not), may not the Anglo-Saxons find in sea power a means of extending their influence without paying the moral price in- volved in Prussianism? To answer that it is neces- sary to realize how sea power works. This chapter gives a summary of the general conclusions of authoritative modern strategists on the operation of sea power and the relation it must bear to military power. V. SOME LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER.... 153 Is the assumption that by enlarging the belligerent rights of sea power we shall ensure the predomi- nance of the non-military, Anglo-Saxon, Liberal type of society as against the continental military- authoritative form, a valid assumption? The evi- dence is all against it. Sea power being increasingly dependent upon military allies for the exercise of world influence is unable to pick and choose as to the character of the nation it supports, as the box- ing of the compass by a nation like England in her alliances proves. The present war is repeating and illustrating what past combinations have abundantly shown. VI. THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRALITY, AND SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE OP NATIONS 189 The whole history of the fight for neutral right is a history of failure. The power which is politically the freest and most liberal in the world has by its practice tenaciously prevented any enlargement of CONTENTS xv neutral right. Yet it has shown by its attitude in peace time towards international law a desire to respect those rights. This seems to indicate that it is impossible to reconcile belligerent necessity at sea with real observance of neutral right. In that case would not neutrals better secure their larger and more permanent interest by the modification of the doctrine of neutrality as at present under- stood in the direction of economic discrimination as against the side that has refused to submit its case to inquiry and so violated the international conventions designed to protect the integrity of states? This is a fulfillment of the Grotian antici- pation concerning neutrality and will be in keep- ing with future conditions if the guarantors of neutrality treaties should be largely increased in number. Would the assumption of limited inter- national obligation of this kind expose states to greater risk or cost, or surrender of sovereignty and independence than is involved in their position in war time under existing arrangements? VII. THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM OF POWER. . 231 If the struggle for power is the struggle of rival groups for sustenance in a world of limited space and opportunity, if war is really, as in the prevail- ing conception it is, a "struggle for bread," it is in- evitable between men and will go on. If one of two parties must eat the other the two cannot come to a really amicable agreement about the matter. Even if this is not the case, but mankind remains persuaded that it is so, war will also continue. But in that case it would be a struggle not of neces- sity, but of misunderstanding which better think- ing and adjustment could dispose of as it disposed of religious wars, the cessation of which proves clearly that some of man's deepest passions can be redirected by a different interpretation of facts knowledge. Is the "expansion" of states a real need? Nearly all political philosophy and public discussion avoid that question, but until we have made up our mind on it all schemes of world organization must necessarily be frustrated owing, among other factors, to the elusive processes of the psychology of fear. VIII. NON-MILITARY MEANS OF INTER- NATIONAL COERCION 297 Any method of defence in the modern world, in- cluding the military, involves a large measure of xvi CONTENTS international agreement: the present war has neces- sitated a military alliance between nine separate and very diverse states and may finally number more. Yet despite this large measure of agreement, one force, that of economic pressure, which might tell most effectively against Germany, may be largely ineffective; partly because of "leakages" owing to the position of neutrals, but much more because the pressure will come to an end as soon as the war is over. Yet much of the motive of aggres- sive war the desire for "culture domination" and commerical expansion could be neutralized and even reversed if the cost of aggression were world- wide exclusion of both the culture and the com- merce of the aggressor, not merely during a war, but until such time as the aggressive policy were modified. Recent facts go to show that the very highly developed means of co-ordinated effort which nations now possess would make this method effective where in the past it would not have been. In any case its worth as a practical means de- pends, not upon its absolute effectiveness as an instrument of international coercion, but its rela- tive effectiveness as compared to present methods, or as an aid thereto. CHAPTER I AMERICA, THE SEA AND THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS Why the world does not fear British "marinism" and does fear German militarism. "Marinism" does not en- croach on social and political freedom and militarism does. The difference between the character of British and German political expansion. Is it in America's best interest to attempt in defence of neutral trading right to limit the British Sea Power? Relative unimportance of the trade interests out of which the dispute has arisen. The alternative courses of action before the United States. The course here suggested and an indication of the grounds upon which it will be defended in this book. CHAPTER I AMERICA, THE SEA AND THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS ERTAIN German writers on international questions have expressed their frank as- tonishment that while the world has talked a great deal of the menace of German militarism, it has had relatively little to say of the menace of British "marinism." The reason however is not far to seek. British naval predominance, be its effects what they may, is not in any case a "men- ace" it is an accomplished fact. The world has very long been subject to whatever is involved in it. We know the worst about it and have learned that in normal times in times of peace it does not constitute a very grievous tyranny. The "freedom of the seas" is a phrase very loosely used. In the century which has been marked by England's unquestioned naval pre- dominance the ships of all nations have in peace time sailed the seas without let or hindrance; England's power has given England's commerce no privilege not freely possessed by the com- merce of all other nations. It is true that many 3 4 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY who discuss naval policies and international affairs generally, often assume that in some way "naval supremacy" can secure for the nation possessing it, trade that could not otherwise be secured, can in some way, even in peace times, direct the currents of trade in its favour. 1 And it is likely that such a theory has played a large part in the general competition for naval power. But there are no facts to support it, and those who give expression to it as though it were a self- evident proposition have never explained in what manner sea supremacy can operate in this way, indicated how the alleged process is supposed to work. One wonders, for instance, how they would explain the fact that the great period of expansion in German overseas trade a period in which Germans were "capturing" British trade in every quarter of the globe was a period in which German naval power hardly counted ; when the German came fourth or fifth upon the list of the world's navies. England was simply unable to use her naval supremacy in any way to prevent this development, at least in so far as most of it was concerned. In certain of her Asiatic pro- tectorates doubtless she could have erected bar- riers against foreign trade. But it is one of the curiosities of the situation we are discussing that it is the nations which are not very great sea 'See p. 246. AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 5 powers that exclude trade rivals most rigorously from their overseas protectorates, colonies, and coastal traffic. France, Holland, Italy, and even Portugal all exact a certain measure of prefer- ence for their trade with their overseas territories and always have done so. Some of them, like France, exclude foreign shipping from their coastwise trade. These are evidently powers therefore that do not depend upon the possession of naval supremacy; of which British sea suprem- acy has not robbed them and which the nation possessing naval supremacy does not happen to exercise. Incidentally it may be worth while to point out that German commercial men as a whole have recognised the facts of this situation more clearly perhaps than the statesmen, political doc- trinaires, and admirals. The big navy agitation of Germany, at least in its earlier stages, got much more support from Pan-German newspaper writers and Chauvinist publicists generally than it did from Germans actually engaged in the busi- ness of building up Germany's foreign trade. Indeed we may say that however strenuously the political doctrinaires may have urged the eco- nomic advantage of sea power, the work-a-day world never felt that England's supremacy in it weighed upon them in any way; and would be largely indifferent to it were not vague fears and 6 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY prejudices stirred by portentous political theories. But there are further reasons why the world as a whole has not placed British marinism upon the same plane as German militarism. Militarism of the modern continental type "the armed nation" affects directly and heavily every family in the nation; necessitates the shaping to its ends the whole life and character, the moral and social outlook of a people. Marinism does not. German militarism means in fact the moulding of the lives of individual Germans in a certain way ; submitting each German to a certain moral training and intellectual discipline. It touches his conscience. For instance, it teaches (not merely a certain class or profession but the whole nation) that in certain circumstances the individual does not possess a conscience : that the State has taken it over for purposes that transcend any personal question, even of right or wrong. The prof oundest human values are thus changed by submitting a whole nation to conscription, especially when it is done with German thorough- ness. Nor does the experience of France, Russia, Austria or Italy invalidate this conclusion, though for the moment it is convenient to over- look it. Fifteen years ago, however, both in England and America the Dreyfus affair was taken as demonstrating that these moral results had gone even deeper in France than they had in AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 7 Germany. But to the extent to which Germany set the pace she had a responsibility in advance of the others. Marinism does not thus affect the whole nation. The navy is not the nation in the sense that the army is the nation; the whole manhood is not passed through its mill. The navy, even when it occupies the place that it does in the British state, is a thing apart from the lives of the people: it does not subject every man to a uniform moral moulding nor is it compelled to create a special social conscience affecting deeply ultimate human valuations in such a way as to touch every man's character and work-a-day conduct. It has been possible for England to ouild up a great navy, to utilise it, to render it efficient, without having to create a new doctrine of the State, and a special organisation of the State for the purpose. Political doctrine and political organisation have developed irrespective of the "needs of the navy." And though it may be true that it is British sea power which has made North America much more an English continent than a Dutch, French, and Spanish one, it did not do so by any process analogous to the process that Germany has used in Alsace and Posen, and Russia in Finland and Poland. The British navy did not need the conscription of Canadian citizens 8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY and so was not impelled either to centralise her Imperial power in the way that, since Napoleon, the military States of Europe have steadily centralised theirs, nor to unify organisation, language, and national outlook for military pur- poses. Political power based mainly upon a navy permits of much freer and looser national organ- isation than does political power based mainly upon an army. This has given us a type of "Empire" never before known in the world a political organisation which is indeed not an Empire properly speaking at all, but a congeries of what are in fact independent states linked by a few but very powerful common social and po- litical ideals; on the whole the most inspiring, as it is certainly the most successful type of political co-operation between separate national units that the world has yet seen, furnishing what is prob- ably the best model for the world state of the future. One of its outstanding features and this again is one which it is essential to realise in estimating the relative "menace" of militarism and marin- ism, of British and German power is that British Imperial authority is not, as a matter of actual fact, imposed at all and does not reside upon force. The self-governing parts of the British Empire have passed to use the language of the political schoolmen from a condition of "status" AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 9 to that of "contract." For all practical purposes the independence of the self-governing British colo- nies has been recognised, particularly in modern English practice, over and over again. It is not merely that the colonies have the full right to create what tariff or exclusion laws against the Mother country that they please, but that by a curious anomaly, Great Britain has by established practice surrendered in her own colonies rights which under international law she would possess in for- eign countries. This was illustrated, for instance, in the conflict which arose between India and Natal over the treatment of British Indians in the latter country ; and by the action of General Botha, Prime Minister of the South African Union, in expelling certain Englishmen from the Trans- vaal at the time of labour troubles there. It is certain that if the acts of Natal and the South African Union in these cases had been committed by a foreign country, Britain would have taken steps to protect the interests of her Indian sub- jects in the one case and English ones in the other, under the ordinary treaty rights which she possesses. But the British government was virtually helpless in the presence of the Colonial government of Natal and of that of General Botha. 2 This, and many similar instances, could 'For specific details on Colonial relationship see "The Great Illusion" (Chap, vii, Part I), Putnams. io THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY be quoted to show that in reality, though perhaps not by constitutional form, the British Empire does not rest upon authority or force, but upon agreement : it is an alliance of free states. The point does not need labouring therefore that as between the moral quality of that type of political society which is the outcome of mili- tarism on the one hand and marinism on the other there are vast differences which justify the world in declining to put the British menace in the same category as the German one. And yet, as I write these lines, the President of the United States is busily engaged in asserting as against Great Britain, and on behalf of Amer- ican commercial interest, certain rights of neutral trade which must result in limiting the effective- ness of sea power as a weapon against Germany and so adding to the final chances of German vic- tory. Indeed in one communication to Germany he implies that America has generally in the past taken the German view of sea rights as against the British (and even if that is not the implication it happens to be the fact). In the passage I have in mind the Secretary of State, speaking for the American government, says : The Government of the United States and the Imperial German Government are contending for the same great AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 11 object, have long stood together in urging the very principles upon which the Government of the United States now so solemnly insists. They are both contend- ing for the freedom of the seas. The Government of the United States will continue to contend for that freedom, from whatever quarter violated, without com- promise and at any cost. It invites the practical co- operation of the Imperial German Government at this time, when co-operation may accomplish most and this great common object be most strikingly and effectively achieved. The Imperial German Government expresses the hope that this object may be in some measure accomplished even before the present war ends. It can be. The Government of the United States . . . feels obliged to insist upon it, by whomsoever violated or ignored, in the protection of its own citizens. 3 This passage and subsequently the energetic de- fence of neutral right as against any extension of belligerent right by Great Britain has puzzled many Americans, as it certainly created uneasi- ness in the minds of many Englishmen. It goes some way to confirm the impression that on behalf of commercial interest Americans are content to harass the employment of that sea power which for a hundred years has never threatened them and which in the opinion of very many Amer- icans themselves stands between them and a dire military tyranny. 'Note of July 21, 1915. 12 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY To put it at its lowest, has not the United States a greater interest in the maintenance of belliger- ent rights at sea, which means the effectiveness of sea power? "If the German submarine cam- paign should be successful," says one American authority, 4 "and British sea power be rendered ineffective for the protection of trade routes the disaster which threatens the British Empire would be in large measure shared by the United States. The existing dependence of this country on British Maritime supremacy for its prosperity and even its safety is complete, and under the present critical conditions appalling. American exports and imports are carried almost entirely in British bottoms. American citizens are obliged to reach Europe on ships flying the British flag. The Monroe Doctrine has been allowed to flourish under the benevolent protection of British sea power. The British fleet affords the only real guarantee for the security of the Panama canal." Surely there are interests here greater than the mere trade interests of certain exporters whose goods happen to be held up or delayed? Whatever our decision in this matter of sea rights this much is clear: that the mere trade interests under discussion between the American *The New Republic, May 15, 1915. AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 13 and British governments are relatively a small and temporary thing compared to the principles of belligerent right involved in the discussion. It is these which are the permanent and important things: in which the future of civilisation is involved. This last phrase is so hackneyed and over- worked that we lose its meaning. Yet it means here just what it says. On the outcome of this question an outcome which American action will very largely determine for the world depend the kind of lives that we shall lead in the future, the objects which they will embody; our freedom per- haps in disposing of them, the morality that will guide them. In the pages that follow an attempt is made to bring into relief some of the facts which must be weighed in considering just what, for our common welfare in the western world, is the best course with reference to neutral and belligerent right at sea, and the exercise of sea power. We are faced by the possibility of three courses: To confirm and fortify belligerent right, leaving its exercise to the power command- ing the sea for the time being, which would be the result of accepting the British position in the present dispute; to attempt to secure the limita- tion of belligerent right and the protection of neutral right by the strengthening of interna- 14 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tional law; or to maintain or even enlarge bel- ligerent right, but internationalise its exercise in some form. This involves the abolition of neutrality as now conceived. The rights of nations as a whole would rest, not upon their holding aloof from conflicts which may arise, but upon their participation to the end of securing respect for certain things like inviolability of ter- ritory which represent needs that are common to all. I am suggesting tentatively that solution will be found in the direction of the last course and have in the pages that follow given the reasons why. Just what that method means and how it might be applied in certain circumstances even in the present war can best be made clear by repro- ducing the terms of a definite proposal made as the reply to certain questions which Americans, in the Lusitania affair were compelled to ask themselves; the questions and reply being as follows : Must America either lamely accept with humiliating inertia a gross violation of her own right and dignity and of the common interest, or else take part in a war which however successful will not necessarily ad- vance in the least degree the objects for which she fights the future safety of her citizens and respect of their rights in war time, a better international law and its more AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 15 scrupulous future observance and which conceivably might even render those objects more remote than ever? Is there no third course? Events have already pointed to a possible one. Great Britain is at this moment engaged in negotiating with the merchants of neutral countries as to the conditions upon which they shall be allowed to trade with one an- other, the object of course being to prevent Germany securing supplies of any kind through neutral sources. This amounts ob- viously to an attempt to control the inter- national trade of the world in such a way as to serve Great Britain's military purposes. The United States government, as apart from certain of her merchants, has of course refused to take part in these negotiations for obvious reasons: this right to lay down the conditions of trade between neutrals, irrespective of blockade and contraband as heretofore understood, constitutes a very pregnant development of belligerent rights at sea. However much the American people may approve England's general cause in this war, the American government could not allow such development to become by prece- dent an accepted part of sea law, because in some future war such functions might be exercised by a power other than England on behalf of a cause of quite other character. Moreover, it is freely alleged by American merchants that British control of neutral 16 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY trade is not exercised impartially: that, while on the ground of preventing supplies reaching Germany, Great Britain has ex- cluded American merchandise from neutral ports, British goods of the same kind have been going to those ports in increasing quan- tities. Whatever of truth there may be in this allegation it is evident that if ever bel- ligerent right expanded into the formal recognition of the kind of control over neutral trade aimed at by Great Britain, it is just such abuses as these from which neutrals would in future suffer. The whole matter is at this moment the subject of very serious negotiation between Washington and London and the cause of some illfeeling between sections of the two countries. Yet this very situation might in the event of rupture of diplomatic negotiations be- tween the United States and Germany be so handled as to become not merely a means of solving the special and present American difficulties concerning neutral rights and interests, but of achieving the larger purpose of developing a really civilized international law and finding some means of enforcing it more efficient than the very clumsy instru- ment military force has proven itself so far to be. Out of the Anglo-American negotia- tions might develop an understanding afford- ing means of avoiding the absurd stultifica- tion which mere military co-operation with the Allies would involve for America the AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 17 position that is of fighting a war to assure the victory of one side, to find after the war, perhaps, that that side is as much op- posed to any form of international law at sea which will really protect American and neutral right and interest as is the beaten side. For, if the suggestion which follows proves feasible, the constructive develop- ment in international law of some sanction enabling the community of nations to en- force it, would not wait the end of war nor be dependent upon a definite victory of one side, but would take place during the war and would later still be operative even though the Allies were not decisively victorious in a military sense. Let us assume a rupture of diplomatic relations between America and Germany a contingency which recent events seem to render not altogether impossible. America would in such an event in any case put her defences in as thorough order as possible, though the likelihood of Germany sending an army across the Atlantic at this juncture is, to say the least, small. But American naval force would probably prepare to be in a posi- tion to convoy ships and so forth. 5 America should certainly make it plain to Germany and to the Allies for that matter "This was written during the acute phase of the negotiations with Germany. Even though the crisis pass, the plan suggested is best illustrated by applying it to an actual case. It has there- fore been left in its original form. 18 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY that the absence of American military co- operation with the armies now fighting Ger- many was not due to mere indifference to the causes involved, still less to a desire self- ishly to avoid the cost and suffering of war in the achievement of her purpose, but be- cause both her own and the larger and ultimate general interest could be more effectively achieved by another form of co- operation, which would be as follows : America would offer to settle the whole contraband and blockade dispute with Eng- land on the basis of making international that virtual control of the overseas trade of the world which England now exercises. That is to say, all that international trade now affected by British action should still be subject to control for the definite purpose of preventing Germany securing supplies; but that control should be exercised, not arbi- trarily by Great Britain but by all the Allies plus the United States and with the unofficial co-operation of the remaining neutrals as well. Prize courts and courts of control should not be British but representative of all these powers. The arrangement would in the circumstances amount to an inter- national control of the world's supplies for the purpose of withholding them from Ger- many, and in such a way as to avoid diffi- culty between the combatants and between them and the neutrals, and as to render the blockade or siege of Germany effective not merely by sea power, but by co-operation AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 19 between the nations of the world as a whole. Such an international body made up of representatives of America, Britain and her colonies, France, Russia, Italy, Belgium, Japan and, less officially, of the Scandinavian and Balkan states, Holland, Switzerland and Greece would not deal merely with matters of exports and imports, with trade between them, but with financial arrangements as well with exchange and credit difficulties, loans, censorship of mails and all the thorny problems that have arisen during the war. From these matters it might perhaps pro- ceed to deal with such problems as the dis- posal of German property interned ships, businesses of various kinds, royalties on patents, bank balances and so forth and, it may be, more remote arrangements as to the future control of German action in the world: tariff arrangements, the conditions upon which Germany should at the peace be once more admitted to the community of nations, whether on equal terms or not; whether the most efficient means of exacting some indemnification for damage done might not be by sequestration of German property throughout the world and possibly some sur- tax by tariff, ship and mail dues, all of course subject to due legal judgment of an inter- national court. In short, there would be in the bodies so created, the beginnings of the world organ- isation of our common resources, social, 20 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY economical and political, for the purpose of dealing with a recalcitrant member of inter- national society, by other than purely mili- tary means a starting point whence inter- national law might be made a reality, a code that is, not merely expressing the general interest but sanctioning processes which fur- nish means of enforcing respect for it. This control would centre at first mainly in America, since during the course of the war the activities and resources of the existing belligerent nations would more and more be absorbed by military operations, thus making America the largest single source of sup- plies, money and ammunition. If the war goes on a year or so, the finan- cial drain upon England by reason of her immense foreign purchase is likely to come near crippling her credit ; whether the Allies could go on indefinitely purchasing material from outside sources, might well become the determining question of the war's issue. If the United States were to assume the respon- sibility of furnishing munitions and material upon such terms as to sustain British credit and liberate an increasing proportion of the European manufacturing population for military service, this country could by purely economic co-operation, make a decisive con- tribution to the coercion of Germany. But though America's economic position would be dominant at such juncture, she should deliberately internationalise the con- trol it would imply, not using it to impose an AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 21 American view, but for the purpose of secur- ing adherence to the common rules drawn up for the common good. Let us see how far the general method here indicated might apply to a later situa- tion of the war. If Europe is to crush Germany within her own borders, and keep her crushed, it will be at the price of the Prussianisation of the whole of Europe. To exact indemnities from Germany will mean the military occupation of her territories, and that means the main- tenance perhaps for many years of large armies by the Allies. To break up the German Empire would mean the annexation of some of her territory and the turning of the western allies into conquerors and military rulers of alien (German) populations. And yet the alternative for Europe is to allow Germany after the peace, to build up her strength and wealth so involving the possi- bility, five or ten or fifteen years hence, of a recuperated Germany still dreaming of world domination. That is to say that would be the alternative if the action of the western world were limited to military action. But if we can assume the international control of the world's wealth in some such a way as that above indicated, well established, hav- ing gone on for some time, you get a situa- tion in which the channels of trade would for prolonged periods have been turned away from Germany and a situation also in which, for instance, Germany's enemies would con- 22 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY trol virtually every pound of cotton grown in the world. And the needs of the war would have engendered between those enemies much mutual helpfulness in the way of loans, credit arrangements, etc., and with their re- sources organised and their action co-ordi- nated by central international organs. If such a situation existed, German aggression would be faced by forces that military power could not meet. In applying the general principle underlying this proposal to the normal international situa- tion, I am suggesting that the economic action in this case urged upon the non-Teutonic powers, should in future be taken against any nation which goes to war without submitting its case at least to enquiry. The community of nations would thus not be obliged to pass upon the merits of any given dispute in order to decide upon which side their economic aid should be thrown: the anti-social nation, the offender against the world's order, the aggressor would be the one which, in any dispute, used its force against another without submitting its case to international examination. The international community would be justified in coming to this conclusion, irrespective of the ultimate merits of the case, just as within the nation the law re- strains an individual who, making himself judge of his own case in a difference with another, AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 23 seizes the goods of that other in execution of his own judgment. Even though the claim on be- half of which the seizure was made prove well founded, the act of force is nevertheless a chal- lenge to all social order. If allowed as a principle between men, law would disappear and society would go to pieces. Thus, also, under the same illustration, the group of nations resisting the action of one using its force in defiance of inter- national examination, represent the "community," and although only a majority, their decisions may have the sanctity of international law. This is the ethical justification of the suggestions here made. Some of the more obvious objections thereto are dealt with in the final chapter of this book. Among the reasons which have prompted the sug- gestions and which are discussed in greater detail in the pages that follow are these: (i) History reveals repeated and striking failure of the attempt to limit belligerent right at sea and enlarge neutral right. Even if we could assume international law enforcible by neutral against belligerent it would, unless radically en- larged, offer but feeble protection. That law is so far mainly case law, a matter of precedent. And a neutral who goes to war to vindicate his right becomes by that fact a belligerent and in the attempt to make his action effective tends by 24 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY his conduct to enlarge belligerent right. There is thus a tendency for belligerents to secure practical immunity for violation of neutral right as the present war illustrates. (2) In so far as the conception of neutrality is based on the assumption that the nations not actually participating in a war have no concern therein; that they are without obligation to either belligerent and can be partitioned off from its effects, the conception is based on a series of fictions. By the growth of their mutual relations and the increase of interdependence between them, the nations do in fact form a society, and if they are to recognise the implications of that fact neutrality in any real sense in the case of a great war is no longer possible. An examination of the process by which the largest degree of freedom and independence has been secured for the individuals of any human society as for in- stance in the communities within the state re- veals a gradual abandonment of the attitude of "neutrality/' A community which is "neutral" when one of its members is the victim of another using his force to defy the law designed for the protection of all is a community in which the free- dom of all is in danger. Society within the State has only been able to solve the problem of bel- ligerent versus neutral rights by abolishing neu- trality and becoming itself the belligerent. AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 25 (3) The application of this analogy to the case of the nation does not necessarily imply the crea- tion of an "International Police" or navy. One of the most powerful weapons of sea power perhaps in most cases likely to arise the most powerful is that which in existing usage enables the combatant that commands the sea to compel neutrals to enter into economic alliance with him and against his enemy by making it impossible for the latter to secure ammunition supplies etc. while being free to do so himself. Yet this power- ful means of coercion in the last resort depends upon the action of neutrals which they are free to withhold if they will. Each nation is free to say whether it will export supplies even to a power in command of the sea. This option enables neutrals as a whole to decide in large measure the effectiveness or otherwise of command of the sea by a belligerent. The exercise of such an option in common would enable them to transfer from individuals to the community much of the power inherent in command of the sea. (4) The retention of predominant sea power in the hands of Anglo-Saxon nations does not neces- sarily imply the predominance of free and non- military civilisation as against the military form. Though sea power is still in certain circumstances enormously efficacious, it cannot impose political control save by co-operation with military allies ; 26 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY and the relative importance of the military arm in the combination tends to become greater. The increasing need for military co-operation may compel a sea power to support highly militarised nations: it is not free to pick and choose, as the present war and the history of the last hundred years abundantly shows. Obviously also there may be international con- flicts in which sea power with all the belligerent rights that Anglo-Saxon practice has given to it, will be exercised by nations other than England or America. If it becomes the recognised right of any nation which can secure the command of the sea to exercise over the rest the powers now contained in that command if such control over the affairs of the world is made contingent merely upon preponderant naval power over some rival nation or group then the struggle for power between nations will go on in intensified form and the anarchy which it connotes become more acute. This implies the progressive mili- tarisation of organised society. (5) The alternative is some process by which such power shall be transferred from rival units to the community : internationalised. The plan here discussed would bring that about in large measure, without the creation of such an instrument as an international navy controlled by some central executive body. That AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 27 may be a possibility of the future, but such schemes must, until certain other changes moral and political have taken place, remain paper schemes. Nor is it proposed to limit the powers exercised by Great Britain in the present war. She already, in the exercise of those powers, acts as the mandatory of a considerable international body of eight nations at least. The proposal is still further to internationalise the sanction of that control and to systematise certain com- mon action of the nations not necessarily military action in such way as to make the effectiveness or extent of sea power, or com- mand of the sea, dependent upon the co-operation of the nations as a whole. The mechanism of such control is explained more fully in chapter VIII. It constitutes a form of inter- national action which, while less cumbersome and artificial than the creation of an international navy, would constitute at least a first step towards the transfer of powers just referred to. Unless some such process of transfer can be set in motion, that freer civilisation which the British Empire and the American Republic represent is likely to be transformed into the Prussian type. The menace of everything which German militarism connotes will be increased, even though the German flag disappear. CHAPTER II AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN EUROPE: WHAT WOULD RESULT? America could not achieve the objects for which she is contending in her disputes with Germany and Britain merely by ensuring the military victory of the Allies, since "the goods could not be delivered" at the Peace, and the mere destruction of Austro-German military power could neither be permanent nor give any assurance that future re-groupings of European alliances would not take place creating a situation as unsatisfactory in the future as in the past. The impermanence of the destruction of a nation's military power and the mutability of military alliances are among the few unquestionable lessons of history. 1 lf This chapter was written shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania, when America was confronted by the question : How far will the fact of going to war vindicate the rights violated by Germany's act? CHAPTER II AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN EUROPE: WHAT WOULD RESULT? WHAT would it mean, "a state of war" with a country whose army cannot possibly touch us, whose battleships dare not take the high seas and whom we in our turn can only reach by co-operating with some six European nations not all of whom are fighting with the same purpose ? Does a declaration of war by ourselves or Ger- many necessarily mean sending troops to France or Turkey, becoming one of the Allies in a mili- tary sense, and later, at the peace, in a political sense, helping by that, whether we wished it or not, certain political and territorial changes which we might or might not approve: e. g., an ex- change of Russian for Austro-German influence in large areas? Should we become the ally of Japan, constrained perhaps, like her other allies, to tolerate a very broad interpretation of such obligations as those to respect the integrity of China ? And if our weight in the final settlement is to be measured by our military contribution 31 32 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the number of men who fight in the allied ranks and not by non-military factors, will not the de- mands of Servia (if not of Montenegro) by that standard get greater consideration? And how far would our military action in these circumstances be effective in achieving what we desire: The future safety of our citizens and the security of their presumed rights at sea; the respect of international agreements upon which those rights are based ; freedom for ourselves and others from the menace of unscrupulous military ambition and the barbarism which accompanies it? And how far would our military co-opera- tion with the continental powers of Europe affect ultimately our place in the world, and influence our future development as a nation with a special character of its own? Would it modify that "American purpose" for which our state is pre- sumed to stand? Now these questions would be important if there were no difficulty with Germany, for in some form the issues that underlie them are going to be permanent issues of American politics in the future. Recent events have made it plain, even if it was not plain before, that America cannot achieve her purpose as a great society by an indifferent standing aloof from the life of the world as a whole. As our planet becomes a smaller place and the contacts more numerous AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 33 and frequent, the nation becomes more and more a part of the life of the universe. We should be concerned with what is going on in Europe, though no Lusitania had been sunk. In some form or other we shall be obliged to co-operate with the other peoples of Christendom for the accomplishment of certain things necessary for our life in common. The question for America is whether she shall co-operate blunderingly, rendering still more remote what she and civilisa- tion as a whole desires to achieve; or co-operate to good purpose. What this chapter considers therefore is whether in the light of known experience the fact of joining in the military operations of the Allies against the central powers will achieve for America the ends that she has set before herself. It deliberately disregards all considerations as to the ethics of war, its cost or cruelty or justi- fiability. It assumes that the accomplishment of the ends in view which so far as America is concerned are mainly moral ends would consti- tute its justification. I have used the phrase "joining in the military operations of the Allies" instead of the word "war" in the preceding paragraph because my final object in these notes will be to show that a state of war need not include military operations ; that American statesmanship can, if it frees itself 34 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY from the shackles of old conceptions that belong to what may be termed the classic statecraft, give a larger meaning to the term "war" and can employ methods of enforcing a general right or an international rule that are more effective than the military method. This present chapter will consider the effective- ness of the old kind of war in the present circum- stances. A later one will describe and examine the possibilities of the new. It is particularly important to realise just how far America can achieve her present ends in the old way, by conventional military methods, that is, because the "natural" course for her, the course which precedent, tradition, established habit of thought, deeply grounded political conceptions, bureaucratic inertia, the momentum of diplomatic routine, all dictate, is military co-operation of the old kind with the Allies. Only a general realisa- tion of the ineffectiveness of these means can present any check to those forces. An American Ambassador, who happens also to be a scholar, has told us that in no field perhaps are men so much slaves of the past as in diplomacy and interna- tional statecraft. Whether in this matter America can give to international politics a little of that imaginativeness and inventiveness which the American manages to apply to other things will depend upon the realisation of the need for so AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 35 doing. So long as we believe the old method satisfactory no new ones will be found. It is necessary to emphasise this : If America does not go to war in the ordinary sense with Germany over the sinking of the "Lusitania" it will not be, let us hope, because she takes lightly an act of that kind. America's protest against that act derives its real importance of course from the fact that if the United States were guilty of inert acquiescence in it she would be sanctioning the establishment of a precedent which would mark a definite step backward in the maintenance of certain fundamental principles of human rela- tionship. America would have a large part of the blame for allowing to take place a re-barbar- isation of international relations and for undoing such small advance as we have made so slowly and painfully in the past. Now it will be noted that there is a suggestive difference in the nature of what we want and the respective demands of the Allies. With them the goods can be delivered on the spot at the peace settlement; with us they cannot. The Allies are demanding either the transfer of territory Alsace-Lorraine, in the case of France ; Trentino, etc., in the case of Italy; Constantinople, say, in the case of Russia, and so on; or the evac- uation of occupied territory, like Belgium or 36 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Northern France, which Britain is demanding, because she believes that its permanent German occupation might menace her. The execution of these demands can precede the signature of the peace treaty. The execution of American de- mands cannot precede the treaty, for what America demands is the future observance of certain international rules mainly concerned with rights at sea. The Allies can have their respective satisfactions on the spot. America can not. A word or two more is necessary as to the American issue in this war. The issue is in its large conception the defense of neutral right in war time. Innocent people have been ruthlessly slain in a war that did not concern them. American rights there represent the general interest. But America will fail alto- gether in the vindication of those rights, and her efforts, military or otherwise, will be revealed as a monstrous futility, if she emerges after the war having secured merely the assurance that ' 'passenger ships shall not be sunk by sub- marines." For to-morrow we may have an American ship destroyed at sea by a mine laid by one of her own allies, and by virtue of a right that belongs to international law, which some of those allies have in the past very strongly defended. In the AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 37 year that followed the war between Russia and Japan (both of which countries would be our allies) some three hundred Chinese ships were destroyed by hitting mines in the Far Eastern seas. Will America tolerate that in future wars the combatants may sow the seas with mines? If not, is not this a question that we should settle with the Allies before we join them ? Otherwise we might go into a war and incur its various risks, and then find that, though we had vindicated the immunity of Americans from death by torpedo, we had left it open for them to be blown up by mines. They would be just as dead! Take another detail of neutral right in which we are in a special sense concerned: A merchant in America sells a shipload of goods to a mer- chant in Sweden, for purposes that both of them believe to be and which may be innocent and neutral. They are loaded on say an American ship. Both America and Sweden are sovereign and independent states, at peace with one an- other and the whole world. Have their citizens a right to trade together? Not in the least, as the law stands, if a war happens to be raging. Because the belligerent who happens to be momentarily predominant at sea can absolutely forbid that trade on grounds of which he, and he alone, is the judge. If his prize court decides 38 that, despite the declaration of the American and the Swedish citizens, the goods in question are destined for the enemy, or that they might ulti- mately by some roundabout process of the nature and likelihood of which the foreign court is again the sole judge find their way to his enemy, the transaction is not permitted. The American ship may be boarded a few miles outside New York by a foreign naval lieutenant, who would instruct that, instead of proceeding to Sweden, it go to some port at the other end of Europe. There it may be held up for months until the facts of the case can be examined and passed upon, not by a court representing either America or Sweden, but composed solely of the citizens of the nation that has an admitted bias against the contention of the two parties to the transaction. In this matter America stands for the rights of the nations of the world on the highways of the world. As things are now, the gravest questions establishing precedents of international law are not settled by an international court but by a national court of the belligerent that has a special interest in direct conflict with neutral interest, which it should be the office of international law to defend. These belligerent "rights/' which have won recognition mainly be- cause those they injured were weak and power- AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 39 less, may, and do, expose whole populations abso- lutely innocent of unneutrality to want and ruin. 2 Nor is this all. The possession of such powers by a momentarily predominant sea combatant en- ables him to compel most other nations to become his allies, whether they will or not. For so long as he has command of the sea he can use his credit to draw upon the resources of neutrals and to prevent his enemies from so doing. We may desire to help England in this war by fur- nishing her supplies and by refusing them to Germany. But assume, for the sake of argument, something which, though it will not happen in this war, may well happen in future wars: that the Power which starts with naval predominance loses that predominance to its rival. Then you are compelled to change over your economic alli- ance. If such a thing happened in this war we should have to support Germany as we have been supporting England. For it would be unneutral, during the course of the war, to change inter- national practice in respect to the export of arms and munition, or supplies. Now the great danger for America in this matter of the future sea law resides in the excellence of the Allied cause and in the in- *The populations in certain Dutch and Scandinavian ports, and in many districts of Switzerland, have suffered terribly in this war. 40 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tegrity of British courts. It is because the British cause is good and her courts are impar- tial that we sanction action by Great Britain that we could never dream of sanctioning in the case of the belligerent fighting for a bad cause and possessing unreliable courts. But, if we allow present practice of the Allies to become the prece- dent for international law, we shall have to accept its operation when others apply that law, even though we may believe the cause for which they are fighting to be a bad or doubtful one. We must accept it even in the cause in which we do not believe, or place ourselves grievously in the wrong. Japan, for instance, at war with China, might, by virtue of rights that English precedent establishes, place us in a position in which our whole Pacific trade, whether with China or not, would be under the absolute veto of Japanese admirals and Japanese prize courts, and we might, by reason of the very law that we had previously sanctioned, become the economic ally of Japan in some war of subjugation that we might not approve. Again, we should be placed in the position either of accepting that situation or of making ourselves lawbreakers. Now, the most strenuous opponent of any re- form in sea law in that direction is Great Britain, and very rightly so as things stand internationally, and stood before the war. Opposition to the AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 41 recognition of neutral right at sea has been for centuries her historic role. 3 From the days when her admirals claimed salute from the ships of all nations, as recognition of England as sovereign of the seas and, parenthetically, when British admirals fired upon and destroyed ships that would not give such salute down through the later time of the wars of armed neutrality, she has withstood firmly all attempts to hamper belligerent privilege at sea. She has always claimed in justification that those privileges in naval war are vital to her national life. I think we must concede that. In a lawless world doubt- less she had been justified in acting as she has acted; but I state the facts. In the long and weary conflict about rights at sea America has on the whole taken one line and England on the whole the contrary. The conflict is in reality little nearer to solution than when it led this country into war with England a hundred years ago. Indeed as the reader will have noted from the previous chapter (and the argument is later de- veloped) the present writer does not believe it "One must distinguish between intention in peace time and action in war. In the various conferences on international law British representatives have often shown a desire to recognise the neutral's position, but the desire is generally overborne by war needs ; as witness the fate of the Declaration of London. 42 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY possible that neutral right can be respected where war takes place on a world-wide scale ; and he ad- vances the thesis that the real protection of such interests as neutrals seek to protect in war time will come more effectively by the abolition of the doctrine of neutrality as at present conceived. But if America is to stand for the enlargement of the present conception of neutrality she will by that fact be brought into collision more with England than with any other nation. She will find herself supporting, as the President's note to Germany forecasts absurd as it makes the situa- tion a doctrine which England has always resisted and Germany upheld. In any case if the American issue so much obscured by the circumstance of the present con- flict is really to be vindicated, America must get certain assurances from her allies before she joins them, since the future conditions of neutral right will depend more upon the Allies' future action than upon the mere defeat of Germany. This conclusion will, I know, be resisted. It will be said that, when the militarist menace, repre- sented by Germany, is disposed of, and the ele- ment in Europe that has been most hostile here- tofore to international arrangements removed, it will not be difficult to secure radical reform of international law and some assurance of its future observance, AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 43 Now that contention implies three things: First, that the destruction of German military power can be made permanent or relatively per- manent; secondly, that the military alliance now existing between Germany's enemies will also be permanent; and thirdly, that a means of enforc- ing international law that depends upon military combinations of the great Powers will be depend- able and efficient. None of these assumptions can be accepted. The destruction of the German state is a mere phrase; nothing in history is more mutable than military alliances like those framed for the prose- cution of this war, and the very incidents that have created our issues with Germany are them- selves proof of how inefficient is military and naval power, even when predominant, for the protection of life and the enforcement of law. To establish the first point I shall be compelled to summarise certain historical facts that I have dealt with elsewhere, and to some extent to quote myself. What does the "destruction" of Germany mean? Certainly not, of course, the slaying of her popu- lation. Does it mean the distribution of her ter- ritory among the victorious Allies ? In that case you will permanently militarise every state in Europe, because each will be holding down un- willing populations and creating military forces 44 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY for that purpose. You will have created not one Alsace-Lorraine which by itself has been so fertile a cause among the various causes of this war but you will have created five, or six, or seven Alsaces; centers of ferment scattered over the Continent. Obviously, that way peace cannot lie, nor the permanence of any arrangement of which that way is a part. If it is deemed that the mere destruction of the German army or navy would have any permanent effect, Germany herself has supplied a dramatic answer within the memory of fathers of men still living. In the early years of the nineteenth cen- tury Prussia was annihilated as a military power at Jena and Auerstadt. The whole country was overrun by the French. By the Peace of Tilsit she was deprived of her territory west of the Elbe and of the larger part of her Polish prov- inces; of the southern part of West Prussia, of Dantzic, thus losing nearly a half of her popu- lation and area; the French Army remained in occupation until heavy contributions demanded by France were paid; and by the subsequent treaty the Prussian Army was limited to not more than forty-two thousand men, and Prussia was forbidden to create a militia. She was broken apparently so completely that even some five years later she was compelled to furnish, at Napoleon's command, a contingent AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 45 for the invasion of Russia. The German States were weakened and divided by all the statecraft that Napoleon could employ. He played upon their mutual jealousies, brought some of them into alliance with himself, created a buffer king- dom of Westphalia, Frenchified many of the German courts, endowed them with the Code Napoleon. Germany seemed so shattered that she was not even a "geographical expression." It seemed, indeed, as though the very soul of the people had been crushed, and that the moral re- sistance to the invader had been stamped out; for, as one writer has said, it was the peculiar feature of the Germany that Napoleon overran, that her greatest men were either indifferent, like Goethe, or else gave a certain welcome to the ideas that the French invaders represented. Yet, with this unpromising material, the workmen of the German national renaissance labored to such good purpose that, within a little more than five years of the humiliation of the Peace of Tilsit, the last French army in Germany was destroyed, and it was thanks 'to the very condition imposed by Napoleon with the object of limiting her forces 4 that Prussia was able finally to take the 4 Napolcon exacted that the Prussian Army should be limited to forty-two thousand men, but by making it a different forty- two thousand each year there was initiated that system of national conscription which made Germany triumphant in 1870. 46 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY major part in the destruction of the Napoleonic, and in the restoration of the German, Empire. It was from the crushing of Prussia after Jena that dates the revival of German national con- sciousness and the desire for German unity, even at the cost of Prussian predominance therein. So with France in 1870. The German armies, drawn from states that within the memory of men then living had been mere appanages of Napoleon and had, as a matter of fact, furnished some of the soldiers of his armies, had destroyed the armies of Louis Napoleon. Not merely was France prostrate, her territory in the occupation of German soldiers, the French Empire over- thrown, and replaced by an unstable republic, but frightful civil conflicts like the Commune had divided France against herself. So distraught, indeed, was she that Bismarck had almost to create a French government with which to treat at all. An indemnity at the time immense had been imposed upon her, and it was generally believed that not for generations could she again become a considerable military or political factor in Europe. Her increase of population was feeble, tending to stagnation; her political institutions were un- stable; she was torn by internal dissensions; and yet, as we know, within five years of the conclu- sion of peace France had already sufficiently AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 47 recuperated to become a cause of anxiety to Bis- marck, who believed that the work of "destruc- tion" would have to be begun all over again. And if one goes back to earlier centuries, to the France of Louis XIV, and to her recovery after her defeat in the War of the Austrian Succes- sion, to the incredible exhaustion of Prussia in wars like the Thirty Years' War, when her popu- lation was cut in half, or to the Seven Years' War, it is the same story a virile people cannot be wiped from the map. There are one or two additional factors. The marvelous renaissance of France after 1871 has become a commonplace ; and yet this France that is once more challenging her old enemy is a France of stationary population, not having, be- cause not needing, the technical industrial capac- ity that marks certain other peoples, like ourselves and the Germans. The German population is not stationary ; it is increasing at the rate of very nearly a million a year; and if the result of this war is to attenuate some of the luxury and materialism that have marked modern Germany, the rate of population increase will not be di- minished but rather be accelerated, for it is the people of simple life that are the people of large families. It is altogether likely that the highly artificial Austrian Empire itself the work of the sword, 48 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY not the product of natural growth embracing so many different races and nationalities, will be politically rearranged. This will result in giving German Austria an identity of aim and aspiration with the other German States, so that however the frontiers may be rectified and whatever shuf- fling may take place this solid fact will remain : in Central Europe a body of seventy-five or eighty millions speaking German and nursing, if their nationality is temporarily overpowered, the dream of reviving it when the opportunity shall occur. I have said that the annihilation of Germany is a meaningless phrase. You cannot annihilate sixty-five or seventy-five million people. You cannot divide them up between France and Russia, save at the cost of making those two states highly militarised, undemocratic and op- pressive Powers. If you break up those seventy- five millions into separate states, there is no reason why, if a Balkan league could be formed as it was formed a year or two since to fight successfully, a German league could not do likewise. And that brings me to the second point: That the military and diplomatic combinations, by which the German states of the future are to be kept in subjugation, cannot be counted upon for permanence and stability. Such combinations AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 49 never have been and, in their nature, cannot be permanent or immutable. This impermanence and mutability is inherent in their nature and would inevitably be revealed if there was a distribution of conquered territory among the victors. They would then be attempt- ing to cure the evils of conquest and military domination by themselves becoming conquerors, by expanding their military domination, by creating all the machinery to effect those pur- poses including the moral or immoral qualities necessary thereto and by fostering the kind of patriotism and national pride that go therewith. It would then be open for two countries to give satisfaction to the political passions so aroused by despoiling a third. For, as Talleyrand most wisely said, "There are few things upon which two persons will so readily agree as the robbery of a third." Let us look at quite recent history, which happens to be particularly suggestive in this connection. The first Balkan War was won by a group of separate states, not linked by any formal political bond but thrown together by one common fear, resentment, or ambition the desire to wrest members of their race from Turkish tyranny. To the general astonishment this combination held together with extraordinary success for the purposes of war. But immediately the military 50 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY success was achieved, dissensions arose among the allies over the division of the spoils. And the first Balkan War was succeeded by a second Balkan War in which the members of the league fought one another, and the final settlement is not yet. Now just take the Allies in the present war. A year ago Italy was in formal alliance with the Powers that she is now fighting. Japan, a decade since, was fighting with a Power of which she is now the ally. The position of Russia shows neverending changes. In the struggles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Eng- land was always on the side of Russia; then after two generations Englishmen were taught to believe that any increase in the power of Russia was absolutely fatal to the continued existence of the British Empire that statement was made by a British publicist less than ten years ago. Britain is now fighting to increase, both rela- tively and absolutely, the power of a country which, in her last war upon the Continent, she fought to check. In the war before that one, also fought upon the Continent, England was in alliance with Germany against France. As to the Austrians, whom England is now fighting, they were for many years her faithful allies. So it is very nearly the truth to say of all the com- batants respectively that they have no enemy to- AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 51 day who was not, historically speaking, quite recently an ally, and not an ally to-day who was not in the recent past an enemy. However, it may be said that Europe did at least deal successfully with the French military menace that arose at the beginning of the nine- teenth century, and that the problem of France in 1815 successfully dealt with by Europe resembles in its essentials the problem of Ger- many, with which Europe has now to deal a hundred years later. To which it is unhappily necessary to reply that the German problem of 1915 does not resemble the French problem of 1815, and that Europe did not successfully settle this latter problem a hundred years ago. First, as to the difference between the two cases. What the Allies were trying to do in 1815 and did very temporarily was to restore to France the old government that had been usurped by a non-French soldier for Napoleon was not a Frenchman. The Allies of that day were, in fact, in alliance with the legitimate ruler of France, and were supported by a powerful French party and by entire French provinces. The Allies of our day, should they come to their Vienna Congress, will not be dealing with a usurper alien to the German people, nor one that is opposed by Germans, as Napoleon was opposed by certain of the French. There are no 52 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY powerful and influential German classes in exile and at home, ready to restore a government desired by the Allies. The historic government of Germany does not happen to represent the political and dynastic preferences of the Europe that may have the task of reconstructing the German Empire. So much for the resemblance. Now as to the success of Europe, in 1815, in exorcising the Napoleonic danger. The victory of the European Allies of 1815 was presumed to have restored permanently the old French dynasty and to have destroyed permanently the Napoleonic usurpa- tion. Yet, within three decades of the Congress of Vienna, it was the old French dynasty that had disappeared and the Napoleonic dynasty that was once more installed. And so little did the victories of the Allies exorcise the danger of Napoleonic military ambitions that, within a generation after the death of the first Napoleon another Napoleon had entered into alliance with England the jailer of the first and with her was busy fighting wars the result of which England and Europe are now attempting to undo fighting, that is, to keep Russia from the Darda- nelles and to "secure the permanent integrity of the Turkish Empire"! For, while the Crimean War was fought for the purpose of preventing Russia from reaching Constantinople and for for- AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 53 tifying Turkish power, the present war is being fought, of course, among other things, for the purpose of achieving the exactly contrary pur- pose. The grim humour of the thing is complete when we remember that the very object accom- plished by the last war in which France and Eng- land fought together is in no small part the cause of the present war. For the result of the Crimean War was to make large Balkan populations sub- servient to Turkish rule, and the present war began in an incident to which the intrigues and struggles of that situation gave rise; it was a part of the unrest which the Crimean War made inevitable. It was not, therefore, the Allies of 1815 who got rid either of the Napoleonic dynasty or of the tradition and evil fermentation that it repre- sented. What finally liberated France and Europe from the particular menace of French imperial- ism was the German victory of 1870. The lesson of 1815, of 1870, and the four or five similar situations that have preceded it in Europe at intervals of a century or so, is that the menace that the two Napoleons represented was not in a person, or even in a dynasty but in a wrong ideal. For modern Germany has pro- duced no Napoleon though it has produced Napoleonism. In all the facts that I have attempted to recall 54 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY to the reader's memory there emerges this truth : That the ideas and instincts, the traditions and temper that underlie war grow out of the remedy that is designed to cure it ; and if history has any meaning at all, and like causes produce like re- sults, the probable victory of the Allies will not of itself bring about a settlement in Europe any more effective or permanent than the settlements that have preceded it. Indeed, pathetic as the truth is, it is to be feared that a very complete victory of nations with great military traditions behind them and such nations form part of the combinations now fighting against the Teutonic Powers will set up just those moral and political forces that victory has always set up in history. And if America should add fifty thousand men or a hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand to the men already fighting in this war she would not materially alter that fact. CHAPTER III AN ANGLO-SAXON OR A PRUSSIAN WORLD? What are Anglo-Saxon and Prussian ideals? In setting out to destroy the one and protect the other we must be able to recognise which is which. Is Europe busy Prussianising itself as part of the process of in- creasing its military efficiency? If military conflict is to continue in the world military efficiency will determine its issue; and that implies the requisite form of national organisation and code of morals. The highest price of war is the Prussianisation of the people who wage it, how- ever good their cause may be. That process is not a matter of race but of doctrine acting upon human quali- ties which are latent in all of us. Thus though the flag may be Anglo-Saxon the society of the future will be Prussianised if we have to beat the Prussian at his own game. Is there any other way of beating him ? CHAPTER III AN ANGLO-SAXON OR A PRUSSIAN WORLD? I SUPPOSE we are all quite sure that we know the difference between the Anglo-Saxon and the Prussian ideal of life and society? I find on taking stock of my own ideas on the matter, that my notion of the Prussian ideal is a pretty definite one. It would have to be, perhaps, since I have written in disparagement of it and argued against it for very many years now. But I find also in this stock-taking that I have rather a hazy idea of the Anglo-Saxon ideal. There is a story that I have just heard of a little girl whose father was about to start for a lecture, when this conversation took place: Little Girl: What are you going to hear about this evening, Father? Father: Professor Brown is going to tell us about the Aspirations of the Slavs. Little Girl: What does Professor Brown know about the Aspirations of the Slavs ? Father: Oh, he is a very great authority on the subject. He has lived many years in Russia and the Balkans, 57 58 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Little Girl: Well, you have lived many years in America. What are the Aspirations of the Americans ? Yes, indeed, what are the American aspira- tions and ideals? If they would stand still perhaps I could tell you. But even in my own life, not a long one, "Anglo-Saxon" political and religious feeling, the character of the social life of the mass in large areas in England and America, the external ex- pression of its religious emotion, its forms of inter- course even, have ebbed and flowed like the tides and changed in colour like the sky at sunset. Undoubtedly, for instance, there took place during the Boer War, in England, a Prussianisa- tion of English thought and feeling which had nothing to do with German influence. It was connected with the need for suppressing the Dutch Republics in South Africa. But the tendency received a check. The Pro-Boer agita- tion, though it did not stop the Boer War, pro- duced a reaction against the Prussian temper so great on one side of English politics, that that side, electorally triumphant, virtually restored to the Republics their independence under the guise of responsible colonial government. And one of the minor difficulties of deciding just what are the aspirations of the English is that when one takes an aspiring achievement like ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 59 that and says: "There is Anglo-Saxondom ; that is what England is now fighting to maintain," one is met by the fact that the noted anti-Germans of English politics or, if you will, those most alive to the German danger during the last ten years are precisely those who violently assailed the Pro-Boers and the Liberals for doing what they did in South Africa ; who declared that this surrender to the Boers was not Anglo-Saxon in its character at all, but very anti-English; and that real statesmanship demanded "severe" treat- ment of the conquered Republics a method of government which in its general principles would have resembled that employed by Germany in Poland and Alsace. Moreover, the ideas of these Prussian-like Englishmen with reference to the government of the Boers were not an isolated manifestation: one saw the same general feeling in their attitude towards Ireland, India, Parlia- mentary government, Imperial centralisation, conscription, and a host of other questions. Tak- ing the commonly accepted definition of "Prussian ideals," one may say that many Englishmen now most marked by their antipathy to Germany, and who to-day, in some instances, are giving evidence of their sincerity by preparing to lay down their lives to resist Prussian influence in the world, are precisely those who have stood, and will pre- sumably stand in the future, for Prussian methods 60 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY in government and politics and national organisa- tion; for Prussian conceptions in thought and morals. And their influence, since the war, has become very much greater than it was before. And yet they would be described as "typical Englishmen" ; are themselves quite sure that they stand for English ideals. And when we get beneath the surface of poli- tics to those things by which principalities and powers should stand or fall the character of the daily life that is lived under them one finds the English ideal still more difficult to fix, changing still more rapidly. The later Victorian period was pre-eminently one we associate with the tri- umph of English Liberalism; it was the golden age of English parliamentary government. But we now know also, alas, that it was one of the darkest of Dark Ages for the great mass of the English people not, it may be, for the few hun- dred thousand of the middle and upper classes who traded and grew rich, and whose orators glowed in Parliament, and who managed to secure something like half the total income of the country, but for the thirty million or so who had to manage as best they might on the other half of the national income. We now know just what the "freedom" of those thirty millions meant when translated into terms of daily life: Children of ten sent under ground ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 61 to be beasts of burden, women forging iron for thirty cents a day; Poorhouse "brats" sold to manufacturers as "apprentices" ("three idiots to count as one" ) ; town and country slums, such as writers from Kingsley to Whiting have sketched for us; "picturesque villagers" in "delightful cottages" living six in a room and supporting a family on less than two dollars a week, dependent even for that upon the good will of the Squire; subject body and soul to the oli- garchs of the Hall and Parsonage. And even where the population was secure from sheer starvation we know the sort of spiritual life that Victorian English freedom meant for so many. Writers like Mark Rutherford have made known to us what the Non-Conformity of the lower middle classes of the nineteenth century meant; that atmosphere which cast a blight upon the hap- piness of children ; that made men and women go through life with a ghastly mask of primness, restraint, and fear, suppressing spontaneity, laughter, human nature; that associated religion with ugliness, black coats and dreary Sundays, and a hard dry dogma of fierce vindictiveness that banished toleration, ruth and kindliness; that made men as stilted in their speech as in their souls. Oh, that was Anglo-Saxon freedom all right! For when the Anglo-Saxon left England to estab- 62 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY lish freedom in the New England of the west, it was just about that which he first established. Just think of the life led during two hundred years in the typical New England Puritan community. For those who really loved freedom freedom to speculate, to question, to bring their minds into clash with others, to let their children develop their varied impulses, to revel in nature, to be sincere, to relish life the theological and moral tyranny of the Puritan theocracy was a dreadful terror that pursued them from birth to death. Well, the particular ideal which this repre- sented has disappeared, or is disappearing. If one considers, say, the ordinary college girl of twenty-five, in an English or American commun- ity that still bears, perhaps, the Victorian stamp, and compare her "aspirations and ideals," her general outlook upon life, with those of her mother, we shall see that the two beings belong to different worlds. The difference between them is far greater than that between the girl from the English university and another from a German. Yet the mother and daughter are both Anglo-Saxon, and are supposed to stand in com- mon for some common ideal as against that of the foreigner. That is just one difficulty in fixing very exactly what are the Anglo-Saxon ideals. Here is another. That Victorian England I have referred to ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 63 has been transformed in at least several outstand- ing features. The laissez-faire of the nineteenth century economists, has given place to a sense of social responsibility on the part of the govern- ing order that has made a beginning, at least, with the abolition of the dreadful squalor of the older industrial centres, and the creation instead of garden cities, properly planned towns. The chance and hazards of wage earning have been eased for millions by such devices as Old-Age Pensions and Insurance Acts. The Puritan terror, with its dogmatic cruelties, has been eased at least by a broader interpretation both of docu- ments and of dogma. Best of all, perhaps, our attitude to childhood has altered. The child has now its charter; it has certain rights to happi- ness; and we have certain obligations to under- stand it. Now, these are great changes. For millions they have transformed the world. But they are not mainly Anglo-Saxon changes, in the sense of arising from Anglo-Saxon national ideas as op- posed to rival national ideals, or having had their origins in England. It is a dreadful thought, but these four outstanding changes in the modern life of the Anglo-Saxon world have come in very large part from Germany. The breaking down of laissez-faire in English political economy and the successful assumption 64 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY by the State of certain social responsibilities and obligations, came straight from Germany, both as to theory and to practice. Town Planning, the Insurance Acts, the Old- Age Pensions are German devices copied quite frankly even in their details from German models. And that wider interpretation of Christian documents and dogma which played so large a part in breaking down the more grievous forms of the moral tyranny of English Protestantism, in drawing the claws of English Puritanism that came largely from Germany, too. Perhaps but for the work of modern German biblical criticism the Protestantism of millions of English toilers would still be just an invisible terror added to all the visible terrors of life; a narrow creed would still be the instrument of a daily social and intellectual tyranny, wielded by black-coated fanatics stifling human feeling with fear-inspiring texts. English and American children would still cry themselves to sleep with thoughts of the worm that dieth not. And this Charter of Childhood to which I have referred, our growing sense of obligation to understand the child and train him otherwise than with a rod that in large part comes from Germany, too. Yet so quietly and naturally do we place ourselves under Prussian tyranny in this as in other things, that most of us hardly ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 65 realise even that "kindergarten" is a German word ; and a German thing. You see I am just trying to get at the reality behind certain words that we use so readily: "Rival ideals of Prussian and Anglo-Saxon," "Anglo-Saxon freedom," "Prussian tyranny," and so on. These phrases have a meaning, and there are great realities in those meanings. But to-morrow we shall be called upon to take definite action with reference to them. If we are then as vague as we have been in the past about them we shall not know really what we are doing. The whole thing will be hazard, drift, obedience to indefinite fears; and possibly we shall hit in the wrong place and fail to hit in the right. We shall be slaves of words and so not masters of our action. And there are just one or two other points we might consider in order to be sure that we get at the realities that underlie the outside form of politics. Mr. Bernard Shaw has in his "Common Sense About the War" written at some length on the English Junker. In what he had to say there was, curiously enough, no reference to the fact that at least some German Socialists do honestly believe that English politics in their internal realities as apart from their external forms are in fact more Junker-ridden than the German; and still less did Mr. Shaw give any comparison of that 66 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY phase of English and German political develop- ment which, in the German opinion aforesaid, supports this view. Such a comparison I heard made on the morrow of the declaration of war by an educated Prussian turned Socialist (nothing less) who had spent some years at an English university. He made it in reply to the usual English contention that Germany stood for Nietzscheanism, the philosophy of Power, and that her defeat would involve the definite defeat of European reaction. As against this view my Socialist Prussian submitted a case which, in so far as it may help us to understand certain Ger- man feeling on this matter and later on when the time comes to deal with it it will be necessary to understand it in some degree may be worth a little consideration. He put it in about these terms : "This fight of the democratic elements of Europe against the philosophy of power was, before the war, going on all over Europe. It was an uphill fight, but had been steadily gaining ground in Germany, and losing ground in England. In Germany, Junker- dom was a threatened institution, in ob- vious danger ; in England it was not threat- ened at all, but successfully masked behind the forms of freedom. In England, Parlia- mentary government had become a brilliant sham, an entertaining historical masquerade ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 67 of political processes and methods that once represented a means of checking power, but by a subtle transformation have since come to mean a method of preserving power in the hands of a small clique. A landless peasantry, an endowed and established church, the open sale of the seats of its Senate, the growth of the caucus, the stiffen- ing of the methods of the party system, the secrecy of its funds, the shaving down of the privileges of the private member, the political inefficiency of labour representation, the increase of power in the Executive, the creation of a Cabinet within the Cabinet act- ing in secret, all diplomatic work confined to one small social class, the growth of the power of a plutocratically owned press within the hands of two or three individuals had practically placed the government of England, especially in such issues as war and peace, within the absolute control of ten or fifteen men. In the things that matter, the power of this little Junta a form of control, a power frightfully difficult to fight because so elusive, much more difficult to grapple with than the definite and public posi- tion of the bureaucracy of Germany was far in excess of that of the Junker party in Ger- many which for some years had been fight- ing a losing battle, retaining merely rights which appealed most to its militarist sense of dignity, the right to push ladies off the pave- ment and cut open the heads of unarmed cripples, But it was so obviously threatened 68 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY an institution (which English Junkerdom obviously was not), that for twenty years the Prussian had been steadily yielding very nearly all the points in the policy of the party that opposed him. The Social Democrat Party had got so much farther with its pro- gramme than had the corresponding party in England that the latter's most daring social experiments were but clumsy imita- tions of it. The swaggering, but not very rich nor powerful Junkerdom, had become cordially detested by the proletariat of the whole of the Empire, and in all the southern half of it by the bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, and the aristocracy as well. Its position was definitely threatened and it could not much longer have resisted political developments that would have nullified its power. It had shown neither the shrewdness nor the duplicity which enabled English Jun- kerdom so to transform all the machinery of democracy Parliament, the universities, the endowed schools, the church, the 'free' (but plutocratic) press as to make that ma- chinery but a means of entrenching its posi- tion of real domination and control. This, indeed, has been the story from the time that the English country gentleman of the eighteenth century true type of the Junker though he, more than any other, 'made Eng- land what it is' created somehow by his Parliamentary rhetoric the general impres- sion that he was dying on the altar of popu- lar liberties and giving his life for the ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 69 defence of the nation's freedom when, as a matter of fact, he was in reality busily en- gaged by his Enclosure Acts in robbing the English peasantry of their land, and so of their real freedom. During this same period, or a little later, the Prussian Junker, with no democratic oratory at all, was engaged in turning serfs into peasant proprietors; so that to-day in Germany, in oppressed and autocratic Prussia even, most of the pea- santry own their land; while in Britain, after so many brilliant victories for polit- ical freedom, the peasant has lost his land. In Germany the universities and higher education, the ministry of the church, are for all alike, rich and poor; in England the 'public' schools (I don't need to remind you that Eton was established for charity boys), the universities both established for the poor have been annexed for the exclusive use of the rich; and even the ministry of the national church is the preserve of the Junker class and its proteges. In fact, the English State is the absolute possession of a class; all that it really accords to those outside the Junker pale is to choose between two parties in that class. Beside such real efficiency in the maintenance of autocracy, as all this shows, I am obliged to admit that the Prussian Junker is a simpleton, a country bumpkin. He should come to England to learn his business. He knows nothing of that astute manipulation of the lower orders which obtains the plaudits of 70 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the very men it robs. All that this yokel of a Prussian can do is to flourish his sword and retain some semblance of author- ity by retaining the military type of organ- isation ; for this purpose he works the danger of Russian absolutism for all it is worth with the democratic elements and the danger of British politico-economic domination with the middle classes, and as the result has enabled the English Junker to use the Ger- man danger for a similar political end in England, it comes about that the democracies of the two countries, instead of fighting to- gether the common enemy of which they are the victims, are in every sense playing the game of that common enemy by fighting one another. "You don't believe that the English upper, or upper-middle, or middle-middle classes have devised a plot to deprive the population of its property and of any real control in the government and destinies of his country ? Neither do I; but it is what has happened. I don't suppose there was a deliberate plot on the part of the militarist either in Eng- land or in Germany to use the war as a means of strengthening one form of society as against a rival form. None of us knows, perhaps, the real nature of the motives he is obeying. We can no more trace all the operations of mind which produce a given result in conduct and opinion than we can follow with our eye the passage of a rifle bullet to its mark. Our instinct often tells ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 71 us that our actions are in tune with our fundamental beliefs when we are quite un- able to explain the harmony, just as the child or the unlettered gypsy or negro can detect false note or rhythm in a song without knowing that such things as time, or crotch- ets and quavers exist. Do you suppose the publican who is almost certain to be a flam- boyant jingo, or the shoemaker a burning radical, could explain the connection between beer and patriotism or shoe leather and republicanism? Yet there are quite definite reasons for that connection or it would not work in ninety-nine per cent of cases. You remember the 'Punch' butler, who, in order properly to provide for his master's clergy- men guests, wanted to know their ecclesi- astical colouring, because 'the 'Igh they drinks more wine, and the Low they eats more victuals/ That butler showed a highly developed gift for generalisation. It was so correct that you could almost write the his- tory of the Reformation in its terms. But he could not have given you a single reason for it or explained it in any way. "Neither can English Junkerdom explain the connection between belief in armaments and disbelief in Parliamentary government, or the connection between the protection of privilege at home and the prosecution of aggression abroad; or what a liking for the House of Lords has got to do with a dislike of foreigners, or why a man who feels sym- pathy for the poor should feel an antipathy 72 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY to jingoes. Yet the Junker, English and German alike, knows perfectly well that these apparently disconnected things are very inti- mately related, as he knows that war and international mistrust are the natural but- tresses of reaction and privilege. Neither the English nor the Prussian militarist has concocted any plot against the democracy. Both have followed a very sound instinct which leads them to fight democracy by the same means. And whatever happens, which- ever side wins, Junkerdom will come out on top." My Prussian was quite honest. One wonders whether there is anything in his case. Again I am prompted to anticipate, by a word of explanation, the reader's irritation at having it presented at all. Why should a man who has made up his mind, as this present writer happens to have done, that Prussianism is a monstrous evil and threatens the world, indulge in what appears at first sight an apology for Prussianism ? Well, precisely because the enemy happens to be a very redoubtable one, and if we are to van- quish him we must understand him; his strong points and his weak ones ; just where he is danger- ous, and where he is beneficent. And this duty falls particularly upon those, who, standing apart for the time being from the present military ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 73 struggle, do not have to take part in a process of self-deception which is, perhaps, a necessary part of active war. Is it necessary to labour the point that difficult and complex crises in human affairs, and our own relation to them, are not likely to be settled by misunderstanding them, by a blindness to many of the facts in them ? Is it necessary either, to labour the point that nations at war will not, perhaps cannot, take the pains to see and under- stand all the facts ? It is, of course, much more easy and much more pleasant to resort in this matter to what M. Sorel has called the "social myth": to regard the struggle as one of two absolutes all the right and good on one side, all the wrong and evil on the other. The only problem then left is the triumph of the good side and the defeat of the bad. That particular myth certainly does achieve a certain peace of soul in war time, of which Dr. Jacks, of Oxford, 1 has recently been writing. He tells us that before the war the English nation, regarded from the moral point of view, was a scene of "indescribable confusion; a moral chaos." But there has come to it "the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a 'Editor of Hibbert's Journal. 74 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY cause to which he can devote himself." For this reason, he says, the war has actually made the English people happier than they were before: "Brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman wor- ries less about himself. . . . The tone and sub- stance of conversation are better. . . . There is more health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies." And he tells how the war cured a friend of insomnia. Unhappily for all this as a cure for the evils of our society, the war will soon have to come to an end. It can last a year or two at most ; and then, with our young men the best and the bravest, those in whom lay the great hope of the future dead, while the diseased and degenerate remain, we shall be faced by very hard and difficult moral and material problems that the war itself has created ; and in those conditions it is unlikely that the peace of mind and unity of purpose which the war has created will last very long ; and we shall go back to those divisions and conflicts which existed before. Mr. Graham Wallas, to whom the world owes so great a debt for his illuminating work in the domain of political and social psychology, has made a comment on Dr. Jacks' reflections, which seems to me to carry a very clear message to Americans on this subject at this time. Wallas says : ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 75 Non-combatants, like Dr. Jacks and myself, who are in the habit of observing our own states of mind, and can therefore to some extent control them, have to come to a deliberate choice. If I too am to make a personal confession, I may say that I believe that the war was mainly the result of German and Austrian aggression, that I intensely desire victory for the Allies, and that a decisive victory for the German governing caste in the present temper would be, in my view, a disaster to all that I most value in civilisation. I also recognise that an absolute surrender of consciousness to the single purpose of victory even by non-combatants has a certain military value. But although my choice means that I sleep not better but worse in time of war than in time of peace, I cannot myself make, or desire to make, that surrender, because to do so would be to abandon as far as I am con- cerned any attempt to control by reasoned thought the policy of my nation. I should choose the unrest of thought because I desire that the war should come to an end the instant its continuance ceases to be the less of two mon- strous evils and because I believe that our national policy should even during .the fighting be guided not only by the will to conquer but also by the will to make possible a lasting peace. For the young men who fight, it may be best to abandon the effort of thought, though that fact consti- tutes not the least of the evils of war; but those who are too old to fight owe to their nation the duty of calcu- lating all the consequences of national policy, however painful and uncertain the process of calculation may be. It is that which Bismarck meant when he insisted on the supreme importance of controlling, even during a war, military action by political thought. Now that whole nations with their parliaments, and churches, and univer- 7 6 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY sities, and industries, are "mobilised," and the intellectual life of Europe is put under military censorship, such a control is less easy than in 1870 but not less vitally im- portant, and it can only be attained if politicians prefer the struggle for truth to the peacefulness of self- surrender. ... I know that there are men in Germany who are in like case with myself. They are in a minority, but as the war goes on, and even more when the war shows signs of coming to an end, their number will increase. Should any one of them read this, I send him greeting, and assure him of my conviction that if ever that imper- fect community of nations is to be reconstituted, of which England and Germany once formed part, there will be work for those who during the war have denied them- selves the luxury of mental peace. 2 There is one phrase in Graham Wallas' article which is particularly apposite as bearing upon the question with which I have headed this chap- ter: "An Anglo-Saxon or a Prussian World?" Dr. Jacks had spoken of "this feeling of being banded together which comes over a great popu- lation in its hour of trial," as a very wonderful thing. "It produces a spirit of exhilaration which goes far to offset the severity of the trial. ... It is comparatively easy to love one's neighbour when we realise that he and we are common servants and common sufferers in the same cause. A deep breath of that spirit has passed into the *The New Republic, September u, 1915. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 77 life of England. No doubt the same thing has happened elsewhere." Now, with reference to this, Mr. Wallas points to the evidence as showing that : "the state of mind which Dr. Jacks describes is rather more general and more continuous in Germany than in England. Among the French and Belgian non-combatants whom I know it seems to be a good deal less general." I think we must admit that this national unity is more general in Germany than in the Western democracies of Europe. It was more general before the war. Indeed, Dr. Jacks has been describing a very subtle part of the process of Prussianisation of the English people: the fact that because a given purpose happens to be the nation's purpose, that of itself tends to close all discussion as to its Tightness or wrongness, utility or uselessness; or to the degree to which it attains to those things. On behalf of a national purpose the English, as Wallas implies, surrender the effort of thought except within the limits of that particular purpose. Now it is unhappily precisely such a process which in the case of Germany has made the man- ifestations of Prussianism Louvain and the Lusitania possible. Where criticism of national action is abandoned for fear of producing division within the nation, the capacity for any real judgment is inhibited. And thus it 78 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY comes that a nation of scientists and thinkers, men who have contributed abundantly to every phase of the highest human activities, can look upon the massacre of Belgian civilians and call it good. To such a process Anglo-Saxon communities have been in the past, on the whole, rebellious. These divisions, and conflicts of ideals, to which Dr. Jacks refers as moral chaos, are of the essence of Anglo-Saxondom. If any generalisation, as to the real difference between the Prussian and Anglo-Saxon type of society is possible at all, it is perhaps this : for the Anglo-Saxon the state was made for man; for the German, man was made for the state. The first conception neces- sarily involves real divisions of belief and feel- ing, discussion, self-criticism, government as a controversial task. The German type, on the other hand, has been marked, not merely by physical submission to authoritatively imposed discipline, but moral submission to the aim of the state. Individual development and personal freedom have been more and more subservient to the needs of collective organisation and state discipline. Now, whatever defects this last form of society may embody, it is obviously better suited to the needs of war than the first. The Anglo-Saxon type, with its necessary divisions, that clash of ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 79 varying opinion which Parliamentary govern- ment not merely tolerates but needs, gives a national instrument by no means well adapted to the purposes of the military commander. And the question whether European society is to take more and more of the Prussian and less of the Anglo-Saxon qualities will depend simply upon whether its main need is to be that of mili- tary efficiency. If survival in the struggle of the various communities of Europe with one another depends upon the element of military efficiency there will be a progressive tendency to Prussianisation and away from that type which we have called Anglo-Saxon. Whether Euro- pean culture can escape Prussianisation will de- pend upon whether European peoples can find some means of fighting out their differences other than as soldiers; are able to resist militarism other than with more militarism. So long as this last is our only recourse the very measures which we take in resistance to Prussianism are precisely those which will impose it and its morality upon us. The future tendency will depend not alone upon the defeat of Germany in this war but upon the possibility afterwards of finding some means of restraint without adopting Germany's own method. If after the war we pin our faith to the military 8o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY method, or can find no other, the Prussian will have conquered us though not a soldier of his remain. The process, as we know, has already begun in England. Quite apart from such definite mea- sures as Conscription, now so powerfully sup- ported, some of the acutest and alertest minds are asking whether the basic conceptions of English political organisation have not to be recast in favour of the Prussian form in order to give a better military instrument. Mr. H. G. Wells holds that "an immense note of interrogation hangs over the theory that the prin- ciple of free co-operation can secure for democ- racy the highest degree of efficiency." Criticising some of the conclusions of Professor van Gennep as to the effectiveness of that form of national organisation which has marked the Western democracies of Europe, Mr. Wells says: "There can be little doubt which side has achieved the higher collective efficiency. It is not the Western side. ... It is no use denying that the Central Powers were not only better prepared for this war at the outset, but that on the whole they have met the occa- sions of the war as they have so far arisen with much more collective intelligence, will power, and energy than any of the Allies, not even excepting France. They have succeeded, not merely in meeting enormous military requirements better, but in keeping the material side of their national life steadier under greater stresses. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 81 It is idle for this writer to pretend to think that the United States would make any better showing in this matter than Great Britain. The British Government has been excellent in argument and admirable in rhetoric, but it has been slack, indolent, and unready in all matters of material organisation; it has muddled and wasted national feeling, and it has been manifestly afraid of the press and over-sensitive to public clamour. It has shown all the merits and failures one might have expected from a body of political lawyers, trained in the arts of making things seem right, wary and prepared to wait and see what chances the adversary will give, and as incapable of practical foresight, as remote from the business of making real things go right, as enclosed nuns. If the present governments of Great Britain and the United States are the best sort of governments that democracy can produce, then Professor Ostwald is much more right than Professor van Gennep is prepared to confess, and democracy is bound, if not this time, then next time or the time after, to be completely overcome and superseded by some form of authoritative State organisation." 3 Now the most significant thing about this is the complete change of attitude toward German cul- ture, which it involves. I said just now that the competition for military efficiency in Europe will compel its democracies to adopt the very morality which it was the original object of their effort to fight. Mr. Wells is merely illustrating one phase of that transposition; the process that is going on in the minds of the nation as a whole, though *The Nation (London) July 24, 1915. 82 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY more slowly than in his very acute and alert one. He justified this war at the beginning because it was a crusade to destroy the German concep- tion of human society. He now tells us that we have to adopt that conception. Just after the war began he wrote: This is a conflict of cultures and nothing else in the world. All the worldwide pain and weariness, fear and anxieties, the bloodshed and destruction, the innumerable torn bodies of men and horses, the stench of putrefac- tion, the misery of hundreds of millions of human beings, the waste of mankind are but the material consequences of a false philosophy and foolish thinking. We fight not to destroy a nation, but a nest of foolish ideas. . . . The real task of mankind is to get better sense into the heads of these Germans. 4 He now tells us that the task is to get better sense into our own; and, instead of destroying their ideas, to adopt them. I am aware, of course, that he distinguished between the Germany of Bernhardi and the Ger- many of Ostwald. But does not even Ostwald accept a moral docility for the sake of discipline which alone makes the Germany of Bernhardi and it is that Germany which violated Belgium and sank the Lusitania possible? It is quite possible to watch the process at *The Nation (London), Aug. 29, 1914. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 83 work, to note the change that is taking place in the public temper, and the general attitude toward Prussianism. Anyone reading an English paper at the out- break of the war and in the case of some of them for months and years before the war would have found that European civilisation was threatened by a new and dangerous barbarism, a dreadful and immoral tyranny, in resistance to which the last drop of blood of a free people should be shed. Certain eminent Englishmen, like Mr. Frederic Harrison, and Frenchmen, like M. Flammarion, professed to find that this con- flict between Prussia and Europe had been going on for two thousand years. These two, between them, manage to quote Velleius Paterculus, Julius Csesar, Tacitus, Seneca, Strabo, and Froissart to prove that the conflict we now witness between barbarism on the one hand, and civilisation on the other, is merely the continuation of the irre- pressible conflict that has been raging for two thousand years. Mr. Harrison quotes Tacitus to prove that German courage is not real courage, and M. Flammarion Velleius Paterculus to prove that the "German character" has always been "in its very nature a companion of ferocity, falsehood and servility." 5 'From an address delivered to the Assemblee generate de la Societe astronomique de France. 84 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY An English Liberal publicist, Mr. A. G. Gard- iner, at the outbreak of the war, writes : As this great tragedy proceeds it becomes increas- ingly clear that the issue that is being fought at this moment in the trenches of the Aisne is not this or that national gain or loss but the spiritual governance of the world. Someone I think it was Sir Robertson Nicoll has expressed it in the phrase, "Corsica or Calvary." I think that is more true than picturesque phrases ordi- narily are, for the cause for which the Allies fight is more vast than any material motive that inspires them. They are the instruments of something greater than themselves. If the phrase is unjust, it is unjust to Corsica, for behind the militarism of Napoleon there was a certain human and even democratic fervour; but behind the gospel of the Kaiser there is nothing but the death of the free human spirit. ... If he were to triumph the world would have plunged back into barbarism. . . . We stand for the spirit of light against the spirit of darkness. 6 And now Mr. Wells and others tell us that this people of anti-Christs, whose national system of morals and organisation threaten humanity, are the people who have found and developed at least in large degree the true method of civilisation, and that the world must follow their lead. An exactly similar transformation of attitude is true with reference to the political objects which the war was to accomplish, the policy which is 'Daily News (London), Sept. 28, 1914. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 85 supposed to have inspired it and the British attitude towards militarism generally. At the beginning of the war we find even the Conservative press, as exemplified in the Times, declaring that the war was "a war against war." It arose from ". . . That love of peace, and of arbitration as means of peace, which is amongst the highest and most cher- ished ideals of the British democracy at home and in the Dominions. That is one of the ideals which the militarism of the German Junker class regards with hatred and scorn. General von Bernhardi, as a corres- pondent showed the other* day, pours contempt and derision upon British and American devotion to it as a sign of our common decadence. But the two democ- racies see in it the bright promise of the future." 7 Mr. Asquith was just as positive. The war meant, he said, ". . . first and foremost the clearing of the ground by the definite repudiation of militarism as the govern- ing factor in the relations of States and of the future moulding of the European world. ... It means finally, or ought to mean, perhaps by a slow and gradual process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing ambitions, for groupings and alliances, and a precarious equipoise, of a real European partnership, based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by the common will." 8 'Aug. 10, 1914. "At Dublin, Sept. 25, 1915. 86 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Some months later (March 8) we find the Times, as embodying British governmental opinion, proclaiming: ". . . we do not set up to be international Don Quix- otes, ready at all times to redress wrongs which do us no hurt. . . . We joined the Triple Entente because we realised, however late in the day, that the time of 'splendid isolation' was no more. We reverted to our historic policy of the balance of power, and we reverted to it for the reasons for which our forefathers adopted it. They were not, either for them or for us, reasons of sentiment. They were self-regarding, and even selfish, reasons. . . . In the event of war we saw, as our fathers had seen, Eng- land's first line of attack and of defence in her Continental Alliances." Anyone who had argued this in August or September would have come near to being lynched. And, at about the same time, we find the Morn- ing Post, an influential Conservative paper, repre- senting a very large class in the governing order, rejoicing as follows: "The absurd talk about this being a war against militarism has now subsided; the British people see that only by the intelligent use of military power can they hope to defeat their arrogant and overweening neighbour. After all, the British Empire is built up on good fighting by its army and its navy; the spirit of war is native to the British race, and as we have an excellent cause nothing less than the national existence this military and national spirit requires no apology. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 87 "But we have long been deceived by false counsels of politicians and sentimentalists, who are even now pre- tending that this is a war which will end war. War will never end as long as human nature continues to be human nature. And war with all its evils teaches us much good. It reminds us of the value of nationality which in peace is apt to be forgotten. There has been in the recent past a horrid disease of internationalism, which has weakened us considerably." Nor are we left in any doubt as to the wider social efforts of the militarist spirit in which the Morning Post rejoices: "War came like a great thunderstorm, which, while it strikes individuals with its lightning, clears the air and cleanses the ground of heat, vapour, and infection. To those who are thoroughly imbued with these false ideas it must seem as if nothing remained. Social reform, land reform, and all the other reforms without which it was supposed the nation could not live, are gone clean out of the picture. Militarism, said to be so bad a thing in itself, is become the sole business of the nation. . . . Democracy may still exist, but it is no longer in evidence, and it may be surprising to many that it continues to live without some new measure of wet-nursing. Many of the cherished liberties of the subject have been taken away, and even the Tory may be allowed to mourn infringe- ments which the most conservative of Governments would not have dared to make. The liberty of the press can hardly be said to survive: it has been permitted to dis- appear without a protest from those journals which might have been supposed to hold it most dear. Courts-martial have been allowed in certain vital affairs to take the 88 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY place of the Courts. As for freedom of speech, the right to lie, which might have been thought sacred to democ- racy, has been curtailed, so that now only those lies are permitted which appear to be in the public interest, and even truth may not be uttered if its effect is considered to be damaging to the country. Political controversy has almost disappeared, and if politics still exist, they are only permitted upon one side. A national theatre, a national literature, and a national art may all subsist in war, but they must breathe something of the national spirit. The internationalism and the chaotic individual- ism of peace are no longer found acceptable." A country at war is led by an almost mechan- ical process to adopt the very morality that it set out to fight. It is all very well to talk of the enormity of militarism, but when we are at war our people must be militarised at least tem- porarily in order to win. It may be monstrous to love war for itself, like the Germans, but if the enemy loves it and you hate it, he is likely to wage it better than you. One must therefore preach its hate with a certain caution. It is all very well to talk of international law, but if you observe it and he does not, that gives him an advantage and you can only equalise things by disregarding it too. Ruth and pity and mercy may be noble things, but they are near relatives to weakness in war. Hate and the desire for vengeance are to some extent military assets they have, for instance, a recruiting value. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 89 Justice, which cannot exist without some liking for knowing the point of view of the other side, and a determination indeed to do so, may be a divine passion, but a people which sees too much of its enemy's side may be divided in its counsels in acting against him. We may be fighting for democracy, freedom, parliamentary government, against despotism, government by a military caste, and restraint of free speech ; yet, if we are to wage the war efficiently, our government must be autocratic, free speech must be suspended, and the military order must have arbitrary power. To get this unity of action in the direction of military efficiency, we establish a truce of the dis- cussion of those principles which underlie democ- racy, parliamentary government, law and right. But the truce in reality means not that the two rival elements in our national life, the autocratic, and the democratic, the militarist and the anti- militarist, the authoritarian and the libertarian, shall both suspend the advocacy of their respec- tive ideas, but merely that one side shall. The supposed truce is not a truce at all; it is an ar- rangement by which the advocates of one par- ticular method and one particular set of princi- ples can go on urging that method and those principles as much as they like, but no one shall be allowed to reply. For instance, you will find plenty of people in England like Mr. Horatio 90 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Bottomley and Mr. Leo Maxse, and Lord Curzon advocating, to a very wide public, doctrines which are certainly not democratic, and as certainly militarist and Prussian in their tendency. But any reply to them or any advocacy of a contrary doctrine is regarded as a breach of the truce and likely to create a temper which will handicap military efficiency. So that during many months the public is hearing one side of the case only the militarist side. Men even of the strongest intellectual equip- ment cannot day by day hear one side of a case to the exclusion of the other without having their judgment greatly affected thereby. And the news- paper, magazine, and review reader is the average man, not the man of exceptional intellectual equipment. Now that is important for this reason: any difference of national character that may exist between two peoples, like the English and the Germans, is a matter of absorbed ideas, of the mind, not of race. The Germans are, of all the peoples of Europe, the most nearly allied to the British in race and blood. If twenty years ago the average Briton had been asked what people in Europe were most like himself in moral outlook, in their attitude to the things which really matter family life, social morality, the relations of the sexes, and the ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 91 respective importance which we ascribe to the various moral qualities he would have said al- most to a man that that nation was Germany. The notion that we were more naturally allied in our character to the French would have appeared to ninety-nine Britons out of a hundred, twenty years ago, almost offensive. Indeed, we know that the Germans were not always Prussianised: that their character has been modified by the indoctrination which has been part of that national military system to which, during the last generation, they have been subjected. The spectacle of Germany to-day is proof of that infinite capacity for self-deception in a people whose judgment is warped by the fact of only hearing one side, by the "nationalist" philosophy and the psychological bias set up in a great national struggle. The world has pronounced Germany the aggressor and her conduct in the war to be that of barbarians. Yet a whole people, including great thinkers, some of the great physicists and, beyond all question, the greatest organisers and administrators of the world, declare that she is fighting a purely de- fensive war by means that are morally justifiable and in the long run the most humane. And now the English are undergoing the same indoctrination. Just note the statements of fact 92 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY made by the great London daily that I quoted a page or two back. It tells us flatly that the coun- try will not, or does not, tolerate any discussion of the right or wrong of its acts ; any truth which reflects upon it is not allowed to be stated ; inter- nationalism that is any obligation beyond that to one's country is repudiated, and you have in its place the full flower of the Prussian doctrine that things done for the fatherland are things that carry their own justification. Can anyone doubt, if this picture even ap- proaches to the truth, that great English thinkers and scientists will finally be as capable as great German ones, of justifying any action whatsoever committed for the nation's cause. You have here indeed a set of conditions which render the capac- ity for impartial or outside judgments of our country's actions a human impossibility. Even in peace the nationalism of our times has pro- duced a patriotic feeling which requires very little stimulus to become the equivalent of the German doctrine that State interest justifies all. The feeling that one's country stands above right and wrong is of the essence of popular patriotic conceptions the world over. When Mr. Roose- velt tells us that we are right to support the proposition, "my country right or wrong," he is merely turning into American the extremest of Bernhardism. If we are to support our country ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 93 right or wrong, presumably Mr. Roosevelt would have blamed a German that protested against the invasion of Belgium or the sinking of the Lusi- tania. And if not, why not? Nor is the morality of this doctrine merely popular. It dominates political writing and think- ing of the most authoritative order both in Eng- land and America, and influences in consequence weighty political action. An historian of the calibre of Mr. W. A. Phillips, in his "Confedera- tion of Europe/' protests vigorously against the idea that a citizen can have obligations to any- thing higher than his own State. Speaking of the "extremists" in the peace agitation, he says: The morality which inspires this agitation moreover shocks the consciousness of those, happily the majority, who still regard patriotism as the supreme political virtue and are not perpared to hold with the late Baron von Sutner that "in any case the interests of humanity and of absolute right are superior to those of any one country." 9 But if humanity and right do not come before the interests of one's own country, how would Mr. Phillips blame the Germans for putting their country before law and humanity? The easy descent or ascent, if you will from one standard to another, the almost un- conscious adoption of that change I am trying to *The Confederation of Europe (Longman's), p. 13. 94 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY describe, is illustrated in the case of military methods which at the beginning of the war the Englishman was quite sure nothing in the world would induce him to adopt. Had you in August, 1914, put to the first half-dozen Englishmen you met, this question : "Would you sanction the kill- ing of women and children as part of a military operation?" they would have repudiated the idea indignantly. When the first Zeppelins appeared in England, and children were killed, the English press quite sincerely described the act as murder of the vilest kind. An English prelate said that the Kaiser would be held up to the execration of posterity for that one act alone, and that the British government should announce that the German military chiefs responsible should at the close of the war be executed as common assassins. And yet, within a few weeks, English and French officers were killing women and children with bombs thrown from aeroplanes ; the German press were recording the numbers of the slain, and the English press in some case were publish- ing the reports 10 and I am not aware that it has 10 The following which appeared in the London Times of April 17, 1915 is merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar reports published by the German Army Headquarters : "In yes- terday's clear weather the airmen were very active. Enemy airmen bombarded places behind our positions. Freiburg was again visited and several civilians, the majority being children, were killed and wounded." A few days later the Paris Temps ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 95 occurred to a single English critic to stigmatise this as anything but quite normal warfare. Cer- tain of the French reports, indeed, speak of the French air raids on unfortified German towns as "reprisals." That, I think, goes a little further. What should we say in peace time of this conduct : A man having murdered a child and escaped, we seized the man's child, or that of his sister, and (April 22, 1915) reproduces the German accounts of French air raids where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mul- heim, Habsheim, Wiesenthal, Tuelingen, Mannheim. These raids were carried out by squads of airmen and the bombs were thrown particularly at railway stations and factories. Previous to this, English and French airmen had been particularly active in Belgium, dropping bombs on Zebrugge, Bruges, Middlekirke, and other towns. One German official report tells how a bomb fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and children. Another (dated Sept. 7) contains the following: "In the course of an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of Roulers in Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two were injured." As I write these lines the American paper on my table contains the following despatch from Zurich, dated Sept. 24: "At yesterday's meeting of the Stuttgart City Council the Mayor and Councilors protested vigorously against the recent French raid upon an undefended city. Burgomaster Lauten- schlager asserted that an enemy that attacked harmless civilians was fighting a lost cause." The English, indeed, are supposed to be developing and specializing on this form of warfare. And yet it is humanly impossible to wage it without killing women and children. The present writer, while acting for a short time as a surgeon's orderly, happens to have witnessed the return of an English officer from a night bomb-throwing raid into the enemy's lines and to have heard his account of just what took place. The aviators themselves have no illusions as to the possibility of sparing civilians in this form of warfare. 96 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY put it to death? It were better, perhaps, not to talk of these things as "retaliations." What re- sponsibility had the women and children of Treves for the bombardment of Luneville ? Indeed, English writers are now making very cold and calculated arguments as to the absurdity of distinguishing between combatants and non- combatants at all. Mr. Maurice Low now says : The complexities of modern warfare make it impos- sible to differentiate between combatant and non-com- batant. The man, woman, or child working in the Krupp factory in Essen is as much a combatant as the Prussian private in the trenches in France. The private fires a rifle, and if his aim is good he kills a British or French or Belgian soldier ; yes, but with what ? with the cartridge that is the handiwork of men, women, and children working in the Krupp factory in Essen. ... A German man or woman who contributes to the fighting efficiency of Germany loses his or her status as a non- combatant. ... If the enemy is placed on short rations its moral and physical strength is impaired. . . . To the emotional this may sound very dreadful; and it is very dreadful. Slowly to strangle a nation to death, to weaken its power of resistance, to enfeeble it by hunger these things move to pity. But war, as it has been observed, is a brutal business. 11 In other words, the increased co-ordination of modern life, on the one hand, and the drift of military invention on the other, mean that "North American Review, Sept., 1915. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 97 modern warfare will necessarily be more and more a matter of promiscuous destruction pro- miscuous both as to materials and to persons and if we are to continue waging it we shall have to fit our morality to its needs. The Prussian has merely anticipated us. We shall have to follow him and go one better. As Mr. Robert Blatchford, the popular English Socialist, so puts it : "Always go one better. . . . If we can make a gas as deadly, a gas still more lethal and horrible, I say it is our duty to our soldiers to make as much of it as we can and to use it upon the brutal dastards opposed to us without remorse or pity." 12 Mr. Hilaire Belloc, regarded as one of the fore- most military critics in England, anticipates that when the Russians invade Silesia, "they will drive before them the civilian population, leaving the mines and factories idle. For to leave a civilian population behind the Russian advance, after the methods adopted by the Prussians, would be to invite disaster." 13 And the same author urges the need for this in the western invasion of Germany as well. Maurice Maeterlinck has made a like claim, and it is put a little more crudely by an English journal, as follows: "Weekly Despatch (London), May 16, 1915. "Nash's Magazine, February, 1915. 98 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY "It is being said that when the Allied armies British, French, Belgian, and Russian enter Germany, they will not ravage and destroy. They will march across the country as peacefully as is possible to an invading force. If they do, a policy of very great unwisdom will have been adopted. The one thing that Germany needs is the infliction of a pitiless punishment one that will bring home to every citizen in the German Empire his personal share in all the devilries that have been committed, and make him realise that the lash of civilisation is being applied to his back by way of requital. . . . Forbearance, when you are dealing with a mad dog or a tiger insane with the lust for blood, is an impossible thing. So far as such creatures are capable of any reasoning, they interpret it at once as a sign of weakness. That is how the German nation is going to interpret any failure on the part of civilisation to inflict the very utmost of the vengeance for the innumerable crimes committed in France and Bel- gium. . . . Like the other devils, the Germans will 'be- lieve and tremble.' Any kid-glove policy means simply that Germany will laugh in her sleeve and sharpen her knife for another onslaught on the vitals of civilisation. What is wanted and what we all hope to see is the Belgium army in Germany with a fortnight's free hand. The beer-gardens will be quieter then." 14 * In its judgment of the German atrocities in Belgium and elsewhere, American public opinion has very properly made this important distinc- tion: the menacing and barbarous fact in it all is not the isolated acts of cruelty and besti- ality it is recognised that such acts are common "The Financial News, September 30, 1914. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 99 in all wars, though every nation passes the sponge over its own contribution to the record but the formal approval and sanction of those acts. It is that which tends to set up a new code, to estab- lish a new morality among men. And what I am trying to emphasise here is that it is precisely that which this war is accomplish- ing for all sides. Louvain and Aerschot were not the outcome of something inherent in the German race; they were the outcome of things that are inherent in, and a necessary part of, militarism and its modern development; all sides are in process of adopting its morality. This is part of the price of war and the sane and courageous thing is to face it. If you make war at all, in the end you will make it in that fashion, and there is no protective serum in the blood of Briton or French or Italian that will render him immune. "Among the many delu- sions," says Mr. Wells with very great truth, "that this war has usefully dispelled, is the delu- sion that you can make war a little, but not war altogether; that the civilised world can look for- ward to a sort of tame war in the future, a war crossed with peace, a lap dog war that will bark but not bite. War is war; it is the cessation of law and argument, it is outrage. Even our war in South Africa, certainly the most decently con- ducted war in history, got to farm burning and ioo THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY concentration camps. Violence has no reserves but further violence. . . . These are no peculiar German iniquities. . . . The German is really, one must remember, a human being like the rest of us, at the worst just merely a little worse in his upbringing." I am not drawing from this for the moment any final conclusion. I am merely trying to emphasise a fact. The result which we shall get for this price that we pay for military efficiency may be worth it; it may be necessary; there may be no other means. All I am saying is that success in this particular process will not liberate us from the Prussian morality. One point may be raised. It will perhaps be said that neither the special temper which has arisen in this war, nor the method of its conduct on both sides, would have arisen if the German had not, by conduct which has no parallel, started it. Well, of course, one might ask what made the German set the pace in this way if it is not the militarisation to which he has subjected himself, and pushed farther than other people. But as to the morality which war sets up, we must keep in mind this fact: While it may be true that the conduct of which the Germans have been guilty is without parallel, it is just that kind of conduct which every nation in every war has alleged against its enemy. And, believing it, has felt ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 101 about the enemy as we feel about the Germans. Thus the particular temper which German con- duct has provoked is precisely the temper which is provoked in every war, even though it is based on false reports. At a time when England was suppressing the Boer Republics a large section of English opinion found it as natural to justify "severity" as it now finds it natural to justify the killing of non-combatants on the ground that only German conduct could have led them to it. When Swinburne could write of the Boer women and children as "whelps and dams of murderous foes" 5 it is not surprising to find English newspapers making such recommenda- tions as the following : The women and children are frequently employed to carry messages. Of course, they must be included in military measures and transported or despatched. . . . \\ e have undertaken to conquer the Transvaal, and if nothing will make that sure except the removal of the Dutch inhabitants, they must be removed, men, women, and children. 16 Mr. Provost Battersby, a well-known London journalist, is indeed quite ready, if needs be, not "Of the Boers as soldiers, Swinburne wrote: "Vile foes like wolves let free, Whose war is waged where none may fight or flee, With women and with weaklings. Speech and song Lack utterance now for loathing." l "St. James's Gazette (London), August 21, 1900. 102 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY to excuse but glorify the process. This has the true Nietzschean ring : The sentiment that would wage war with considera- tion is not humanity, but a shallow and calamitous senti- mentalism, that, to avoid the reproachful appearance of suffering, increases tenfold its persistence and intensity. War is still a method of barbarism and must be to the end. So let us wage it nobly and austerely, as the bar- barians of the past, and not with the blighting pusil- lanimity of a too civilised nation. 17 And if Americans imagine that they are exempt, let them without even going back to the conduct which each side alleged of the other (I am not talking of what really took place) in the North and South War consider the attitude of responsible papers and public men towards some of the incidents of the Philippine conquest, as, for example, General Jacob Smith's order to "kill everything over ten" in the island of Samar. 18 But, indeed, one has only to go to our own English and American military authorities, writ- ing in cold blood as to the most efficient method of military action, to see how very slight is the "Morning Post (London), August 5, 1902. 18 I have dealt with the American attitude in such matters in a chapter entitled "A Retrospect of American Patriotism" in an earlier book ("America and the World State": Putnam's). The quotations from Lea, Murray, and Roberts here given appeared therein. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 103 push needed for them to reach the present Prussian standard. And this is true as much of the general political ethics which lead to war, as to the manner of conducting it. An American author, General Homer Lea, has written a book which he has called (suggestively in this connection) "The Day of the Anglo- Saxon." It was dedicated to Lord Roberts, the most popular English soldier and English na- tional character of modern times. The book was well reviewed in England, and I am not aware that it particularly shocked public opinion in this country. Yet its thesis is that the Anglo- Saxon is to conquer the world and to do it with- out regard to any ethical considerations what- soever. The mere fact of the Anglo-Saxon's strength is to justify the whole thing. If the reader can discern in it any moral superiority of doctrine to that preached by Bernhardi he has very remarkable powers of discrimination. As to the ethics of "expansion" which are to justify the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the world, General Lea (pp. 10, n) says: "The brutality of all national development is appar- ent, and we make no excuse for it. ... "Nations cannot be created, nor can they become great by any purely ethical or spiritual expansion. The estab- lishment, in great or small entities, of tribes and states is the resultant only of their physical power : and when- 104 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY ever there is a reversal, or an attempted reversal, to this, the result is either internal dissolution or sudden destruc- tion, their dismembered territories going to make up the dominions of their conquerors. "In just such a manner has the British Empire been made up from the fragments of four great maritime Powers ; the satrapies of petty potentates, and the wilder- ness of nameless savages." By way of driving the point home, Lord Roberts himself illustrates it from the history of the British Empire. In his "Message to the Nation" (pp. 8, 9) he says: "How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire war and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the habitable globe, when we propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally re- fuses; and pointing, not without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has climbed to her un- matched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this nation, and the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the lustre of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or regard the utterance of one of her greatest a year and a half ago (or of General Bernhardi three months ago) with any feelings except those of respect?" The American author cited whose books, by the way, were recommended to the writer by a great British pro-consul treats of neutrality ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 105 and the ethics of its violation which are to mark the onward march of the Anglo-Saxon race. I hardly dare think what we should have said if Bernhardi, instead of General Homer Lea, had written the following: The occupation of the Persian and Afghanistan frontiers prior to war with Russia, or the European frontiers in a conflict with Germany, arouses in the British nation the appearance of great opposition to the violation of neutral territory. This is false, for the Empire is not moved by the sanctity of neutrality. Neutrality of States under the conditions just men- tioned has never heretofore nor will in future have any place in international association in time of war. Such neutrality is a modern delusion. It is an excrescence. After justifying the sudden descent of Britain upon Portuguese and Danish territory, General Lea says: So correct is the principle of this initiation that it stands out with remarkable brilliancy in the darkness of innumerable military errors made by the Saxon race. If England were, therefore, justified in seizing Den- mark in the beginning of the nineteenth century for no other reason than to prevent the employment of the Danish fleet by the French, how much more is she justi- fied during peace in the twentieth century in the occupa- tion of its southern frontiers for the protection of both nations against German aggression. 19 And so on, and so on. 19 "The Day of the Anglo-Saxon," p. 228. io6 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY And General Lea has English compeers. An English military writer, Major Stewart Murray, has written a book which is in some sense a counterpart to that of the American author, Lea, entitled "The Future Peace of the Anglo-Saxons." Lord Roberts writes for it a laudatory preface. One can imagine this book of an English officer commended by the greatest of English soldiers being translated into Ger- man as Bernhardi has been translated into Eng- lish, and circulated as representative of English political morality and indicating the real English view of such things as the sanctity of interna- tional law. Major Murray (pp. 4041), speak- ing of the seizure of the Danish Fleet in 1807, says: "Nothing has ever been done by any other nation more utterly in defiance of the conventionalities of so-called international law. We considered it advisable and neces- sary and expedient, and we had the power to do it ; there- fore we did it. "Are we ashamed of it? No, certainly not; we are proud of it. ... "For people in this country to talk of the sanctity of international law is nothing but hypocrisy or ignorance." And so as to "frightfulness." We select from Clausewitz, or from the German War Book, pas- sages which seem to place Germans outside the pale of civilised people. Yet these passages can ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 107 be duplicated almost word for word among Eng- lish authors. Major Murray is frank enough indeed to welcome Clausewitz as "the Shake- speare of military writers, the greatest and deep- est of military thinkers, whose book forms to-day the foundation of all military thought in Britain," and warmly applauds the appeals against "sick- ening humanitarianism." Major Murray fully endorses the principle of making war as "fright- ful" as possible: "The worst of all errors in war is a mistaken spirit of benevolence. . . . For 'he who uses his force unspar- ingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise.' . . . Now this is an elementary fact which it is most desirable that those of our politicians and Exeter Hall preachers and numerous old women of both sexes who raise hideous outcries about 'methods of barbarism,' etc., every time we have a war, should endeavour to learn. By their very outcries for moderation and weak- ness they clearly show that they know nothing about war. They impede the proper energetic use of the national forces. They are the greatest possible enemies to our peace." Nor does Major Murray stand alone. Admiral Lord Fisher has laid down the same principles just as vigorously: "The humanising of war! You might as well talk of humanising Hell ! When a silly ass at the Hague got up and talked about the amenities of civilised warfare, io8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY and putting your prisoners' feet in hot water and giving them gruel, my reply, I regret to say, was considered totally unfit for publication. As if war could be civilised ! If I am in command when war breaks out I shall issue as my orders : "The essence of war is violence. "Moderation in war is imbecility. "Hit first, hit hard, and hit anywhere. ". . . If you rub- it in both at home and abroad that you are ready for instant war with every unit of your strength in the first line, and intend to be first in and hit your enemy in the belly and kick him when he is down, and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any) and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you." 20 Lord Fisher was, perhaps, not quite serious, although his biographer says of him: "He had the not uncommon notion which uniform experi- ence of mankind has shown to be false that nations are deterred from going to war by fear of the atrocities which accompany conflict. . . . It is probably the conviction of many who would never dare to express it, although they would be quick enough to act upon it when the time for action came." Some of Admiral Fisher's French colleagues are just as "vigorous." We are apt to forget "From a character sketch by the late W. T. Stead, which appeared in the Review of Reviews (London) for February, 1910. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 109 that the German submarine warfare was precisely the plan of campaign which the younger naval men of France ("la jeune ecole," as they were called) advocated some years ago when the sub- marine first appeared, as the true tactics against an island power. (At that time, of course, Britain was France's prospective enemy and the one against whom the invention of the submarine in France was mainly directed. ) Admiral Aube, writing on naval war in general, lays down these principles : If a great ruler (Frederic the Great), philosopher, and master of the art of war, can declare that wealth is the sinew of war, anything that strikes at the enemy's wealth, a fortiori everything that can affect that at its source, becomes not only legitimate in war but imperative. We must expect then to see battleships that have secured command of the sea turn their power of attack and destruction, in default of adversaries that will not meet them in fight, against all coast towns, fortified or not, peaceful or combatant, burn them, ruin them, or at least impose merciless ransoms upon them. That was the method of the past, it is not that of the present, but it will be that of the future. . . . Fleets can only play a worthy part in war if we descend from the cloudy heights of that sentimentality which has been created by this monstrous association of words: the rights of war, and return to logic and reality, which rule the world. . . . The supreme object of war is to do the greatest possible injury to the enemy. 21 "La Revue des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1882, p. 331. no THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY But perhaps the most pathetic illustration of the tendency with which we are dealing that of a nation to become, by successful military re- sistance to military ambition, itself imperialist and militarist is furnished by the recent his- tory of Italy. Her fight for unity and freedom from the oppression of the imperial ambition of other military states, stirred the world. But, the consolidation which enabled Italy to throw off the foreign yoke and become a nation, also, unhappily, enabled her to enter one of the groups of the great military powers. That fact has en- tirely changed the character of Italian national- ism. "Few people realise," says Mr. T. L. Stoddard, 22 "the intensity of the movement which during the last few years has been transforming Italian thought. This movement, expansionist and aggressive to the highest degree, calls itself Nationalism but is in reality a sublimated Im- perialism." Mr. Stoddard presents a mass of evidence which would seem to show that Italian Imperialism is relatively much more violent and widespread, and only lacks the power to become as dangerous, as its Prussian equivalent. Its exponents fully recognise that it is the en- dowment of Nationalism with power, its mili- tarisation, that transforms it into aggressive imperialism. "In the Forum, Sept., 1915. ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? in "One is a Nationalist," says Professor Cor- radini, one of the prophets of Italian Imperialism, "while waiting to be able to become an Imperialist later on." He prophesies that "in twenty years all Italy will be Imperialist." His prophecy is in process of realisation. It is one of the penalties of a military alliance that one must never tell an unpleasant truth about an ally, and presumably that is why the English public know nothing apparently of the extremely dangerous ambitions growing up in Italy. The facts which Mr. Stoddard reveals and of which other impartial observers have at times given hints point to a grave and menacing problem for the victorious allies at the end of the war. Speaking of the Nationalists who have now be- come so powerful in Italian politics who, indeed, of late seem to have dominated national policy he says : "Their eyes have never been fixed solely upon Tren- tino and Trieste, nor have they considered Austria as Italy's sole potential enemy. Space forbids the elabora- tion of this point, but a wealth of Nationalist utterances might be adduced. To sum up the matter: The Nation- alists, while of course never forgetting Trieste and Tren- tino, also remember that French Corsica, Nice, and Tunis, English Malta and Swiss Ticino are all inhabited by Italian populations. If Austria has dominated the Adri- atic, France and England control the Mediterranean. Nationalist colonial aspirations extend far beyond Albania ii2 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY over the East Mediterranean basin. This last is im- portant because the Italian Government here apparently shares in great measure the Nationalist point of view. Italy's refusal to evacuate Rhodes and the other Aegean islands occupied by her during the Tripolitan War has been supplemented by the staking out of a large sphere of influence in Southwest Asia Minor and by a markedly aggressive attitude throughout the entire Levant from Smyrna to Alexandria. The insistence of the Italian Government on its eastern policy was revealed by the diplomatic duel between Sir Edward Grey and the late Marquis di San Giuliano during the opening months of 1914." In short, the demand is that Italy shall now set out to fill the role of ancient Rome. "Italy must become once more the first nation of the world," says Corradini. His colleague, Signer Rocco, in a book published early in 1914, explains how it can be accomplished: "We are prolific. Hitherto we have had to submit to the injustice of nature, for we were not numerous and the others outnumbered us. ... But to-day we also are numerous. . . . We will soon have overtaken, even surpassed the others. ... It is said that all. the other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the path of progress conquer . . . territories occupied by nations in decadence. Italy will know how to create a culture peculiar to itself and to impress ... its national seal upon the universal intellectual development." Another member of the same school, Luigi Villari, well known to the Anglo-Saxon public,, ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 113 rejoices that for the purposes of this programme "the cobwebs of International Socialism and mean-spirited Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel in whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride of the Roman citizen." Signer Scipione Sighele confirms it: "Italy since the war is another Italy. She has revealed something which before did not exist. Her people vibrate with an enthusiasm at first judged ridicu- lous. A breath of passion animates all souls. . . . Terrible as a menace, which is the instinct of the race. . . . The desire of a great Will." This writer also condemns the ideals of peace and a united Europe : "War must be loved for itself. ... To say 'War is the most horrible of evils,' to talk of war as 'an unhappy necessity/ to declare that 'we should never attack but always know how to defend ourselves,' to say these things, is as dangerous as to make out-and-out pa'cifist and anti-militarist speeches. It is creating for the future a conflict of duties ; duties towards humanity, duties towards the Fatherland." Corradini expands on the text : "All our efforts will tend towards making the Italian a warlike race. We will give it a new Will, we will instil into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create a religion the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other nations." II 4 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY And for that purpose Professor Corradini wants the Italian nation to discard the "foreign" ideas of English Liberalism and French democ- racy. These are too individualist. The State and Nation must be placed first. Indeed the whole Nationalist movement in Italy seems frankly anti- democratic in the Anglo-Saxon sense. Its posi- tion is indicated by the motto: "Per il Popolo, contro la Democrazia." Significantly enough, in the light of subsequent events, a report made to the Nationalist Con- gress in Milan a few months before the war, up- holds the political conceptions of the Italian Machiavelli as against those of English and French individualism. Mr. Stoddard sums up a review from which the preceding is largely taken, and which seems to show that the Bernhardis of Italy are both more numerous and more powerful that those even of Germany, by the statement: "The outcome of the European War is, indeed, the touchstone, not only of Italian hopes, but perhaps of the Nationalist movement itself. Italian defeat might well be followed by an Anti-Imperialist revulsion akin to that after Adowa, but naturally of much more acute intensity. On the other hand, Italian victory, judging by the con- sequences of the Tripolitan War, would probably mean such further indorsement of Nationalist ideals as to sweep the Italian people fairly into the ambitious race for world-dominion." ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 115 The Prussian, as the most efficient soldier of present-day Europe, has shown us how war in our modern world with modern instruments must be waged if men would have success in it; how a nation must prepare itself for it, how its mind must be shaped and its soul adapted. Presum- ably, if men go to war at all, they will try to be successful in it. The Prussian even may dis- appear, but the process of competition, the elim- ination of those unfit by heart or mind to follow this art, will always tend to give us other Prus- sians. If war, as we now know it, is really in- evitable, then a Prussian world is inevitable. But what of this instrument of sea power that does not seem to demand the Prussianisation of those who create and use it ? Cannot that instru- ment hold in check the other and protect the world from militarisation, give to it a dominant society that shall not be Prussianised? The three following chapters deal with that question. CHAPTER IV THE MECHANISM OF SEA POWER If "Marinism" has not the special political and social dangers connected with militarism (as in the first chapter we saw that it has not) may not the Anglo-Saxons find therein a means of extending their influence without paying the moral price involved in Prussianism? To answer that it is necessary to realise how sea power works. This chapter gives a summary of the general conclusions of authoritative modern strategists on the operation of sea power and the relation it must bear to military power. CHAPTER IV THE MECHANISM OF SEA POWER WHAT does "sea power" mean? The world comes to use such a word, just as it may speak of "evolution" or any other large process with very wide variations of meaning. As a matter of fact "sea power" is very difficult of precise definition. At the end of his work on "The Navy and Sea Power" 1 David Hannay asks whether, after all, in our survey of maritime history we are able to tell exactly what "sea power" is, and what share it has had "in pro- moting the greatness and maintaining the safety of nations." He concludes : "For my own part I have to confess that I find it beyond my capacity to give a definition. In the whole history of con- flict, whether by downright fighting, or competi- tion in trade on the sea, I find but two nations of which it can be said that they could be great only by exercising power oversea, and that so long as they could defeat an enemy in the waters round their shores they were safe against invasion. Even as regards them we have to add the quali- 'Pp. 247-8. 120 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY fication that their security lasts only so long as they do not possess dominions overseas which are subject to attack by formidable assailants, and across land frontiers." In this and the chapter which follows an at- tempt is made to furnish the data necessary for an answer to the question suggested in the first chap- ter of this book, namely: If naval power has not the special political and social dangers connected with military power, may not the Anglo-Saxons find therein a means of extending their influence without paying the moral price involved in Prussianism ? The present chapter is a summary of the general conclusions of authoritative modern strategists on the operation of sea power and the relation it must bear to military power, rather than a statement of personal conclusions. In the chapter that follows, however, I have attempted to bring out the limitations of sea power which result from the interdependence of land and sea forces, and the outcome of that on international politics as illustrated in history. Sea power is exercised through command of the sea, which is the object of naval warfare. By "the command of the sea" is meant: I. That the state obtaining it can carry on its maritime commerce without interruption or with MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 121 only slight interruption from the armed ships of the enemy. 2. That it can with reasonable safety trans- port troops overseas for the purpose of attacking colonies or effecting a landing in the enemy country and can keep these troops supplied with such reinforcements, ammunition and provi- sions as will enable them to prosecute their cam- paign. 3. That portions of its fleet can safely be used to co-operate with land forces in operations on an enemy coast, by bombarding coast fortifications, covering landing parties, and dispersing the enemy's troops by its fire. 4. That it can prevent the enemy state from carrying out any of the operations coming under heads No. 2 and 3, or at least render them ex- tremely perilous and uncertain. 5. That it can establish an effective blockade of his chief commercial ports and thus close them to all commerce whether in enemy or neutral bottoms and by exercising the right of search can prevent him from receiving from overseas, through any port, such articles as are classed as contraband. It will be seen that the command of the sea is in the first place a defensive weapon. In the hands of a State which has no land frontiers, or none which adjoin the frontiers of the enemy, an 122 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY invasion of its territory is rendered practically im- possible. If the nation possesses a great foreign trade it is enabled to carry on that trade even during the actual period of war. The nation is thus saved both from the worst ravages of war and from any overwhelming interruption to its industrial and commercial life. For purposes of direct offensive, the value of command of the sea depends upon the military strength of the nation which exercises it, but as will be seen later, a comparatively small military force is often enabled to exercise an effect dispro- portionate to its size. In the long run naval pre- dominance can be used as an offensive weapon only if there is a strong army to co-operate with it. It must be remembered, however, that a power which, for any reason, does not keep up a great military force in time of peace, is enabled by command of the sea to build up such a force after the declaration of war, to train it, to manu- facture or import arms and equipment, and finally to transport it to the scene of action when it is ready to strike. Economic pressure, however, which is an in- direct method of offence, can be exercised by the command of the sea. By preventing the enemy from receiving material of war it weakens his power of resistance and by the interruption of his trade it diminishes his financial resources for a MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 123 prolonged war and it may also inflict such injury upon his commercial and industrial classes as will induce them to put internal pressure upon the gov- ernment to make peace. This power to exercise this economic pressure often renders a great naval power, even if its army be comparatively negli- gible, an extremely valuable ally to a military state. The command of the sea may be either Absolute, Virtual or Disputed. Absolute command of the sea implies either that the enemy has no serious naval force or that his naval force has been destroyed. In that case all the advantages mentioned in the five headings, with which we started, are secured to the naval power in full possession. In the South African War the Boer Republics possessed no fleet and Great Britain was thus enabled to transport an overwhelming force to the scene of action and to bring the necessary military pressure to bear, while her commerce went on without any inter- ference from without. Virtual command of the sea exists where the enemy's naval force, being in inferior strength, declines to put to sea ; or where it can be so closely observed by the superior fleet that it cannot put to sea without being immediately brought to action by a superior force. In such a case the shores and commerce of the State exercising vir- 124 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tual command will be efficiently protected, while it will be able itself to conduct overseas opera- tions with a minimum of risk. The extent of such risk will depend entirely upon the degree of certainty which can be established that the enemy's force will not get to sea. After Trafal- gar, Great Britain may be said to have exercised virtual command of the sea because the enemies' fleets were closely watched or blockaded, while their reduction in strength and morale rendered it practically useless for them to think of risking a general action for the purpose of breaking the blockade. All danger of invasion passed away, while Great Britain was enabled to land and sup- ply a strong army in the Peninsula. Again, while isolated cruisers caused much damage to British Trade, these losses were not sufficient to prevent that trade from being actively and profitably car- ried on, while the overseas trade of France was completely ruined. In the present war, though the German fleet has never been defeated in a great battle, Britain has from the first exercised a virtual command. The reason is that her superiority in capital ships is very great and her strength in cruisers, coupled with her geograph- ical position in regard to Germany, render it practically certain that Britain could at once throw the British battle squadrons in superior strength across the path of the German fleet MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 125 should it issue from its ports. Britain has, there- fore, been able to land a large force in France, to keep it reinforced and supplied, to seize German Colonies, and conduct coastal operations in Bel- gium and the Dardanelles. Her commerce has suffered certain losses from cruisers and sub- marines, but only to a very small percentage of its total volume, while her control of the ap- proaches to the German coast and the main trade routes has driven commerce in German ships entirely from the seas. The command of the sea is said to be in dis- pute when neither power has obtained a position of naval superiority. In this case neither side will be able to exercise the advantages of com- mand. No invasion on a large scale will be pos- sible and smaller expeditions will be very danger- ous. The danger arises not only from the possi- bility of interruption by an enemy squadron but also from the fact that even if a landing be safely effected the communications of the expeditionary force will be insecure. It cannot receive regular reinforcements and supplies, and if the enemy's fleet should subsequently obtain a position of superiority by winning a decisive action, the in- vaders may find themselves entirely isolated and be compelled to surrender. The commerce of both parties will be exposed to attack and heavy loss, but so long as the condition of disputed com- 126 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY mand continues, neither will be able to undertake a commercial blockade or to drive its rival's flag from the seas. During the whole war of American Inde- pendence the command of the sea may be said to have been in dispute. While the allied fleets were numerically superior to the British, they were never able to win a decisive battle. Their intervention was of vital importance to the rebel- ling colonies, because it prevented the British from using their sea power to isolate and reduce one by one the various sections of the narrow and indented Atlantic coast strip, which then formed the United States. On the other hand, it was not sufficient to enable France and Spain to invade the British Isles or to transport troops in suffi- cient numbers to overwhelm the British armies in America or undertake any great expeditions. The West Indian Islands fell into the hands of one side or the other according to the temporary fluctuations of power. As a net result the United States gained their independence because they were on the defensive and a disputed command which prevented the British from exercising the full pressure of seapower was sufficient for their purpose. France and Spain, on the other hand, gained very little because the war for them was an offensive one and they never obtained that naval superiority which would enable them to take the MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 127 offensive with success against an insular and colonial power. At the beginning of the Seven Years' War we find the same position of disputed command, but in this case superior strategy and the great victories of Hawke and Boscawen converted the position into one of virtual command by the British Fleet, which enabled Britain to strike down the French power in India and Canada, while the protection given to her trade so estab- lished her financial position that she could finance Frederick the Great in the continental struggle. The command of the sea may also be said to be in dispute so long as an inferior naval power possesses a "fleet in being." The doctrine of the fleet in being is often misunderstood. We have seen that if an inferior fleet can be observed so closely in its ports that it cannot put to sea with- out avoiding action, the superior power may carry on overseas operations without regard to its ex- istence, as in the present war. But if the margin of superiority is so small as to render victory uncertain, or if the inferior fleet retains freedom of action, the case is altered. By a "fleet in being" we mean a fleet which is so far inferior to its opponent that it will not seek action except on favourable terms, but which retains its freedom of movement and is strong enough to constitute a serious threat to overseas operations. Thus in 128 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 1690, when de Tourville was in the Channel with a superior force, Torrington wrote to the Gov- ernment: "Whilst we observe the French, they cannot make any attempt either upon ships or shore without running a great hazard." He did not think himself strong enough to fight on equal terms, but he was so strong that the French could not detach ships to cover military operations without giving him an opportunity, and if their main fleet encumbered itself with transports and the covering of a landing he could attack it with advantage. When his orders compelled him to fight, he drew off with as little loss as possible and continued to observe the French from the Thames estuary, where he awaited reinforce- ments. In his own words: "I always said that, whilst we had a fleet in being, they would not dare to make an attempt." 2 The extent to which a fleet in being will hamper the movements of the enemy depends, of course, upon the estimate which they form of its fighting value. Thus, in the Chino- Japanese War, the Japanese moved troops into Korea while the Chinese fleet was still at large, undefeated. But in that case Admiral Ito had satisfied himself from the conduct of the Chinese that their squad- *In 1866 the Italian admiral, Persano, disregarding the in- ferior Austrian fleet, attempted a descent upon the Island of Lissa. He was taken at advantage by Tegetthoff and disgrace- fully defeated. MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 129 ron would not be handled with sufficient energy or skill to constitute a serious threat. It must be remembered that so soon as an inferior fleet is blockaded, or can be observed so closely that it cannot put to sea without being brought to action by a greatly superior force, it ceases to be "in being" in the sense in which the term is here used. Thus the power of an inferior fleet to affect the situation depends upon its ability to evade action or blockade, hoping for some mistake upon the part of the enemy which will allow it to fall on a detached portion of his force, or to take his main force at a disadvantage. The difficulties of an inferior fleet are greater than those of an inferior army, inasmuch as it cannot compensate for numerical weakness by taking up a strong defensive position. It can indeed remain under the protection of its coast fortifications, but by so doing it abandons the seas to its adversary, and on the high seas there are no positions. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to observe that a numerically inferior fleet which is greatly superior in efficiency to its opponents may possess a real superiority in striking power. The ex- pression "superior fleet" here used implies simply such superiority in numbers, or type of ship, or morale, as renders defeat of the enemy reason- ably probable. 130 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY In the main, the command of the sea is one and indivisible. A land power, attacked on two frontiers, may stand on the defensive on one and concentrate superior force upon the other. The unity of the sea, with the immense facilities which it gives for concentration, together with the absence of defensive positions, renders any similar plan of campaign at sea impossible. On the high seas there are no neutral frontiers to limit operations, no natural obstacles, such as mountains and rivers present on land, no forti- fied lines, and consequently no positions which cannot be turned. The containing of a superior by an inferior force is thus impossible. If the inferior fleet concentrates it will be defeated or blockaded by the superior, if it is divided, its detachments can be followed everywhere and de- stroyed in detail. These considerations may be varied in certain cases by geographical conditions. In the present war the German fleet occupies to some extent the same position with regard to the Russian as the British does to the German. This is due to the very narrow entrance to the Baltic Sea and the existence of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. In the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese navy was in- ferior in total strength to the Russian ; but after the first torpedo attack at Port Arthur it pos- sessed a distinct local superiority, while the rein- MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 131 forcement of the Russian fleet was rendered difficult by the great length of the voyage and the absence of coaling stations. The Japanese were thus able to use freely the local command which they had established and, finally, Togo beat the Russian reinforcements at Tsushima. Had the Russian fleet been more efficient and had they possessed a good base, say at Singapore, where the fleet could have refitted after its voy- age, Togo's victory might have been less certain ; and had he been defeated, the Japanese army, landed in Korea by virtue of their temporary local command, would have found its communi- cations cut. In the war of American Independence, de Suffren, the great French admiral, was fast establishing, not so much by superior force as by superior genius, a control of the Indian seas, which might have seriously shaken the British power in India had not the peace of Versailles intervened. Here too, however, it must be borne in mind that a decisive British victory in the main theatre of war would have enabled them to send out a force by which the control of the Indian seas would have been restored to them. The value of superior local strength depends upon the rapidity with which the enemy's main force can be brought up, and the character of the war. Suppose two powers, "A" and "B," are at i 3 2 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY war for a limited object, say the occupation of the island of "C." "A" has the larger navy, but "B," being nearer to "C" than "A," defeats the "A" squadron in those waters and is able to transport troops to "C," who conquer the island. If the "A" people do not put an excessive value on "C" they may be disinclined to make the exer- tions necessary for its recovery and will make peace. But if the questions at issue between the two nations are such as each regards as of vital importance, then "A" will put forward her whole strength and send out a superior fleet to "C" waters. In that case the "B" troops on "C" will be lost. Having examined the nature and meaning of the command of the sea, we must now say a few words with regard to the ways in which that command is obtained and exercised. It is a cardinal principle of British naval strategy that command of the sea can only be obtained by defeating or bottling up the enemy's battle squadrons. In Britain's wars with France it was the general strategy of British admirals to bring the enemy's fleet to action upon every possible occasion. The French policy was gener- ally directed rather to ulterior objects, to the taking of certain islands, or the safe passage of convoys. In the words of a French officer : "The MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 133 French navy has always preferred the glory of assuring or preserving a conquest to that, more brilliant perhaps, but actually less real, of taking a few ships." In consequence they evaded action whenever possible and relied on sudden concen- trations of force to cover the passage of troops. If brought to action, they contented themselves with beating off the enemy so as to cover the immediate military operations in hand. Thus d'Estaing, having achieved a success over Byron, refused to press it because he was afraid of risk- ing the island of Grenada, which he had con- quered and which he regarded as the real object of his campaign. In 1782 de Grasse neglected a very advantageous opportunity of attacking the British, and his action was justified by a Court Martial as "an act of prudence on the part of the admiral, dictated to him by the ulterior projects of the cruise." Three days later he was attacked and defeated by the same fleet and all the ulterior projects of the cruise were lost. By continually hammering at the enemy's fleet wherever it could be found, the British generally ended by obtain- ing a command of the sea which enabled them to recover anything temporarily gained by the French and to gather in all secondary objectives at their leisure. So with the various projects for the invasion of the British Isles. If the French could only i 3 4 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY have defeated the British fleet, or driven it into its ports, they might have thrown an army across the Channel. Instead of attempting to do this they generally relied upon a temporary concen- tration of force to cover a landing, evading the British fleet wherever possible. Their elaborate plans invariably failed because the whole British strategy was directed to maintaining touch with every squadron that put to sea and bringing it to action. One or more of the squadrons destined to cover the crossing was invariably run down and defeated and the whole scheme collapsed. On the other hand, when the British army was sent to Spain, it arrived without interruption, not because it was accompanied by a great cover- ing force, but because successive defeats had shattered the material and moral strength of the French navy and its remaining squadrons were all masked by superior forces. The masking of French fleets by the British has sometimes led to a certain confusion in terms. The "blockade" of the French fleets was not in general a blockade in the strict sense of the term. It was not desired to prevent the egress of the French squadrons ; indeed, every effort was made to tempt them out. The one object was to ensure that they should never come out without being fought with. The mainspring of the whole strategy was the desire to bring the enemy's fleet MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 135 to action. It resulted, of course, in condemning him to inaction if he was unable or unwilling to fight, with the result that the French fleets diminished in morale and seamanship to an extent which greatly reduced their activities when they did manage to slip through. It follows from this policy of concentration upon the organised forces of the enemy afloat that the mainstay of naval strength is the capital ship the ship which in the old phrase is "fit to lie in a line" and, as these ships are expensive and can- not be improvised, it results in the necessity for a power desirous of obtaining command of the sea in war, to prepare for war by a free expendi- ture of the national resources upon its battle fleet. A further result is seen in the disposition of the fleets. While the points to be protected may be numerous and scattered, sound strategy dictates that the fleet which is to protect them should be concentrated within striking distance of the enemy's ports. The British Empire could not be protected by a series of local squadrons based on India, on Canada, on Australia. Since it would be impossible to tell where the blow was to fall, such squadrons might well be evaded or overwhelmed in detail. But if the British main fleet is concentrated off the enemy's ports, or at a rendezvous within striking distance of them, with scouts closely observing every movement on 136 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the enemy's coast, then any expedition destined against India, or Canada, or Australia, can be located and destroyed at its point of departure and the only means by which its departure could be protected would be for the enemy to fight and defeat the British fleet. The possibilities of evasion have been consider- ably overrated even in the case of the sailing ship. There was a good deal of loose talk about Villeneuve "luring Nelson away" to the West Indies. Nelson was never "lured away." His place was on the heels of Villeneuve, whether in the Mediterranean or the West Indies. While he was on his heels Villeneuve could do nothing. He could only have rendered his squadron avail- able for covering a crossing by falling upon Nelson and defeating him. Napoleon's scheme for the invasion of England was not destroyed at Trafalgar. Trafalgar was only an epilogue. Napoleon's plan presupposed an overwhelming concentration in the Channel and it broke down because the masterly dispositions of the British fleet made it impossible for the French to get to the Channel without fighting. It is true that in 1798 Napoleon succeeded in carrying his army to Egypt by evasion, owing to the fact that Nelson was insufficiently supplied with frigates for scouting. But the sequel is instructive. Nelson found the French fleet at MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 137 Aboukir and crushed it. England obtained com- mand of the Mediterranean. It was impossible for the French to receive reinforcements or sup- plies from home. The co-operation of the British fleet checked Napoleon at Acre. He recognised that the game was up and returned home. A British army was landed in Egypt and the French were forced to capitulate. Advocates of local squadrons and defences sometimes contend that the British fleet must remain in British waters to protect the British Isles and that therefore it is not available for the defence, say, of Canada. The non sequitur is complete. If the enemy's organised force is in European waters, the British fleet will protect Canada by being there too. Until it is defeated no great expedition can leave the enemy's ports. If the enemy's fleet has gone to Canadian waters the British fleet will protect Britain by following and defeating it there. Those who talk of sudden raids protected only by a few fast cruisers have never considered the position of a crowd of transports, all intensely vulnerable, liable at any moment to be overtaken by a superior force, or the length of time neces- sary for disembarkation. The inventions of modern science, steam, and wireless telegraph all go to increase the difficul- ties of invasion. The speed of each side may be 138 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY increased in equal proportion, but all the advan- tages given by greater certainty and by greater rapidity of communication are on the side of the force which desires to keep in touch with the enemy and against the force which relies on chance and evasion. The same principle applies to the attack and defence of commerce. No superiority of strength can prevent occasional scattered cruisers from slipping through and working havoc, but such de- struction of commerce will never bring a powerful nation to its knees. The cruisers dare not lie long on the main trade routes or they will be hunted down by superior force. The bases open to them will continually diminish as the command of the sea enables the superior power to capture the overseas possessions of its enemy. On the other hand, if a fleet has defeated the enemy's battle squadrons or bottled them up in their ports it can so dispose its cruisers and so stiffen them with powerful vessels, as to close the main trade routes altogether to the enemy's commerce; or by the establishment of a commercial blockade can bring still more powerful economic pressure to bear. The difference of result between sporadic com- merce-destroying and the economic pressure exer- cised by a fleet possessing command of the seas was very clearly shown in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, The defeat of their battle MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 139 squadrons induced the French to put a very great part of their energies into commerce-destruction and the actual British losses were heavy. Yet they did not exceed some two or two and one-half per cent of the total volume of commerce. On the other hand, the French overseas trade became dependent upon some form of smuggling by foreigners, and if a ship put into Calais crowds turned out to witness the strange sight. An apparent exception to the inefficiency of mere raiding has been found in the disappearance of American shipping as a result of the Con- federate depredations. The answer is two-fold. The transfer of trade was caused largely by the fact that steam was just supplanting sail, and iron vessels replacing wooden ones. The United States fell behind in the competition because her whole energies were absorbed by the war, of which the Confederate commerce-destroying was only an incident. Moreover, the success of the Alabama and her consorts was almost entirely due to the defective dispositions of the Northern Admiralty. A dozen cruisers stationed at the controlling points of the great trade routes would have saved nine tenths of the damage. In the present day the lot of the raiding cruiser is harder than ever, partly because wire- less telegraphy renders it easier to locate her, mainly because of her absolute dependence upon I 4 o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY coal supply. The coaling stations of the weaker naval power soon disappear, the supply which can be obtained from neutrals is restricted. Every time a cruiser puts into port she can be located. It is this strategical ineffectiveness of sporadic commerce-destruction, coupled with the effective pressure which a navy which has obtained command of the sea can exercise by blockade and by control of the trade routes, which has given rise to the tendency on the part of the more powerful naval states to stand out for ex- tended belligerent rights. Great Britain in the Napoleonic wars and to-day, and the United States in the Civil War, put belligerent rights high, because the higher they are, the more pressure can be exercised by the superior naval power. A fleet cannot, generally speaking, exercise direct military pressure. The defeat of the Spanish Armada freed England from the fear of invasion, but the war lingered on more or less ineffectively for fifteen years because there was no army capable of backing up the blows of the fleet. In general the policy of Great Britain has been a division of labour. She has devoted her- self mainly to securing the command of the sea, leaving to allies, financed by her, the main mili- tary operations. To provide at once a great fleet and a great army has generally proved too hard MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 141 a task. Moreover, while the naval predominance of an insular power may be borne, since its offen- sive force depends so largely upon co-operation with others, the conjunction of predominant naval power with great military strength in one nation might drive all other states into alliance against it. What the navy can do is to secure time for the creation of an emergency army when required. The present war gives a striking in- stance. An illustration on a smaller scale was given in the very instructive Chilean Civil War of 1891. The army held by the government. The fleet declared for the rebels. The long coast line with few lateral railways and great patches of desert rendered command of the sea the decid- ing factor. The Congressionalists imported arms from abroad, trained and equipped an army in the North and then transported it to within strik- ing distance of the capital. Moreover, the unlimited power of transporta- tion given by command of the sea has often ren- dered a comparatively small force able to neutralise much greater numbers. In the Seven Years' War, when Pitt put eighteen thousand men into transports in the Solent, the move- ments of over one hundred thousand French troops were affected, because it was impossible to tell at what point the blow would fall. The ex- tent to which this advantage can be reaped de- 142 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY pends, of course, upon the length of the enemy's coast line, the number of good landing places and the rapidity with which his troops can be con- centrated by road or rail. Another military advantage of sea power lies in the easy and unassailable communications given to troops who can keep in touch with a sea commanded by their fleet. Further, their retreat is secured. When Moore with his small army cut across Napoleon's communications and drew upon himself the whole force of the French in Spain, he did so in the security afforded by his knowledge that if forced to retreat to the coast he would find his transports waiting for him. Direct action by the fleet against coast fortifi- cations is generally of doubtful value. To silence guns on shore it is generally necessary for each gun to be hit ; the whole battery of a ship may be lost by a shot on her waterline or in her engine room. She is peculiarly vulnerable to high angle fire or to plunging fire. The damage done to earthworks is very difficult to estimate and a fort, apparently silenced, can speedily be refitted un- less occupied by a landing party. Where a fort is obsolescent and is attacked by powerful ships, so that its guns are outranged, success may be obtained; but, providing forts have been kept up to date in design and armament, the ship will always be at a disadvantage. Kiel would be a MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 143 different proposition to the Dardanelles. It is significant that at Port Arthur and again at Tsingtau the Japanese confined themselves to a long range bombardment which did not risk their ships but could not be decisive. The real work of their fleet was to convey and supply the army by which the fortress was reduced. The power of ships to run past forts has, more- ever, been limited by the development of the mine. It is perhaps the chief modification of naval war which the mine has worked. Its value for coastal defence, however, may be exaggerated. Unless protected by fortifications a mine field can be destroyed. If the fortifications are there the mine field is generally superfluous. Its one un- doubted use is to prevent vessels running past forts situated at the entrance to a strait, without reducing the works. The sowing of mines on the high seas apart from the question of its humanity will only be largely resorted to by a power which scarcely hopes to win command of the sea. The automatic mine is as dangerous to friends as to foes. While it may cause annoyance and loss, it will never decide a war. Sweeping operations can only be prevented by the defeat of the fleet which covers them. A mine field on the high seas can only partially and temporarily hamper the movements of the superior fleet while it restricts the oppor- 144 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tunities for evasion and surprise which might have accrued to the inferior. Of the influence of the submarine it is perhaps too early to speak, since it is still in a state of development. So far it never appears to have scored a success against a vessel in rapid move- ment or accompanied by destroyers. Its total failure to interfere with the transport of troops and stores is a significant mark of its present limitations. We have now discussed the nature of sea power and the manner in which it is exercised. It re- mains to consider very briefly certain influences it has exercised in the development of nations. It may be said in general that sustained national effort will always be associated with real or pre- sumed national needs. A military government, such as that of Louis XIV, may for a time create a great fleet for the purpose of aiding military operations ; but in the long run sea power implies an extensive maritime commerce to be protected from attack, an extensive coast line to be pro- tected against overseas invasion or distant colo- nies with which communication must be kept. The ancient Greeks, especially the Athenians, with their propensity to commerce and colonisa- tion, early learned the advantages of sea power and many of the decisive battles in the history MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 145 of Athens were fought at sea. Carthage, as a great commercial and colonising state, de- veloped a high degree of maritime power. When she came into conflict with Rome, the Romans, who had at that time few oversea interests and no fleet, found themselves compelled to build up a navy in order to protect the Italian coast and secure communications with Sicily. In the Second Punic War they seem to have acquired a command of the Mediterranean which com- pelled Hannibal to undertake the long land route from Spain, involving the crossing of the Alps, by which he gained fame but fearfully diminished his army. It was the Roman control of the sea which rendered it impossible for him to receive reinforcements direct from Carthage, while it allowed the Romans to strike at the heart of their enemy. With a Carthaginian command of the Mediterranean it is quite conceivable that Rome would have been crushed. It is, however, with the development of the sailing ship which enabled fleets to keep the sea in all weathers and for long periods that the great development of sea power began, and its opera- tions can be illustrated mainly by the case of England. In the case of England every requisite for the development of naval power existed. She was insular, and thus could be preserved from inva- 146 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY sion by command of the sea. Her people have shown a natural aptitude for maritime trade and colonisation. She has always had a large sea- faring population. The struggle with Spain saw the English com- pelled to develop their seapower (a) for the pur- pose of breaking through the attempted exclu- sion of their traders from the Indies, (b) for defence against invasion by the powerful and ex- perienced Spanish army. The defeat of the Armada secured England against invasion; the supremacy established by her sailors enabled her to force her way into the Indies. The real work of Drake is not to be found in his capture of Spanish treasure, but in his armed penetration of the great new trade routes and his establish- ment of commercial treaties in the Far East. The sea power of Holland was one of the de- cisive factors in the attainment of her liberty by cutting the communications of the Spanish troops. Under its cover she founded her colonies and developed her trade. These developments brought her into conflict with England, a conflict ended not so much by the defeat as by the ex- haustion of the smaller nation. The ruin of her sea power was consummated by the necessity for military effort against France imposed by her land frontier, while England, even during her participation in the Continental wars, was enabled MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 147 to take as much or as little share of the land warfare as she desired and reserve her main effort for the seas. In the Wars of the Eighteenth Century the French and Spanish Colonies in America and India fell one by one into the hands of the power which was able to gain command of the seas, while the happy genius of the English for colo- nisation enabled them to develop these colonies into fresh sources of trade and to plant strong communities whose resources afforded admirable bases for the British squadrons. Thus the colonies acquired by the exercise of sea power, in their turn, contributed to its development. It is, perhaps, in the great Napoleonic struggle that sea power finds its fullest illustration. While the French armies overran the whole of Conti- nental Europe their power stopped short at the coasts. While the rest of Europe was disorgan- ised by perpetual warfare and France herself exhausted by the drain of conscription, Great Britain, undisturbed by the invader, was able to take advantage of the inventions of Watt and Arkwright to accomplish the great industrial revolution to carry her commerce and her carry- ing trade all over the world. It is not true to say that the great development of British industry and commerce was due to sea power and the war. It arose from economic causes with which the i 4 8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY war had nothing to do. But that it was developed in spite of the war was due to the protection afforded by the Command of the Sea. The actual prosperity of England was not due to sea power ; her relative prosperity as compared with the general exhaustion of Europe was. This prosperity it was which enabled her to subsidise coalition after coalition against Napo- leon. The knowledge of this fact and the steady economic pressure of the fleet forced him into one desperate measure after another with a view to excluding British trade from the Continent, and was finally responsible for the quarrel with Russia which led to the downfall of his empire. English gold and English troops, operating by virtue of sea power, maintained the struggle in the Peninsula which drained so heavily the re- sources of the French army. Finally, a growing view as to the extent to which modern naval strategy has suffered modi- fications for which the classical authorities like those just summarised had not prepared us is perhaps fairly indicated in the following: "We have witnessed the development of an un- suspected power of the defensive at sea. The mine has made it possible to fortify the waters, and great invisible lines of obstacles stretch across the waves, fulfilling the same functions as the MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 149 trenches of the Aisne on land. It seems to be impossible to bring an unwilling enemy to a gen- eral engagement. It is equally impossible to im- pose a formal blockade, though the extension of the doctrine of conditional contraband serves something of the same purpose in limiting the services which neutrals may bring to an enemy. The submarine has limited the activity of capital ships, nor is it easy to-day to imagine a successful landing on a coast provided with the modern defences. The power of a crushing offensive seems to have weakened, and the notion of decid- ing a war by a naval battle to have vanished. What remains is an enhanced power of slow pressure, and an ability to penalise commerce, which steam and wireless telegraphy have greatly reinforced. The seas may never again see the spectacle of a modern Trafalgar. But the basis of Mahan's argument remains. Sea power is still a condition of successful warfare on a world- wide theatre, and it is still the basis of world- empire." CHAPTER V SOME LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER Is the assumption that by enlarging the belligerent rights of sea war we shall ensure the predominance of the non-military, Anglo-Saxon type of Liberal society, as against the continental military authoritative form, a valid assumption? The evidence seems against it. Sea power being increasingly dependent upon military alliances for the exercise of world influence is unable to pick and choose as to the character of the nation it supports, as the boxing of the compass by a nation like England in her alliances has proved. The present war is repeating and illustrating what past combinations have abundantly shown. CHAPTER V SOME LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER "f AHE truth is that back of all the technical discussion ? which surrounds the subject, beyond all the his- torical considerations which can be adduced, lies one all- important question : Whether Anglo-Saxon domination of the sea is to persist. For centuries the origin of the glory of the Anglo-Saxon race has lain in its sea power. Is that power to continue or to vanish? And what interest have we Americans in that great question? To state the problem is to answer it. Every triumph of Anglo-Saxon sea power, every magnifying of that power by the operations of the Order in Council which we have analyzed, is a weapon wrought for the hand of the United States. "Should the East ever menace the coast of California, shall we Americans look out upon an ocean on which ride the fleets of Great Britain and the United States, or shall we face alone an open sea? For centuries England has ruled by her sea power. In 1861 the sea power of the North was not the least of the forces under which the South was crushed. Are there any who would pro- pose for us under the name of 'neutralisation of sea power' the fate of Belgium? Or shall we be mindful of the words of that great American, whose fame stands so far higher in Europe than in our own country, the name of Admiral Mahan? "But the great thing is that if Anglo-Saxon sea power 154 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY continue to dominate the sea, if this nation stand firm in the protection of its commerce, if it remember that any blow to the high dignity of sea power is a blow aimed at our future national existence, then the menace which so many thinking men of Europe see lying across the path of the United States will vanish from our future. The spectacle of a Germany whose commerce and whose economic life is held in iron grip by Anglo-Saxon sea power will forever warn an island empire of the fate which the challenging of that sea power will hold. "Back of the Order in Council, back of the acquies- cence of the United States in that order, lies the recog- nition of sea power, lies reverence for the wisdom and foresight of Abraham Lincoln, lies perhaps the future destiny of the United States." Thus a "Prominent American Lawyer" writ- ing on the subject of International Law and its relation to the United States. 1 The major assumptions which he makes are usually regarded almost as axioms in the discus- sions of this subject. What is their validity? How will the enlargement of neutral right affect the international position of the United States, the survival of Anglo-Saxon civilisation in its struggle with rival forms, in such possible future collisions as that in which it is now en- gaged? Should we not by limiting the effective- ness of sea control give relatively greater influ- l New York Times, May 16, LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 155 ence into the hands of militarist land powers? If, as indicated in the first chapter of this book, "marinism," that is to say, the possession of great naval force, does not involve on the part of the nation developing it the peculiar social and moral dangers that does "militarism," should we not by hampering naval power throw the development of civilisation rather under the influence of the more mischievous form of armed power? Ought not America to tolerate whatever disadvantages may belong to a situation like that which has arisen in the present war and to make some sacrifice for the purpose of contributing to the strength and influence of that particular form of civilisation of which she is a part ? Such are perhaps the first questions which an Anglo-Saxon is apt to raise in the discussion of sea power. But it is necessary again and again to point out that the project outlined in the first chapter of this book does not involve the limitation of belligerent right at sea, as against neutral right. It amounts indeed to a proposal to increase belligerent power by the voluntary trans- fer from the neutral of his existing rights in return for a more effective defence of his perma- nent interests by the increased power so created, in which power he would have some measure of control. Or put it this way: The process of internationalisation would not limit sea power 156 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY but transfer the control of its operation in so far as that operation acted through economic coer- cion. So long as the belligerent, using sea power, represented in his final political object the general will of the community of nations, the internation- alisation of his instrument would add greatly to its force. Throughout this discussion it will be necessary for the reader to keep this fact well in mind : The suggestion here made is that sea power should be rendered more effective by the free co- operation of "neutrals," who give that co-opera- tion because the coercion is being exercised on behalf of their ultimate interest duly protected by arrangement. Only in the event of an Anglo- Saxon power challenging the general will of the nations would it find itself hampered by this re- adjustment of "neutral" position. In other words, the alternative we are con- sidering is not as between the effectiveness of sea power and its limitation, but as between its inter- nationalisation, and its arbitrary exercise by any nation that by any means can become predominant at sea. Indeed, the difference of principle between the two courses is that which gives to the foreign policy of the great powers two rival tendencies, that which divides the alternating policies of English statecraft: the Balance of Power as op- posed to the European Concert. Both these poli- LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 157 cies may be defensive in motive, but they are separated by this radical difference. The partisan of the Balance of Power says to his prospective rival : "You cannot attack my group because it is as strong if not stronger than yours. Therefore it is out of the question for you to carry out your policy against our interest." The partisan of the Concert, on the contrary, says to his prospective rival : "We don't ask your group to submit to our preponderant power be- cause we should not be content to submit to yours. But let us all combine for such objects as we have in common. Instead of three nations adjusting their differences on one side and three on the other, let the adjustments be as between the six." The Balance of Power policy is bound ulti- mately to fail because "two can play at that game." If we found ourselves faced by a com- bination which was as strong if not stronger than ourselves we should not regard that as a safe position, and, as a matter of self-defence, of protecting our political interests, our diplomatic position in any international negotiations that might come up, we should try to become stronger. Military power being at best an un- certain quantity, it is as well to be on the safe side. So that the method of the Balance is really one by which both of two parties are each try- ing to be stronger than the other; and as both 158 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY cannot be, this method postulates, as a basis for international relationship, a physical impossibility if all are to be treated alike ; or else, not something which is fair for all alike but something which places one party at a disadvantage. This, of course, will never be accepted and the inevitable result is a constant struggle for preponderant power, incidents of which struggle are bound at certain stages to be war. Now a conception of international relationship based on sheer superiority of English or Anglo- Saxon sea power belongs to just this character of policy. It assumes that other nations, without sharing in any way the control of its force, will be content to accept it either because it is purely defensive and could not be a menace to them, or because they can do nothing else since Anglo- Saxon peoples alone can exercise preponderant sea power. I want to show in this chapter that these last assumptions are invalid, that sea power as a factor of international politics need not be and usually is not purely defensive; that as it is obliged in practice to operate with land powers against other land powers, the incidence of its alliances may well make for the support of mili- tarily aggressive nations ; and that as sea domina- tion has belonged in the past to other than Anglo- Saxon nations it may well do so in the future. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 159 In the first chapter I have attempted to show that British sea power of itself, in peace time, does not operate as a tyranny or menace to the world, or, as an instrument for commercial favouritism. But as English sea power in war becomes generally a part of some land power it is its effect in that connection which we have to consider in estimating its international influence. To an American belongs the honour of having brought home to the world the real meaning of sea power, and he once for all destroyed the illusion of its being necessarily a purely defensive arm. The mechanism of the thing has been sketched in the preceding chapter. It is certain secondary results in international politics with which we are now concerned. Mahan's teaching quite true teaching as far as it went was one of the causes, and not the least potent, of this war. But for the entrance of Germany into the field of naval competition it is doubtful whether the differences between Germany and England would have been irrecon- cilable ; and consequently whether European poli- tics would have drifted away from the principle of the Concert which for some time as in the Salisburian regime had the support of English influence, and towards the re-erection by England of the method of the Balance, which has given the present result. 160 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY More than one English critic (Professor Spencer Wilkinson among the number) has noted Mahan's influence on German naval policy. It was summarised by a writer in the London Nation just after Mahan's death, thus : 2 The strategist who evolved the theory of sea power was much more than a historian. He helped to make history, much as Treitschke did. . . . His teaching was available to remind us how considerable are the oppor- tunities for attack, how immense the resources of resist- ance, of a Power which retains the unchallengeable com- mand of the seas. Admiral Mahan had an immense influence among ourselves. But we are inclined to think that his influence on German thinking was even more fateful. He gave us clear reasons for persevering in our traditional policy. He gave the Germans equally cogent reasons for seeking their future on the sea. One may doubt, indeed, whether Bernhardi and all his school had as much effect in deciding Germans to build a great navy as this American historian, who drew the lessons of the past primarily for the benefit of the English-speaking world. His books were quoted as classics by Count Reventlow and other leaders of the "Flottenverein." The significance of Mahan is chiefly that he swept away the comfortable maxim in which most of us were nursed, that a navy is only a weapon of defence. Its function in history has been, 'There is a story which I have been unable to verify that in the last few months of his life Mahan, who was a keenly reli- gious man, was profoundly affected by the realisation that his doctrines had played so large a part in stimulating German naval ambitions and so in producing the war. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 161 primarily, the acquisition of Empire. When modern Ger- many turned away, under the pressure of its growing industries and its teeming population, from the Bismarck- ian ideal of a purely Continental Empire to dreams of extra-European expansion, it found Mahan's books ready for its use. ... It might, indeed, by a purely Continental victory over France, for example, acquire French colonies, but it would hold them only by the leave of the Power which commanded the seas. Nor was the case much better, if it thought not so much of predatory adventures at the expense of European Powers, but turned instead to the appropriation of spheres of influence in China or Turkey. There, too, it met with the hard fact of our supremacy at sea. Wild extremists may have thought of an invasion of England. Sober men, like Prince von Biilow, used the argument from capture at sea. But the real motive which explains the rise of the modern German navy is the lesson derived from Mahan, that sea power is essential to world empire. That at bottom is the reason why our attempts at discussion invariably failed. We were rather apt, on our side, to disguise the real facts, when we used to argue as though the sole function of our navy were to defend our shores. The Germans knew better; Mahan and history were their teachers. ... If we, on our side, had been a little franker in our thinking, we might, perhaps, have carried rather further the policy of facilitating German expansion, which Lord Salisbury followed in the delimitation of Africa. This passage, though going far beyond the general English understanding of the German view, fails to give full value to this considera- tion: that any continental power, dealing with 162 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY purely continental enemies, is obliged, quite apart from any question of overseas ambitions, to take British naval force into consideration as a pos- sible arm of those continental enemies. As the present war illustrates. Assume, for the sake of argument it may not be true at all, but as an illustration helps to clarify the working of these things that German terri- torial ambitions did not envisage British territory at all; that they ran mainly in the direction of Asia Minor, acting at first through Austria and Austria's domination of Servia. Yet, even so, England is brought into the conflict in support of the principle of the Balance of Power, the prin- ciple that a continental power that greatly over- tops the rest threatens her. How is this theory defended ? The answer explodes the notion that sea power is something which Anglo-Saxon peoples can alone exercise. If England could always be sure that no other power could challenge her sea posi- tion, why should the erection of an overpowering State upon the Continent threaten her ? Her navy would make both herself and her empire safe. But she assumes that other nations, if they become powerful enough, can build navies; that "sea power," though exercised at sea, is made up of things that come from the land : iron, steel, coal, intricate and costly machinery, scientific training. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 163 Naval power is mainly a matter of wealth of industrial efficiency which enables a people to build ships and pay for them. The proportion of material to men is very much greater in naval than in land war. Even seamanship is not an exclusive possession of the Anglo-Saxon race: great seamen of the past have been Scandina- vians, Normans, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Dutch, and even Moors. They have all taken to the sea readily enough when the wealth of their coun- tries was bound up with sea trade and enabled them to maintain great navies. History indeed is quite emphatic on the point that widely diver- gent races, situated in very different geo- graphical conditions, can equip themselves with the wherewithal of sea power. A Germano-Slav combination, a Russia under the tutelage of Germany, which Professor Cramb foretells so emphatically 3 as one of the inevitable combina- tions of the future, organising the resources of territories very much greater than those of the United States and a population twice that of North America, with outlets on the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Medi- terranean, would not be faced by any physical impossibility should it determine to challenge the predominance of British sea power. *In "Germany and England." 164 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY That is the first point : It is to take a very short view of history to assume that sea power must necessarily be the exclusive possession of the Anglo-Saxon. But the same fact also demonstrates the inter- dependence of land and sea power. If Britain has to prevent the growth of a land power that is in the first instance a military nation using military force to increase its resources she can only do so by allying herself with other military powers, its rivals. Sometimes this has to be done without reference to the merits of any particular dispute between continental states or to the character of a particular state ; or to the question whether the alliance promotes a free form of government or not, as when, during so large a part of the nine- teenth century, she supported Turkey against Russia. Moreover, the relative importance of the mili- tary role in this necessary combination between land and sea tends to become greater for reasons that I will deal with presently. This will inevitably have one, or both, of two results always assuming that the struggle for political power based on armed force continues. It will compel an empire like the British to de- velop the potential military force contained in its millions of Asiatic subjects, or, more and more to be dependent upon the land forces of military LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 165 and continental allies. In the former contingency there is likely to be a certain divergence of in- terest in the matter of relations to Asia as be- tween Britain and America (and even certain of the British colonies) and in the latter con- tingency the development of the military struggle is just as likely to make for the survival of the military type of civilisation as for the "Anglo- Saxon." This former point bears upon one of the assumptions made by the writer from whom I have quoted at the head of this chapter. He assumes, as a matter of course, that in future world politics America and the British Empire are certain to have such identity of aim that any war made by one is sure to represent the national aims and purposes of the other; or at least not be so divergent as to run counter to those vital interests which the sea power of either could be called upon to defend. This implies that their naval forces could never be brought into rivalry. That, of course, is assur- edly to be hoped, but it is interesting to note that Mahan, although cited in the passage quoted above as supporting such view, was by no means positive thereon. Asked on one occasion by the Editor of The North American Review to express his opinion upon Anglo-American reunion, which, it had just then been suggested, 166 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY should have its beginning in a naval union or alliance, he wrote a long article 4 which, while paying every tribute to the moral unity of Anglo- Saxondom and hands-across-the-sea sentiment, yet "turned down the proposition." He gives more than a hint that America, dominating a whole continent, standing in a maritime sense between the two great halves of the Old World Europe and Asia is destined to control very largely in the days to come the communications between them. "Whate'er betide," he writes of those times, "sea power will play in those days the leading part which it has in all history." He goes on : The United States by her geographical position must be one frontier from which as from a base of operations the sea power of the civilised world will energise. . . . Like the pettier interests of the land it must be competed for, perhaps fought for. The greatest of the prizes for which nations contend, it too will serve like other conflict- ing interests to keep alive that temper of stern purpose and strenuous emulation which is the salt of the society of civilised states. The writer from whom I have quoted also speaks of the importance of "Anglo-Saxon sea power from the point of view of possible con- flict between this continent and Asia." But can 4 The North American Review, November, 1894. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 167 we assume that in the matter of the relationship to Asia the position of the United States and Great Britain is certain to be identical? Are we not apt to overlook the fact that Great Britain, in addition to being an Anglo-Saxon, is becoming more and more an Asiatic Power more and more dependent as her military needs increase upon Asiatic populations ? 5 A certain cleavage between the two Anglo- Saxon powers has in this matter already revealed itself. Great Britain is and has been for many years an ally of Japan; the military and naval aid of the latter country in the present war has been accepted by Great Britain. During that period the relations of Japan and the United States have been getting steadily worse. Japan has seized the occasion presented by the war to assert a virtual sovereignty over China. China is avowedly looking to at least the moral assist- 'The system which England may be compelled to develop in India and Egypt and equatorial Africa, France may be com- pelled to develop in other parts of Africa. A school of French military leaders have for many years been urging the more thorough conscription of the natives of Northern and Western Africa the development of "La Force noire," as one of their military writers has called it. Some little has, of course, been done in that direction already, but the possibilities of the system have hardly been realised in the view of some very notable authorities. Some of the first "French" troops that the Germans met in battle in August, 1914, were Senagambian blacks "val- iantly defending their fatherland," as Maximilian Harden remarked. 1 68 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY ance of the United States against this encroach- ment and the United States has, it is reported, made very energetic diplomatic representations to Japan. The situation is far too undeveloped to judge of its permanent reaction on Anglo-American rela- tions, but it is certain that Britain, at a time when she is beginning to make very considerable use of Indian troops outside of Indian and even Asiatic territory (and if her military needs of the future become more pressing she is pretty certain to develop this system) will go to very great lengths to avoid cleavage of policy with Japan, a nation that in a few years has become the "England of the East," and is in some degree setting the direction of Asiatic ambition. I have said that the relative importance of the military part in the necessary combination of land and sea power tends to become greater. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the three or four great nations of Europe imposed their authority upon great spaces of Africa and Asia and America divided the world between them in large part with small bodies of men. The destiny of half a continent might depend upon the fact of a single shipload of men landing among savages and establishing some sort of authority among them. It was much more largely a matter of sea roving than it would LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 169 be possible for any contest between European powers in Asia or Africa or America to be to- day. The development of transport and com- munication, both by land and sea (Russia put immense armies into Manchuria without sending a regiment by sea) the industrialisation of the world, the Europeanisation of Asiatic populations has altered the old conditions. This is indeed the strongly expressed view of more than one English authority on sea power. In his "Navy and Sea Power," 6 Mr. Hannay says: Let us assume that the day may come . . . when Great Britain will require on American, Asiatic, or African frontiers, not the handful of men who obeyed Clive or the small armies of British soldiers who were led by Wolfe, Lake or Sir Arthur Wellesley, but great hosts. What will be the influence of sea power then? Its function will, of course, be to keep open the road for its armies, but the fate of the empire will depend on the armies. Nor has the process of consolidation and expansion gone on only in remote continents. It has been every whit as conspicuous in Europe. . . . Instead of weak Imperial cities and small kingdoms on the north there is the German Empire. The kingdom of Italy has taken the place of feeble Genoa and moribund Venice, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the States of the Pope and the Kingdom of Naples. If the formation of the German Henry Holt & Co., New York. 170 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Empire and the Italian Kingdom has destroyed the old pre-eminence of France on the continent it has also radically affected the position of Great Britain on the sea. . . . The century which began in 1814 by the Treaty of Paris has witnessed one long struggle on the part of Great Britain to maintain her relative position on the sea and . . . she has barely succeeded. ... If the world believes that the Great Sea Power thinks itself to be in danger, is eagerly seeking for allies and will make sacri- fices to obtain them ... it has some excuse. It is a conceivable thing that Japan might be driven out of Manchuria as Sweden was driven out of the Baltic provinces in spite of all her fleet could do. It is also a conceivable thing that the frontiers -of Canada and of British India might become to Great Britain nearly what the frontiers of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Netherlands were to Louis XIV. The burden of defending them might be so exhausting that the Sea Power might be beaten even if it had never lost the 'command of the sea. . . . And that is the peril which in the end proved fatal to Athens, to Phoenicia, to Venice, to Holland ; the strain of carrying on war on land. It is a dream that power on the sea can dominate the land. It is valuable because it gives access to the land. ... It is the bridge which keeps up communication and gives access and is of infinite value. But it may be crossed on a march to Moscow and to the retreat therefrom. Whatever be the precise place, however, of navies in relation to armies as bearing upon the identity of Anglo-Saxon sea power and the sur- vival of democratic nationalities, we can in any case say this: the history of Britain's conti- LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 171 nental struggles is proof enough that in the choice of allies for the defence of a policy like the Balance of Power, even the greatest mari- time nation is obliged to disregard the precise quality of the civilisation of the allies which it may choose ; and consequently disregard the kind of civilisation which its policy may or may not promote. The conditions of the struggle for political power do not leave this possibility of picking and choosing, the common impression to the contrary notwithstanding. The franker and abler political critics of Eng- land who do not allow what may be termed the "constants" of statecraft to be obscured by popular feeling on incidentals however praise- worthy and natural it may be fully recognise this. The difference between the popular concep- tion of national policy and the "real," or realistic, was revealed a few months after the war by an interesting incident. Mr. Lloyd George had made a public statement to the effect that Britain had gone into the war simply because of Germany's disregard of public right the violation of the integrity of Belgium, in other words. "But for that," he said "95 per cent of the electors of Great Britain would have been against embroiling this country in hostili- ties." In other words, the Balance of Power consideration of itself would never have involved 172 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the country. Mr. Lloyd George's own position was stated as follows: This I know is true after the guarantee given that the German fleet would- not attack the coast of France or annex any French territory, I would not have been a party to a declaration of war had Belgium not been invaded; and I think I can say the same thing for most, if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal Government, then, would not have intervened. When this statement appeared in the press, the London Times, whose historic role has al- ways been to voice the Foreign Office and never more so than in the last few years, printed a very remarkable leading article entitled: "Why we are at War." The following are passages: There are still, it seems, some Englishmen and Eng- lishwomen who greatly err as to the reasons that have forced England to draw the sword. They know that it was Germany's flagrant violation of Belgian neutrality which filled the cup of her indignation and made her people insist upon the war. They do not reflect that our honour and our interest must have compelled us to join France and Russia, even if Germany had scrupulously respected the rights of her small neighbours, and had sought to hack her way into France through the Eastern fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted more than once upon this truth. He has fancied, apparently, that he was making an argumentative point against us by establishing it. That, like so much more, only shows his LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 173 complete misunderstanding of our attitude and of our character. . . . Why did we guarantee the neutrality of Belgium? For an imperious reason of self-interest, for the reason which made us defend the Netherlands against Spain and against the France of the Bourbons and of Napoleon. . . . We keep our word when we have given it, but we do not give it without solid practical reasons, and we do not set up to be international Don Quixotes, ready at all times to redress wrongs which do us no hurt. .... Even had Germany not invaded Belgium, honour and interest would have united us with France. We joined the Triple Entente because we realised, however late in the day, that the time of "splendid isola- tion" was no more. We reverted to our historical policy of the balance of power, and we reverted to it for the reasons for which our forefathers adopted it. They were not, either for them or for us, reasons of sentiment. They were self-regarding, and even selfish, reasons. Chief amongst them, certainly, was a desire to preserve the peace of Europe, but it was the chief only because to preserve that peace was the one certain way to preserve our own. In the event of war we saw, as our fathers had seen, England's first line of attack and of defence in her Continental Alliances. When we subsi- dised every State in Germany, and practically all Europe, in the Great War, we did not lavish our gold from love of German or of Austrian liberty, or out of sheer altruism. No; we invested it for our own safety and our own advantage, and on the whole, our commitments were rewarded by an adequate return. In this war, as we have again and again insisted in the Times, England is fighting for exactly the same kind of reasons for which she fought Philip II, Louis XIV, and Napoleon. . . . She is not fighting primarily for 174 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Belgium or for Serbia, for France, or for Russia. They fill a great place in her mind and in her heart. But they come second. The first place belongs, and rightly belongs, to herself. 7 Now this article is singularly honest; if all political writing were as frank, public discussion would be a pleasanter business than it is and would give better and saner results than it does. We see here, in placing the two expressions of opinion that of Mr. Lloyd George and the Times side by side, the popular as opposed to the diplomatic and governmental conceptions of policy. And in European foreign politics the chancelleries initiate and conduct policy; the public approves and pays, when it has been told what to approve. It is true that a policy could never be carried into effect without public sanc- tion, but in our prevailing conceptions con- cerning the need of upholding the hands of the government and supporting the country through thick and thin, the public never fail to sanction anything the diplomatists may initiate. When the balance of power demanded the support of the Turk and opposition to Russia, the Turk was supported by the public at large, who shouted the song in the music halls from which the word "Jingo" took its origin: 'The Roosian shall not "March 8, 1915. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 175 have Con-stan-ti-no-pool." But they are just as ready to shout, as at present, that he shall. The recognition of these moral foundations of British foreign policy is not confined to Conser- vative publicists like writers in the Times. A presumably Liberal critic does not hesitate to admit that even when France stood for repub- licanism and freedom in Europe as against re- action, England supported reaction because the "Balance" demanded it. "Pitt's principle of the stability of Europe meant the maintenance of an equilibrium between a few great Powers without any kind of reference to the feelings and wishes of the populations they governed. The French were the special objects of his dread, because they had introduced a most disturbing principle into this system the principle that the peoples themselves counted for something. This was what he meant by 'infection,' and in 1793 it was not French power but French principles that the English aristocracy feared. That the French broke their own principles nobody denied, but the part- ners in the first Coalition would not have liked them any better if they had observed those principles with the most scrupulous care." 8 Of course, popular feeling does not operate thus cold bloodedly, and it is as well that it does not. It has an infinite capacity as witness feeling in Germany at present for making any war even that of most doubtful origins, a Holy War. "The Nation (London) May 29, 1915. 176 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY The fashion in which a nation may see in its alliances, actually, or sub-consciously perhaps prompted by one object, the accomplishment of a very much more "noble" one (a phenomenon that modern psychology explains in quite precise terms) is illustrated in the difference between the attitude of the average English historian to-day towards the Napoleonic struggle and that of a French one. To the Englishman, Britain's action a century since was just what it is to-day resistance to a gross military tyranny which threatened Europe. And he pic- tures France to-day as a penitent France, having learned wisdom, co-operating with the British to prevent Germany doing what France tried to do a hundred years ago. Yet to the Frenchman, France is fighting, not on the opposite but on the same side, so far as principles are concerned, as that on which she fought when she fought against England. Speaking at the Sorbonne, the French historian, Aulard, said the other day 9 , in begin- ning his discourse: "La guerre actuelle, la guerre que nous soutenons centre le militarisme prussien, centre TAllemagne prus- sianisee, n'est que la continuation de la Revolution fran- caise. Nous combattons pour la meme cause que com- battaient nos aieux en 1793 et 1'an II." "March 7, 1915. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 177 And yet, as one English critic points out, in the eyes of many Englishmen this was the first round in the duel between the British spirit of national independence and the revolutionary spirit of aggrandisement. In French eyes what is all-important about the warfare of 1793 and 1794 was that it decided whether or not the ex- periment in democracy should be allowed in Europe. That, and nothing less, was at stake. If in 1793 the Coalition, as represented by Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain, had reached Paris, as Germany tried to reach it in 1914, the counter-revolution would have been triumphant from one end of Europe to the other. "It is not difficult," as Mr. Grant Robertson points out, "to conjecture what a Holy Alliance, worked by Thu- gut and Lucchesini, Artois and Godoy, Frederick William II, of Prussia and the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons of Madrid and Naples and Great Britain in the fetters of the reaction of 1793-1801, would have wrought in a Europe that knew nothing of the Spanish Rising, Stadion, Hofer, and Stein, and the Wars of Liberation." I have hinted above and dealt at some length in a previous chapter with our easy changes in regard to Russia. English professors at the present moment are prepared to prove to you that Russia is a democratic, anti-military, liberal- ising force in Europe. It may be so, although 178 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the discovery comes rather late, 10 but England was just as ready when her politico-military position demanded it to fight Russia and enter into an alliance with the Turk "the finest gentleman in Europe" whom Englishmen at the time of the Crimean War were very angry with Cobden for disparaging. During the nineteenth century England allied herself with the Turk as against the Russian because it was deemed that Russia might threaten England's power by cutting her road to the East. She just as readily allies her- self with the Russian against the Turk when the overpowering consideration of maintaining her political power in the world seems to justify it. (The fact that England desires to maintain that power for defensive purposes only does not affect the fact. ) At an earlier period she fought in alli- ance with the German against the French because France seemed to be the main threat to her power. She fights just as readily in alliance with the French against the German when the same pre- dominant motive counsels it. Russia in the Russo- 10 It will be noted that the Allies are expecting victory to do for Russia what they tell us defeat alone can do for Germany check the reactionary forces. As a matter of fact, it was on the morrow of Russian defeats in August, 1915, that Russian Liberals presented their claims for the liberation of political prisoners, freedom for the Jews, better treatment of Finland, the severer treatment of bureaucratic corruption, and so on. So long as Russian arms were victorious the government showed not the least disposition to move in these things, but went on its old way. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 179 Japanese War, in 1903, "valiantly defends Chris- tian civilisation against Asiatic heathenism," and just as valiantly enters into an alliance with it in 1914. The "yellow peril" was often presumed to be one of the justifications of European arma- ment. Yet when the Armageddon comes it en- ables Japan to do two things : on one hand, to take the first steps towards control over four hundred million Chinese, and, on the other, to assist in the attempt to break up the militarily most effi- cient nation of Europe, the one that has shown a national genius for organisation and which would in any military effort by Europe as a whole be its natural leader. It affects one curiously to read: "The best artillery the Russians have is Japanese artillery, manned by Japanese gunners men who fought them to the death ten years ago and Japanese experts in all lines are assisting them." Italy is in close alliance with Austria and Ger- many for a generation and then in ten months when she has failed to get all she thinks she is entitled to in the way of territory finds that Austro-Germans are the enemies of human freedom; and goes to war with them. Perhaps the most serious thing of all is that the need for military alliance in these combinations is at times so great that military necessities of the moment are allowed to override considerations of perma- nent territorial settlement. The Crimean War, i8o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY by which England, for political purposes of her own, upheld the dominion of Turkey over Chris- tian populations, was at least one of the ancestors of the present. In the present war both sides are offering to the Balkan powers bribes which are not designed to achieve permanent settlement of Balkan difficulties but merely to secure military co-operation in a war involving half the world. But the worst example of all, perhaps, is Italy. In order to bring her into the war she has been offered bribes which, if ever paid, will make future Balkan wars inevitable. A previous chap- ter summarises evidence to show that in Mr. Lathrop Stoddard's words, "Italian victory will probably sweep the Italian people into the am- bitious race for world dominion." n I have referred at several points throughout this book to the relations of England and Europe generally to the Near Eastern question because it reveals very clearly the real motive, as apart from the avowed, which is so often either self- deceptive or half hypocritical the fact that our European conflicts have but little to do with the conflict of cultures and ideals. Such motives are indeed less operative to-day than at certain former periods. When Europe fought the Turk for the possession of Jerusalem, the European had a real "See Chapter III. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 181 belief in the importance of religious dogma and symbol. It was a motive which outweighed alto- gether "national" considerations. Europe fought as Christians, not as Frenchmen or Englishmen. A really "ideal" motive determined their wars. But when to-day we talk of differences of national culture any ideal save that of Power or the fear of it determining our international politics, our changed relation to the Turk shows us how un- real is that pretended motive. For between the "civilisation" of the Mohammedan conquerors who captured Constantinople nearly five hundred years since and the civilisation of Western Europe, a real gulf is fixed. It is not an imaginary one created by hazy philosophers who are mis- understood perhaps more when they are read than when they are not, but a real difference of the ordering of daily lives. For very nearly five centuries, in a city which for a still longer period had been one of the capitals of Christendom, the alien conqueror has maintained a society which has included physical slavery in some of its most degrading forms ( involving for centuries raiding expeditions among Christian populations for the purpose of bolstering the military ambitions of an oriental despot or of satisfying the sordid lust of a heathen court), polygamy, organised assas- sination on a huge scale, corruption, oppression of the crudest and most obscene form (in which 182 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the victims were mainly Christians), and you had actually a great Christian monument given over to the rites of an oriental invader from beginning to end a contemptuous repudiation of Christian morals and all the social and civic prin- ciples upon which Western civilisation is sup- posed to be based. If, therefore, it is the difference in such funda- mental things as these which is the underlying cause of war, we ought to find in the alliances and groupings that have marked the wars in which the Turk has been involved the Christian and Western Powers ranged as a whole against this alien and anti-Christian Power. But it so happens that in not one of those wars in which the modern Powers were involved has the group- ing been along those lines at all. If international politics, the conflicts between nations, were con- cerned with the profound differences of men; if wars and the alliances of wars arose out of deeper moral issues, you would have found, of course, the essentially anti-Christian and anti-Western Turk confronted with the hostility of Christian and Western Powers. But it is precisely this clear-cut issue which you never have found in all the intricacies of Eastern politics. Always has the Turk found a Christian champion or a Chris- tian ally for considerably over half a century Great Britain was that champion and ally. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 183 Englishmen who are honestly and genuinely shocked at a German-speaking Alsace being ruled from Berlin, and who would regard an English war for the continuance of such a thing as an unimaginable national crime, were not in the least shocked at England fighting a* war against a Christian Power in order to uphold Turkish domination in Christian lands. Not merely were they not shocked, but they thought it entirely natural that English poets should laud the spec- tacle, and insisted that English public men who ventured to criticise such a situation were evi- dently lost to all sense of national honour. One cannot dismiss all this as ancient history; it is very much modern history, since it is un- fortunately part of the very problem which we have to face to-morrow in things like the dis- posal of Constantinople and the settlement of the Balkan difficulty. It is because all the great Christian nations in the past have been in fact indifferent to the moral differences and have been mainly concerned to increase their political power as against some other Christian nation, that the problems presented to us to-day are all but in- soluble. What is certain also is that when we find the predominant sea power swinging between the support of, and opposition to, rival civilisations in this way; when we find it standing, however un- 184 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY willingly, for the Japanese conquest of China, the expansion of Russia, the settlement of Balkan questions with reference only to securing the mili- tary aid of the respective states, the annexation by Italy of territory which will inevitably increase difficulty in the future, it is evident that naval force has not within it some mysterious element enabling it to operate with non-militarist military allies and to stand invariably for the promotion of free civilisations as against the unfree. At this moment of writing nobody knows on which side of the fence certain of the Balkan states will descend, and in their case the high falutin' about "conflict of morals and ideals," "inevitable clash of civilisations," is a little too much even for our political leader writers. Bul- garia, through her Prime Minister, announces with most commendable frankness that her mili- tary assistance is for sale to the highest bidder. The following is a press despatch from Sofia : 12 The Bulgarian Premier, for the first time, to-day revealed to the world exactly what Bulgaria demands for remaining neutral, and what she asks from the Allies for driving the Turk from Europe, an operation that admittedly would prove the turning point of the war for the Allies. Radoslavoff is the storm centre of the greatest diplo- matic struggle the world has ever seen. Because Bul- " August gth, 1915. LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 185 garia holds the key to the world war the diplomatic agents of every great power involved swarm here, their pressure centering upon him. Said the Premier: "We will fight for but one end. That is to extend our frontiers until they embrace the people of our own blood, but that end must be guaranteed. Bulgaria is fully prepared and waiting to enter the war the moment she receives absolute guarantees that by so doing she will attain that for which other nations already engaged are striving, namely, the realisation of her national ideals." "We have, therefore, frankly and openly accepted the offers of both groups of powers in negotiations to that end. Only by dealing with both sides do we feel we can obtain the best guarantees that what we desire will be attained." Presumably, if, as the result of the large bait offered by the Allies, Bulgaria joins the war, it will also be in her case "a life and death struggle for profound convictions." Six months hence the Bulgarians may be fighting quite genuinely and sincerely in the belief that they, too, have been forced into war in defence of their national exist- ence and spiritual ideals ruthlessly threatened by an alien civilisation; they will hate the Germans with a deadly and quite genuine hatred. If, on the other hand, Germany can to-day make the better offer they will "defend their threatened existence" and "spiritual ideals" in alliance with "their brave comrades in arms the Austrians and Germans against their hereditary enemies the 1 86 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Servians," whom in that case they will certainly regard as the hired assassins of the Russians and the British. But the point for us at present is that the mili- tary critics, as I write, are seriously declaring that Bulgaria's decision will determine the issues of the war. "Bulgaria holds the key to the world's war," says one of them. So that it is not sea power that will save our civilisation, but Bul- garia! Fancy the future of civilisation at the mercy of a Bulgarian politician. That fact to the degree to which it is a fact at all illustrates the dependence of sea power upon certain other forces in these world struggles. It is not that it does not play a large role therein. It is perfectly true that without England's sea power and America's munitions even the Bul- garian politicians could not save civilisation. But these things are interdependent, and the depend- ence of sea power on those other things marks its limitations. It is quite unable of itself to impose this or that culture at will upon the two billions of the planet; and, even if that were possible, Anglo-Saxon peoples have no patent in it. CHAPTER VI THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRALITY, AND THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPEN- DENCE OF NATIONS The whole history of the fight for neutral right is a history of failure. The power which is politically the freest and most liberal in the world has by its practice tenaciously prevented any enlargement of neutral right. Yet it has shown by its attitude in peace time towards international law a desire to respect those rights. This seems to indicate that it is impossible to reconcile bel- ligerent necessity at sea with real observance of neutral right. In that case would not neutrals better secure their larger and more permanent interest by modifying the doctrine of neutrality as at present understood in the direction of economic discrimination in war time against the side that has refused to submit its case to enquiry and so violated the international conventions designed to pro- tect the integrity of states? This need was foreseen by Grotius and will be in keeping with future conditions if the guarantors of neutrality treaties should be largely increased in number. Would the assumption of limited international obligation of this kind expose states to greater risk or cost, or greater surrender of sovereignty and independence than is involved in their position in war time under existing arrangements? CHAPTER VI THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRALITY, AND THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPEN- DENCE OF NATIONS THE growth of the spirit of nationality is ad- mittedly the outstanding fact in the political history of the nineteenth century. Although it had its beginnings in a feeling for popular rights it has gone far in its international effects, not only to undo the work of the French Revolution among European democracies for, of course, the prin- ciples of modern nationalism are in flat contra- diction with the idealistic cosmopolitanism of the Revolutionary period but to render the concep- tion of European society, or of Christendom, as a unity, less vivid perhaps than it was five or, for that matter, ten centuries since. The mediaeval sovereign could acknowledge subserviency to the head of the Christian Church, as representative of a universal order, a moral sanction standing over and above the political State. But to-day we are only just beginning to emerge from the domination of political philosophies which would make the State, even in morals, the final appeal. 189 190 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Nineteenth century nationalism, on its popular side, is at one not only with the "anti-intellec- tualist" tendencies of our time but also with later reactionary German philosophy in its assumption that beyond the political State there can exist no real obligations. The slogan so current in Eng- land and America, "My country right or wrong," is merely the popular expression of the neo-Hege- lianism of Treitschke or Bernhardi. This general conception has resulted in intense hostility on the part of modern nations to sur- rendering the least particle of national independ- ence and sovereignty on behalf of any obligation to civilisation or organised society as a whole. Every effort towards internationalisation is apt to be met with the objection that the com- plete independence of states, that sovereignty which allows them means of individual develop- ment and self-expression, which prevents the world being cast in one monotonous mould, is a very precious quality which may be cheaply purchased even at the price of disorder and war. I want to give just a hint of the extent to which this hesitation to assume international obligation defeats its own end, compelling nations to sur- render both sovereignty and independence in large measure; to show how those things are necessarily invaded by belligerent action in war, NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 191 and to illustrate by an historical instance or two the failure of neutrals to defend them; to show that neutral right far from developing has in practice always had to cede to belligerent need. This does not necessarily imply any ill will on the part of the belligerent ; on the contrary, the more it can be shown that the power com- manding the sea was or is desirous of respecting neutral right, the stronger does the case become for some revision of the principles of neutrality and belligerency. I am suggesting also that just as the belligerent cannot respect the sovereignty and independence of the neutral, the neutral cannot observe real impartiality; that the action of "neutrals," while still preserving the legal forms of neutrality, may conceivably determine the issues of a great w r ar. And, finally, that the aims of the nations as a whole in this matter the objects for which Mr. Asquith has declared Britain to be fighting this war, namely, "to maintain the independent exist- ence and free development of the various nation- alities each with a corporate consciousness of its own" can best be achieved by the general aban- donment of a fictitious neutrality on behalf of some such common international action as that outlined in the first and detailed in the last chap- ter of this book, a principle the need of which by the way was foreseen by Grotius. '192 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY A London paper, discussing certain problems arising out of the present war, speaks of "the horrid disease of internationalism" and expresses the opinion that a nation willing to yield one fraction of its sovereignty or independence to foreigners has "sacrificed its soul" to ease and convenience and that those who would counte- nance such an act are guilty of "preaching a mischievous and immoral doctrine." Yet this same authority is an ardent defender of all those belligerent rights at sea claimed by Great Britain in the present war; and evidently in defending these two things at one and the same time sees no inconsistency whatever, showing how little is there any general and vivid realisa- tion of the sacrifice of sovereignty and inde- pendence which the non-combatant nations are compelled to make under the existing condition of things. It is doubtful whether until just recently Americans as a whole have really visualised the extent of the surrender of their own sovereignty. The situation is referred to briefly in a previous chapter, but it is necessary to elucidate it in greater detail. Most Americans certainly have at the back of their minds or had until the recent exchange of notes with Great Britain a general impression that the United States by her past wars, by the respect which she is able to impose for her flag, NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 193 by the power of her navy and her army, had acquired the right at least to go about her lawful business on the high seas without let or hindrance from anyone; that an American ship, flying the American flag, carrying American goods to a country with which it was at peace and with which all the rest of the world was at peace, could at least proceed secure and unmolested; that an American merchant had at least secured the right, backed by the power of his country, to trade with the four corners of the world. That is all fiction. The American merchant cannot sell a single sack of wheat or a ton of iron to any country, although that country may be at peace with this country and with all the world, save by the per- mission of a foreign naval bureaucrat if that foreign official's country cares to go to war. The American merchant carries on his trade not by virtue of any right which his Government has managed to enforce, but simply to the extent to which a foreign official will permit him to do so. A Chicago or New York magnate may, for in- stance, enter into vast commercial arrangements with some foreign magnate in Amsterdam or Rome or Buenos Aires, and the Governments of the United States and Holland and Italy and Argentina may be agreed as to the legitimacy of the transaction but it will not be completed un- less a British official, making himself judge of 194 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY all its details, decides that it is in accordance with His Majesty's Orders in Council. The American merchant may make oath which may be supported by the foreign merchant that the cargo is of such and such a nature, destined for such and such a purpose; all that will go for nothing if in the decision of a court, in which neither the American nor the Dutchman nor the Argentine is repre- sented, the circumstances are not what the par- ties profess them to be. The American ship can be searched, its cargo can be turned upside down, can be held up indefinitely by a British officer, and the fiat of a foreign court will decide the fate of the American merchant's enterprise. Now, if I appear to put this case strongly as a matter of fact I have put it rather in its minimum than in its maximum form it is not because I want to create the impression that the American has any grievance, but because I want to make it plain that he has not. All that I have indicated takes place in strict accordance with international law. The case could be made a great deal stronger if one sketched in- stances of power exercised under recent Orders in Council, but the legality of which may be a little questionable. The British are applying, at least in the situation I have described, not merely the law, but what American interpretation of the law sanctions. There may be differences as to details, NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 195 but this right of a foreign navy absolutely in this way to control the trade of the whole world, to say, at any rate within very wide limits, when their particular navy happens to be at war, which ship shall pass and which shall not, which country it shall trade with and which it shall not, is a condition which the American Gov- ernment has accepted and which, fittingly enough, the writings of an American admiral have done a good deal to encourage. 1 1 When we remember that the only formal code to which England was definitely bound in most of the questions which have been raised is the Declaration of Paris, I think it is diffi- cult to say that there has been definite violation of law on England's part. However that may be, we can certainly say this : that any other country would have acted in the same way. Even in the matter of the blockade, which is not complete, Mr. Balfour surely makes a good case when he says that even if England has violated the letter she has respected the spirit of the law. The intention was to exact that no blockading nations should show favoritism of one neutral as against another. What has actually happened is that the accident of geography prevents Britain exercising the blockade against the Scandi- navian States. There is no intentional favoritism the thing at which the law was evidently aimed on England's part. It may be said that British action is a clear violation of Clause 2 of the Declaration of Paris. ("The neutral flag covers enemy's merchandise with the exception of contraband of war.") But apart from the question of what is contraband neither Holland nor America were parties to that Declaration; its only signatories were the present combatants, so that in strict law America has no grievance arising from its violation. For blocking the approaches to neutral harbours justification can be found in American action during the North and South War with reference to ships bound for Nassau and Mexican ports 196 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Whether the above is an over statement of the situation can be judged by the admission of a famous English writer on Sea Law whose efforts were in large part responsible for England's failure to ratify the Declaration of London. Although he takes the ground that Britain's authority at sea is already too curtailed he admits that the "last rags of English maritime right" left by the Declaration of Paris include the right of English Prize Courts to administer not the law of England but the law of nations and to decide every material question affecting the rights of neutrals : "Was this an effectual blockade? The Prize Court alone could decide. Was there an actual or attempted breach of blockade? The Court decided. Were these enemy goods? The Court alone decided. Was this a duly commissioned public vessel of war? The Court pronounced. Was that act a breach of neutrality? The Court declared. Was this enemy merchant ship duly transferred by a valid assignment to a neutral ? Was this the American doctrine of continuous voyage. Given a definition of "blockade" which includes the maintenance of a cruiser cordon hundreds or even thousands of miles from the blockaded coast, the doctrine of "continuous voyage" and its derivative which a modern writer has termed "the doctrine of continuous transport," a definition of contraband which can include ladies' underclothing, there is perhaps no British act for which some precedent or other of existing international law cannot be found. However, whether a pro-British or anti-British view of the Anglo-American dispute is taken, is in fact irrelevant to the main thesis of this chapter. NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 197 or that thing contraband of War? Again it was for the Court." 2 Yet a very considerable body of English opinion, and even in the last year or two before the war, of governmental opinion, has worked hard for a more civilised code. The significant thing is the immense gulf which separates the best English intention and effort as to sea law, and actual English practice. One has only to take three great international acts the Naval Provi- sions of the Hague Convention of 1907, the Project for the International Prize Court, and the Declaration of London and to remember that though these last two did not receive ratifica- tion, they represented the evident desires of the British government as a whole, and then see how utterly that government has failed to carry out the intention embodied in those acts, to realise what immense pressure bears against the respect for neutral interest in war time. Those Conven- tions represented the painful accumulations of international law during sixty years since the signing of the Declaration of Paris. At the first "whiff of grape shot" the whole thing was swept away, and to justify the Orders in Council we have to go back to the Declaration of Paris of 1856 indeed it is the opinion of Sir John Mac- *T. G. Bowles : "Sea Law and Sea Power," pp. 18, 19. 198 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY donnel that we can only get formal justification for them by going back to still earlier conceptions. So far as practice is concerned and international law is built up from precedent the world has made no progress towards the protection of neutral rights in sixty years. One may doubt, indeed, whether it has made any in a hundred or two. Take a typical instance of the struggle between neutral and belligerent that which led to the war of 1812. An American authority has recently dealt with the facts at some length. 3 They may be sum- marised as follows : Great Britain had (in 1806) proclaimed a blockade of the Continental coast from the Elbe to Brest, though she let it be known that it would be enforced only from Ostend to Havre. Napo- leon replied with his Berlin Decree, proclaiming a blockade of the entire British Isles and for- bidding sub Poena all trade or communication with them a decree considerably resembling the present German "war zone" order; particularly in this respect, that Napoleon was quite lacking in naval power to make the blockade effective. Next came a British Order in Council forbid- ding all neutral commerce with European ports under Napoleon's control, or from which British commerce was excluded, with a supplementary "North American Review, May, 1915. NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 199 Order declaring all such ports to be blockaded, but giving neutral vessels which were warned away from them the privilege of proceeding to some open port, on payment of a fee to the British Government. In reply to this came Napoleon's Milan Decree, ordering the seizure and confisca- tion of every neutral vessel which submitted to this Order. American commerce was thus so placed that it was penalised whatever course it followed. An American merchant ship might be overhauled by a British cruiser and searched, quite in accordance with international law, and then be released with an admonition not to try to enter a blockaded port, but to proceed to some open port. In that the American would be committing no offence against France or anyone else. Yet, because of that epi- sode, the vessel would be seized and confiscated by the French. Vessels had to comply with certain British requirements or be seized by the British. Yet, if they did comply with them, for that very cause they would be seized and confis- cated by the French. It was to escape from this embarrassing dilemma that the famous Embargo was ordered, forbidding American merchant vessels to trade with either of the belligerents and thus practi- cally confining them to our domestic waters; whereupon Napoleon ordered the seizure and 200 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY confiscation of every American ship found on the seas. The next move was made by Great Britain, in offering to repeal the Orders in Council if America would repeal the Non-Intercourse and Embargo acts so far as Great Britain was con- cerned, while still enforcing them against France. This bargain was not consummated, but the knowledge that it had been considered provoked Napoleon to order the confiscation of every American ship that might enter the ports of France, Spain, Italy, or the Netherlands; an order, however, which was not promulgated. Then Congress repealed the Non-Intercourse act and gave Americans freedom again to trade with both belligerents. But, at the same time, it in- vested the President with power to prohibit inter- course with France if Great Britain should before March 3rd withdraw the Orders in Council, or with Great Britain if France should annul the Decrees. Neither of those powers took action, and the act therefore remained a dead letter. Later in that year, Napoleon, fearing war with America, suggested that he would withdraw the Berlin and Milan Decrees, so far as America was concerned, provided that the United States would either get Great Britain to annul her Orders in Council or declare non-intercourse with that country. This offer was, of course, designed NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 201 either to have the blockade of the French coast removed or to secure America as an ally against Great Britain. Yet, at the same time, Napoleon ordered the condemnation of all American ves- sels which had entered French ports, and imposed upon all which should thereafter arrive a vexa- tious system of license fees and cipher letters with which alone they would be permitted to trade with France. Madison accepted Napoleon's offer at its face value, believed that all restric- tions upon American commerce with France were removed, and, in default of similar action on the part of Great Britain, proclaimed non-intercourse again with the latter country. That led to the War of 1812. But the war itself virtually achieved nothing so far as the permanent protection of neutral right is concerned. Anything that it might have accomplished in that direction has been undone by America's action as a belligerent since then when her interest happened to be on the side of expanding belligerent right. 4 *The New York Times says with reference, for instance, to the British reply to the American notes : "The American Eagle has by this time discovered that the shaft directed against him by Sir Edward Grey was feathered with his own plumage. To meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and our own court decisions. . . . "Sir Edward very naturally puts great reliance upon the case of the Springbok, involving questions of continuous voyage. The principles laid down in the Springbok case have been con- 202 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY "The issue to-day between the belligerents and this nation is the same as that between the United States, Great Britain, and France a century ago. Napoleon's Berlin decree was in retaliation of England's blockade of 1806. The Kaiser's sub- marine war order is in retaliation of the British attempt to starve Germany. The British Orders in Council of 1807 were in retaliation of the Berlin decree. The British Orders in Council of last March were in retaliation of Germany's sub- marine war order. The United States never ad- mitted the legality of Napoleon's decrees or of the British Orders in Council, it declared that they were illegal, and in defence of its rights resorted to the embargo and non-intercourse acts, with the result that Napoleon cancelled his de- crees; but England refused to withdraw her demned by some of the greatest authorities, particularly Conti- nental authorities, on international law. Sir Edward reminds us, however, that it is the business of text writers to formulate existing rules and not to offer suggestions of their own; the 'existing rule' is unquestionably that laid down by the Supreme Court and accepted by Great Britain in the Springbok case. It was not through lassitude or mere good nature that the British member of the Mixed Claims Commission voted with the other Commissioners to affirm the Springbok condemnation. Great Britain was not disposed, even in the interest of British com- merce and British ship owners, to insist then upon a construc- tion of law which in her later experience as a belligerent she might find to be highly inconvenient. The wisdom and fore- sight she then exhibited now enable her to make use of this case in the argument defending her blockade practices against Germany." NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 203 Orders in Council, and the war of 1812 followed her refusal. To-day the United States is on pre- cisely the same ground it was on a century ago." 5 The whole history of sea law reveals over and over again the hopeless ineffectiveness of any method which ignores this simple fact : that to the extent to which the nations use the sea at all they are a society, and that the units have obliga- tions the one to the other, which cannot be dis- charged by "neutrality." Recognising the im- possibility of neutrality, and refusing, or unable, to accept the principle of internationalisation, the nations have in the past applied the principle of territorial jurisdiction to the seas a principle not finally surrendered until well into the nine- teenth century. They divided the seas between them. Portugal regarded herself as sovereign of the whole Indian Ocean and the Southern Atlantic. Spain more modestly laid claim to the Pacific. England claimed the North Sea and the Atlantic from Cape Finisterre to Stadland in Norway, and at times, tentatively, the seas of the world ; and it was only in the early part of the nineteenth century that Great Britain silently dropped her claim that foreign vessels should "strike their topsail and take in their fla^ in acknowledgment of his Majesty's sovereignty within his Majesty's seas." In the preceding cen- "R. B." in the New York Evening Post. 204 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY turies this very claim had figured in the causes of more than one war, notably with the Dutch. Hendrick van Loon (whose descent may, if the reader will, prompt a certain discount of his presentation of the case) tells picturesquely some early phases of the struggle. "On the 2Qth of May, 1614, Marten Harperts- zoon Tromp, lieutenant admiral of the Republic of the United Seven Netherlands, commanding a fleet which cruised off the coast of Flanders, was by persistent and severe northeasterly winds driven in the direction of Dover. There he met with a British fleet under command of Blake. Between the two countries, England and Holland, there was no state of war. Furthermore, the Dutch Republic, a commercial establishment which preferred sound profit to mere disputes about hollow honors, had given its admiral urgent instructions to avoid all possible conflict. It was known and had been known for a long time that the English Government insisted upon having their ships of war saluted by those of every other nation. Indeed, the first open warfare about this unwarranted demand of England had occurred in the year 1640, when two Swedish warships had been attacked because they refused to salute the British flag. They had been brought to the Island of Wight and had been released. The conduct of the admiral had been thoroughly ap- NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 205 proved by Parliament because he had 'Maintained this Kingdom's sovereignty at sea.' Upon this particular occasion, Admiral Tromp, to avoid all possible misunderstanding, struck all his sails (except the topsails) when he came near the British fleet and made ready to salute by lower- ing his orange pennant. The British admiral, not satisfied with this preparation, expressed his feelings by firing a shot which mortally wounded a Dutch soldier. Tromp thereupon ordered a boat to proceed to the ship of the British admiral and ask for an explanation. Before the explana- tion could be given a bullet had hit his ship in the centre. Remembering his instructions, Tromp satisfied himself with a defensive action and after five hours quietly sailed home to report. The first battle of modern times for the right to the open sea had been fought." In "The Memorials of Sir William Penn, Ad- miral and General" (London, 1833), we can read how Sir William meets with three Dutch vessels in the Mediterranean. The Dutch vessels salute the British squadron, but Sir William is not cer- tain that they have done this politely enough. Accordingly he calls his captains together for their advice, but after a discussion it appears that in the opinion of the captains the Hollanders "have done enough" and they are allowed to go. It was some forty years before this that the 206 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Dutch East India Company, in the matter of a law suit concerning the seizure of a Portuguese vessel, had ordered a certain young attorney to assist in the defence. This young man set to work and wrote a huge tome. This, however, he never published. But one short chapter, entitled "Mare liberum," and containing the chief items for the defence, was printed in pamphlet form. In this chapter he claimed the right of all nations to communicate freely with each other on water. This right he based upon the fundamental laws of humanity and at the same time denied that any one single nation could declare herself by a stroke of the pen the rightful sovereign and owner of the limitless ocean. The name of this young man was Grotius and the doctrine that he then enunci- ated brought Holland for two centuries into deadly conflict with England. Van Loon has sketched it as a phase of the struggle for neutral right. If it was we can only say it has been as great a failure as the other phase of that struggle. He says : "From the middle of the seventeenth century on, the issue between the two countries was clear. On the one side England, with her claim to sovereignty over the billowy highways of the nations. On the other side the Dutch Republic, which demanded that these roads should be open to all those who wished to use them for just and lawful purposes. NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 207 "In four terrific naval wars the Dutch Republic tried to establish her good right to sail and trade as she pleased. That she was not driven into this conduct by unselfish reasons of a speculative legal nature alone is quite clear. Her demand for her natural right coincided with her direct commercial interests. But without any doubt she had the right on her side." After some century and a half of Anglo-Dutch conflict, Holland's task was also taken up by others. The story is told by Mahan, 8 who certainly could not be accused of Dutch sympathies as op- posed to English. Speaking of the War of Armed Neutrality (1780) he says: "The claim of England to seize enemy's goods in neutral ships bore hardly upon neutral powers, and espe- cially upon those of the Baltic and upon Holland, into whose hands, and those of the Austrian Netherlands, the war had thrown much of the European carrying-trade; while the products of the Baltic, naval stores, and grain, were those which England was particularly interested in forbidding to her enemies." The declarations finally put forth by Russia, and signed by Sweden and Denmark, were four in number: ( I ) That neutral vessels had a right, not only to sail to unblockaded ports, but also from port to port of a bel- 8 "Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution." 208 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY ligerent nation; in other words, to maintain the coasting trade of a belligerent. (2) That property belonging to the subjects of a power at war should be safe on board neutral vessels. This was the principle involved in the now familiar maxim, "Free ships make free goods." (3) That no articles were contraband, except arms, equipments and munitions of war. This ruled out naval stores and provisions unless belonging to the government of a belligerent. (4) That blockades, to be binding, must have an ade- quate naval force stationed in close proximity to the blockaded port. The contracting parties being neutral in the war, but binding themselves to support these prin- ciples by a combined armed fleet, the agreement received the name of the Armed Neutrality. Mahan tells us that the British Ministry, without meeting the declarations by a direct contradiction, determined to disregard them a course which was sustained in principle even by prominent members of the bitter opposition of that day. The undecided attitude of the United Provinces, divided as in the days of Louis XIV between the partisans of England and France, despite a century of alliance with the former, drew the especial attention of Great Britain. They had been asked to. join the Armed Neu- trality; they hesitated, but the majority of the provinces favoured it. Mahan adds: NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 209 A British officer had already gone so far as to fire upon a Dutch man-of-war which had resisted the search of merchant ships under its convoy, an act which, whether right or wrong, tended to incense the Dutch generally against England. It was determined by the latter that if the United Provinces acceded to the coalition of neutrals, war should be declared. On the i6th of Decem- ber, 1780, the English ministry was informed that the States-General had resolved to sign the declarations of the Armed Neutrality without delay. Orders were at once sent to Rodney to seize the Dutch West Indies and South American possessions; similar orders to the East Indies; and the ambassador at the Hague was recalled. England declared war four days later. Now note how Mahan tells us of the end of this two hundred years' fight of Holland for a right which in theory, though not in practice, the civil- ised world has come unanimously to support. Holland's fight for a great principle of civilisation ended, as it was bound to end, in existing concep- tions of neutrality and sovereignty, and is thus described by Mahan: The principal effect, therefore, of the Armed Neu- trality upon the war was to add the colonies and com- merce of Holland to the prey of English cruisers. The additional enemy was of small account to Great Britain, whose geographical position effectually blocked the junc- tion of the Dutch fleet with those of her other enemies. The possessions of Holland fell everywhere, except when saved by the French, while a bloody but wholly unin- structive battle between English and Dutch squadrons in 210 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the North Sea, in August, 1781, was the only feat of arms illustrative of the old Dutch courage and obstinacy. And after these century-long sacrifices the Dutch population is to-day, in 1915, being im- poverished and burdened, the trade of her ports arrested and her workpeople deprived of employ- ment, from the very selfsame cause for which she was fighting nearly three hundred years since; for a war in which they are entirely innocent and in which they have no share they are paying as heavily as some of the combatants; the "Vry schip Vry goed" for which they have given so much, is once more shattered. "The work of centuries," as Dr. van Loon says, "has been undone in a few months." He adds: The North Sea once more has been proclaimed the exclusive property of the warring nations. Without any regard for the rights of neutrals, all parties liberally sprinkle their mines upon the highroads of commerce. Like so many sharks German submarines shoot rapidly through the waters and gobble up whatever they can find. If they discover that in the hurry of the moment they destroyed the wrong fish, a Swedish or Dutch or Nor- wegian ship, they say: "Sorry; it was a mistake," and promise some future indemnity, which does not make dead men alive. On the other hand, England, blockading the German coast at a distance of three thousand miles, drives all neutral ships into her harbors, keeps them there, talks about them, writes about them, wastes much red tape NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 211 upon them, does some more writing, and finally lets them go, after the cargo has been thoroughly spoiled. Things are just as bad in the Baltic. They threaten to be just as bad in the Mediterranean. A similar anarchy by organised government was never before seen. The small neutral nations, however, unless a speedy return is made to some semblance of law and order, will be impoverished for years to come. Even Switzerland, which has never been bothered by strictly maritime con- siderations, now discovers that its very existence depends upon the goodwill of the unlawful owners of the high seas. For ten months the republic has been kept from starvation by the grace of Italy and England and has been obliged to go through many experiences, humiliating to the proud spirit of this most advanced of nations. French and English prize courts have apparently de- cided that all Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch ports are disguised suburbs of the German Empire, and the difficulties of the trade between those countries and the rest of the world (even with their own colonies and the products of their own possessions) are such that the trade may come to a complete standstill at any time. 7 And be it noted, the nation which is insisting upon a conception of belligerent right which produces these results, entered the war for a pur- pose described by its Prime Minister in the fol- lowing terms : "The end which in this war we ought to keep in view is the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea of European politics. Room must be 7 From an article in the Boston Transcript. 212 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY found and kept for the independent existence and free development of the smaller nationalities each with a corporate consciousness of its own. "Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland and the Scandi- navian countries, Greece and the Balkan States must be recognised as having exactly as good a title as their more powerful neighbours to a place in the sun." Now I do not believe that the anticlimax here indicated is in conflict with what has been said in the first chapter of this book ; namely, that British "marinism" in normal times constitutes no men- ace to the other nations of the world. But war time is not normal time. And I believe further that heavy as is the British naval hand in war time it is as light as would be or could be that of any other power exercising the belligerent right of the command of the sea at such time. All the evidence goes to show that England does her utmost to make things as light as possible for neutrals; with the result, however, that we have seen. And this leads directly to the conclusion sug- gested at the beginning of the chapter, namely, that there is no means under existing conditions for neutrals to escape paying very heavily for a war in which they play no part and are not re- sponsible. They cannot escape war's risks. Would the risk of a definite obligation to take some economic part in a system of policing which NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 213 looks towards the restraint of nations attempting aggression involve greater risk? Moreover, if, under present arrangements, neutrals have grievances against belligerents, belligerents have grievances against neutrals. It is America a neutral that will largely determine the issues of this war. One may admit, if you will, that England's prohibition of imports of food and raw material into Germany has not had the effect anticipated (though if prolonged the story might be very different). But no one denies the overwhelming importance of the am- munitions supplied to England and her Allies and not supplied to Germany. More and more is it evident that modern war is what Napoleon foresaw it would become, mainly a matter of munitions. 8 It is a war largely of factories. As the industrial population is drawn upon more and more for the army, the fact that their places can be filled indefinitely by calling upon the resources in ammunition and material of outside countries, makes those countries directly contributory to the military power of the nation to which the sales are made. "Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech reported in the American press as I write these lines, says : "The reverses of our allies, the Russians, are due absolutely and entirely to one thing only : a lack of proper ammunition. . . . What we have to do is to ensure for ourselves and our allies munitions, more munitions, and still more munitions." 214 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Indeed, these facts are not challenged. As the war goes on, military opinion gives greater emphasis to them. In the opinion of most im- partial military critics to-day, the Allies would have a hopeless task in dislodging the Germans from the territory held by them if the immense quantity of ammunition purchased in this country were withheld. And so it is America that will largely determine the issue against Germany. Now, that America should thus be free to aid in the defeat of Germany, is, in the view of the present writer, entirely as it ought to be. But what is not as it ought to be is that the result is secured by a sort of chicanery. Referring to the agitation for an embargo on the export of am- munition an American authority says : "The real objection to the proposed embargo is not that it would be legally unneutral, but that it would be morally and politically reprehensible. By forbidding 1 the export of arms and munitions the United States would be aiding and abetting the Germans in bringing to a success- ful conclusion a deliberate conspiracy against the peace of the world. . . . "The government of the United States must continue its profession of technical neutrality, but American public opinion should not deceive itself with the pretence. There are two ways of being technically neutral. One is to sell war supplies to all belligerents. The other is to sell war supplies to none of them. We should prefer the former, and should assume full responsibility for the consequences of the preference, because in this way we NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 215 can most effectually protest against German preparedness for conquest by war. Germany should be made to under- stand that the loss of American co-operation is one of the penalties which she must pay for the violation of Belgium. If she had not attacked France through Bel- gium the demand for an embargo on the exportation of war supplies would, we believe, be irresistible. The government of the United States did not formally protest at the time of the violation, but its citizens protested and have been protesting ever since. International law gives us an opportunity of making that protest effective with- out going to war ourselves with Germany. We should take advantage of it as a matter of deliberate national policy, because as a pacific democracy we want to bring into existence a world in which inoffensive pacific nations are free from unprovoked attack. And in every unofficial way Germans should be made to understand why Amer- ican public opinion preferred to give its neutrality an Anglican rather than a Teutonic complexion." 9 But all this puts the United States government in the position of maintaining a solemn diplomatic farce. While making protestations of its absolute neutrality in all things, it is, as a matter of fact, enabling Germany's enemies to win the war. And this fact of itself deprives America's act in siding with the Allies of the moral value which it might otherwise have possessed. It has in it a large element of that diplomatic make-believe which it is so essential for the future to break down. The writer from whom I have quoted is forced "The New Republic, July 10, 1915. 216 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY to admit that while making a great diplomatic parade of impartiality the government is obeying a popular feeling which is not at all impartial. It would be better in every way, it would be an im- mense service to the cause which the American people has given its unofficial allegiance, if the government had been able to give just that reason for not putting an embargo upon the export of munitions. It would have been better still, if, by virtue of the terms of some already existing inter- national arrangement, like that indicated in the first and last chapters of this book, the American government had been able, in the fateful days of July, 1914, when Germany was repelling the offers of an international enquiry, to notify her that failure to submit her case to such enquiry would close America to her as a source of sup- plies, whatever happened. If, in other words, America had chosen the form of "neutrality" for which this book is an argument. The accepted conception of neutrality is a direct encouragement to naval rivalry. The writer from whom I have just quoted implies that in no case whether Germany won com- mand of the sea or not would America have aided the cause of the violator of Belgium by furnishing supplies and munitions. But what assurance have we of that? In existing cir- cumstances it is only a guess to say that had NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 217 the Germans won command of the sea Amer- ican ports would still be closed to them. 10 Indeed, we know that that is not true in so far as food, cotton, etc., are concerned, as the American government is at this moment doing its best to see that the American merchant shall be allowed to sell those things to Germany. Most Germans to-day, doubtless, argue that if they had command of the sea they could buy munitions and supplies from America just as England is doing. Indeed, America's formal and legal position is: We are prepared to sell to you if you can fetch the goods. It enables the Ger- man Navy League to say with some show of reason: "Now you see why we were asking for twice as many ships as the Reichstag would vote. If we had got them you would have seen a very different story." And at the peace settlement, which is quite unlikely to witness the "destruc- tion" of Austro-German Europe, or render new combinations more or less favourable to it impos- sible, American policy, as at present denned, will be but an added incentive to the further rivalry of naval power. But if the defined policy of America is that its doors are closed in any event to the powers that go to war without submission l In the article from which I have quoted occurs the sentence : "If the Germans wanted to buy supplies from us during war they should have planned to control the sea." This is given as pne of several views of the situation. 218 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY of their case to enquiry, the case is entirely altered; and still more if America in this matter acts practically for the western hemisphere. That would have at least these important results : give very solid reasons to the Teutonic powers for accepting international judgment of its case, add weight to the value of outside opinion (one of the difficulties of the past having been to show Germany that that was a thing she need regard at all), and to the importance for a nation of keeping its policy right with it ; and would detract very largely from the value of sea power used in any way in defiance of outside opinion. But such an action on America's part, or in conjunction with other nations, could only be effective if it represented a definite and pre- announced policy. Obviously no penalty, whether in municipal or international action, can be pre- ventive if the prospective offender is unaware of what awaits him. Moreover, to leave American decision in such matters to the accidental circum- stances of each particular case, to the drift of public opinion for the time being, subject to the lobbying of special interests cotton, munitions (which promise to become the greatest of all American industries) or what not and in heaven knows what condition of internal politics, would deprive the action of any real value in this connection, NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 219 Definite proposals are indeed now being made to employ this economic force of the country as against Great Britain for the purpose of com- pelling her to give greater consideration to neu- tral trade rights. It is urged, for instance, by Professor Clapp, in his book, "The Economic Aspects of the War," n that the threat to put an embargo on arms would soon restore American right to trade with neutral countries and within the limits allowed under the Declaration of Lon- don with belligerent countries as well. Pro- fessor Clapp recognises that to carry the threat into effect (and unless there is a possibility at least of America doing so it would be disregarded by England as bluff and so remain ineffective) might mean placing a very grave handicap on England's military task, and so give Germany an added chance of victory. But, he argues, neutrals are not concerned with the outcome of a war to which they are not a party. Well, apply that to the present case. If Ger- many were victorious, Belgium and part of France annexed, English commercial policy in large areas replaced by German, would inter- national law, the integrity of the smaller states and America's general international position be as secure as in the case of British victory? Rightly or wrongly the American public has de- "Pp. 307-308. 220 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY cided that they would not. But if that decision is just, to facilitate German victory for trade pur- poses is to sacrifice a large permanent interest for a relatively smaller and temporary one. To base remedial action on the assumption that America is relatively indifferent to the issue of the war, that she can allow the action which she takes, if needs be, to give the victory to Germany, is to disregard the decision of American public opinion on essential facts of the case. That brings us indeed once more to the unreal- ity which vitiates both the existing theory and practice of neutrality. Nevertheless the right course is for America to protect as much existing international law as the world possesses, and to enlarge that if possible towards the recognition of some such code as that embodied in the Declaration of London. Otherwise we might lose what there is with little assurance that we should get a different law to replace it. Indeed to press energetically for respect of neutral right in existing circumstances might conceivably be a first step to the internationalisa- tion of the economic control exercised by bel- ligerents: Belligerents finding themselves ham- pered would want to come to terms with neutrals, not in the direction of surrendering any means of carrying on a war, but of securing sanction of its necessities. This they might achieve by making NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 221 its objects such as to promote the permanent interest of the non-belligerent nations. Surely the evidence dealt with here is proof enough of this : that, even if we could secure the formal recognition of such a code as the Declaja- tion of London, there is no assurance in our present absence of sanctions that it would, in all the altering circumstances of war, be observed in future. And if it were neutrals would still suffer in some cases as much as at present, because these things are a matter mainly of the hazards of geography and commercial intercourse by the operations of blockade and contraband; and still more importantly, of course, by the general com- mercial chaos occasioned by war. Switzerland has suffered perhaps as much as any neutral in this war: and no Declaration of London could protect her. International law as we know it has grown up, not as the result of definitely thought out prin- ciples and long views as to the protection of the general interest, but as the piecemeal accumula- tion of spasmodic protest against isolated injury to neutral trade. The neutral has in effect said: "We don't care what you do to your victim but you must not hurt us." The momentary incon- venience to the neutral has been the predominat- ing consideration. But can any community which hopes to create 222 a real law be guided by such a standard of judg- ment? If such principles guided municipal law we should find the State concerning itself with and punishing very severely offences like ob- struction of the sidewalk (because of their imme- diate inconvenience) but being "neutral" to the murder of old people or infants because no imme- diate inconvenience to the general public was occasioned. It is an interesting fact that "the father of modern international law" clearly anticipated the need sooner or later for embodying the principle here indicated in any code if we are to get a real society: and, of course, law connotes a society. In the chapter which Grotius devotes to the subject of neutrality (lib. Ill, cap. 17) he sum- marises his doctrine as follows: It is the duty of those who stand apart from a war to do nothing which may strengthen the side which has the worse cause or which may impede the motions of him who is carrying on a just war ; and in a doubtful case to act alike to both sides, in permitting transit, in supplying provisions, in not helping persons besieged. This doctrine has been condemned as absurdly impracticable by modern lawyers, but its imprac- ticability arises, not from its intrinsic fallacy, but from the failure of nations to organise themselves. If for "worse cause" we read : "the nation which has refused to submit its case to enquiry," so as NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 223 to get an instant and ready standard of judgment, it will be seen that some such economic co-opera- tion of States to the end of securing an inter- national sanction for law as that suggested in the last chapter of this book, is, in some sense, a realisation of the Grotian forecast of "neutrality." Grotius rightly foresaw that a society based on the general principle that an attack on one of its members does not concern it, that those not attacked can remain "neutral" and recog- nise any rights that the victorious party may establish as against the resistance of the other, is in its very foundations anti-social. It compels each one of its members to arm, often on the standard set by the least scrupulous, and tends, at least, to make power the measure of right. Such a conception necessarily produces an- archy. Civilised communities within the state are founded upon the directly contrary principle, namely, that all are interested in resisting aggres- sion because if one is victimised with impunity to-day any may be the victim to-morrow. Illegal injury to one is injury to all, and in such case the community immediately takes sides. It takes sides by compelling (through its collective powers represented in the police) the aggressor in the case to submit to third-party judgment. As to which is the aggressor, it settles that by deciding that it is the party which uses force on his own 224 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY judgment to secure a decision in his own case. It may be true in a disputed case that B owes A a certain sum of money; but if A broke into B's house and took it he would be arrested for burglary. The community would, through the police, with no knowledge of the merits of the case and not needing to have them side with B. The conceptions of neutrality which have en- tered into international law are, of course, bound up with the conceptions of sovereignty and independence which the more morbid moods of nineteenth century nationalism referred to at the beginning of this chapter have engendered. Underlying those moods is a question of morals too big to enter into just here, but it is certain that before our international code can be put upon a more civilised basis we shall have to shed some of our more barbaric nationalism. We talk of sovereignty and independence as absolute things in the case of nations and create the fiction that states are accountable to no sovereign be- yond themselves. But "law" and the complete independence and sovereignty of those subject to it, are, of course, contradictions in terms. A "society" made up of "sovereign and independent units" is another. Until we can get away from some of these assumptions and replace them by some clearer notions of the real relationship of NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 225 states, international law will be founded upon confusions and hugger mugger. We could only imagine complete sovereignty and independence if each nation kept to itself. From the moment that it has contact at all with others and enters into treaty arrangements, it has surrendered its absolute sovereignty to that of its bond. Unless we get back to the Machia- vellian principle, that a nation is not even bound by its bond, we cannot maintain the fiction of complete sovereignty. And, of course, the final sovereignty the social obligation, treaty faith, what you will is representative of all. The sea is symbolical of a worldwide social unity. It is "one," and the ship plying between two coun- tries is an international thing, and in actual prac- tice half a dozen nationalities may, through pas- sengers, cargo, mail, insurance, be concerned in the case of a single vessel. How can those nationalities be either "neutral" or "sovereign" in any absolute sense ? What are the practical conclusions to which the whole thing points? They may be summarised thus: (i) In a great war where sea operations are involved there can be no real protection of non- combatant nations by international arrangements for isolating them from the conflict ; by the stiffen- ing of neutral right, that is. 226 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY (2) It is impossible for non-combatant nations to be neutral in the sense of impartial as between the combatants; the command of the sea by one belligerent may compel their economic co-opera- tion with him; or geographical position and other factors may make a country's neutrality of immense value to one party and an immense handicap to the other, irrespective of whether the neutral nation's interests or feelings correspond with such favouring of the one as against the other. (3) The disposal of valuable factors of this kind should not be left to chance, but should be utilised for aiding international arrangements which already exist in embryo for the protection of the integrity of states. (4) The sort of alliance which at present is effected between the government of a combatant state and the citizens of a "neutral" one as in the matter of controlling Dutch exports through arrangements with Dutch citizens, and the fur- nishing of American credit should be the pre- rogative of government, duly and constitutionally using those forces for nationally-approved pur- poses. (5) Constructive international law which pro- ceeds on the principle of the isolation or detach- ment of states not directly concerned with mili- tary co-operation in the conflict, is bound to break NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 227 down owing to the weight of the forces against it the complexity of international contacts which make it impossible for the action of a belligerent nation not to affect in certain cases a non-belliger- ent one. (6) Rather should the efforts at the framing of international law proceed on the principle that a state, in order to secure its benefits, must assume certain obligations towards other nations which have pledged themselves to render the law effective by similar obligations. (7) Though the assumption of such obliga- tions would give to international law a reality it does not at present possess, their burden would not be greater than those borne by neutrals and non-combatants under past and present conditions of international relationship. The character of the obligations here men- tioned is explained in detail in the concluding chapter of this book. The suggestion there made would, of course, link international law to inter- national politics, would compel alliances for the protection of law just as we now have alliances for the protection of territory like the treaty which was supposed to protect Belgium but did not; like the alliances which have brought the European world to arms. If the nations had shown as great a readiness to assume burdens 228 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY for the enforcement of law embodying the general interest, as for political and territorial interests, the war might have been avoided. In any case if, after the war, a state like Bel- gium is to be protected at all, it must still be by means of a treaty of some kind. We talk con- temptuously of treaties, but do we propose to leave Belgium after the war dependent upon her own force alone? Any other plan involves ar- rangements of some kind between the nations, the assumption of guarantee obligations by Belgium's neighbours. And the same applies to other lesser states. Since international contracts of some kind therefore there must be, and since those contracts are obviously frail things, likely to be violated, the only recourse is to give them as many guarantors as possible. To ensure this, the obligations under the guarantee must be of a kind that the guarantors can discharge without too great a cost. In the case of certain states, an undertaking to use their economic influence the control of their exports and imports mainly not in obedience to an uncertain law of neutrality, but to a definite law designed to ensure their national protection, would be a lesser burden than military obligation, and one Just as effective in many cases, and would be less costly to them than is the present system and its total results. If the struggle for power is the struggle of rival groups for sustenance in a world of limited space and opportunity, if war is really, as in the prevailing con- ception it is, a "struggle for bread," it is inevitable be- tween men and will go on. If one of two parties must eat the other the two cannot come to a really amicable agreement about the matter. Even if this is not the case, but mankind remains persuaded that it is so, war will also continue. But in that case it would be a struggle not of necessity, but of misunderstanding which better think- ing and adjustment could dispose of as it disposed of religious wars, the cessation of which proves clearly that some of man's deepest passions can be redirected by a different interpretation of facts knowledge. Is the "ex- pansion" of states a real need? Nearly all political philosophy and public discussion avoid that question, but until we have made up our mind on it all schemes of world organisation must necessarily be frustrated, owing, among other factors, to the elusive processes of the psychology of fear. CHAPTER VII THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM OF POWER UNDERLYING all the questions so far dis- cussed in this book neutral and belligerent right, Prussianism, sea power as a part of the general contest for political power, the possibility of co-operation between nations, underlying indeed all problems of international relationship what- soever, is one ultimate problem which I can most vividly indicate by two quotations, one of which I happened to have used elsewhere but which I repeat for reasons that will appear presently. A writer in the English "National Review" one of the leading anti-German organs during the last decade or so in an article which appeared a year or so before the war, said: Germany must expand. Every year an extra million babies are crying out for more room, and, as the expan- sion of Germany by peaceful means seems impossible, Germany can only provide for those babies at the cost of potential foes, and France is one of them. A vanquished France might give Germany all she wants. The immense colonial possessions of France present a tantalising and provoking temptation to Ger- man cupidity, which, it cannot be too often repeated, is not mere envious greed, but stern necessity. The same struggle for life and space which more than a thousand 231 232 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY years ago drove one Teutonic wave after another across the Rhine and the Alps is now once more a great compel- ling force. Colonies fit to receive the German surplus popu- lations are the greatest need of Germany. This aspect of the case may be all very sad and very wicked, but it is true. . . . Herein lies the temptation and the danger. Herein, too, lies the ceaseless and ruinous struggle of armaments, and herein for France lies the dire necessity of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful allies. 1 The other quotation is from Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, the English author who tells us, with prophetic vision, that as long as the human race endures men will fight about their national ideals. It has to be accepted, he says, as a fact in nature, not in any way to be altered by this war which is only one round in a never-ending series of great games. He imagines an Englishman outlining the nature of the game that he is playing with the Prussian by saying to the latter : You believe that God has called upon you to spread German culture through the lands. You are ready to die for your faith. And we believe God has a use for the thing called England. Well, let us fight it out. There seems no other way. You for St. Michael and we for St. George ; and God be with us both. Are the underlying assumptions of these two passages true? Is it true that nations are in- 'Sept., 1913. 233 cvitably pushed to conflict either by vital needs of sustenance, "the struggle for bread"; or by an irreconcilable antagonism of ideal, or by both ? I will put the question in less absolute form: Does military victory and the consequent increase of political power over others that it gives, achieve for a people great material or moral advantage promote their commerce and culture for example ? These are the ultimate questions in interna- tional politics. They underlie not merely the competition of the Great Powers for colonies and territories, the intrigues of the Chancelleries, but the whole problem of nationality and self-govern- ment, Imperialism and Home Rule; not merely the differences about Egypt and Morocco and the partition of Africa, but the struggles of race, language, religion, in South Eastern Europe, the emancipation of peoples from alien domination, the final political situation of Belgium, of Alsace, of Poland, of Bohemia, of Austria, Balkan policy generally, the expansion of Russia, Italian irre- dentism. A mere knowledge of the detailed fact is of no avail unless we realise the general meaning of the facts: we may fail to see the forest for the trees. If we are to have any reasoned opinion about our own future policy in the world on preparedness and its nature, the character of future alliances, the causes we should support and those we should condemn we must 234 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY answer in our minds the question of principle involved in the two quotations just cited. This does not mean, of course, that when we have answered those questions, and answered them truly, we shall have solved all international difficulties. It merely means that an obstacle which prevents, and which of itself suffices to prevent, their being solved will have been re- moved. Until we got rid of the notion that pestilence was a visitation of God, prophylactic medicine w r as impossible (as it is in the East to- day where that belief prevails) . And the destruc- tion of that fallacy was not the less essential because there are terrible diseases with which medicine cannot deal at all. But until the world could shake itself free from the old fatalism it was not even on the right road in its fight with disease. It is necessary to emphasize the very elemen- tary truth that this illustrates, because it will be said that to reduce international politics to a general principle like that dealt with in this chap- ter is to be guilty of over-simplification; to dis- regard difficulties of detail, to settle complex prob- lems with generalities and formulae. A vast amount of criticism of this kind seems to ignore the real function of a general principle. So long as the world believes although the belief may be a barely conscious one that the THE PROBLEM OF POWER 235 answer to the suggested questions is "yes," and that states are condemned by a necessity of nature, a law beyond human control to exist in perpetual and inevitable antagonism, we shall develop neither the intention nor the energy necessary to carry into effect that international co-operation which might put us fairly on the road to some solution of our difficulties. To believe, however vaguely or undefinedly, that in questions of war and peace we are the puppets of forces outside ourselves will prevent our forming that "Will" without which there can certainly in this matter be no way. And the way will be just as impossible of dis- covery so long as nations believe that they must either be swallowed by others or be in a position to swallow them. With that belief in the back- ground of consciousness policy would inevitably drift in one direction; and no effort could per- manently succeed in re-directing it until that belief had been destroyed. Now, it is one of the grimmest humours of the war that the thing which everyone, taking due thought, admits to be the basic issue, is the one thing that, practically speaking, has never been raised as between the nations; only various inci- dents arising out of that issue, not the issue itself. Not merely has it no place in the vast official literature that fills the various bulky blue, white, 236 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY orange, red, green, and grey books, but it has never been discussed as between the peoples through their press, their writing, their daily talk in the way that issues between Liberals and Con- servatives, Republicans or Democrats, Suffragists and anti-Suffragists, vegetarians and carnivora are discussed. The people of Europe have not asked them- selves: Why do nations want to govern each other instead of themselves? Is that desire a fixed thing, or something that can be changed, like opinion in politics? Do they really need each other's territory ? Can we so arrange things in Europe that the German, without murdering us now, will be able to feed his children of the future? What is it precisely that he needs to that end ? Is there any means of letting him have it that would not hurt us? As little has the ordinary German put seriously to himself the question: "Have we any more reason for compelling other people to accept our culture than for compelling them to accept our religion?" Of the elements of these problems the public of all three countries are profoundly ignorant. They have gathered up catchwords about places in the sun, fulfilling national destiny, the inevit- ability of struggle, all of which creates a vague sense of resentment of the other man's intentions, THE PROBLEM OF POWER 237 and that is all. The blue and red books are, of course, even farther away from the realities than the public talk and writing. Here for years the peoples which compose the allied nations of the west had been alleging an evident intention on the part of Germany to establish a military tyranny over them ; the Teutonic peoples had for the same period been alleging the evident inten- tion of her political rivals to "encircle" her. Yet in the immense mass of official despatches which were exchanged during the crisis that preceded this war those things are barely mentioned: just a vague and distant hint once or twice. And the public discussion, that of the press and political writers, concerning the alleged rival am- bitions of the various parties the intention of Germany through Austria to dominate the Bal- kans, and so Asia Minor, and so perhaps the world ; the intention of Russia to protect the Slav peoples from this alien domination; the necessity for England, in terms of the Balance of Power principle, to prevent the establishment on the channel of an overwhelming continental power was all carried on in such a way, owing mainly to the conventions of secrecy and hugger mugger that characterise European diplomacy, as to de- generate into accusations of intended aggression and little more. Despite all the oceans of talk that went on 238 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY before the war concerning the planned invasion of England by Germany, the contemplated de- struction of France, and Germany's allegations of "encirclement," we do not to-day know how far the mutual accusations were true. 2 The final action of each group was based on an assumption concerning the other, the truth of which that other denied and continues to deny to such degree that both sides have managed honestly to convince themselves that they are fighting a purely defensive war. During all those years the social democratic party in Germany, for instance, could not tell, because it did not know, the policy for which Ger- many stood. Not merely the British Parliament, but the members of the British Cabinet, a week before the declaration of war did not know for what policy England stood, whether England would participate. One member of the Cabinet says that but for Belgium England would never have been brought in ; another says that Belgium 3 The London "Nation," which has shown itself, because of its Liberalism in politics, perhaps most energetically anti-German and enthusiastically pro-war, says, more than a year after the outbreak (Sept. 4, 1915) : "The main object for which the saner German Imperialists are fighting is the Empire of the East. The picking up of scattered colonies is only a secondary aim and the annexation of Belgium is the dream of extremists. The goal of the main official body is to win that political and military predominance in Turkey from which a sort of economic monopoly might follow." THE PROBLEM OF POWER 239 or no Belgium, England would have been brought in to destroy a tyranny that threatened her existence. The discussion of motive and intention is of little avail here. We don't even know our own motives as individuals; less even can we know the motive of millions of differing fellow country- men; less yet those of foreign countries. One may hear a political wiseacre solemnly descanting on the "intention" of this or that foreign country, to do this or that thing, some years hence. Yet if you were to ask this same wiseacre the inten- tion of his own country in some such simple matter as suffrage, or the next Presidential elec- tion, what it would do, not some years, but six months hence, he could not tell you to save his immortal soul. What we have to establish is not intention or motive, but need, necessity; and then interest, moral and material. In the questions which underlie the two quota- tions I have given, there is, of course, a very sig- nificant difference : If we admit that an increasing population like the German must either expand its frontiers or starve, conquer or be without food, war, of course, will go on, because you cannot ask a whole population to commit suicide. Nor, if it is a question of one surviving at the cost of the other, can there be any real possibility of 240 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY agreement between them. It would only last as long as the pressure of population on the soil was not really severe. As well might two cannibals say: "Since one of us has got to eat the other, let us come to some amicable agreement about it." And even though, as a matter of fact, there was no necessity whatever for either to eat the other, agreement would be just as impossible so long as each believed in that necessity. For the false belief would have the same effect on the conduct of both as though that belief were true. But in that case their conflict would be the out- come, not of necessity at all, but of a mistake; of misunderstanding of certain facts. So with nations: the fact that there is no in- evitable rivalry between them based on conflicting needs, the fact that the whole idea is a mistake, will not necessarily stop war between them. War might take place because nations wrongly believed their needs to be irreconcilable. But, again, in that case also, it would be a conflict of misunder- standing. And that is why we need widespread discussion. But, assuming the idea that nations must struggle with one another for their sustenance in a world of limited space and opportunity to be a true one, there is this difference between that conflict and the conflict of ideals. I may acquire another man's ideal, "capture" it in the sense of THE PROBLEM OF POWER 241 adopting it, but he still has it. But if I take his property he hasn't. And that is rather an important difference. Now the main reason which leads people to avoid discussion of this whole subject is the plea that man's conduct is not affected by discussion. It is argued, as Mr. Jerome argues in the quota- tion I have made from him, that whether the struggle for political power serve any purpose or not, is well or ill founded, necessary or unneces- sary, men always have struggled for power and that consequently the motives of such struggle are something fixed, which no amount of "talk" or reason or logic will change. That it is "in human nature." Which, of course, is bad psychology and worse history. Some of the strongest passions and motives that have played the greatest part in history, such as those which for centuries led the populations of Europe to pour out their blood like water, and their wealth like trash, for the re- covery of the Holy Sepulchre, or later drove them in rival religious parties one against the other until countries were depopulated and king- doms ruined, are passions and motives that have been so transformed by discussion and change of view and attitude, that we cannot even under- stand them. When the Europe which had fought during two centuries for the Holy Sepulchre could 242 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY have had it for the asking, it did not even ask. The French Catholic has not merely stopped kill- ing the Huguenot, he has stopped wanting to, which is far more remarkable. "Nationalism" 3 as a passion in politics is a modern creation resting upon a certain conception of certain facts which discussion and literature, and that accumulation of them which we call tradition, has formed in quite modern times. To say that the direction of our passions cannot be changed by our interpretation of facts, by "logic" if you will, is, of course, to be guilty of ignorant confusions. If you see your enemy, Smith, going down the street, you may want to murder him ; if he turns round and you see that the man is not Smith at all but your very good friend Brown, your purely intellectual perception of a fact due to a piece of pure "logic," enabling you to conclude that a fur coat resembling Smith's had caused a false induction changes altogether the direction of your feeling. Some of the bitter- est passions in nations are due to mistaking 3 This word is used to-day indifferently to describe the pan- German, or the Italian who dreams of Italy dominating the world as a resuscitated Rome, and the German who expelled Napoleon or the Italian who freed his states from the Austrian or the Balkan populations who rose against the tyranny of the Turk. But surely the two are very different ideals. The earlier nationalism was in large part a revolt against sheer political oppression; its later development is an Imperialism based on race superiority. THE PROBLEM OF POWER 243 Brown for Smith ; and a clearer knowledge of the fact and clearer thinking about it will redirect those passions. Dogmatically to assume, therefore, that be- cause nations do desire power and territory, there- fore they must, and that it is not worth discus- sion, is to show one's inability to face even simple facts. The idea that a national culture should be imposed by force of arms upon an unwilling people and, of course, if no nation wanted to im- pose it, no nation would have to go to war to resist its imposition is a conception of what constitutes a worthy and noble national ideal, certainly as much subject to modification by discussion as were those other abandoned ideals that bled Europe for some centuries. 4 It may be that nations do fight to-day simply to dominate, "to show that they are boss," to impose their political religion. But can we dogmatise and say that the human mind is incapable of realising that such an ambition is a tawdry and shoddy one ? On what ground do we allege that the human mind is incapable of seeing this: That if you can't convince your neighbour of the superiority of your political ideas by fair argument, you are certainly not going to do so 4 We need not conclude that the modern European has no feeling for religion. That feeling is probably deeper than ever. What he has lost is the idea that anything of worth in it can be "imposed" upon a people by defeating their armies, or that such defeats are relevant in any way to religious conviction. 244 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY by burning his house down and murdering his wife? To insist that such a notion of national "dignity" must for all time be the possession of mankind is a curious plea coming from those who profess to see in these military struggles the higher manifestations of the human spirit. * * All that may apply, it will be urged, to the moral side of the problem. But what of the brutal, physical side; of the view that this con- test for territorial expansion and political power giving commercial privileges and advantage does indeed represent a part of man's "struggle for bread," for survival; that expanding popu- lations must secure more territory or expose themselves or their descendants to starvation? If that is true, no argument, no talk will alter it. It is a physical fact as regrettable as you like, but a fact in nature. I have said at the beginning of this chapter that that is a question which, speaking broadly, no government or people have thought it worth while to discuss. In the disputes of the diplomats as of the general public, it has been assumed al- most as an axiom that, of course, this contest for territory is in fact the "struggle for life" among nations; that changes of frontier are not of the nature of other political changes like that from Republican to Democratic rule, or vice versa. THE PROBLEM OF POWER 245 Never, it is assumed, could such things be a matter of normal political discussion and re- adjustment, maintaining by such means, more or less, the required equilibrium. It is an irreconcil- able conflict to be determined only by force. A few specialists have, it is true, discussed these things in books which the public as a whole don't read. But, even with those specialists, the "ultimate" question is generally settled by an unquestioned adoption of the orthodox assump- tion concerning the value of political power. Admiral Mahan, for instance, will discuss with acuteness and learning, through large volumes, the place of sea power as an instrument of inter- national rivalry, but this last question was one which, as the circumstances of a discussion with the present writer showed, he had not asked him- self with any clearness since he answered in one way, in one mood, and in an exactly contrary way in another. The extent to which this is general among the specialists may be gathered from a book like Professor Usher's "Pan-Americanism," written since the war, and which deals with prob- lems presenting themselves for solution after- wards. This book is described as "a forecast of the inevitable clash between the United States and Europe's victor," and the author essays to present the views of the various sections and 246 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY interests in the country. Underlying practically every view presented, however contradictory otherwise, is the assumption accepted virtually without discussion, that the industrial nations at least are rivals in trade, that what one gets the other loses, and that their economic development represents a competition for strictly limited "mar- kets," and that out of this arises a conflict deeply rooted in real sustenance need. Germany is repre- sented as being impelled by these needs to "strike a crushing blow at her adversary's prosperity" (p. 149) and England looking upon even the United States as a "dangerous rival, whose foreign trade is to be checked by British military and naval power" (p. 158). The view that political power, even in peace, determines the cur- rents of trade, is carried so far that the develop- ment of Central American trade with the United States during the last fifteen years is gravely ascribed to the withdrawal of the British fleet to European waters during that period, thus "giving the naval supremacy of the Western Hemisphere into American hands." And when the destruction of the German fleet places that supremacy once more in British hands, England will, by some unexplained process, use her "supremacy" to pre- vent further development of American trade in that direction. The following passages indicate sufficiently THE PROBLEM OF POWER 247 the dominant assumptions of Professor Usher's discussions : Foreign markets, expanding markets, are necessary for the defence of the future and the greater good to the greater number yet to be born justifies a war of apparent aggression to ensure their welfare (p. 119). They see clearly in Europe that the most vital interest of the state is economic, because economic prosperity is the founda- tion of political independence, of national unity, and of international status ; they see that prosperity depends upon the continuance of the rate of growth, and that political and military action ought to protect and further those economic interests. The present European con- flicts are based primarily upon those economic conten- tions. This, then, is an economic war a war for mar- kets, for colonies, for dependencies, in which markets may be developed, for access and, perhaps, preferential rights in those of Asiatic communities. Precisely those factors are already present in the United States, and, if precedent be any criterion, will before long lead our statesmen and citizens to a conviction that the supreme duty of the state is to provide for the economic welfare of its citizens, whence it is but a step to territorial ex- pansion, to an insistence upon new markets, secured by political, diplomatic, and, it may be, military and naval agencies. It is true that in his chapter on the Monroe doctrine he intimates that it is not expedient for the United States to quarrel with Europe, to extend our relations with Latin America, but by his emphasis throughout on the general concep- 248 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tion implied in this passage makes it also pretty plain that America may well have to choose be- tween her fundamental future interests and her desire to live unaggressively at peace. Now, the present writer happens to be one of those who have maintained (in books mostly un- read even when discussed by the general public) that there are certain fundamental "illusions" economic, political, biological at the basis of this whole theory of the necessary rivalry of states. The grounds upon which he has challenged what is undoubtedly a prevailing conception, cannot be repeated here. 5 They do not constitute, by any 'America will lose nothing by European development eco- nomically in South America, nor Europe by ours; and if clash comes it will come, not from any necessary hostility of interest, but from misunderstanding of interest. All the talk of the inevitable clash for markets leaves out of account half the facts. If we want expanding markets in South America we should welcome the investment of European money therein; if we want to sell harvesters to Argentina we should be glad to have Europe buy her wheat; and if Europe is to buy her wheat Europeans must sell something in some foreign market wherewith to get the money and so become our competitors somewhere. A market is not a place where things are sold, it is a place where things are bought and sold ; and the one operation is impossible without the other, a fact which makes our competitors necessary to our markets and our markets impossible without our competitors. "America" is no more a "rival," dangerous or otherwise, of Great Britain or Germany than Virginia is a rival of Missouri. These political units are not economic units at all, nor are they trading corporations; to the extent to which there is economic competition and rivalry it goes on between individuals and not between states. These THE PROBLEM OF POWER 249 means, a whole cloth new theory of the relation- ship of states. They are more the development and definite application to current problems, of principles, the beginnings of which can be found in the arguments of the physiocrats, two hundred odd years since, and which every economist has since in some measure developed. Happily, it is not a purely economic case. It does not rest upon showing the cost of war, more or less, or whether it pays more or less, but upon the existence of an things are, of course, very elementary economics, and this is not the place to develop them, but the whole fabric of "inevit- ability" of struggle for economic ends between nations falls to pieces when due account is taken of them. To the extent to which the old economic misconceptions dominate international politics they do so by virtue of the momentum of old ideas. It is always a slow process by which better thinking gets translated into political action. For a century and a half, or more, from the days when David Hume poured his contempt upon the "narrow and malignant opinion" that one nation had any interest in checking the economic ex- pansion of another, and prayed "not only as a man but as a British subject for the prosperity of Spain, of the Germanics, aye, and even of France," the economists almost to a man have thought one way and the politicians acted another. For the philosophy of political aggression does not get its main inspira- tion from the economists, or even from the traders and mer- chants, but from the Bernhardis, Treitschkes, or the popular admirals, generals, and politicians who have seldom been econo- mists even of the most elementary kind. But this lagging of political action behind the best contemporary thought is not merely true of international relations. Montaigne was laughing at witchcraft two hundred years, and most educated men a hun- dred years, before the politicians and lawyers stopped burning witches. From a Review of Professor Usher's Book. 250 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY entirely false mental picture of the relation of government and administration to those activities by which the mass of people earn their livelihood and live their lives. Part, at least, of the all but universal approval of power in one's own govern- ment comes from the idea that by the exercise of that power, especially in the extension of terri- tory, annexation of colonies, and the like, there is a definite accretion of wealth to the annexing power. That, of course, implies a confusion of thought. A country which annexes a province has not added to the wealth of the original inhabitants of that country any more than a city which takes an outlying suburb into its administration adds to the wealth of the original inhabitants of the city. The change may, or may not, be of advantage; there may be some administrative economy, and so some reduction of taxation for the citizens of the new administrative area as a whole, and something similar may take place on the annexa- tion of a province by a national government (though generally the reverse is the case). But the point is that to the ordinary mind the two operations are not upon the same plane. In the case of the city there is no widespread illusion that New Yorkers now "own" this or that suburb, and have added something to their wealth thereby, and no New Yorker would dream for a moment THE PROBLEM OE POWER 251 of shedding his blood or giving the lives of his children for bringing about such a change; or talk of the need of the city's expansion for his children's sake. If the new suburb didn't want to come in, let them stay out. It would not be regarded as a life and death matter. But if Austria wants to annex a Servian province, or Germany a French one which adds not one iota to the economic or moral welfare of the average Austrian or German, which, indeed, complicates his politics, adds to his military burdens, to his risks of attack from other nations the dire cost is all assumed as a sacrifice on behalf of his father- land's destiny; in order, that is, that the central administrations of these territories may be Berlin instead of Paris, or Vienna instead of Belgrade. 6 Obviously, the two operations are not judged by him in the same light : he sees in one all sorts of important considerations economic, cultural, moral, social, what you will that he does not see in the other. Yet in terms of the realities of human life they are about upon the same plane. *It will be noted that I have chosen examples from the attempt to impose rule on other people, not from the attempts to resist foreign rule. Wars of nationality are caused not by a man's preference for his own country but by the attempt to destroy that preference, to make someone else accept a foreign- er's rule our rule. If all respected the preference of men for their own nationality the wars of nationality would cease, like the wars of religion ; and for the same reason. 252 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY The whole picture that he has in his mind as to what happens in the case of conquest is a false one. The essential untruth of that picture which, obviously, is not just a matter of statistics of cost and expenditure in war is what I have attempted to show in earlier works. The fact that it is a general idea and not a matter of statistics which is involved is important, for this reason: If the truth did depend upon statis- tics, if the public, before it could have right ideas upon the subject, had to become familiar with elaborate theorems, as in the case for Free Trade or Protection, the outlook for sound general judgment would be very poor. But much less than that is needed. In order to shake off the obsessions of witchcraft, it was not necessary for mankind as a whole to pass judgment upon the learned discussions running through thou- sands of volumes that marked the debate on that subject during a century or two. It sufficed that, having shaken itself free from the hypnotism of false theories, it was able to see the common daily facts of life straight. In the same way, when certain old Roman and Feudal prepossessions as to the nature of the State, and its relationship to the wealth it ad- ministers, have been shaken off, it will not take an economist nor an historian to see that the citizens of a little State like Sweden, or Switzer- THE PROBLEM OF POWER 253 land, without political power, without colonies, having enjoyed no conquest, are by every real test of well being, moral or material, as well off as the citizens of great military empires that have spent blood and treasure immeasurable upon securing their "place in the sun." It is as possible for the ordinary unlearned man to test politics and the worth of political theory by the realities of his daily life as it is for him to test witchcraft to the confusion of many learned doctors and the obliteration of fearful and wonderful theories. That does not mean, of course, that even if en- lightened feeling and opinion on international relations become general, serious economic ques- tions would not arise between States. They would. But what makes those differences now so fatal is precisely this general feeling that the possession of political power over others is an economic need of life and death order. When one State of the Heptarchy fought with another over some question of cattle grazing, or fishing, it was a war from "economic causes," and doubtless the wise men of the time spoke of the inevitability of the struggle for subsistence between nations. But there was no inevitability about it. That it did not arise from any real sustenance need was proven by the fact that both states sustained their people immeasurably better after they gave up the habit of fighting one another. When the 254 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY inhabitants of Great Britain were engaged in the "struggle for bread" by war with one another, the island supported with difficulty, and frequent want and famine, anything from half a million to a million inhabitants. When they stopped this form of struggle for existence, the island sup- ported in infinitely greater comfort a population from twenty to forty times as great. And so little is it true that the great states of the world, like America, are England's "rivals" to-day, that a sensible proportion of the British people is absolutely dependent upon such states for its livelihood: let all these "rivals" be destroyed and those people would have to starve or emi- grate. 7 Nor has the use of political power for the con- trol of trade or the imposition of trade monop- olies been, as a matter of simple historical fact, any permanent element of a people's economic development, or any real "insurance for their future." The mercantilism of the type assumed by Professor Usher to be the motive of modern wars, was applied ruthlessly by an enormously powerful Spain with a hemisphere for experi- mental ground, and the more she applied it the poorer she became. Pretty much the same T I need hardly remind the reader that England can only raise enough food for some four fifths or less of her population. THE PROBLEM OF POWER 255 could be said of Portugal, and of France, while England's period of greatest commercial and industrial development synchronises with the abandonment by the British Empire of those methods. Great states, wielding immense political power, have seen the welfare of their peoples arrested or declining, while little states, with no means whatever of enforcing their supposed in- terests by military means the Switzerlands, Denmarks, Hollands, Belgiums, Swedens have shown a steady upward movement, and to-day display a standard of wealth and welfare not outdone by any great naval or military state of the world. Not that we need assume necessarily that there is nothing whatever to be said for political power as a means of economic advantage. There was a great deal to be said, both socially and morally, for the control of religious belief by the state, the policy which gave us the wars of religion. But that policy, once nearly universal, has been abandoned, not because every argument which led to it has been answered, but because the funda- mental one has. That argument was based on the belief that a people's possession of religious truth was dependent upon the possession of pre- ponderant military power over religious "rivals." In our day a people's prosperity is deemed to be dependent upon the possession of preponderant 256 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY military and political power over economic "rivals." When it is realised that mere political power, preponderant force over others, is in any positive sense as ineffective to the ends of pro- moting prosperity and welfare as to the ends of promoting religious truth, we shall be within dis- tance of making wars between the political groups as obsolete as are wars between the religious. And just as these realisations, to which we owe the disappearance of the religious wars, were the result of a change of mind and attitude due to widespread discussion largely the indirect work of the Reformation so, by the dragging of international problems into the arena of normal political discussion, by the growing perception that those problems are an integral part of all social problems, we may get a corresponding change of mind and attitude in our international relations. And then and probably by no means which does not include this process will the ''inevitable" conflicts be made avoidable. 8 Mr. Lowes Dickinson has, in his compelling way, described this false picture of the state to which I have referred as "the governmental theory." He says: War is made this war has been made not by any necessity of nature, any law beyond human control, any *From a Review of Prof. Usher's book, "Pan-Americanism," in The New Republic, July 17, 1915. THE PROBLEM OF POWER 257 fate to which men must passively bow; it is made be- cause certain men who have immediate power over other men are possessed by a certain theory. Sometimes they are fully conscious of this theory. More often, perhaps, it works in them unconsciously. But it is there, the dominating influence in international politics. I shall call it the governmental theory, because it is among governing persons emperors, kings, ministers, and their diplomatic and military advisers that its influence is most conspicuous and most disastrous. It might be out- lined as follows: The world is divided, politically, into States. These States are a kind of abstract Beings, distinct from the men, women and children who inhabit them. They are in perpetual and inevitable antagonism to one another; and, though they may group themselves in alliances, they can be only for temporary purposes to meet some other alliance or single Power. For states are bound by a moral or physical obligation to expand indefinitely each at the cost of the others. They are natural enemies, they always have been so, and they always will be; and force is the only arbiter between them. That being so, War is an eternal necessity. As a necessity, it should be accepted, if not welcomed, by all sound-thinking and right-feeling men. Pacifists are men at once weak and dangerous. They deny a fact as fundamental as any of the facts of the natural world. And their influence, if they have any, can only be disastrous to their State in its ceaseless and inevitable contest with other States. 9 'Mr. Lowes Dickinson, so well known in America from his books, is a lecturer in political science at Cambridge University, a fact interesting in this connection which may not be so well known. 258 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY The relation of the ordinary man to this theory he thus explains: He has a blank mind open to suggestion; and he has passions and instincts which it is easy to enlist on the side of the governmental theory. He has been busy all his life; and he has no education, or one that is worse than none, about those issues which, in a crisis like that which has come upon us, suddenly reveal themselves as the issues of life and death. History, no doubt, should have informed him. But history, for the most part, is written without intelligence or conviction. It is mere narrative, devoid of instruction, and seasoned, if at all, by some trivial, habitual, and second-hand prejudice of the author. History has never been understood, though it has often been misunderstood. To understand it is perhaps beyond the power of the human intellect. But the attempt even has hardly begun to be made. Deprived, then, of this source of enlightenment, the ordinary man falls back upon the Press. But the Press is either an agent of the very governments it should exist to criticise (it is so notoriously and admittedly on the Continent, and, to an extent which we cannot measure, also in this country) or, it is (with a few honourable exceptions) an instrument to make money for certain individuals or syndicates. But the easiest way to make money by the Press is to appeal to the most facile emotions and the most superficial ideas of the reader. And these can easily be made to respond to the suggestion that this or that foreign State is our natural and inevitable enemy. The strong instincts of pugnacity and self-approbation, the nobler sentiment of patriotism, a vague and unanalysed impression of the course of history, these and other factors combine to produce this result. And the irony is THE PROBLEM OF POWER 259 that they may be directed indifferently against any State. A hundred years ago it was France; sixty years ago it was Russia ; thirty years ago it was France again ; now it is Germany ; presently, if governments have their way, it will be Russia again. The Foreign offices and the Press do with nations what they like. And they will continue to do so, until ordinary people acquire right ideas and a machinery to make them effective. Such, then, in very general terms, is the issue ; and until the democracies of Europe can in some way "sense" it by some real discussion, and in general terms pass upon it, as they have passed upon graver issues of the past, there can be no solution of the military conflicts of European society. But, as I have said, in the way of bringing about that discussion, of making these issues part of the ordinary issues of everyday politics, stand certain very curious facts in human nature which have to be surmounted. The average man does not like to have to change his opinion upon any matter in which his feeling is involved, and is very angry with any other who seems to be likely to do it. Generally he protects himself against such risks by so arranging his life the clubs or societies to which he belongs, the papers that he reads, the people that he meets that he only comes into contact with ideas that he already holds. If we really cared about the truth, we 2<5o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY should, of course, arrange our clubs, etc., so as to throw Republicans into contact with Democrats, Catholics with Protestants. As it is, we organise them for the express purpose of keeping them apart. It is a curious fact in psychology, this. In an argument someone shows us conclusively that we are quite wrong; and we want to hit him. Yet he has done us a very great service one of the greatest services that a friend can do us: he has corrected an error of which we were the victim. And we immediately get angry with him, and if it is safe to do so, call him names ; and if the public hear evil stories about men of unpopular opinion that is to say, men who, by compelling the popu- lar opinion to justify itself, are doing the com- munity a very great deal of good they are delighted. To recall the outstanding facts in the history of religious heresy, political radicalism, abolition, socialism, suffrage (until these things become fashionable), will furnish endless exam- ples of what I am trying to indicate. Society also protects itself against having to shift its point of view or modify a conception, by a subconscious conspiracy to kill the thing at the start by misrepresentation. The Roman belief that the early Christians indulged in human sacri- fice was doubtless genuine in its way as was the belief of the English churchman, that the early THE PROBLEM OF POWER 261 dissenters indulged in wild orgies of devil worship. This may in part explain the popular attitude towards those who would rationalise and improve the relations between nations. "Pacifist" has in the popular journalism of Europe and America become a term of contempt, and with certain fluctuations has been ever since the idea of international organisation and order took root among European thinkers. The popular feel- ing towards the "peace men" drove Cobden from public life at the time of the Crimean War. One of the greatest of England's orators, and, in his generation, one of its great democratic figures, he could not hold a meeting in his own constituency among his own people. Such was the penalty of venturing to differ from popular opinion on the most foolish war that England ever entered into, a war which has amply justi- fied Cobden; concerning which, as Morley has said, all the after events showed Cobden to be as right as the public were wrong. There are one or two curious forms that this subconscious conspiracy of misrepresentation takes. To the popular journalist the Pacifist is a person who believes that war is impossible, or that it will not take place because foreigners are too kind to wage it, or something equivalent. And every war that breaks out is taken as 262 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY demonstrating how foolish Pacifists are. Yet surely it must be obvious, even to the hurried journalist, that no man in his senses would, in a world where war rages every year, seriously urge "the impossibility of war." And the Cob- dens and Herbert Spencers, after all, did not write from lunatic asylums. 10 10 To a New York paper which had editorially remarked that "Mr. Norman Angell has written books in the endeavour to prove that war has been made impossible by modern economic conditions . . . but events have shown their fallacy," I was impelled to reply as follows : I have never written any book to prove that war has been made impossible. On the contrary, in every book of mine on the subject, I have urged, perhaps with wearisome emphasis, that no such conclusion could be drawn from the facts with which I dealt. Indeed, considering that violent wars were raging when the books were written ; have been raging very nearly continuously ever since, such books, had they been based on the argument that "wars had become impossible," must quite obviously have been just silly rubbish, and I do not quite see, in that case, how you would justify your very excellent reviews of them ! What, of course, I have tried to show is not that war is impos- sible, but that it is futile; not that conquest cannot in modern economic conditions take place, but that those conditions make it impossible to benefit by it ; that the victory of Germany, for instance (if that implied conquest), would not benefit the German people morally or materially, and that all the talk about the need for Germany's fighting for her place in the sun, or her political "expansion" being necessitated by the struggle of her population for sustenance, is all part of a grave and very prevalent miscon- ception. I have, indeed, taken the ground that since the Reli- gious Wars, most wars have been the outcome of a contest for political power based on just that false conception. Among the causes of this war the general belief in Germany that that coun- try had to possess greater power than its neighbors or be THE PROBLEM OF POWER 263 Another form of protective misrepresentation, by which the community is shielded from any dis- turbing need to readjust its opinion in this matter, is a sort of swinging between picturing the Pacifist as a dreamy, idealistic person living in an unreal, Sunday-school kind of world, and altogether too gradually "squeezed out," both in the sense of economic expan- sion and national culture, certainly played a large, if not a dominant part. Since no nation will commit suicide, even on behalf of morality and peace, the question whether these conceptions are right or wrong, whether nations are in reality struggling units obliged in a world of limited space and opportunity to eat or be eaten, is the supreme question behind all international politics. All relations of one country to another turn at last upon that ultimate interrogation. I have tried to contribute certain quite definite data, economic, social, and moral, toward the answer of it; to show that that data proved aggression and territorial conquest (the possibility of which creates the need for defensive armament), to be futile in terms of human well-being. The events of this war do not show, if I may say so, "the fallacy of these arguments," or anything resembling it. But the futility of war will never of itself stop war, and it is that fact which justifies the very ungrateful task in which I happen to be engaged. It is not enough that conquest and power should be barren; men must realise that barrenness, since, even in their rational moments, they are not guided necessarily by their interests, but what they believe to be their interests. It is not the facts which matter so much as men's opinions about the facts. And, unhappily, mankind is little apt to be guided by reason at all, and that is why it is so tragically important to nurse and cultivate the little reason that we have and to get the facts of this matter as clear as possible. Otherwise, certain luxuries of our nature temper, pride, passion, irritation will certainly lead us to the pit, 264 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY good for this, refusing to face the hard facts of life between this, and the exact opposite of a sordid person who thinks that nations go to war for money and would yield up his country's honour for profit or security. (The two pictures can be, and are, used indifferently for one and the same person.) This last plea has been used particularly with reference to that case against the prevailing view which I have attempted to indicate in this chapter. Even Mahan was shocked quite genuinely, I believe at the "sordidness" of the thesis which I presented. That this should be possible with a man of Mahan's intellectual equip- ment shows the difficulties that stand in the way of any real discussion of this issue. Just consider. Mahan had laid it down that to the possession of political power based on arms there belonged commercial advantages so great that inevitably, as the world grew more crowded, men, for their very sustenance, must be pushed into war. For many years Mahan maintained this, fortifying it by the general proposition that states must unsentimentally, because they are trustees for their people, be guided by their in- terests even to the extent of killing others in defence of them. He regarded this killing as an inevitable and even elevating process. He main- tained all this for many years, and I am not THE PROBLEM OF POWER 265 aware that any critic ever thought of treating him as sordid therefor. 11 A writer then comes along and attempts to show that there is not this dreadful alternative between killing other people's children or allow- ing our own to starve ; that these conflicts are not any necessary result of physical facts in nature, but are the results of a misunderstanding con- cerning them which it is necessary to clear up. Obviously that misunderstanding cannot be cleared up save by showing where and in what manner the prevailing interpretation of the facts "Mahan's attitude in this matter showed how possible it is for a great technician, for a man who has handled what may be called the mechanism of power all his life, never to have asked himself clearly the fundamental question : "What in the end is it all for?" This is shown by the fact that he could give with equal emphasis two mutually contradictory answers to it accord- ing to the mood or controversial necessity of the moment. In 1908 (in "The Interest of America in International Conditions") he wrote : "It is as true now as when Washington penned the words, and will always be true, that it is vain to expect nations to act consistently from any motive other than that of interest. . . . The study of interests international interests is the basis of sound, of provident policy for statesmen." Yet, in criti- cism of my own work, which sought to establish just what were the real interests of nations in the matter of conquest, he wrote (North American Review, March, 1912) : "Nations are under no illusion as to the unprofitableness of war. . . . The entire conception of the work is itself an illusion based upon a profound misreading of human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only is to live in a non-existent world, a world possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to do it bare justice, persistently entertains." 266 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY in question is wrong. The facts are, of course, "economic" in their nature, and that has involved dealing with certain economic phenomena and their relation to international politics. Then Mahan replies that this writer is a very sordid person for introducing such a thing as "economics" into the problems of war and peace. An English military critic says that the -attempt to do so is a "slander upon the profession of arms and offensive to men of honourable tradition." Let us see the position in which this places these military critics with reference to (say) German policy and its results. The German is presumed to have based his aggression, in part at least, upon this kind of plea : The great expansion of our population com- pels us to acquire territory wherewith to feed them. Failing that, our children will be reduced to want. To this the military philosopher in England or in America replies in effect: "You are abso- lutely right. That is just the position in which you are placed." And one can imagine the German then saying to the Englishman or American: "In that case you will, of course, as a man of chivalric tradi- tion, share with us your great heritage; or, at least, facilitate our expansion. You will not op- pose it by your arms." THE PROBLEM OF POWER 267 To which the British Imperialist, or Nationalist, or Militarist, or whatever one cares to call him, replies: "We are a people of noble and chivalrous tradition. You shall therefore starve ere we want, and we will kill your people upon the battle- field to the last man rather than give from our fullness to your need." And then comes the Pacifist to say : "You have stated a false dilemma. No sacrifice on your part is involved. The German can feed his chil- dren and add to your wealth in so doing. He can better their welfare, and you can profit. You need not surrender anything whatsoever. It is merely a matter of understanding how." To which the militarist replies: "You are a sordid bagman and understand nothing of the noble sentiments that animate my soul." Now, if all this began and ended as a matter of dialectics between rival "schools of thought," it would be of no great moment, and the reader may, indeed, ask what all this has to do with the "ulti- mate problem of power." Well, these issues lie at the very bottom of that problem. Mankind is fighting blindly; it has not really asked itself why its conflicts arise. It is concerned with a mass of confusions and misunderstandings which themselves generate the poison gas of ill-feeling that prevents us seeing clearly; it is in the worst kind of vicious circle, and we are trying to break 268 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY it at one point the point where the very attempt to open blinded eyes creates the hostility of the sufferers to the remedy. I am not, of course, overlooking the fact that the feeling against Pacificism is "protective" in a more rational sense: based upon the fear that such indoctrination may lead to a neglect of national defence and so endanger the country's security. But in so far as the advocacy of military pre- paredness includes appeals to old prejudices and misconceptions, and the disparagement of effort at international agreement and we have to admit unfortunately that very much of such advocacy does include that it is likely to create as much danger as it provides against. Much military advocacy in America would seem to imply that military force need not take foreign policy or the questions raised at the be- ginning of this chapter into consideration at all, because the United States could never be brought into military conflict with a foreign nation except to repel an unprovoked invasion of these shores. The average advocate of increased armament seems to say: "All we ask of foreign nations is, kindly to keep out. And as we don't intend to argue about that, what has the nature of our foreign policy to do with the amount of protec- tion that we need?" THE PROBLEM OF POWER 269 Well, a moment's reflection suffices to show what a travesty of the facts that is, and how very direct is the relation between our military needs and our foreign policy. Within the last few years the United States has been confronted with the problem of a pos- sible intervention in Mexico ; it has actually inter- vened in Central America; is at this moment arranging the affairs of Hayti ; has been develop- ing a specific policy toward South America which makes this country, by that fact, concerned very closely with the relations of European nations to those republics, and this, apart from the implica- tions and responsibilities under the Monroe Doc- trine, whatever they may be ; has taken over the government of islands off the coast of Asia; has been brought into conflict with England over the Panama Canal ; with Japan over the question of immigration; has taken a certain stand with reference to the Open Door in China, and may be brought into conflict with Japan also over the future international status of China; has been brought into very acute conflict with Germany over sea law, and less acute but still serious con- flict with England over other phases of the same law. Now it is out of some of these questions that war, if it .comes to America, will arise: some de- mand of Japan for equality of treatment which 270 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the nature of its Federal relations with California will not allow the government to grant; a con- sequent attack on the Philippines which this coun- try would repel the beginning it may be of some great assertion of their power by Asiatic peoples a long, demoralising and enervating war. It is unlikely to be fought on American soil and military preparedness of itself will not prevent it. Merely to acquire an army or a navy sufficiently large to deal with Japan would certainly not be adequate, even from a purely military point of view. The great wars of our time are not fought by single nations but by groups, and Japan would certainly find Asiatic and possibly European allies. These questions present themselves: Are we going to make no attempt to stop this drift to- wards conflict by some equitable settlement of the difficulties involved ? To take one instance only : that of Japan. Those who know the subject best declare that settlement is not impossible and thai- patience and fairness on America's part could secure it. But that means an effort which won't be military at all. Are we going to make that effort? Probably it cannot succeed except as part of the settlement of other foreign difficulties: those with China, possibly with certain of the South THE PROBLEM OF POWER 271 American republics. And if we find that it cannot be settled, are we going to wage this war alone, without knowing beforehand what stand the other white nations Australia, Canada, and Great Britain will take with reference to this ques- tion of the relations of Asiatic and European? But so long as "preparedness" means merely adding to the instruments of war, America may muddle into this great collision without having made just the kind of effort that might have avoided it. And her responsibility in that case will be a very serious one. International relations become daily less and less matters merely of two parties, more and more matters of many. American relations to China affect immediately those to Japan; those to Japan affect those to Great Britain, those to Mexico to the whole problem of Pan- Americanism ; the policy of Pan- Americanism to the Monroe Doc- trine; the Monroe Doctrine the whole relation- ship of the new to the old world. Where does America stand precisely in all this ? Nobody very clearly knows. And until it is known we cannot tell whether we or the others are the aggressors, and, however great our navy and army may be, whether we are adequately de- fended or not. For in the last resort the army and navy are for the purpose of defending, not a country, but the policy of a country. 272 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Every war, moreover, has a Pacifist aim: it is fought to establish a peace. (After all, peace is just as inevitable as war, which cannot last for ever. ) What kind of peace ? Without some con- ception of that, without some kind of programme, war degenerates into a series of national epileptic fits. A sudden passion on both sides, over a question that neither has rationally discussed, precipitates an American-Japanese War. The Japanese are beaten, but the victory does not settle the question; the Japanese may decide that in some early future, with a westernised China at their back, they won't be beaten. And so it might go on until a policy of some kind is established. On the morrow of most wars the discovery is made that if the nations had taken as much trouble with policy before the war began as they are obliged to take when it is over, it need never have taken place at all. Scientific Pacifism is merely the formulation of that policy. Not that saner international relations are a simple matter; they are not. And it is because they are difficult and increasingly important that one must take a little trouble with them. * * One of the most difficult problems of inter- national politics is the psychology of national defence. Earlier in this chapter I attempted to show that it is not enough that nations should in THE PROBLEM OF POWER 273 fact have no need to fight one another ; that war, in other words, is futile. It is also necessary that they realise it to be futile. Otherwise it will still go on. But even that is not enough. Each side must see that the other realises its futility. For even though each of two parties may him- self believe that nothing is to be gained by war, if he thinks that the other party may be of a different opinion, you may still get war from mutual fear ; which is probably what in large part this present war is. Each being afraid of the other takes measures to which the other immedi- ately replies, and finally it becomes necessary to act first in order to anticipate the other. That was the case perhaps in the European war. Everybody was afraid of everybody else. At the last it was precipitated by the very things which each did to make himself safe. Germany built a navy to be on the safe side; it brought England into the war against Germany ; France allied her- self with Russia to be safe; but for the alliance she would not have been involved. Russia mobi- lised to protect herself against German action: it led Germany to declare war. And so on. Not merely were we all afraid, but we were all afraid of an action from the other side which was finally caused by our own. I know it is difficult at this stage to realise that the Germans could have been afraid of the Rus- 274 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY sians, and perhaps the general staff wasn't. But the people as a whole including the Social Democrat party were. I remember a conversa- tion which I had in Germany with a business man who knew Europe pretty well and I think it is worth reproduction here. I had been defending English "nervousness" with reference to invasion; had urged our vul- nerability, or what we thought to be our vulner- ability; that we had never abused our world- power; that Germany was not so vulnerable and had little to fear, and perhaps I hinted had not always refrained from abusing her power in the past. The German had listened patiently, and when I had quite done he spoke with a certain quiet intensity. And this is what he said: "Oh, yes. You talked just now of the 'stately homes of England.' Do you know that there are no stately homes of Germany no beautiful old houses that have come down to us from the past. They have all, practically every one, been destroyed by the invader, mainly by the French, by the Rus- sian, or his hirelings and allies. I suppose you know the history of the Thirty Years' War, of the wars of Louis XIV, of the wars of Napoleon how these new-found friends of yours ravaged our country again and again, and actually, literally, cut our popu- lation in half ; stamped it into the mud. Try THE PROBLEM OF POWER 275 to get the perspective. Picture Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Notting- ham wiped out, not merely that the houses were destroyed, but that every man and woman and child within those places had perished, and this not in some distant past, but so near to you that your great-grand- father could have told you the story, having got it from the mouths of those who wit- nessed it. "Of course, you cannot conceive, no man can conceive, what the destruction of ten million human beings means. Yet by that number of beings was the population of Germany decreased during these wars. A State as populous as England when Queen Victoria came to the throne was in one war reduced to the population of Holland. What have you to compare with this, to set beside it? When, indeed, have you had to watch vast uncounted multitudes of your women and children driven forth homeless, their corpses massed in the country roads, with grass in their mouths, the only food that the invader had left? And these same invaders who have poured in devastating floods over our land to-day boast that again they will invade us if and when they can. I say boast. Can you find me one French public man who will say that France should abandon the hope of attacking us? It is their declared, their overt policy. "And that is only half the story, the danger 276 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY on one side of us only. On our other side we have 160,000,000 of semi-barbaric people of whom not more than one-eighth can read or write. The Chinese have a larger proportion of literates than these Russians. And these, our immediate neighbours, are governed on absolutist methods by a reactionary bureau- cracy frankly militarist. It is a country in which public interest means the interest of an autocratic caste. Do you believe that such a State, whose frontier abuts directly on ours, is no danger? But, my dear Eng- lishman, for generations, until last Tuesday week in fact, you were preaching that this Great Power was the standing menace of the Western World, and although a Russian soldier has never set foot upon your shores you have fought one great war to stop the progress of this nation, to check her march towards your possessions. But it is not in a distant possession that she threatens us. It is on our own soil. "So that is our situation : on our right and on our left enemies from whom we have suffered as no other civilised people have suffered at the hands of enemies. The his- tory of both is a history of conquest, in one case passionate, insatiable conquest, whose ambitions you and I in the past have had to resist shoulder to shoulder. And that Power, who was your enemy for centuries, makes no secret of its intention to renew the aggression upon us when it can. It is in the creed and blood of Frenchmen that they will attack us THE PROBLEM OF POWER 277 at the first opportunity. Oh, yes, we are a military people. Do you wonder? But we have fought on our own soil, or have re- turned to it as soon as the invader was re- pulsed. And you? You have fought in every land under the sun except your own. And where you have fought you have for the most part stayed. Where have we sought to conquer? Where have we stayed, save in territories that were in history, race, and language part of the German heritage? Our soldiers have fought your battles in North America. Where is our North Amer- ican dominion ? We helped you to break the power of Napoleon. Have we inherited French Colonies? We helped you to fight your battles in Spain. A regiment of ours still bears upon its arms the word 'Gibraltar.' You have the fortress. We have the name. "This is ancient history. But what is our modern history? With these memories be- hind us we found ourselves the absolute mas- ters of our ancient military enemy, France. The country from whom during bloody cen- turies our people had suffered so much was at our feet, thanks not so much to our strength as to her divisions. We found her people murdering each other, divided against themselves, helpless, broken, hopeless. What did we do? Did we adopt the policy of Louis XIV or Napoleon, the policy that Louis Napoleon would have adopted if he had been the victor? We conquered nothing. We restored to Germany what was German in 278 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY speech and history and had been cut off by the sword from the German body two cen- turies before. And even when, during the generation that followed, when perhaps we were the military masters of Europe, did we start upon a career of conquest? We are the only Great Power that has not gone to war, real war, for forty years. And in those forty years you have fought wars big and little. Your conquests have gone on. You have acquired Upper Burma, British Balu- chistan, part of the Straits Settlements, Rhodesia, Nigeria, Uganda, Nyassaland, British East Africa, the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, Egypt. And France, she has acquired a whole Empire Cochin China, Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, Mada- gascar, Tunis, Senegambia, Dahomey, and finally Morocco. What has Germany to com- pare to all this ? "And now you profess to know, by what political astrology I cannot tell, that we are to be the aggressor we who under the shelter of our national armour have scru- pulously kept our sword sheathed and have found our expansion in the arts of peace, we who have endeavoured to give to Europe an example of social organisation complete and scientific, who by our industrial organisation have stopped the emigration of our people, who possess a territory as yet half filled, are told by you, who have conquered half a world, that these old enemies of ours, who in the past have invaded us again and again, THE PROBLEM OF POWER 279 and who still boast that they will do it yet once more if they can, must be strength- ened by English might, lest we should crush them ! "What can we conclude ? Here is my old enemy Jacques shaking his fist and declaring that he will go for me because he is deter- mined to have certain property that I hold, and then you rise and announce that you will stand by Jacques. He has only been waiting for the means to attack me, and now finds these means yours placed at his disposal. What can I possibly conclude but that you desire to instigate him to attack me? What is all this talk of the 'new France,' of which we hear, but the revival of old France, of all that Napoleon meant, 'The Great Shadow' as one of your own writers has called him? It is you who have revived the spectre of the guerre de revanche, which was nearly laid a year or two ago, and would have dis- appeared but for your encouragement. The successors of the Napoleons are now talking, as you are now talking, of this expeditionary force to the Continent. But an English ex- peditionary force to the Continent means a force against Germany. Against whom else could you use it? And so, with these 160,000,000 barbarians on our right, and our ancient military enemy (who also talks of using the black troops of his African Empire against us) on our left both peoples who have invaded us and destroyed our homes you are now to add an invasion from another 2 8o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY quarter. What do you expect us to do? Stand and wait supinely for it to come to us ; watch the hordes of invaders, the old in- vaders and the new prospective ones, increase ? "My friend, the reply to an English ex- peditionary force is a German Navy. We must try to prevent that force reaching our shores or the shores of our enemy, your ally. That is why we build. "You talk of standing by an 'old friend.' By an 'old friend' you mean not the one who has maintained peace with you for 1,000 years and who has fought your battles with you, but the one who has fought against you for a thousand years and whom ten years ago your own statesman warned to mend their manners or take the consequences. And that same statesman was talking then of an alliance with Germany. And when we see this sudden patching up of the old enmity, are we not entitled to watch and see its mean- ing, and begin soberly and moderately to take our precautions? I know no official secrets, but it seems that you needed French acquiescence, in Egypt was it not? What was the price? That you should support France somewhere else against us apparently if needs be. Well, we hoped that Morocco had paid off your obligations, but now appar- ently you are still to support France against us in all her quarrels. And thus 'the new France.' Once more we hear of the guerre de revanche, and see you, who hold a French- THE PROBLEM OF POWER 281 speaking province and would never think of surrendering it, take part and lot against us in an enmity based on the fact of our holding a German-speaking province which we will not surrender. Again I ask you, what would you have us do? "I will not insult you by supposing that you deem our fleet to have anything to do with a desire to invade India, or Canada, or Australia. Even the blindest of your coun- trymen have ceased even to pretend that you are in greater danger from us than from Russia in India, or from the United States in Canada, or from Japan in Australia. You know that that is not the cause of our fleet, and although I am not an expert in high politics I will make this guess that readily would we agree to the limitation of our fleet if your statesmen would plainly and cate- gorically declare the neutrality of England in these ancient quarrels of ourselves and France. But they will not declare that neu- trality. More and more are your people declaring that they are the friends and allies of our enemies. Well, that is why we are building. Let it be on your head." This, of course, is an entirely partial view it is certainly not the writer's but it is plausible enough, given the bias of ordinary patriotism, to furnish the basis and background of the kind of appeal that the German militarists made for a thoroughly efficient military machine. And once 282 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY you have that, the border line between defence and preventive war becomes very, very thin. * * Were not the religious wars also wars of fear ? There is a story somewhere of a conversation that took place between a Catholic statesman and a Huguenot just after the Massacre of St. Bar- tholomew. It ran translated into the speech of our time something like this: Huguenot: I submit, Your Eminence, that this affair of the other night is a very regret- table one. Catholic Eminence: Agreed. But you cannot ask us Catholics to commit political suicide. You are perfectly aware, of course, that the Huguenots have been growing very greatly in power of late. They have, in fact, formed a State within a State. If they grow much in power they will dominate us. And then they will massacre us. And if needs be we are prepared to massacre them to prevent their doing it. Huguenot: But need there be any massacr- ing about it. Can't we agree that these dif- ferences shall not be settled that way. Need we make them a matter of political rivalry at all? Catholic Eminence: I spoke as a statesman. I will now speak as a man and a Catholic. Men will always fight about their religion, the most important thing that concerns them. We can imagine a man submitting such dif- THE PROBLEM OE POWER 283 ferences as those concerning money and property to the decision of courts; we cer- tainly cannot imagine him, if we believe that he has an immortal soul at all, submitting the alleged rights of heretics to such tribunal. He will defend his religion with his life be- cause it goes beyond his life. He will defend his eternal salvation and that of those dear to him to his last drop of blood. Huguenot: Should you not say the last drop of the Huguenot's blood ? Catholic Eminence: So long as the heretic threatens, as he does, by the dissemination of his doctrines the eternal salvation of our beloved children, yes. What is the momen- tary pain of a slain Huguenot to the eternal torments of my people, whose salvation is placed in jeopardy by your influence ? We see here fear of a double kind fear of the Huguenot's temporal and political power and of the spiritual perversion that he might engender. But there was a fear and doubt of a more subtle kind : the Catholic's fear that his belief would not be equal to meeting unaided, the other's belief, a doubt as to the strength of his own spiritual forces. And when we talk of this war as a spiritual conflict, of it being necessary to destroy the Prussian root and branch in order that he shall not impose his atrocious ideals and morality upon 284 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the world, are we not revealing a doubt in the strength of our own moral and spiritual forces? English and American writers without num- ber have spoken of the need of saving France her literature, her intellectual contribution to western civilisation implying that those things would be destroyed and the French become in their spirits and minds submissive Prussians if Germany should destroy French military power. Well, Germany has done it before pretty thoroughly but the Frenchmen did not forth- with surrender their literature and those special qualities that we associate with France. Van- quished France since 1871 has had a wider intel- lectual and moral influence in the Western world than victorious Germany since that date. In the same way, half a century or so before that, France, with which men had come to associate the democratic idea, was defeated by reactionary Europe. Did the democratic idea die? If this present is in part even, a war of fear, surely it is worth examining the nature and origins of our fears. And what follows is not intended as an argument for non-resistance in which this present writer most emphatically does not believe or even the restriction of resistance to non-military forces, but as a contri- bution to clearing up some of our misunder- standing. And one can strongly believe in mili- THE PROBLEM OF POWER 285 tary defence and still desire, for the general understanding of the issue, to have the case for the use of non-military forces clearly stated. If we had a few men of intellectual weight in England or in France and Germany stating that case they would certainly not convert those countries, and so deprive them of military de- fence ; but they might compel Europeans generally to question the ground of certain fears, instead of re-acting to them without thought; by the dis- cussion of the foundations help perhaps to modify the temper of Europe just as a somewhat analo- gous discussion helped to modify its temper con- cerning religious conflict. It may sound like playing with paradox to say that military submission to Germany would pos- sibly contain less risks of moral Prussianisation than successful military resistance to her. And yet there is in it a measure of truth. 12 "I have dealt with the impossibility of widespread tribute by a conqueror in our times in "The Great Illusion" and in "Arms and- Industry." The Hon. Bertrand Russell, the Cambridge mathematical philosopher, has recently put the case picturesquely (The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1915). He says: "The greatest sum which foreigners could theoretically exact would be the total economic rent of the land and natural resources of Eng- land. In fact economic rent has been defined as what can be and historically has been extorted by such means. The rent now paid to land-owners in England is the outcome of the exactions made by William the Conqueror and his Barons. The law ... is the outcome of that set up at that time . . . From 286 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY I attempted to show in an earlier chapter that the defeat of Germany might quite conceivably result in the Prussianisation of the victor. But inertia and lack of imagination the English at the present day continue to pay the land-owners vast sums to which the latter have no right but that of conquest. The working classes, the shop keepers, manufacturers and merchants, the literary men and men of science, and all the people who make England of any account in the world, have at the most an infinitesimal and acci- dental share in the rental of England. The men who have a share use their rents in luxury, political corruption, taking the lives of birds and depopulating and enslaving the rural districts. This way of life is that which all Englishmen and women con- sider the most admirable. Those who are any way near to achieving it struggle to attain it completely and those who are more remote from it read serial stories about it as their ancestors would have read of the joys of paradise. "It is this life of the idle rich which would be curtailed if the Germans exacted tribute from England. Everything in England that is not positively harmful would be untouched : wages and other earned incomes could not be diminished without diminish- ing the productivity of English labour and so lessening the capacity for paying tribute ! Our snobbish instincts, if the idle rich were abolished, might be driven by want of other outlet into admiration of real merit. And if the Germans could effect that for us they would have deserved their tribute. "It is very doubtful indeed whether Germans would exact from us a larger tribute than we exact from ourselves in resist- ing them. ... A debt of a thousand million created by the war represents an annual payment of forty million pounds. All this, together with the annual expenditure on the army and navy, we might have paid to the Germans without being any poorer than we shall be when the war ends. This represents an incredibly larger tribute than any derived from India." I think most economists would question even the possibility of exacting from a modern nation its economic rent as foreign tribute. In practice it would be found impossible to exact even a considerable proportion of it. THE PROBLEM OF POWER 287 it may also conceivably be true that just as we may surrender to an alien culture, while we continue to fight the alien arms, resistance to the alien culture and morality can go on long after military resistance has ceased. Forty years of German domination in Alsace and Poland, when the military power of the Prussian was as complete as it possibly could be in those territories, did not suffice to Germanise them. The same sort of moral resistance has kept alive a separate national conception and culture during centuries in Ireland in the face of ruthless alien regimentation. And these forces of resistance become stronger with the development of such things as printing, education, cheap newspapers, and other instruments of expression which make a tradition or ideal a very elusive thing to handle. "You can do most things with bayonets," once said a Russian general in Poland, "except sit on them." And the converse is true: That an absence of political domination does not necessarily involve an absence of moral and intellectual influence on the part of aliens. Japan, which is not under direct European political control, has become Europeanised much more rapidly than India, which is under the very efficient political control of the leading European power. America was not lost to English literary, political, or social 288 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY influences when the political tie was severed. The ideas of the French Revolution did not make much headway in Europe while French arms were predominant; they made their greatest headway in a period which followed the defeat of French arms. The greatest change of all, perhaps, in the nature of European society in the last two hundred years was not due to political forces at all, but to the industrial revolution. But what of the horrors of hostile invasion, the atrocities, as in Belgium? In making that objection we have forgotten certain things. When we speak of the abandon- ment of physical resistance to invasion, we have a vision of a vast army landing in a country, finding no resistance, and forthwith subjecting that country to sack and destruction. But that is to ignore not only the whole character of human nature but the way things actually work in practice. Take the case of the German who in the methods of his warfare we believe to be more brutal and ruthless than any other modern European man. We say: It is childish to put yourself within the power of such a wild beast; he respects nothing but force. Yet for generations thousands of us have without hesitation put ourselves, our women- folk, our children, with perfect confidence within THE PROBLEM OF POWER 289 his absolute power. We have sent our children to German schools, our invalids to German sana- toria, placing them absolutely beyond the reach of our army or police. And it never even oc- curred to us that they were in any danger. As in truth they were not. Germany has maintained civil order better than any country in Europe: crimes of violence in Germany are little more than half what they are even in England, infinitely less than in the United States. The schoolmaster in Germany to whom with perfect confidence we entrust our children, the surgeon who operates upon us, only become murderous animals when organised into an army, when they meet the re- sistance of other armies, or presumably armed populations. There have been no massacres in Luxemburg not a person has been hurt al- though it is in German occupation. There has been no killing in Brussels, though the German army has been there a year or more. But even when we keep these facts in mind we have not got to the heart of the matter. If there were no armies to meet it, there would be no German army, or a very small one. How have the German people been persuaded during forty years to give their lives and wealth, those they love, and the taxes that they pay, to the creation of this marvelous military machine? Because the German government managed to persuade 290 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY them that it was necessary to overcome the armies that it would have to meet. Germany would not maintain an army of three million men during forty years in order at the end of that period to annihilate civil populations that did not possess soldiers. Even the German taxpayer would object to such a burden when a few bodies of properly trained butchers would perform the task just as well. But if you had not had a large army during forty years in Germany, the whole military system would have yielded to civilian influence: indeed, there would have been no military system. You can't have that without a great army. Would German militarism and all that it has meant to Europe have arisen? When in conversation in past years French- men have alleged an overpowering determination on the part of Germans to conquer their country, I have often put this question: "Why did not Germany do it in 1871, when France was abso- lutely prostrate; her military power broken; her state dismembered, and German troops in occupa- tion of the whole country, a German government established at Paris?" Suppose that when the last German soldier had been withdrawn from France after that war, Frenchmen had argued thus : "The Germans have been, and gone. If they had wanted to stay and THE PROBLEM OF POWER 291 rule our country, then was their chance. They did not take it, so presumably our actual soil is safe. We will not create another army. These millions of youths will no longer give the best years of their lives to the drill sergeant and to the barracks, but to economic and intellectual effi- ciency; to social reorganisation, to strengthening the influence throughout the world of French thought and culture." It is true that there would have been no con- quests in Tonkin or Madagascar, nor alliance with Russia, nor complications in Morocco, nor consequent rivalry with Germany as to who should appoint the officials to administer certain Negro populations in Africa (and also conse- quently certain of the factors of the great war would not have come into existence ) . But would the setting of such an example in Europe, the establishment of quite a new method in "high politics," have had no effect on their subsequent development ? Bismarck, addressing the German parliament in 1888, said: If I were to come before you and say: We are seri- ously menaced by France and Russia ; it is to be foreseen that we shall be attacked; that is my conviction as a diplomat based on military information; for our defence it is better to employ the anticipatory thrust of the attack and open hostilities at once ; accordingly I ask the Imperial 292 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Diet for a credit of a milliard marks in order to start the war against both our neighbours well, gentlemen, I do not know whether you have sufficient confidence in me to vote such a grant. I hope not. But if Bismarck was doubtful about their assent in such circumstances as those and if he was not only doubtful but could infer that they would be right what would have been the attitude of the Reichstag and the Nation if the government had been obliged to say : Our neighbours cannot invade us because they have nothing to invade us with. But we intend to invade their territory and to conquer them. It is true that our army will have no army to meet, so that a large army, even on military grounds, is quite unnecessary; but we want a large army by way of showing our valour; a small pro- portion of it only will be used, and that to sack and burn, and kill unarmed, defenceless people. Do you think that in these conditions the sacri- fices necessary for the maintenance of that large and useless army would have been made, year after year? What actually happened was that, to the aston- ishment of everybody, the crushed and beaten France became in a few years once more a very formidable military power, and in the later seven- ties German militarists were believing that the crushing might all have to be done again. One THE PROBLEM OF POWER 293 can trace in these years, 13 in the history of Ger- man foreign policy, the growth of a justification of "preventive war," based on the armaments of alleged enemies. 14 But if, despite all, the last penalty would in the case of her disarmament have been paid by France, and we could imagine her annexed to Germany, become part of the German Empire, need we, even then, if we have a real faith in the strength of moral and intellectual forces, believe that her mission in the world is ended? Would not the greatest single element in the German Empire then be French? Would the moral in- fluence of forty million French, the effect of the intellectual fermentation of their art, stage, liter- ature, cease and in no way affect their new fellow subjects? Does not all evidence go to show that if we could imagine such a thing taking place the incorporation of France into the German "Bismarck himself quite admitted the risk of the military spirit affecting national policy. In the "Memoirs" (p. \\>, translation, Vol. ii p. 103) occurs the passage quoting him: ". . . That the General Staff and its chiefs . . . have permitted themselves to be misled into imperilling peace lies in the necessary spirit of the institution. ... A spirit I should not desire to see disappear. It becomes dangerous only under a monarch whose policy lacks sense of proportion and capacity of resisting one- sided and constitutionally unjustifiable influences." "The conflict between the two tendencies is brought out very clearly in Pfofessor Monroe Smith's scholarly and pregnant article, "Military Strategy versus Diplomacy," in the Political Science Quarterly for March, 1915. 294 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Empire would mean the Frenchification of the German and the Germanisation of the French perhaps to the very great improvement of both? And yet, says our instinct (and it happens to be mine), men should die rather than submit to foreign dictation. To hope that they ever will so submit is to hope for the world's salvation through human cowardice. And yet again all war this war is based on the belief that men will submit to foreign dicta- tion rather than die. The English believe that if they beat the Germans sufficiently they will give in. The Germans hope that if they frighten the English enough they will yield. Most of war and its operations are based on the assumption that the enemy will obey motives that we won't. And, moreover, if on one great day all the com- batants in this war were to throw down their arms, refuse to strike another blow, come out of the trenches and decline absolutely to discuss who began it or who first used poison gas, we should know that these transformed men, far from being craven or coward, would be showing qualities of greater hope for mankind's future than all the vast heroisms of the war so far shown; and be performing an act more glorious than all the military victories that history records. CHAPTER VIII NON-MILITARY MEANS OF INTER- NATIONAL COERCION Any method of defence in the modern world, including the military, involves a large measure of international agreement: the present war has necessitated a military alliance between nine separate and very diverse states and may finally number more. Yet despite this large measure of agreement, one force, that of economic pressure, which might tell most effectively against Ger- many may be largely ineffective, partly because of "leak- ages" owing to the position of neutrals but much more because the pressure will come to an end as soon as the war is over. Yet much of the motive of aggressive war the desire for "culture domination" and commer- cial expansion could be neutralised and even reversed if the cost of aggression were worldwide exclusion of both the culture and the commerce of the aggressor, not merely during a war but until such time as the aggressive policy were modified. Recent facts go to show that the very highly developed means of co- ordinated effort which nations now possess would make this method effective where in the past it would not have been. In any case its worth as a practical means depends, not upon its absolute effectiveness as an instru- ment of international coercion, but its relative effective- ness as compared to present methods ; or as an aid thereto. CHAPTER VIII NON-MILITARY MEANS OF INTER- NATIONAL COERCION THE justification for America concerning herself with the possibilities of non-military means of enforcing international public right, is that for her purposes, military means are ineffec- tive to that end, however successful in the mili- tary field. However great be America's naval and mili- tary power, she cannot defend by that power alone even her most elementary rights, like those violated in the sinking of the Lusitania. Did she possess to-day the greatest fleet in the world she could not radically alter the naval situation of the present war, since the Western Allies have a sea supremacy about as complete as ships can make it. If she joined the Allies, sending armies to France or Russia, the resultant victory might still leave America without any assurance that the rights for which she had fought would be respected in the future ; for sea law, as laid down by her own prospective allies, fails to meet her claims. She might after victory find the radical 297 298 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY reform of that law, which alone can satisfy the demands moral and material that she is mak- ing, still strenuously opposed by her own military associates. Even though she could secure agreement be- forehand as to the sea law that was to follow the war, she has no assurance that the agreement would outlive the military alliance on which its enforcement depended. There is a vague idea that she could in some way enforce the agree- ment by her own naval and military strength, becoming for that purpose the "strongest Power in the world"; but nations no longer fight as units they fight as groups. This war has demonstrated that a nation can no longer depend either for its security or for the enforcement of its views of right on its own strength, as the position of any one of the allied nations France, England, Russia, or Italy clearly shows. What has made it possible for them to defend themselves is an international agreement their national safety depends on treaties. War has become internationalised. If, therefore, America intends to vindicate her rights perhaps even if she intends to secure her mere safety on land by military means, she, too, must do what even the most powerful military states of the past have done : enter into the game of military alliances. But, for America's purposes NON-MILITARY COERCION 299 the establishment and enforcement of certain international laws, for instance the alliances must be permanent. Of the very few things that history teaches us, with any certainty, one is that these military alliances do not outlast the pressure of war conditions. No international settlement that has followed the great wars ever settled or endured. The military alliances on which they were based have been, as we saw from the facts presented in a former chapter, unstable and short-lived. As for destroying a common enemy, like the Germany of to-day, those same facts show that the destruc- tion has never lasted more than a year or two; at the end of which time the common enemy, the outlaw, generally became the ally of one of its policemen against all the rest; and the whole process of alliance shuffling has begun again da capo. The usual conclusion from all this is that the problem is insoluble. We indulge in a sort of fatalistic dogmatism: War is "inevitable"; "we shall always have it and it is useless to try to prevent it"; "it is the outcome of forces beyond our control"; "man is a fighting animal ... as long as human nature . . ." and so forth. All of which, obviously, gives not the slightest help in this question of protecting America's rights and interests. It is merely a noisy way 300 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY of running away from the problem. The question under discussion is not the inevitability or other- wise of war; it is whether we can make war effective for the purposes for which it is waged can so organise our relations with our allies that it shall achieve the ends for which it is fought, which heretofore most wars have not done. If we say that this is Utopian, we merely proclaim our desire to be relieved of the fatigue of thought by action of some kind, preferably entertaining and spectacular action action which at the same time gratifies an instinct or satisfies impatience. But the fighting, however gloriously ineffective, must finish sooner or later, and then once more we are brought face to face with the problem: "How shall we achieve our purpose?" I have said that war itself has become inter- nationalised and depends on agreement of some kind. Indeed the use of force effectively in human affairs generally depends on agreement and co-operation. And as it is supremely important in this matter to realise the relation between co-operation the possession of a common purpose and the em- ployment of physical force, I want to tabulate a few of those truths which happen to bear on this problem and which, because they are so obvious, are generally overlooked. We are often told that the world is governed NON-MILITARY COERCION 301 in the last resort by physical force. Well, there are animals on the earth that have im- measurably greater physical strength than man. They do not govern the world. Man, who is so much weaker, eats them, or makes them work for him. The world, indeed, was once peopled by immense beasts of a physical strength bearing about the same relation to man's that man's does to the blackbeetle's. These colossal creatures have all disappeared, superseded by others that were smaller and physically weaker. So it is evident that some element other than physical force is involved in survival. Let us push the inquiry a little further. We are told that law and civilisation rest in the last resort upon force the police or the army. Yet the police or the army obeys the instructions of the law. What physical force compels it to do so, ensures that it shall do so? Who guards the guardians? What is our final "sanction," or means of compulsion? It is an oath, a contract, and if we could not depend upon it the civilisation of the United States would be like that of Mexico or Hayti. When, as Democrats or Republicans, we vote against an existing President, how do we know that he will obey our votes and quietly walk out of office? The army? But it is he who com- mands the army; the army does not command 302 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY him. The army would stand by the country? Then what is controlling its act is a conception of constitutional right, not physical force, since it could easily, presumably, make itself master of a hostile Republican or Democratic party, as the case may be. Obviously it is not because the North American is more military that he is saved from certain defects of South American civilisa- tion. Just as obviously it is because he is less military. An Englishman says: "It is force alone which vindicates Belgium's rights." But what put the force in motion? What decided England to go to the rescue of Belgium, instead of remaining at home ? It was a thing of the mind, a moral thing, a theory: the tradition of the sanctity of treaties, the theory of international obligation, a sense of contract, if you will, like that which makes the President respect the hostile vote instead of in- triguing with the army, and the army obey its oath instead of intriguing with the President, or against him. Without this moral thing you can- not get even the effective employment of force in things that look at first sight like sheer violence. You cannot, for instance, have piracy without an agreement and co-operation, without the ob- servance of treaty rights as between pirate cap- tain and crew. If every member of the crew said : "Don't bother me about rules and obeying the NON-MILITARY COERCION 303 captain. I've got a pistol and I mean to make my own rules and act as I see fit" why, of course you could not run even a pirate ship. Success in piracy depended a great deal on the morals and discipline of the pirates on the mind of the cap- tain ; his fairness in dividing the booty ; the capac- ity of the crew to hang together. Anyway, alleges the man who is so sure that nothing but physical force matters, nations can- not depend upon anything but their own strength ; and all international agreements are futile. Well, as we have already seen, but for inter- national agreement no single one of the Allies in the present war would be safe. If, for instance, France had had to depend simply upon her own strength she would have been lost. But she had an alliance, an international treaty, and that saved her. And so with the other parties to that treaty. And if Germany is beaten, as, despite her immense forces, she probably will be, it is because she depended upon her own strength alone and neglected the element of "opinion" in other nations which has enabled her enemies to range the world against her. "Opinion" a mere moral thing was something that the German military leaders seem to have held in immense contempt ; and that contempt will be paid for by Germany at the price of defeat. For opinion comes before force, since it deter- 304 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY mines the direction that force shall take; how it shall be used. Force, in other words, is not a thing that acts of itself in human affairs, but as the instrument of a human will. The savage who happened to be born with a longer "reach" than others of his tribe was the bully of the whole until two weaker men put their heads together and agreed to co-operate, and so, by taking him front and rear at the same time, brought his tyranny to an end, replacing it by their own; which continued until three weaker men were able to act as one, and so on, until finally we got a combination of the whole community in the policeman. The effectiveness of the policeman resides, not mainly in the fact of the force that he wields, but in the fact that he personifies a common will, which is the outcome of things of the mind. When you have something resembling a com- mon will you can get the policeman : but until you get that agreement, "force" cannot be used for the ends of the community at all. The final triumph of the community represented the slow growth of a common purpose as against conflict- ing purposes. Now, what forms the basis of this common purpose, of the starting point of common action in which force is combined instead of being cancelled ? NON-MILITARY COERCION 305 How does a disorderly group of individuals an early collection of Western pioneers, for in- stance become an orderly society ? Not by each of the individuals going as heavily armed as pos- sible and taking his own view of his own rights and his own means of enforcing them. That gives you a mining camp, where they "have a man for breakfast every morning," or those Carolina mountain counties, the counties of the "crackers," where a feud about a strayed hog will wipe out a dozen families. When we say, therefore, that civilisation is based upon physical force, the statement is incomplete ; there is plenty of physical force in a mining camp and among the Carolina "crackers"; plenty of guns, armaments, "de- fence" ; much more, indeed, in proportion to popu- lation than in New York or Boston. And yet the physical force does not give us order and civilisation; it gives us chaos. What, then, makes a society out of a fortuitous gathering of units? The law courts and police? But that only pushes the question a little further back. How do the law courts and police come there? The police do not descend from the skies ready made ; they do not impose themselves upon the community. They are the creation of the community. Before you can have the police, the community must get together and decide to create it; before you can have the police you must have 306 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY a law, and before you can have a law the com- munity must decide what it is to be. The step which turns the group of Western pioneers into an orderly community is their coming together and agreeing to enforce such rules as are neces- sary to the common good. And there is no mys- tery as to the point at which common agreement starts. There is one matter on which all are agreed. There is not one of us who wants to be wiped out. Many want to wipe others out, want to make victims; nobody wants to be a victim. So that you have here, in this desire for pro- tection, an absolutely universal agreement. It is the least common denominator, and it is from that starting point of common agreement that all societies are created. That is why any society, even the most primitive, will protect in some degree the weak against the strong, be- cause each is aware that he may at any moment find himself accidentally weaker than some one else. A degenerate loafer with an automatic pistol on some dark night is more "mighty" than the finest athlete or physical giant who happens to be unarmed. We have decided that the superior physical power of any one individual the fact that any one man happens to have his sixshooter with him while his neighbors have not shall not give him by virtue of that, a right to impose his point of view. The community has agreed, if it NON-MILITARY COERCION 307 is on the road to civilisation, that such a strong man shall be restrained. They will cancel his force by throwing the whole force of the com- munity against it and in favour of his victim. They may, like the "crackers," be unintelligent, suspicious, like most ignorant folk; unable to or- ganise the mechanism for achieving what they want, but they all want this security. Their agreement on that point does not mean agreement upon all points. You may have in a community Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Populists, Protestants, and Catholics, atheists, homoeopaths and allopaths, Latins and Anglo- Saxons, every imaginable difference of race, reli- gion and opinion, but they are all agreed on the one point; that they do not want to be the victims of some one else's gun. So they decide that any one who attempts to use his gun to enforce his own view shall be restrained; all would protect his prospective victim. Now, it will be noted, as I have tried to make plain in preceding chapters, that this attitude in- volves the abandonment of "neutrality" on the part of the community. And yet the aggressor might be right. That involved a further step a necessary co- rollary that no man should be judge of his own case. He must submit his dispute to third-party decision. The individual New Yorker who 3 o8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY should attempt to settle a business difference with his grocer or his insurance company or his banker with his sixshooter, would be restrained. The fact that he believed himself entirely right and his opponent wrong; the fact, indeed, that he was right as to his contention on the difference, that he was a college professor and the grocer an ignorant person none of this would be accepted as the slightest justification for settling the matter in that way ; the plea that he was using might on the side of right would be most summarily dis- missed. For if each were his own judge as to what was right against his neighbour no society would be possible. It is the essence of a social group that no individual shall be permitted to make himself the judge of his own cause and the executioner of his own verdict in any difference that he may have with a neighbour ; and that the whole social group shall combine to prevent it. Now, the difference between the "peace man" and the "war man" is generally taken as being that the first is opposed to physical force and the second recognizes the need for it; and that the "peace man" is inconsistent because he approves of the police, and that, as the police uses physical force, he should thereby sanction and approve of armies, and their multiplication. About as reasonably could one urge that in some way a horse chestnut is related to a chestnut horse. NON-MILITARY COERCION 309 What is the difference between an army and a police force? It is very simple: armies are for the purpose of righting one another ; the police forces are not. If the New York police force were raised for the express purpose of fighting the Chicago police of defending New York against an attack from the Philadelphia police it would be an army. An army is not for the purpose of maintaining order and restraining crime ; the German army did not need to maintain order in France, and did not go there for that purpose. Nor did the French army need to main- tain order in Germany, a country which normally has less crime in it than any country in the world. In our chaotic society of nations the army of each is for exactly the purpose that the sixshooter of each individual is in the case of the Western disorderly pioneer; it is that each may enforce his own view of his rights as against his neighbour. The army of Germany or Britain is not like the police force of New York, the creation of the community of the community of nations, that is. It is merely the arm which each indi- vidual has created for himself, which he uses, not according to law or rule upon which the commun- ity (again of nations) have agreed, but according to his own notion of right or justification. Each is quite sure, passionately believing itself to be 310 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY right, that it is entitled to use its might to en- force its view. But such a plea would never for a moment be accepted in any civilised community of men. And it is because it is accepted by the nations that they do not at present form a com- munity in the proper sense of the term. Until we realise that no individual nation as against another is entitled to be its own judge of what its own rights are, we shall not make much progress to making out of them a real society. We are so much the slaves of words that I am afraid the use of the word police force will distort my meaning. We have heard from time to time a good deal of an international police force, and immediately we have in mind an army and navy controlled by an international body, taking their instructions from some international council or court, a great international force operating at the dictation of some cumbrous international machine Cossacks camping in Central Park to secure the enforcement of an international deci- sion hostile to the will of the whole American people and secured in the International Congress as the result of a snap vote in which a combina- tion of Japanese, Haytian, Siamese, and Turkish delegates had managed to secure the voting balance ! On that I will touch at greater length presently. NON-MILITARY COERCION 311 It is hardly astonishing that those at all familiar with the practical difficulties of international politics have never managed to take very seriously the elaborate paper schemes of World Federation which flourish so abundantly in this country. If we were within measurable distance of having achieved an international "will" to co-operate so complete as to agree upon the numberless and immensely difficult details that the simplest Federation plans involve, there would be no need for Federation so far as war prevention was concerned, because war would not take place. Questions like the proportional representation of the nations in a parliament with authority to decide matters of vital interest, whether in such a parliament China should count for four times as much as the United States and, if not, whether San Domingo on some principle of equality should count for as much, are at present even greater difficulties than the problems which it would be the business of the Parliament to solve if once it could be created. One need not rule out the possibility of such a Parliament, nor abandon effort toward its creation. But neither should less ambitious schemes wait upon its creation. The prac- tical thing is to ask whether it is not possible to set up in international society, the operation of forces which shall in fact include the active prin- 312 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY ciple of policing: that is to say, shall represent the common will on at least the one point of pro- tection, integrity, and shall be coercive of the recalcitrant member who challenges that will. Europe has, of course, had a shadowy consti- tution intermittently, even in modern times, with- out going back to the Roman or the Holy Roman ages, or to Henri IV and his "Grand Design." The Peace of Westphalia did at least recog- nise the existence of a community of states and a public law of sorts, an European "system"; and the Congresses of Vienna and Paris a new and different one. Both systems frequently broke down in part, and both, at the last, entirely. In so far as they attempted to give expression to a common will and a sanction to their law, that attempt was marked by two characteristics which obviously in part underlay their failure: (i) The real parties to the Acts, great military states, were few in number; (2) They depended upon military power for the enforcement of their will. Had not a few great powers virtually excluded the smaller ones from any weight in the Concert (as at Vienna) ; and had the forces which lay behind the treaties been other than military, the results might have been more satis- factory. It is true that there have been international congresses of an order different to those of NON-MILITARY COERCION 313 Munster and Vienna, but they got over the diffi- culty of sanction by deciding to have none at all ! We cannot settle the difficulty by running away from it in that fashion. It is certain that if the sanction is to be purely military, the real parties to the agreement will be few in number. The military co-operation of an Argentina, or even a Portugal, in resistance to a Russian invasion of Sweden, or a German one of Belgium, is of very doubtful effectiveness. And yet when the alliance is composed of just a few great states the defection of one state is likely to split the combination into two hostile groups and create a situation in which there is an attempt on the part of the one group to exchange the condition of partnership for that of mastery. And this too is, of course, aided by that peculiar psychology of power and military effectiveness touched on in the last chapter. What has made Germany desire to dominate the Europe of which at one time she was perfectly content to be a partner, is her growing effectiveness in that military power which in the first instance was merely a contributon to the common stock. Can these two dangerous characteristics of the past, which have marked the great European coalitions since the Renaissance, in future be avoided ? There is at least one favourable circumstance: 314 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY the parties to the European agreement of to- morrow will probably be numerous. The com- batants in the present war number a round dozen, may number fifteen before it is over ; and if those directly affected by the war and its problems are to have any part in the settlement, most of the civilised world will be involved. If the Congress even pretends to "settle" any- thing at all it will necessarily, of course, have to decide how it proposes to ensure the permanence of the rearrangement which it may make, the carrying out of the decrees it may promulgate. To put it more briefly, it will have to consider the question : "How shall we deal with the party that in a year or two attacks our decision and violates the treaty guaranteeing it?" If the implication is to be that nothing will be done if Austria may, at the moment most favourable for her, proceed to take back the Trentino, or Servia her territories ceded to Bulgaria, or what not the whole thing will, of course, be a futility too monstrous for words, and that public right and the greater security of the lesser states which Mr. Asquith has told us were the main objects of the war, will be more remote than ever. And yet the perpetuation of the old alliance arrangements will create again the condition which existed in Europe in July, 1914, when a difference with a small Balkan State over a NON-MILITARY COERCION 315 political assassination precipitates, overnight, a war which finally involves twelve nations, the killing or maiming probably before its close of some ten millions of men, and the piling up of burdens which virtually place a generation of Europeans in pawn in order to defray the cost of it. Yet, it was a war which an English ambas- sador, who was in the thick of the negotiations, declared a ten days' delay would have prevented. Will the future Congress of settlement so leave things that when such an incident occurs again, Europe is in precisely the same condition of chaos, so far as any preconcerted policy or plan is con- cerned, as it was in July, 1914? It is not, of course, a matter merely of creating some Council of Enquiry and decreeing that an incident like the Serajevo assassination be sub- mitted to it. It is doubtful whether the mere existence of such a Council would have been more effective in stopping the action of the Central powers than was the offer of an international conference actually made. The truth is that though the whole system of European armaments is based on the presumption that states will commit aggression when oppor- tunity offers, and though Europe had for a gener- ation been piling up armaments as never before in history, the force it had so acquired had no deter- rent effect on the aggressors, and when used was 316 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY rendered largely ineffective owing to factors which, practically speaking, had not been taken into account at all. There was plenty of force in Europe to render a common policy effective; there was no common policy. European military force failed as a preventive of aggression in Germany's case because there was no certainty that any overwhelming part of it would be used against Germany. There was no certainty that England would not remain neutral ; no certainty that Belgium would refuse the pas- sage of troops; nor that Japan would be one of the Allies ; nor that Italy would "rat" ; nor what part the Balkan states would play. There are plenty of gambling chances here to a state that becomes bitten with military ambitions. Just as uncertain were the effects of England's command of the sea. Would food importation be allowed? How far would the position of the neutral states facilitate the securing of supplies? Could not America, as the champion of neutrals, be counted on for ensuring large imports of food and raw material ? And, finally, if German effort failed it would not fail in such a way as to penalise or handicap Germany's future in the world at large. Obviously, until we get agreement on the points involved here, there can be no effective common action against a recalcitrant state. And that NON-MILITARY COERCION 317 agreement must just as obviously include many States, great and small, and cover the economic as well as the military contribution of each. That the lesser state can play an important part is shown by the spectacle, in this war, of the great Powers, going hat in hand to some Balkan Premier, begging him to save Western civilisa- tion by intervention at the crucial moment, and also by the fact that it is the position of such states as Holland and Sweden that has rendered the economic force of sea power, in part at least, ineffective. One may doubt whether in future European arrangements the lesser states, whose territorial integrity the coalition will doubtless be pledged to uphold, will be allowed to frustrate in some degree the effectiveness of a war waged on behalf of a public right which is for them their only guarantee of security. Note the situation in the present war. States like Holland and the Scandinavian, though not directly involved, are nevertheless vitally interested in the outcome, for the simple reason that if Germany were com- pletely successful it is certain their future position would be extraordinarily insecure. Yet these countries, even against their will, served in the early part of the war as entrepots for the supply of Germany. It is not generally realised how far from com- plete is the isolation of Germany. She has been 318 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY in daily communication with the outside world by mail and cable. The moral and military advantage of this is immense; while during the first six months of the war the flow of materials of all kinds including ammunition was very great indeed. I want to suggest here that the forces of Europe will not be really deterrent of aggression until the following conditions at least are fulfilled: (a) The forces placed behind a policy the first object of which shall be to deter aggression; (b) aggression so defined as to have no reference to the merits of a dispute between two nations or groups, but to consist simply in taking any belligerent action to enforce a state's claim against another without first having submitted that claim to international enquiry; (c) the economic pressure which is an essential part of military operations rendered effective by the co- operation of states which do not necessarily give military aid at all; (d) economic pressure so organised as to be capable of prolongation be- yond the period of military operations; and (e) the penalties attaching to aggression made so plain as to be realised beforehand by any people whose government tends to drift towards aggression. If the new Congress of Vienna is effective, those conditions will be fulfilled. NON-MILITARY COERCION 319 Any arrangement which includes them would partake of the nature of a league of mutual guar- antee of integrity, and would be one in which there would be fair hope of economic pressure gradually replacing military force as the com- pelling sanction. Economic pressure might be that first felt if the outstanding feature of the arrangement were that any constituent state resorting to hostilities as the result of a differ- ence with another, not previously submitted to an international court of enquiry, by that fact caused boycott or nonintercourse to be proclaimed and maintained against it by the whole group. This would not prevent certain members of the group from carrying on military operations, as well, against it. Some of the group would go to war in the military sense all in the economic sense; the respective roles would be so distributed as to secure the most effective action. From the moment of the offending nation's defiance of the international agreement to which it had been a party, its ships could enter no civilised ports out- side its own, nor leave them. Payment of debts to it would be withheld; the commercial paper of its citizens would not be discounted ; its citizens could not travel in any civilised country in the world, their passports being no longer recognised. Thus, the outlaw nation could neither receive from nor send to the outside world material or 320 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY communication of any kind neither food nor raw material of manufacture, nor letters, nor cables. Money due to him throughout the world would be sequestrated for disposal finally as the international court's judgment should direct ; and that rule would apply to royalties on patents and publications, and would, of course, involve pre- cautionary seizure or sequestration of all prop- erty ships, goods, bank balances, businesses held by that nation's citizens abroad. It is doubtful whether at the present stage of international understanding this arrangement could be carried beyond the point of using it as a means to secure delay for enquiry in inter- national disputes. Its use as a sanction for the judgments of international tribunals will prob- ably require a wider agreement as to the founda- tions of international law than at present exists. But a union of Christendom on the basis of common action against aggression would be a very great step to the more ambitious plans. It has, however, been suggested 1 to use this method as a sanction for the judgment of an international court in the following terms : In the event of non-compliance with any decision or decree or injunction of the Inter- national High Court, or of non-payment of the damages, compensation, or fine within the *At a conference organised by the Fabian Society, July, 1915. NON-MILITARY COERCION 321 time specified for such payment, the Court may decree execution and may call upon the Constituent States or upon some or any of them, to put in operation, after duly pub- lished notice, for such period and under such condition as may be arranged, the following sanctions : (a) To prohibit all postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and wireless communication with the recalcitrant state; (b) To prohibit all passenger traffic (other than the exit of foreigners), whether by ship, railway, canal, or road, to or from the re- calcitrant state; (c) To prohibit the entrance into any port of the Constituent States of any of the ships registered as belonging to the recalcitrant state, except so far as may be necessary for any of them to seek safety, in which case such ship or ships shall be interned; (d) To prohibit the payment of any debts due to the citizens, companies, or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant state, or to its national Government; and, if thought fit, to direct that payment of such debts shall be made only to one or other of the Con- stituent Governments, which shall give a good and legally valid discharge for the same, and shall account for the net proceeds thereof to the International High Court; (e) To lay an embargo on any or all ships within the jurisdiction of such Constituent State or States registered as belonging to the recalcitrant State; 322 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY (f) To prohibit any lending of capital or other moneys to the citizens, companies, or subordinate administrations of the recalci- trant State, or to its national Government ; (g) To prohibit the issue or dealing in or quotation on the Stock Exchange or in the press of any new loans, debentures, shares, notes, or securities of any kind by any of the citizens, companies or subordinate adminis- trations of the recalcitrant State, or of its national Government; (h) To prohibit all imports, or certain specified imports, coming from the recalci- trant State, or originating within it; (i) To prohibit all exports, or certain specified exports consigned directly to the recalcitrant State, or destined for it. It should be noted that if the future European coalition means business at all in giving perma- nent effect to its settlement provisions, the chief powers would be committed, during any period of war, by virtue of their military obligations, to everything contained in the plan just outlined. All that the project under discussion involves in addition is that (i) Certain states interested in the observance of public right, but which, by their circumstances, are not suited to mili- tary co-operation, should give economic aid by taking part in the embargo arrangements. They should not be neutral, but should refuse NON-MILITARY COERCION 323 intercourse with the recalcitrant state while according it to the others. (2) That such co- operation should be duly organised beforehand by public arrangement and be recognised as part of the normal measures of international public safety and, being duly recognised in this way, should become part of international law an amended law in so far as the rules of neutrality are concerned. (3) That the arrange- ments should include provisions for prolonging embargo or discrimination against an offending state after the period of military operations had ceased. The first point that occurs to one, of course, in considering such a plan is that it has proven ineffective in the present war since this condi- tion of non-intercourse is exactly that in which Germany now finds herself, and it is not at all effective. To which I reply : i. That Germany, as already pointed out, is not yet subject to a condition of complete non- intercourse, since from the beginning of the war she has been receiving her mail and cables and maintaining communication with the outside world, morally an immensely important factor. Nor is it entirely moral. Large supplies have, despite the naval blockade, come to her through Scandinavia and Holland. 324 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 2. That, though of slow operation, it is the economic factor which in the end will be the decisive one in the operations against Germany; as the ring tightens and a necessary raw material like cotton, is absolutely excluded, the time will come when this fact will tell most heavily. If the nonintercourse had been world-organised the effect would have operated from the first. Inci- dentally, of course, America and England, be- tween them, control the cotton of the world. 3. The effect of the suggested embargo, boy- cott or economic pressure would be most decisive as a deterrent to aggression, not so much by what it might be able to accomplish during a war as by what its prolongation would mean to the aggres- sor afterwards. For purposes of illustration, let us imagine the method applied to the case of the present war. In the first chapter I have reproduced the terms of a definite proposal for America's participation in the present conflict, in just that way out- lined for the case of those states whose circum- stances render it unsuitable for them to take part in the military operations, but whose economic co-operation would be valuable. The suggestion in question is that America should offer to settle the whole contraband and blockade dispute with England on the basis of making international that virtual control of the overseas trade of the world NON-MILITARY COERCION 325 which she now exercises. 2 America would thus take a definite part in preventing any of her sup- plies reaching Germany. The same international body, created for this purpose of which, of course, America would be part would be "deal- ing with the disposal of German property, in- terned ships, businesses of various kinds, royal- ties on patents, bank balances, and so forth, and, it may be, the more remote arrangements as to the future control of German action in the world : tariff arrangements, the conditions upon which Germany should at the peace be once more ad- mitted to the community of nations, whether on equal terms or not; whether the most efficient means of exacting some indemnification for damage done might not be by sequestration of German property throughout the world, and pos- sibly some surtax by tariff ship and mail dues, all, of course, subject to definite legal judgment of an international court." Some of the criticism provoked by this proposal shows the extreme difficulty of making clear any suggestion which implies the revision, however small, of familiar abstract conceptions. Thus Professor Usher criticises in these terms : Under this specious guise of an international council controlling the overseas trade of the world with all coun- tries except Germany, Mr. Angell proposes to strip Eng- *See page 14. 326 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY land of her control of the seas. ... In return for such cession of England's present authority he urges no quid pro quo whatever, and does not even discuss the necessity of granting one to secure the cessation itself. . . . But does not this scheme require England to cede to others that very control of the seas which she regards as the foundation of her national independence? Is it not this the control at which the German fleet is aimed and which every effort of England has been made to insure beyond peradventure ? Must not its loss seem to Englishmen the very greatest possible blow (short of invasion) which a crushing defeat of the Allies by Germany might deal them ? Moreover, is not this arbitrary exercise of author- ity by England, of which Mr. Angell writes, the very right which the English are supremely anxious to pre- serve? How, too, can it really be transferred to others while the English fleet outnumbers the fleets of its allies and all neutrals combined? I cannot believe that such a council would do more than . . . reveal in all their nakedness the fundamental difficulties which now hold nations apart. These lie in the fact that England does have control of the seas and that all other nations have something to gain from taking it away from her, and per contra that England has every- thing to lose by allowing them to do it; that nearly all neutral states, the United States in particular, are depen- dent upon the English merchant marine, English ex- change, English insurance, for economic contact with three- fourths of the globe; that the geologic contour of the European coast, the ocean currents, and the position of the British Isles compel the commerce of the world with northern Europe to pass through the English Channel which England's harbours, for the same geologic reasons, control. NON-MILITARY COERCION 327 To that criticism I replied as follows: One rubs one's eyes. Here are Great Britain and her allies, by their own repeated avowal, in an all but desperate position. They have again and again declared that their very existence is threatened; they are at this moment strain- ing every nerve to secure the help of even minor Balkan states, not a few military critics declaring that the outcome of the war will depend upon the action of those states. However that may be, however slim the chance, that is, that Germany is likely to overcome the Western Allies, there is no visible prospect of their achieving what we have so often been told is the real object of the war: such a conquest of Germany as to reduce her military power to impotence and make it impossible for her ambitions ever again to disturb the world. If that, or any- thing resembling it, is ever to be achieved by the method that the Allies are now employ- ing, it will mean a long drain upon resources that are already strained as the present very serious credit difficulties of Great Britain show resources which, without the United States to draw upon, would be obviously un- equal to the task. The proposal under discussion is that at this very critical juncture the United States should intervene and say to Great Britain: In order to secure a more effective co-opera- tion of the world against a common menace, 328 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY we will not only sacrifice what we believe to be our rights to very valuable trade with neutrals and with Germany, which, if insisted upon, would greatly add to the difficulty of your task; but we will also make arrange- ments concerning our trade and finance in the future which may render possible what your unaided efforts seem unlikely to accom- plish, namely, the removal of a menace which you say threatens your existence. Such co- operation on our part involves, in fact, plac- ing our national resources at your disposal for your present purpose and may involve on America's part great sacrifices of trade and profit over very long periods ; this sacri- fice will be obviously a valuable, possibly a vital contribution to the achievement of your ultimate purpose, which from the first you have declared to be essential to your con- tinued national existence. And this, says Professor Usher, is no service at all on America's part, "no quid pro quo whatever"! In submitting my proposal I made an assumption which I believe most Englishmen would make, namely, that "control of the sea" is something which England exercises, not for the purpose of imposing her domina- tion, political or commercial, upon the world, but for securing England's safety (which they believe in the present circumstances in- volves the defeat of Germany) and the vindi- cation of what Mr. Asquith has called "the public right of Europe." If the civilized NON-MILITARY COERCION 329 world will make common cause with her in those objects, associating itself with her for the purpose of rendering more effective that isolation of Germany she is attempting to achieve by her sea power; and, if the neces- sity of defeating Prussian military aggres- sion should demand it, for the purpose also of completing and prolonging that isolation to a degree and in a way which her unaided sea domination could never do, why, in the name of all the professions with which she entered this war, should England object? Professor Usher seems to write as though the plan involved some surrender of Eng- land's power to her enemies; but it means increasing that power over her enemies by the addition of an economic ally and the pro- longation into the post bellum period, by the consent of her allies, of blockade arrange- ments, their transformation into an organ- ised embargo. What Professor Usher suggests is that when virtually the whole non-German world is prepared to tax its re- sources for the purpose of waging more effectively a war against a common enemy, England will stand out for controlling the employment of that instrument, not for the common purpose, but for her own advantage as against that of her allies. I do not believe that she could if she would, or would if she could. For, while it is true that England's allies and the United States may be depen- dent upon her in the way Professor Usher suggests, it is also true that England is very 330 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY much dependent financially and industrially just at present upon the United States a circumstance which Professor Usher's sur- vey of the factors does not include. When he tells us that international co-operation of this kind is impossible because England would be in a position to defy the decision of her partners by virtue of her preponderant sea power, he surely overlooks the fact that those partners, notably the United States, have the disposal of things ammunition, food supplies, money essential to rendering even sea power effective. The real situation is one of interdependence with the balance as between England and the United States tilted rather remarkably just now against Great Britain. Professor Usher's criticism moreover seems to overlook the fact that if America joins the Allies in the ordinary way all the arrangements I have indicated will go into effect automatically during the period of the war. America in a state of war will take her own precautions to see that supplies, whether of cotton or of anything else, do not reach Germany; this country will also pre- sumably enter into some sort of consultation with her allies as to the most effective form of her co-operation in the war that they would be waging in common : whether, for instance, her energies should go mainly into the furnishing of supplies, ammunition, money, etc. This country would have to decide what proportion of the output of NON-MILITARY COERCION 331 munitions and supplies would be needed for her own military purposes, and that would involve the control of exports. Obviously there can be no real and effective division of labor between the Allies in these circum- stances without consultation and agreement as to such matters, and as to others like the furnishing of supplies to neutrals. Would England still insist that her allies had no part in controlling those arrangements, and that such control must remain a prerogative of her absolute dictation secured through sea power ? In short, would not the mere fact of America's joining the Allies bring about just those international arrangements concerning the destination of American supplies, etc., which in effect mean the internationalisation of sea control? What my suggestion amounted to was this: that since internationalisation of sea control would be inevitable during the period of the war anyhow, if America became one of the combatants, this country could secure England's co-operation in a plan which may give the nations as a whole, not merely for the purposes of the present war but per- manently, an instrument more effective than military force, exercised as it has been in the past, seems to be in restraining a recalcitrant member. England's co-operation therein would in no wise weaken British sea power as a de- fensive instrument, for a condition of its internationalisation would be the co-opera- 332 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tion of all of those who shared its control in British defence. The world as a whole under such an arrangement would stand for British integrity as much as it would stand for Belgian, and if the plan is workable at all British security would gain and not lose. What Professor Usher's objection comes to is that England desires to retain her con- trol of the seas, not as a defensive instru- ment, but as one for securing special ad- vantage over other nations. To which I would reply that it cannot in practice be so used ; and that if it could, and England does so attempt to use it to the disadvantage of others, she is destined one day to occupy the position that Germany does to-day. Rather than that, I believe that Englishmen as a whole would, if the facts were clear, infinitely prefer some such international arrangement as the one I have indicated. I will deal with certain other criticisms and objections later, but in order to see clearly just how the proposed internationalisation of trade control might be applied to the problems created by the war let us assume that the Allies have been only so far successful as to stop the Ger- man offensive ; that, in other words, it had become plain, even to the Germans themselves, that they could not possibly break through the Allies' lines. On the assumption that the German offensive has been stopped, here is something, at least, with NON-MILITARY COERCION 333 which the world could bargain. For, if, as pointed out in the proposal I have cited, we can assume the international control of the world's wealth having gone on for some time, "there would be a situation in which the channels of trade would for prolonged periods have been turned away from Germany, while the needs of war would have engendered between Germany's enemies much mutual helpfulness in the way of loans, credit arrangements, etc., with their resources organised and their action co-ordinated by cen- tral international organisation." The Allies in these circumstances would be in a position to notify Germany that, whether the military operations of the Allies compelled the evacua- tion of Belgium or not, German property throughout the world ships in port, royalties on patents, all other debts due to German citizens would be sequestrated and, under order of court, ultimately realised and the proceeds paid into a central war indemnification fund for the relief of those who had suffered by Germany's aggression. They would also be in a position to notify her that, failing the fulfilment of certain con- ditions, the world would be closed to her after the war for a period of years, that period to be succeeded by one in which, though inter- course might be established partially, a sur- 334 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY tax would be imposed on all tolls or dues paid for mail, cables, harbor charges, and so on, by Germany throughout the world, such surtax also to be paid into the same indemnification fund. Such a situation does not imply an overwhelm- ing victory on the part of the Allies. From the moment that Germany obviously cannot break through the Allied line the Allies would be in a position to put such a threat into execution. But it is, of course, mainly as a deterrent in the formulation of future policies on the part of would-be aggressors that some such method would be valuable: when the nations come to discuss the future at the end of this present war. Whether such a method could play much part or not as an instrument of bargaining in the existing settlement it could certainly play a large part in determining the future course of nations likely to be bitten with military ambition. If Germany had known, during the last decade or two, when Pan-Germanism and culture- spreading had taken its most dangerous form, that the result of military aggression would be to close the world to German influence, would aggression have become a popular policy? al- ways assuming for the sake of the argument that Germany is the aggressor. Would not the pros- pect of such a penalty on aggression reverse and neutralise the motives that provoke aggression? NON-MILITARY COERCION 335 If the center of militarism and unrest in Europe has been in Germany, certainly that unrest had its origin in the German desire for national self- expression, for expansion, for the imposition of German influence on the world. But if it had been known that the fact of using Germany's military machine in defiance of the common will of Chris- tendom implied the closing of the outside world to her trade, her communications, the travel of her people, the dissemination of her literature, the distribution of her products, would not Germans, inspired by dreams of German domination, have been likely to consider whether German influ- ence would not have a greater chance of free play by peaceful methods than by military aggres- sion? Imagine the world absolutely closed to Ger- many, her trade shut out, all communication with her cut off, for a period of ten years! (That is the case now, remember, with four- fifths of Europe, and will be the case with America if this country goes to war.) How would German influence, whether commercial, intellectual, or political, stand at the end of that period ? In any case it would not be a condi- tion that the Pan-Germanist or Imperialist would desire as likely to advance his dreams. There is at least a chance that even he would decide, on the strength of evidence now available, that Ger- 336 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY manism stood a greater chance of survival through peaceful penetration than through mili- tary means. Had he to choose between reduction of armaments coupled, of course, with some guarantee against attack by other states plus an open field in the world at large on one hand, and continued armaments and a closed world on the other, even he would be likely to choose the former. As to certain obvious objections. We will first take the suppositious case of American action against Germany already described. It will be said that by such action America would have sacrificed her neutrality and created a state of war with Germany. Of course, and if Germany cared to avail herself of existing inter- national law to insist on that point, it would sim- plify America's action. But . it would be an academic point raised by Germany. She could hardly oblige America to send troops to Europe to fight German troops and, just for the moment, she is not in a position to send troops here. The meaning which America gives to a "state of war" is in the supposed circumstances mainly Amer- ica's affair ; and if she cares to put the emphasis of her effort upon the development of other than military forces, how can Germany prevent that? And why should America worry as to the precise NON-MILITARY COERCION 337 meaning which Germany might attach to "a state of war" in the assumed circumstances? The situation of a state like Holland would, of course, be very different. But it should be noted that Britain is managing to obtain by the private co-operation of Dutch merchants pretty much the situation which would exist if Dutch neutrality had been abolished in the fashion contemplated in the project under discussion. The Dutch mer- chants have established a commission The Netherlands Overseas Trust the scope of whose operations may be gathered from the notifica- tion issued from Washington 3 to the following effect : Further restrictions on commerce -to Holland are re- ported to the Department of Commerce by Commercial Attache Erwin W. Thompson, assigned to Berlin, but temporarily handling United States commercial interests at The Hague. Mr. Thompson cables that the Overseas Trust, which handles all imports into the Netherlands under an agree- ment with Great Britain that none of the goods will reach Germany, had decided to issue licenses only to importers able to satisfy the trust that former consign- ments had been consumed in Holland. Only shipments consigned to the Overseas Trust are allowed to pass unmolested by Great Britain. Dutch importers will be required hereafter to dispose of their goods under the immediate supervision of the 'August 13. 338 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Overseas Trust, which has formed a new committee for the purpose. Mr. Thompson advises the department of an opening for American coal in the Netherlands market. Hereto- fore no coal from abroad has been allowed to enter Holland, but agitation resulting from a shortage of fuel has influenced the Overseas Trust to issue important licenses for the American product. 4 4 Some of the effects of these measures are dealt with by the Saturday Evening Post in the following paragraph : "Recently rates for marine insurance on shipments in neutral vessels from the United States to Scandinavian ports except Stockholm were advanced to seven per cent ; while to Stockholm the rate was fixed at ten per cent. These are the rates the shipper paid when he declared neutral ownership and neutral destination of the cargo. At the same time the rate of insurance on shipments in neutral vessels from the United States to Holland neutral ownership and destination being declared was one and a half per cent. "The reason for this extraordinary difference was that Dutch shipping interests had combined in the Netherlands Overseas Trust and given guaranties satisfactory to Great Britain that no goods shipped into Holland should find their way to Germany. The Overseas Trust gives licenses, under strict regulations, to Dutch importers, who must prove that the goods do not reach Germany. When the insurance rates were advanced Scandi- navian countries had not made arrangements which assured to England's satisfaction that goods billed to their ports would not reach Germany. Hence, England was seizing the shipments; hence, the nearly prohibitive insurance rates. "Small neutral states are free to use the sea just in propor- tion as they meet Britannia's requirements. In wartime 'free- dom of the seas' is largely a figure of speech." Measures of a much more coercive kind are applied by Great Britain to control American trade in such a way as to serve her military ends. NON-MILITARY COERCION 339 They are revealed in great detail in the New York " World" (which speaks of them as "Brit- ain's Blockade of America") in its issues of September 20-21. It summarises their nature thus : The procedure is simple. When an American industry is dependent on raw material coming from any part of the British Empire, that industry is compelled, at the cost of a famine in raw material, to sign agreements restricting its sales at home and confining its exports to England or her allies in the war. In the case of cotton, which is beyond British control, a blacklist of offending American dealers serves the same purpose. This is an attempt to extend the British blockade of Germany along a line reaching out around the world. It is an effort to "collect" on the blockade not within the war area but "at the source," through a virtual invasion of neutral America, thousands of miles from, the scene. It is either an admission that Britain is not powerful enough at sea in this war to administer an effective and legitimate blockade, or it is an undertaking to prevent America from gaining any advantages out of the war as against England in trade with neutral markets. The first of these alternative conclusions makes a sorry comment on British naval efficiency. The second reads badly at a time when British financial agents are combing the country for the means with which to buy goods in a market their Government is trying to hold down. These blacklisting and blackjacking efforts are con- ducted through individuals and associations, many of them in the United States. They are glaringly in re- 340 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY straint of the domestic and foreign trade of the United States. We have a law clearly applying criminally or civilly to such cases. Let that law be enforced. 5 As a matter of fact, however, the American State Department, far from taking any such ac- tion, in a sense recognises, if not the legality, at least the inevitability of measures like these. Professor Clapp points out that though the United States government had taken the view that the stoppage of German exports to America was illegal, two officials of the State Department were deputed to act as representatives of Amer- ican shippers in presenting to the British embassy at Washington proofs that their desired imports from Germany had been paid for before March. As he points out, the situation would have been paralleled with regard to Germany if, after pro- testing against the sinking of passenger vessels with Americans aboard, the American govern- ment had appointed two Foreign Travel advisers attached to the State Department, whose func- tions would have been to inform prospective travelers what ships the German Ambassador, on behalf of his government, would agree not to torpedo. "For further details of the fashion in which Britain thus secures discrimination against Germany by neutrals, see Pro- fessor E. J. Clapp's interesting work : "The Economic Aspects of the War" (Yale University Press), pp. 252-6. NON-MILITARY COERCION 341 Now, if such a situation is possible at all under international law, that law will not require much stretching either in fact or in abstract conception to include a general subscription to the rule which would, of course, be a necessary part of any plan of international sanction by economic pressure. That rule, which would have to secure general assent at the forthcoming European settlement if any such plan as that here discussed is to become part of such settlement, would be of some such nature as that indicated by the following clause of a suggested arrangement : When any sanction or other measure or- dered by the Court (Council) is directed to be put in operation against any Constituent State, it shall be an offence against the comity of nations for the State against which such decree, decision, injunction or execution is ordered, or against which any sanction or other measure is directed to be enforced, to declare war or to make any naval or military action, or to violate the territory or attack the ships of any other State or to commit any other act of aggression against any or all of the States so acting under the order of the court; and all the other Constituent States shall be bound, and do hereby pledge them- selves to make common cause with the State or States so attacked. 6 'From a plan outlined by the Fabian Society in July, 1915. 342 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY It will be said, of course, that a state which has challenged the other constituent states by refusing to submit its difference to enquiry is certainly not likely to be restrained from aggres- sion by the mere fact that such aggression is proclaimed "an offence against the comity of nations." But there is nothing now save its own caution that prevents any one nation from issuing declarations of war to the whole world at the same time. We may assume that a nation placed in a state of nonintercourse with the world would not gratuitously add to the not trifling difficulties of this situation by insisting that every party to it must fight it by its armies and navies as well as by its economic forces. This point is important, because the first natural criticism provoked by the proposal is that the acts necessary to create a state of noninter- course are tantamount to a state of war, which calls on a nation to move its troops or its battle- ships. So, under existing precedent and conceptions, it does; but with new methods and new concep- tions would come new precedents and a new meaning to "a state of war." If a nation cares to assume that it has received a declaration of war from the world, it can, of course, if it deems its dignity demands it, move its troops against the planet as a whole. NON-MILITARY COERCION 343 As a matter of military fact, of course, it could do nothing of the kind. It would have to choose, to say the least, which part of the world it would attack first; and would desire, if it could, while dealing with one particular nation, to be free from attack by the others. So there is not necessarily any more likelihood than at present of a minor state like, say, Spain or Sweden finding itself suddenly involved in military operations. We know unhappily that such a risk exists now for a small state, even when it is not a party to such an arrangement as that which we have in mind. Belgium and Lux- emburg show us that little states, obviously inno- cent of any intention or possibility of aggression, may now become the victims, merely by reason of their position, of the military quarrels of larger neighbours. This much is certain that, confronted by an organized group of nations representing in fact the outside world determined to enforce a boy- cott, Germany could not challenge all at once and compel by military means all, at one and the same time, to admit her ships and facilitate her trade. She would have to begin with at most one or two and concentrate her military effort on them, and in order to be successful would have to secure some sort of peace or understanding with the others, 344 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY "It is too complicated to be effective, and likely to hurt us as much as our enemy." Well, I think most men of affairs would have argued that way a year ago ; but the experience of the present war shows that centralised action, like that of a great state, or, better still, of a group of states, utilising the devices of the modern world instantaneous communication with all parts of it, and so on can co-ordinate the immense economic forces of our commercial and industrial civilisation far more effectively than most of us a year ago believed to be pos- sible. In the first days of August both Great Britain and Germany were confronted with the need of redirecting the currents of trade and intercourse of all kinds. Intercourse between two great groups the British and the German Empires had been suddenly severed, and very many thought that the disorganisation so created would produce catastrophic effects paralysing both incidentally the present writer did not take and never had taken that view. The respective governments, however, immediately used the national resources at their disposal to rearrange the fabric of credit and trade. The British, for instance, guaranteed commercial paper and the collection of certain foreign debts. It practically took over marine insurance. It NON-MILITARY COERCION 345 even took charge of certain industries and became the distributor of certain raw materials. Very much to the astonishment even of those who had the arrangements in hand, it was found that a great centralised government could effec- tively exercise the necessary control over very great areas, stretching, in the case of the British Empire, from Calcutta to London, from Cape Town to Vancouver, and from Montreal to Sydney; and in a few days make such readjust- ments as would enable life in these immense areas to go on with relatively small disturbance. The experiment proved two things : First, that nonintercourse can in large degree be very quickly established; and, second, that its effects can be controlled that they can be prevented, for instance, from falling unduly on one class or section. Now we may urge that this proves too much, since it proves that a nation like Germany can escape in large part the damage resulting from being cut off from the rest of the world. That point I have already dealt with. In the long run she cannot stand it and maintain her position of dominance. The rest of the world those enforc- ing it can stand it much better, for the following reasons : Every League of Peace every combination for the restraint of disorder assumes that the 346 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY lawbreakers will be in a minority; that those coercing outnumber those to be coerced; and, though this method, like all methods of restraint police and courts and prisons within the state cost money involves sacrifice on the part of the majority enforcing it, it is to them less burden- some because shared by a greater number. In other words, the states enforcing noninter- course are still free to maintain their communi- cation with one another and so to readjust their social, commercial, and industrial life more easily and to greater advantage, because operating over a larger area, than is possible within the nar- rower limits of the embargoed nation. "Embargoes of the past have not been effec- tive." This objection generally is based on the ill working of the Continental decrees of Napoleon and his rivals and the futility of our own decrees of "nonintercourse" during that period. But I can hardly imagine anyone quoting that with any vivid realisation of the difference, not only in extent of international commerce, but in the dependence of a civilised people in normal times upon international intercourse. So far, of course, as the American nonintercourse procla- mations were concerned, they were not the act of a worldwide group of powers, but of what NON-MILITARY COERCION 347 was at the time a feeble, distant, and undeveloped outpost of civilisation. Embargoes in those days were enforced by sailing ship navies and so loosely applied that smuggling became at times as considerable an industry as the commerce which the embargoes aimed to destroy had been. Every feature of the conditions of the continental embargoes is as obsolete as the old smuggler who formed a part of them. If, in those days, bad weather or other causes completely severed the new world from the old for three or four months if it took, that is, that period to communicate with Europe and get a reply, which it frequently did there was no particular disturbance of life on either continent. But if one could imagine such cessation of communication to-day, immense industries, involving millions of persons, would be vitally affected. I have already touched upon the deceptiveness of that appearance of self- sufficingness which war conditions have given to Germany. She could, of course, live in a physical sense ; but the cost that she would pay for sever- ance from civilisation the scientific and intel- lectual as well as the economic which her people would thoroughly well realise would be enor- mous. She can, undoubtedly, be self-sufficing as a military measure for a time, a year or two it may be, but a country cut off from cotton, rubber, 348 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY coffee, tropical drugs, to mention but a few things ; hardly able to communicate with the out- side world, whose citizens cannot travel abroad, is not a comfortable country, to say the least, and not one that could very long keep up the pretension of "world domination." The whole philosophy of "world domination," world leader- ship, "saviourship of civilisation," and all the phrases which feed national vanity and the disastrous policy it promotes, would become ludicrous in the case of a people so situated. From the moment that it is no longer covered with the glamour of military heroism; so soon as it becomes, not a matter of glorious battles, but inglorious isolation from civilised intercourse, the psychological roots of sentimental Imperial- ism are cut away. * * This psychological difference from methods of war is an important one. If someone with whom you maintain ordinary relations quarrels with you over a dispute, and, by way of enforcing his view of it, strikes you, you don't argue about the merits of your difference, you strike back and you have no desire whatever to know his view: your only desire is to hurt him. And the more he proclaims his intention of showing you he is the better man and parades his fighting capacity generally, the more you are determined NON-MILITARY COERCION 349 not to be humiliated in that fashion. The merits of the dispute itself soon disappear, and it is the circumstances of the fight that concern both par- ties. Neither has any sense of moral obloquy, and the longer the fight goes on and the more its origins are forgotten and the more bitter it becomes, the more do both feel justified in carry- ing it "to an honourable conclusion." But the case is different, if, as the result of your conduct, one of your friends simply ceases business and personal relations with you; and, still more, if he is joined in this attitude by the community in which you live. If you have honestly taken the view that your conduct has been right, you are much more likely to put to yourself the other man's view than in the cir- cumstances when he opened negotiations with a blow. And though parallels between individuals and nations are generally false, there is enough of validity in the analogy here to justify the hope that a prolonged condition of nonintercourse, in- glorious and tiresome, would not set up quite that condition of patriotic blindness to any side of the case other than that of one's country, that a war does. And it should be noted that the essentials of this proposal are entirely in keeping with the evolution of police processes in society generally. 350 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Only in the very crudest forms of society are its members compelled to make their contribution to the enforcement of the common will by sharing in the act of physical compulsion, taking actual part in police work. Only on the frontier is a citizen likely to be called upon to become part of the sheriff's posse. The policing of a populous and heterogeneous community could not be efficiently done in that way. What the citizen does is to make an economic contribution thereto : he pays his taxes. But that is not all he does. Social control is directly exercised in a thousand ways, other than through direct physical force, even of the police: by the honour which in our daily intercourse we accord to the good man, the repugnance with which we meet the bad, the discomfort we create for the challenger of certain conventions, the effort to make it pleasant for those who make it pleasant for us, our dis- trust of the dishonest, our refusal to co-operate by employment of or trade with the inefficient and untrustworthy all the multitudinous proc- esses, moral, social, economic, by which we compel conformation to certain definite rules and stan- dards of conduct. It is difficult to bring home clearly a vision of how an analogous process would operate interna- tionally, because mankind has never used this instrument of exclusion in just this way. Two NON-MILITARY COERCION 351 countries or groups of countries go to war; the armies of one are destroyed; and a year after peace is made they trade with one another and both with the world at large just as before. Trade between France and Germany was multi- plied by three in the interval between the wars of 1870 and 1914. But, with efficient organ- isation, the most telling elements of boycott are those against which no military force can pre- vail. Here is a form of defence against a common enemy in which every man, woman, or child of every country that feels itself threatened can co- operate. Even bayonets cannot compel a world to drink German beer, or buy German goods, or read German books, or speak the German tongue, or understand German philosophers. Germany herself has, during forty years in the case of Alsace, and longer in the case of Poland, employed ruthlessly all the means that unques- tioned power placed in her hands, and tried to Germanise those two provinces; and, though she was dealing with peoples without means of mili- tary resistance and with but rudimentary organ- isation of the non-military means, her efforts, by her own admission, have completely failed. But, nevertheless, Poland has been invaded and more Polish territory taken? Yes, because only now is the futility of these annexations be- ginning to appear. Much German opinion, even 352 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY in this time of war, is against annexation of non- German territory and recognises its danger. But the point is that these annexations have hereto- fore carried no penalty in so far as German ex- pansion in the rest of the world is concerned. If, forty-four years since, the German Empire had known that as the price of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, it would face a costly ex- clusion from the markets of Europe and America, would not the counsellors who opposed that annexation have been very greatly strengthened; and would it have occurred? It is the elusiveness of non-military resist- ance which would give it its strength in the modern world. Even if one could imagine a Germany breaking down a world's embargo in some way forcing the entrance of her ships into foreign harbours that would not give customers to German trade if the resisting country had determined not to buy German goods. Every housewife boycotting German hardware and every child German toys would be a soldier in the defence of his or her country; and if all German power and efficiency have not sufficed to break down the resistance to Germanisation of a rela- tively small number of Polish peasants, how could it accomplish the immensely more difficult task of overcoming the American woman and the American child ? NON-MILITARY COERCION 353 It is not generally realised, perhaps, how the outstanding features of our industrial civilisa- tion give into the hands of a determined popula- tion means of non-military resistance not pos- sessed in former times. Instantaneous intercom- munication over wide areas would render a unity of action of this kind possible, which was not possible even a century since. The permanent need of intercommunication between nations is greater than it was; the interdependence is far more vital. In the old days a nation could live within itself in some degree. In our day it cannot. Perhaps the one nation that could come nearest to it would be our own. The United States is indeed the one country of the world against which it would be most difficult to employ effectively the method of boycott. That fact is, of course, a considerable disadvantage and tells somewhat against the value of the method. On the other hand, however, the vastness of the resources and the weight of the economic forces that give us this immunity also give us a strong position for initiating this plan, for organising it and render- ing it effective. Indeed, so far as it is possible to judge, there is no great scepticism on the part of American business men as to the practicability of the plan under discussion. In the Convention of the 354 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY Chamber of Commerce of the United States held last February in Washington, Mr. Herbert S. Houston presented a resolution urging that "the economic pressure of the world's commerce was the most effective possible safeguard of the world's peace and that its application should be provided for as a penalty in future Hague Con- ventions." In supporting his resolution, Mr. Houston said: Hague Conferences have sought earnestly for penal- ties that would save their conventions from being treated as mere "bits of paper." Penalties that every nation would be bound to respect could be enforced through economic pressure. The loss in trade would be small or great in proportion to the amount and duration of the pressure ; but it would be at most only an infinitesimal fraction of the loss caused by war. This pressure would not require an international police force to make it effective. Each nation signatory to a Hague Convention that some nation had broken could apply it against that nation. Of course, the fact of infraction would have to be established, but that would be equally necessary if an international police force were to be used. The point urged is that economic pressure is a powerful and peaceful way to insure peace, while an international police force is likely to be a warlike way to provoke war. Probably such a force could be employed as a constabulary for the Hague Conference, under well defined limitations, but its use would be beset with endless difficulties and enormous and per- petual expense. Economic pressure, on the other hand, could be put in operation from within by each nation NON-MILITARY COERCION 355 without expense and its power would be as sure and steady and irresistible as gravity. Mr. Edward A. Filene, the well-known Boston merchant, vice-president of the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce, is another prominent business man who has identified him- self with the support of the general plan of economic pressure. Speaking at Philadelphia, at the meeting which was organised there under the presidency of Mr. Taft (June 17, 1915), Mr. Filene emphasised many of the considerations urged here. He said : America has it within her power to organise forces which are greater, perhaps, than battleships and armies. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that the world can do without arms. I do not think we can, any more than we can do without the policeman. But, just as within the State there are many things we use besides the policeman, and before we use the police- man, for the enforcement of the law or the execution of the judgments of the courts, so there are forces that we can use before we employ our armies and our navies. These forces can be summarised in the term "Economic Pressure," by which I mean the commercial and financial boycott of any nation which goes to war without sub- mitting its dispute to judgment or to inquiry, and that boycott could be of a progressive severity. In the first, and what would probably be usually a sufficiently effec- tive stage, the nations forming a league for international law and order would refuse to buy goods from or sell goods to the offending nation. If its offense, however, 356 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY were a very grievous one, and continued despite the first measures, so that greater pressure were needed, the nations of the League would practically sever all inter- course with it and refuse to enter into financial or com- mercial transactions, refuse to receive or send its mail, or to clear its ships. And then only, finally, if such measures were ineffective, would military force be resorted to. But my plea is that, in the first instance, economic force is clearly indicated and that military force should be resorted to only if economic pressure should prove ineffective. It is the deterrent effect of organised nonintercourse which would make war less likely, since it would be a terrible penalty to incur, and one more difficult, in a sense, to fight against than military measures. Furthermore, its systematic organisation would tend to make any subse- quent military action by the League more effective. Many States that, for various reasons, might not be able to co-operate with military force, can co-operate with their economic force, and so render the action against the offending State more effective, and that, in the end, would be more humane." Mr. Filene's support is suggestive owing to the fact that he has in the past carried through very important measures of international com- mercial organisation, notably in connection with the International Chamber of Commerce. It is understood that a very influential group in the United States Chamber of Commerce is now at work upon a report on the subject and may submit a referendum upon it to the Chambers of the country. NON-MILITARY COERCION 357 I do not imagine, by the way, that "without expense" Mr. Houston intends to convey the idea that non-intercourse would be costless to the nations enforcing it. It would not. It would be costly, as is every form of penalty to those inflict- ing as well as to those upon whom it is inflicted. But that does not condemn it. Some of the gravest dangers of the proposed plan have not been touched upon by its critics so far as I know: certainly not by my critics. Its outstanding defect is that the strong inter- national currents which division of trade and labour, irrespective of frontiers, have in the last few generations set up would be deliberately checked. The activities of men, which have in the recent past so largely disregarded frontiers, would be so organised as to take very considerable regard of frontiers. Nations will tend to become under such an arrangement what they have not been of late: economic, social and moral units. There might result between nations a sort of competition for self-sufficingness which, ill directed, might conceivably end in buttressing that immoral nationalism which was one of the causes of the war. But to accept present evils because a possible remedy may be ill-used is to condemn us to help- 358 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY lessness. If a remedy presents itself it is our business to see that it is not ill-used. Moreover and this reason is the decisive one all the risk and evil of distorted nationalism, of swamping the human conscience in the national corporation, which like other corporations has no conscience, is still more inherent in the militarisa- tion of the nations, in military preparation and efficiency. Every new proposal is subjected to a standard of judgment which it is never thought of apply- ing to old methods. There are, of course, in the project under discussion, obvious defects, difficulties, and dangers. But to justify its trial or adoption it is not necessary to controvert that ; all that is necessary is to show that those dis- advantages are, on the whole, less than those attaching to any possible alternative method. When, therefore, it is objected that the proposal has such and such defects, it is necessary to ask whether military force war in the ordinary sense has not those defects in still greater degree. The plan here outlined will not work perfectly ; it will be less imperfect than the present means just as imperfect as the means we employ within the state for punishing crime or compel- ling observance of necessary rules. It will be expensive of employment, just as the maintenance NON-MILITARY COERCION 359 of law courts and police and prisons is expensive. It will hurt innocent parties, just as when we send a man to the penitentiary we punish his wife and family far more severely, probably, than we do the culprit. All I claim for this extension of the meaning of war is that the methods which the circum- stances of the modern world have made possible will be much more effective than merely military coercion, because in the last resort history proves such coercion in certain contingencies notably such contingencies as those that face America now and will face Christendom at the end of the war hardly to be effective at all. Above all, will the method here suggested stand out from purely military methods as tend- ing by its use to undermine at least some of the motives moral and material which create the danger of military ambition and aggression. The older and purely military method does not so undermine those motives and impulses; its em- ployment tends to develop them, to spread the very disease which it is its object to cure. Mili- tary conquest of a military aggressor generally ends merely by transferring the danger from one area to another. What are the steps for America to take? The definite one that has here been suggested is contingent upon the rupture of Diplomatic 360 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY relations with Germany. If that is avoided the natural ground for international action by Amer- ica at the settlement, or earlier, is in the questions arising out of sea law. In that, as in certain other regards, America stands at this juncture of inter- national affairs as the natural and most powerful exponent of neutral interest. She should, there- fore, secure practical agreement not necessarily by formal conference between herself, the South American states, and possibly also the neutral states of Europe, as to the international law for which they would all stand in such matters as the use of the sea. On the basis of this, America might then devise with them an agreement as to their economic relations with the rest of the world in certain situations: an understanding covering not only such things as the furnishing of supplies to European or Asiatic combatants in wartime, but also covering certain peace con- tingencies as well. Presenting thus a solid front to the actual com- batants, the neutrals could certainly secure a place at the settlement when it comes to discuss- ing those matters that are now subjects of differ- ence between this country and Germany and Great Britain. Obviously the combatants will need the neutrals after the war ; and if America went into the con- ference as the central figure of a combination NON-MILITARY COERCION 361 composed of the neutral states, she could in large measure dominate the situation, so far as future international law is concerned, and place the international relations of the future on a very different foundation, by leading in the organisa- tion and application of those forces I have dealt with here. All this, of course, calls for a little imaginative- ness and inventiveness; but America has never lacked those qualities in other spheres. Will she show them in this new field that she will shortly be obliged to enter the field of international politics? Or will she be content with the old futilities of the older world ? DATE DUE PRINTKDINU.S.A. JfKMHBRNII