V^{otice I N ITS gratuitous distribution of books and pamphlets dealing with international affairs, the American Association for International Con- ciliation assumes no responsibility for the ideas expressed in such documents. The material is sent out for the purpose of furthering the study- by thinking men and women in the United States, of documents of public importance bearing upon international relations. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/americanleaguetoOOashbrich THE AMERICAN LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE THE EUROPEAN ANARCHY. By G. Lowes Dickinson. 2s. 6d. net. Postage 4d. ABOVE THE BATTLE. By Romain Holland. 2s. 6d. net. Postage 4d. OUR ULTIMATE AIM IN THE WAR. By George G. Armstrong. 2s. 6d. net. Postage 5d. TOWARDS A LASTING SETTLEMENT. Edited by Charles Roden Buxton. 2s. 6d. net. Postage 5d. TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT. By J. A. Hobson. 2s. 6d. net. Postige 4d. NATIONAL DEFENCE: A Study in Militarism. By Ramsay Macdonald, M.P. 2s. 6d. net. THE PRESENT POSITION AND POWER OF THE PRESS. By Hilaire Belloc. 2s. 6d. net. London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd. HE AMERICAN LEAGUE to EN- FORCE PEACE AN ENGLISH INTERPRETATION BY C. R. ASHBEE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. LOWES DICKINSON LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. ...y. . T^ F/>s/ published in igiy {All rights reserved) INTRODUCTION Mr. ASHBEE has asked me to contribute a few words of introduction to this volume. I do so gladly because I am in agreement with the main position he takes up. It is clear to me that the future of civilization depends largely on the attitude adopted by the United States in the immediate future. The period of unarmed isolation is over. Either the United States will remain isolated, but armed, in which case they will enter as a new element into the existing international anarchy, and by so doing intensify and per- petuate it ; or they will enter, with other States, into a new international order, arming only so much as may be necessary to support that order. That they should adopt the latter course is probably a condition of any such s 3598^8 6 INTRODUCTION order coming into existence. But if it does not, not only have we to look forward to a long perspective of wars, but the prepara- tion to wage those wars will involve the trans- formation of the democratic countries into militarist oligarchies. The issue between democracy and militarism really is the issue of the war. But it will not be decided merely by the war, it will be decided by what follows the war . And in that decision the part played by the United States will be a determining factor. The only way out of the vicious circle of armed anarchy seems to be to form an international agreement to refer disputes to peaceable settlement, and to back that agree- ment, in case of need, by such armaments as it may be necessary to maintain for that purpose. The plan of such an agreement is laid down in the American League to Enforce Peace with which Mr. Ashbee deals. And that plan has been endorsed by President Wilson and Viscount Grey. The great ques- INTRODUCTION 7 tion of tKe future is whether the Governments and the public opinion of the belhgerent nations, as well as of the United States, will support it. As I write there comes from President iWilson the following message :— The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that whatever is done that is likely to disturb the whole world's life must first be tested in the court of the whole world's opinion before it is attempted, and the United States must be ready to join in the guarantee and back it with her whole force and influence. A settled and secure peace can be made sure of in no other way when the present war is over. May Europe respond as well as America! G. LOWES DICKINSON. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION . . . . .5 I. THE NEW OBJECTIVE . . . .II II. THE LEAGUE AND THE QUESTION OF ARMA- MENT . . . .31 III. DEMOCRATIC PURPOSE AND THE NEW INDUS- TRIAL ETHICS . . . .49 IV. THE GREATER EUROPE IN AMERICA . . 77 THE NEW OBJECTIVE THE AMERICAN LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE I THE NEW OBJECTIVE At the outbreak of the war a group of men in England thought they might do useful service, not only for their country but for the greater cause of civilization, by getting into touch with American opinion, and bring- ing thoughtful men in England and America together. Their idea was to focus opinion, not on the war— the newspapers were doing that— but upon the saner international settle- ment that was to follow after the war had been fought out. Their action was in no sense official, the opinions they held were their own, and they often differed, but since 14 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE the summer of 1 9 1 4 these opinions have been voiced by different people in the public press : in the Nation, in the New Statesman^ in pam- phlets of the English Society of the League of Nations, by the Union of Democratic Control, and in the United States by papers sympathetic to English progressive thought, the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic^ the American Nation, and others. The opinions are now, therefore, fairly well known, and are being voiced with ever-increasing clarity and conviction. It fell to my lot, as one of the group, to come over to the United States in the spring of 191 5, the time when the American League to Enforce Peace was in conception. I was present on the memorable occasion in Inde- pendence Hall when it was finally brought to birth, and I had the privilege of discussing the great questions involved, with most of the leading men who are trying to shape a -*new policy" for America and the world. The conclusions I have arrived at are TO ENFORCE PEACE 15 personal, they are tKose of an Englishman who, while often sympathizing with individual party politicians at home— Liberal, Conserva- tive, Socialist, and Irish— cannot himself go with any of them, holding all existing divisions to be factitious and unreal. Eurther, my conclusions are the result of a conviction, gradually formed after many years of study, that the key that is to unlock the problem of the settlement after the war is in the United States. By this I do not mean the immediate settlement of the war itself— I have never believed in any Peace or Stop-the-War campaign— but the sane and stable ordering of the New >World that is to shape after the war has been fought out. The American Ueague to Enforce Peace is a step of pro- found importance towards this end. It is the first real effort to get people to think beyond mere national limitations. It fixes attention on something that is greater than the war— the condition of the world after the war. It is more even than this : it is the i6 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE effort to get the United States, to get Demo- cracy, to accept moril responsibility for the avoidance of a similar disaster to mankind. My reasons for thinking that the United States hold the key are as follows :— First, they are the greatest neutral Power. Secondly, to them has come in the last twenty-five years a melting or fusion of all the Democracies of Europe. This is little understood in England, or even in the essenti- ally English sections of America, but it is bound to increase as American industrialism develops. Out of this fusion has yet to be shaped a national solidarity, but it has engendered an intimate human sympathy between groups in the United States and similar groups in the different warring nations . It means that the ideas behind the war have not only got to be fought out on the battle- fields of Europe, but in the hearts of men and women in America. Here are the latest figures showing what this industrial fusion means. In a population of one hundred TO ENFORCE ;;PEACE 17 millions, there are twenty-six millions of foreign birth and parentage, made up as follows : — 8,000,000 from Germany 13,000,000 M Great Britain 300,000 i> France 3,000,000 ^> Russia 2,000,000 M Austria 250,000 )) the Balkans 100,000 )1 Belgium^ The effect of the war and the resulting impoverishment of Europe will probably swell these figures. iWe so often igpore these facts, and whether our generalizations are made in London, in Boston, or in Toronto, the specific episodes of local history that in the larger sense are neither English nor American are too much stressed. To the majority of these twenty-six millions, for instance, or the other millions yet to come, the Mayflower legend can never have any meaning. Thirdly, and as a consequence of this * Samuel Harden Church, " American Verdict on the War," published by Norman Remington, Baltimore. s i8 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE industrial fusion, there has grown up among the people of the United States a keener instinct for ** International Right." That idea of International Right has always existed, but it seems to me in the last ten years to have taken more hold of the people. When they begin to think they think more on inter- national lines than we do in Europe. That is very natural. When an American in daily life meets another American who has lately been a Pole, or a German, or a Czech, or a Russian, he discovers, not only that the ** other fellow " has a point of view of his own, he even grows to sympathize with it. It is much harder for us in Europe to do this, because, unless we are Poles or Germans, Czechs or Russians ourselves, we so seldom come across each other, and when we do we have no common languag;e and no common State. This community of interest makes for the idea of international Right. My fourth reason for holding that the key to the European problem lies in America, is TO ENFORCE PEACE 19 that, in the political evolution of the world, the United States occupy an intermediate position between Great Britain on the one hand and the British Empire on the other. From Great Britain they have drawn the force and the inspiration of their own political organism, and in working this out they have brought home to the British Empire the supreme lesson of self -government and its responsibilities. But the United States are not only a Power absorbing! into themselves the other nationalities, they are a State formed and effective, while the British Em- pire, destined perhaps to become an even greater Power and also of divers national ele- ments, is not yet formed as an effective State. The reaction of the war upon the Empire may bring this effective State into being, but with- out sympathetic affinity between it and the United States, or without their goodwill, it is at least doubtful if this can come about. Einally, in America every man does his own political thinking. In England men 20 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE think •' by party," in Germany they think " by the State," but in America men do, as far as poHtics are concerned, or in the larger foreign questions as they arise, think for themselves ; this thinking may sometimes not gfo very far, but at least the man, the unit, counts. And this, in the end, is what Demo- cracy means : freedom to think for oneself, and to exercise this independence of thought in the affairs of life. In England we often blind ourselves to the gjreat facts of American Democracy, and of Privilegie. Privilege in America is for ever getting hold of the machine of Government, dominating now this, now that function of the State, and creating a "political interest." The gireat creature Democracy shakes the flies of Privilege off ; they come and settle again in another form. But all the while, in America, Privilege is not the real power. Every now and then, as in th^ Bull Moose movement, ephemeral though it may have been, we get a spiritual re - interpretation of Democracy ; the real TO ENFORCE PEACE 21 power is for a moment made clear and re- asserts itself. I believe that is happening now in regard to the European War. Men are beginning to think out the ideas that underlie it, and the first clear sign of the effort to embody this thinking was the Inde- pendence Hall meeting. That meeting! meant the awakening of the American conscience. It pointed to the country's responsibility for the Peace of the world. It brought home the fact that if a Democracy, tied sympa- thetically to the rest of the world, has rights, it also has duties. I recall few more significant and dramatic moments than at the close of the afternoon of June 17, 191 5, in the intense heat of the Philadelphia summer. The delegates had dropped off one by one from sheer heat exhaustion, and the gathering was reduced to less than half its number, when the peace- at-any-price party, who hold Peace to be an end in itself, backed by the pro -Germans of Milwaukee, brought in their amendment to 22 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE cut out the word "enforce." Here was Christian pacifism caught in the German militarist net. It was equivalent to wrecking! the whole thing. President Lowell, of Harvard, sprang up and cried, " Either we are here to enforce Peace, or we are here for nothing at all ! " The chairman put the amendment, and, because extremists, especi- ally when they are pacifists, have louder voices, the Ayes had it. For a moment every- thing seemed lost : then the party of reason called for a count, and by only eleven votes '^ the amendment was reversed and the American League to Enforce Peace came into being. There was an inwardness here that at first sight we might miss. The ultra -pacifist posi- tion, that of the saint, the non-resister, the Tolstoian, may be applicable to the individual ; it does not, at least yet, apply to the councils of nations. It does not, for instance, in front of an aggressive Germany, face the fact of ^ Later by a fresh vote made unanimous. TO ENFORCE PEACE 23 an outraged Belgium. It is illogical, too, for while it holds in the literal sense the Christian teaching of offering the other cheek, it does not hold the doctrine that goes with it, the rule of poverty. To repudiate the policeman while we accept his services in guarding our possessions is dishonest as well as illogical. The extreme pacifists in America have, till their defeat at the Philadelphia meeting, been the despair of the constructive thinkers . Their pretensions have been unreasonable, their practical proposals futile. But, by implica- tion, the League to Enforce Peace has meant also the defeat of the extreme militarists. By these, in America, I mean the party, a small but noisy group, who would have dragged the country into war, are not willing to think about the future, and who hold above all things that America must arm, and rapidly, to be one among the warring nations. They hold, quite honestly and rightly, that the Allies are fighting the battle of American 24 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE Democracy. But, as far as they think at all, they believe in force as an end ; they believe that the big stick is the last word. And though they would fight the Germans, they hold the German point of view. But the League to Enforce Peace among the nations, if it gets beyond the American stage and is actually formed, will cut the ground away from under these noisy fighters. It will convert an army into a police. President Taft, in his " Tailors of Tooley Street " speech, with quiet judicial humour, put the situation clearly enough. If America enters the League of Peace which these tailors are advising the world to form, it must not only bear its proportion of the policing, it must accept its responsibilities to the world as a whole, and be ready to surrender some at least of the Monroe Doctrine, and the teachings of George iWashington as to en- tangling European alliances. It must face the fact that America is no longer a colony outside the world. Ex-President Roosevelt, TO ENFORCE PEACE 25 when I talked it over with' him later, added this to the discussion, and it seemed to me to contain wisdom and righteousness : '* If the American Democracy is going to enter into a League to Enforce Peace, it must first learn two things, neither of which it yet understands. It must be prepared to keep its word, and it must be prepared to enforce its word." Here, then, quietly shaping in America, but so far, until President Wilson's speech in June 19 1 6, unnoticed in Great Britain, was the first piece of greater constructive work towards a better world. What have we in England, what has British Democracy, to set beside it ? Where does the political thinking in the two countries run parallel? There are in England at this moment only two constructive political movements that have any real value. The one is the counterpart of the American Eeague to Enforce Peace, sometimes associ- ated with names of eminent English states- men, and best set forth by Lowes Dickinson 26 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE in "The War and After/* and in the programme of the League of Nations Society. The other is the movement for the unification of the British Empire into an effective State, and best set forth in *' The Problem of the Commonwealth/' ^ This work depends for its success on the intelligent co-operation of the self-governing colonial Democracies, and their fusion with the great dependencies of the Empire, binding them closer together in a true federal State . The two movements are not antagonistic, though they are led by men who sometimes believe in the one to the exclusion of the other, but it is probable that the Commonwealth must take form first before the League is realized. Events will show, and the war is precipitating events ; but I do not think that either movement can be brought about without the intelligent co- operation or the goodwill of the United States. I do not ignore the fact that there are « See " The Problem of the Commonwealth," 1915, and also the " Round Table " pubHcations. TO ENFORCE PEACE 27 other constructive movements in England — the Socialist, Fabian, Syndicalist, Labour, Trades Union ; but these are not essentially English, they are cosmopolitan, each in their way manifestations of Democracy seeking expression through industrial conditions. Regarded as movements for the maintenance of Peace, they have given no lead ; also, with the exception of the Fabian scheme, they have shown so far no great power for any large practical construction. They have on the one hand been too loose and visionary, on the other too narrow. Meantime, the fact of Democracy remains. The English colonial emigration continues, the Colonies approximate more and more to the American model, and in America the great force of industrialism is drawing the different races of Europe into itself. I do not know the English Colonies so well as I know the United States, but I have tried to understand the impelling force in both ; I have watched the emigrant, I have watched 28 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE labour. I do not find that the ideals of an English workman, small farmer, or labourer, going out to an English colony, shape very differently if he goes to the United States. Men in my employ, friends of mine, have been to both ; I have helped to send many out. In some cases they have sampled the life in either. The flag has not meant so much as the democratic idealism that the flag has connoted. It has meant more to the Public School boy than to the artisan, be- cause of his more exclusive traditions, but the vital fact is the fundamental community of idealism between the United States and the colonial Democracies. The historic back- ground may differ, as Stellenbosch or New Amsterdam, Boston or Quebec differ ; the vital fact is the outlook on the future. We may hark back to Piet Retief, to General Muhlenberg, to Peter Styverson— men who were heroes, each in his corner of the world — but our common denominator is always democratic idealism. TO ENFORCE PEACE 29 Thoughtful people in the United States have said to me that the time has come when our current notions of patriotism must be replaced by something* wider and of larger sympathies. It is not only Americans who feel this. There is a need, clearly discerned by the leaders both of the Leagjue and the Commonwealth, for a new political form or mould into which the living liquid metal of Democracy shall be poured before it can take shape. Searching, then, for a synthesis that shall make both the League and the Common- wealth possible, we believe it is to be found in the United States. We believe that there lies the key. The preamble of the American League which came into being] in June 1 9 1 5 sets forth the belief of its originators in language worthy of Jefferson and Lincoln :— Throughout hve thousand years of recorded history, Peace, here and there estabhshed, has been kept, and its area has been widened, in one way only. Individuals have combined their efforts to suppress violence in the local community. Communities have co-operated to 30 AMERICAN LEAGUE FOR PeACE maintain the authoritative State and to preserve Peace within its borders. States have formed leagues or confederations, or have otherwise co-operated to estabHsh Peace among themselves. Always Peace has been made and kept, when made and kept at all, by the superior power of superior numbers acting in unity for the common good. Mindful of this teaching of experience, we believe and solemnly urge that the time has come to devise and to create a working union of sovereign nations to establish Peace among themselves and to guarantee it by all known and available sanctions at their command, to the end that civilization may be conserved, and the progress of mankind in comfort, enlightenment, and happiness may continue. TKen follov^ the clauses which we will now consider. THE LEAGUE AND THE QUESTION OF ARMAMENT II THE LEAGUE AND THE QUESTION OF ARMAMENT The four points of the League to Enforce Peace, as drafted at the Philadelphia meeting, are these :— First. All justiciable questions arising between the sigjnatory Powers not settled by negotiation shall, subject to the hmitations of treaties, be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judgment, both upon the merits and upon any issue as to the jurisdic- tion of the question. Second. All other questions arising be- tween the signatories and not settled by negotiation, shall be submitted to a Council 3 3* 34 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE of Conciliation for hearing, consideration, and recommendation. Third. The signatory Powers shall jointly use forthwith both their economic and mili- tary forces against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits acts of hostility against another of the signatories, before any question arising shall be submitted as provided in the foregoing. Fourth. Conferences between the signatory Powers shall be held from time to time, to formulate and codify rules of international law which, unless some signatory shall signify its dissent within a stated period, shall thereby gbvern in the decisions of the judicial tribunal mentioned in Article i . The first and second of these points are a development of the work of the Hague con- ferences, and imply the acceptance by the signatory Powers of something akin to the tribunal they would set up . The fourth point indicates a machinery, perhaps a development TO ENFORCE PEACE 35 of the Hague conferences, and makes it pos- sible for them to become a real Parliament of the Nations. The third point is the vital one, because it binds the signatories to use force if necessary, and so lifts the whole matter out of the region of windy speculation and the fine phrases of pacifists into real- politlk . In the early days of the war, when we of the party of the Allies were all crying the same thing, one of the wisest of our English ** elder statesmen " asked me, " Are you pre- pared to give up the principle that Britannia must rule the waves?" It was his reply to the demand which I, like everybody else, was making, that Germany must give up her militarism. I was not, nor, at present, I presume, would any Englishman be. But, since coming again to America— and after many visits now I know the country fairly well, east, middle -west, and west— I see things differently. I would exchange British naval supremacy for an English-speaking 36 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE alliance, or for an effective League to Enforce Peace, based on the supremacy of the seas. The alternative is significant, but more par- ticularly in this, that it involves the inter- nationalism we considered above. If the appeal for the future Peace of the world is international rather than national, it is an appeal also to intelligent German opinion ; and here again, wliat in the end America with its eight million Germans may have to say in the matter is vital. It was my privilege to discuss this with intelligent pro -Germans in the United States, and they helped me to see it in the broader light. I found myself in agreement with them to this extent, that the theory of conquest must be given up. By conquest we meant military and territorial conquest or industrial penetration backed subsequently by force of arms. Perhaps this must be qualified by a reservation that in "uncivilized countries" conquest might still occasionally be desirable. Admittedly we were here on dangerous ground ; and since TO ENFORCE PEACE 37 we have not for the moment to defend the civihzation, say, of China and Persia, nor to deny that of Bechuanaland or Haiti, let us leave the point. These discussions further brought out the fact that as against the League to Enforce Peace there were for the United States three alternative policies. The first was isolation ; the second Pan-American- ism ; the third an Enghsh-speaking alliance. The first alternative, the policy of isolation, was urged for the most part by the older men and by the militarists, an armed isolation with thousands of submarines. I heard it so put. It appealed to the fighting imagi- nation. It was also the easy and short- sighted policy. But the younger men looked at things differently. True, the submarine had increased the security of America, but thereby also its "moral isolation.'* Was this desirable? There were ethical questions in- volved ; humanitarianism as well as the interests of world-commerce were influences pulling in another direction. The younger 38 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE men were not prepared to follow on tKe old, traditional lines ; they looked at the matter more widely, and with them lay the future. As for the second alternative. Pan -Ameri- canism, this obviously also had its disadvan- tages. It meant a dangerous extension of the Monroe Doctrine. There were great risks of interference in the affairs of Latin America, experiences in Mexico and the Philippines had engendered caution, and clearly such a policy, if carried out, had the support only of a small minority, and was antipathetic to the great mass of '* English " Americans— I find they still prefer the term *' Anglo- Saxon "—who are the dominant factor. ■Was the third alternative, frankly an Eng- lish-speaking alhance, any better ? It appealed to the old families, to those whom in England we should call— one must not use the term in America— the gentry. It appealed more particularly to those who were nervous of industrial Democracy, and who believed the country was gping to the dogs, the dagoes, TO ENFORCE PEACE 39 and the aliens. The chief reason against the Enghsh-speaking alHance was also the chief reason in favour of the League to Enforce Peace — the Internationalism of American Democracy. It is, then, at this point— the " enforcement " of Peace with the aid of America, which by implication leads us to the arming of America, that the question becomes actual. What shall we arm for or against? And in what proportion shall we arm? The object of the League is to establish an international arrangement by which war shall be made more difficult, less worth while, and more risky. The League does not claim that war can be abolished, but it has a plan for making it less likely. The League, there- fore, is a challengiC to American opinion, not only on broad ethical grounds, but also upon the various issues on which American foreign policy has touched Europe, and particularly England. Here, however, it is necessary to clear away 40 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE a misapprehension. It is sometimes asked by English people, *' Would joining the League mean the giving up of British naval supremacy?" The answer, of course, is No. But the question is pertinent because the Germans have been trying to raise the issue of the " freedom of the seas," and the Americans—witness some of the earlier notes between the two countries— have also been upholding what they call the " freedom of the seas." The two parties use the phrase in a different meaning and use it loosely. The League to Enforce Peace, then, has nothing to do with the ques- tion of naval supremacy, even as it has nothing to dc with German military supremacy. As long as there are arma- ments and the risk of war, it is clear that each country must be ready to fight, and fight in its own way, whether by sea, by land, or economically ; and that being so, it is clear, further, that the English cannot abandon their position as the strongest naval Power. But TO ENFORCE PEACE 41 there are subsidiary questions which gfow out of this, and which may be considered independently, and one of these is the right of capture at sea of private property other than contraband. This question has now, as the result of the submarine, taken a new complexion, and in deference to the views held by other nations, it may be wise for British statesmen to make some concession on the point when the right moment comes for doing so. I am not here further con- cerned with the matter as one of British policy other than to add that though the question of the right of capture is not con- nected with the League to Enforce Peace, it is connected with the question of the reduction of armaments w^hich many hope may be a consequence of such a League. In fact, if the surrender of the right of capture were made a condition of the formation of the League, it would be worth while for Great Britain to consider it as a matter of practical politics . 42 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE As it has always been an American view that the surrender was desirable in the in- terests of the whole world, it will be worth while finding out what representative Ameri- can opinion on this matter now is. I tried to do this, and I found that the opinion of the younger and progressive thinkers differed from that of the older, because the League to Enforce Peace had lifted these questions on to a new plane. "If we are to have a League that is to be effective," said they, ** it must contain within itself naval as well as military supremacy. If America, there- fore, is to join the policing force, it may be better to accept the British naval point of view that sea power to be effective must be absolute— in other words, naval supremacy is the policeman's truncheon ; if we also become one of your constables, we prefer to keep the truncheon. But again, if we are to have a League that is to be really inter- national, it must not be aimed at the exclusion of Germany or any other Power." TO ENFORCE PEACE 43 On the general question of the League and armament, it followed that each of the three great Powers chiefly affected, England, Ger- many, the United States, must surrender, not the whole, perhaps, but a cardinal point of its ancient policy : Germany, its '* militarism " ; England, its " navalism " ; America, its ** George Washingtonism." And what pre- cisely do they each mean? By the first we mean the power to dictate the policies of Europe, and to compel the arming of other countries, by the constant threat of over- whelming military force. By the second we mean the power to determine, for exclusively British interests and without the interests of neutrals, how the Sea is to be policed— a power which, however, only comes into effect when Great Britain is at war. By the third we mean the right, hitherto claimed by America, to be free to benefit by a continental isolation, indirectly protected by the British Navy, and yet not to accept any responsibihty for the future Peace of the world. 44 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE As far as America is concerned, this sur- render of her traditional policy is the crux of the whole matter. We, in England, admire and love George Washington much as we admire John Hampden ; they were great English gentlemen, and they stood for a principle. Destiny, or the chances of war, made of the one the founder of a common- wealth, of the other a soldier-martyr. For both the principle was the same, but in either case it has been won, acted on, lived through. England has reinterpreted many times the principle for which John Hampden gave his life . America has to do the same with George Washington. If he is to continue to be more than the father of his country, he must be more than a totem. My study of American opinion further convinced me of this : that the younger thinkers, and those who were willing to abandon the traditional American aloofness, were agreed on the general prin- ciple that the League must be formed first, before the question of armament, military or TO ENFORCE PEACE 45 naval, could be profitably considered ; that questions such as *' the right of capture '* could be left to the League, when formed, to settle ; and that such questions were funda- mentally of an ethical nature . They depended upon international confidence— Trust. Can the nations trust each other? Is the world ready, will it at the close of the war be ready, even if the League be formed, to accept the ethical principle involved? There perhaps, in the doubt, in the hope that it will, we may leave the question. "We are not," wrote Count Herman Kaiserling from the Baltic Provinces of Russia, in the thick of the war, " essentially fighting militarism (the immediate effect of this war will probably be an increase in armaments, not in Europe perhaps, but in America, China, and Japan), nor against Germany, nor for the rights of small nations : we really are fight- ing all together for a new and better state of existence." ^ ^ Hibbert Journaly April 1915. 46 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE That is nobly put, and it applies as inti- mately to the United States as to each of the unhappy countries now wasting themselves and one another for an idea that is not yet understood. An American lawyer, himself a " reform mayor/' used these words of one of the great " progressive mayors " of modern America : ** The law on which the Golden Rule is founded, the law of moral action and reaction, is the one most generally igpiored. Its principle he felt to be always at work, so that men lived by it whether they wished or not, whether they knew it or not. According! to this law, hate breeds hate, and love produces love in return ; and all force begets resistance, and the result is the general disorder and anarchy in which we live." ^ It is for the community to say how and when we shall apply to the interrelation of States a rule the application of which to personal conduct we hold to be right. My ^ Brand Whitlock, " Forty Years|ofiIt," 1914, TO ENFORCE PEACE 47 own view is, that while we should keep it as an aim, we are not yet ready for its full and logical application, but it is of the essence of democratic purpose. It is to America that we must look for its fulfilment. American opinion is quick to change, it is often fickle, but it is spontaneous, and before all things, it is sensitive to moral issues. When Thomas Paine sent as a gift from Lafayette to Washington the key of the Bastille, he wrote : ** I feel myself happy in being the person through whom the Marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the spoils of Despotism, and the first ripe fruits of American principles, transplanted into Europe, to his great master and patron. When he mentioned to me the present he intended you, my heart leaped with joy. It is something so truly in character that no remarks can illustrate it, and is more happily expressive of his remembrance of his Ameri- can friends than any letters can convey. That the principles of America opened the Bastille ,/ 48 AMERICAN LEAGUE FOR PEACE is not to be doubted, and therefore the key comes to the right place." Freedom from militarism, freedom from materialism, freedom for man's higher de- velopment, that is what we are fighting for. The ancient token, the great iron key of the Bastille, hangs to-day in Mount Vernon, and the message is set beneath it. We have un- locked the Bastille before, we must now unlock it again, but since the key is kept in America we in Europe cannot do it, the world cannot do it, unless America, who holds it, lends us the key. DEMOCRATIC PURPOSE AND THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ETHICS Ill DEMOCRATIC PURPOSE AND THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ETHICS This younger American attitude, the analysis of which I tried to give in the foregoing chapter, shows clearly that the real issue is not one of politics only, that if the League of Nations, with its new objective, is to take form, something else is needed in the life of the peoples. What is it? On all sides we hear it said that there must be a change of heart. That change of heart, we are told, is to save us from militarism in the future, to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy of the War of Nations. Will it? The change of heart must not alone be for Germany, it must be for England likewise, and for America. SI 52 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE Jacob Schiff, the New York banker with whom in 1 9 1 5 I was discussing the prospects of the League to Enforce Peace, said to me : " Your League does not meet the difficulty— the apple of discord is economic." And the criticism made, not unreasonably, upon Lowes Dickinson's con- structive peace proposals, as set forth in ** The War and After," is that they ignore economic forces. Norman Angell and others have dealt with that aspect of the question, but I want to say how this struck me during a year's study of American conditions. I was perpetually faced with two questions, and, being myself unable to answer them, I tried to draw the answer from others. What was the reason for the war? xAnd how is the war— how is all this waste—going to be paid for? The two questions are more akin than at first sight appears. Seyeral hun- dred million human being;s do not fly at each other's throats because an unhappy archduke is murdered, nor yet because in one country TO ENFORCE PEACE 53 a military clique has for the moment got control of the State. Such ans'wers are too obvious. Then, when it comes to paying for the war, we are told that we shall all be poorer, that there will have to be increased' production, and that all will have to help in the payment. Perhaps : but what does being poorer, what does increased production mean, and in what way shall we be called upon to help? Aglain the answers given are too easy. They are the answers of an opulent Indus- trialism, of the wealthy man, who gives not caring, and out of an abundance he does not need. They are too material. They miss the point. All those who have had any intimacy in life with working! men and women— I do not mean those in authority, employers of labour, or politicians, or financiers, though they too may occasionally make the discovery— know that what the people need, and what they want, is a finer life. It is a life fuller, freer, more beautiful, more human. It is not the mere accumulation of material things, though the 54 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE want often begins by taking this form. That is the hope ; the true democrat, whether Eng- lish or American, is he who believes in the fulfilment of this hope. There is a spiritual force at work in Democracy outside the Churches, outside the Socialist organizations, outside business, by virtue of which this hope is planted in the heart of every believer. Now, to say that the war is going to be paid for by a transference of territory, by indemnities, or by commercial privileges or concessions, or by the creation of artificial markets, is to miss what, for many of us, is the main issue of the war. The war is to a gjreat extent an economic war, but to imagtine that it is gjoing to be settled or satisfied by a mere rearrangement of the old economic weights and balances ignores the hope of this finer life which for many is discernible through the sorrows of the war. "The struggle of German industry," says a recent American writer, " for the control of the world-markets is the real cause of the creation and rapid TO ENFORCE PEACE 55 development of the German Navy to threaten the British mastery of the seas. It is possible that the statesmen of Great Britain by a liberal policy in regard to German colonial expansion in Africa and Asia, and in regard to German ambition in Asiatic Turkey, might have diverted German energy from bending all its efforts to destroy British commerce." ' Possible, but improbable, for the war is the logical outcome of the conditions of economic Peace, as the world up to August 19 14 understood them— competing markets backed by militarism. The war is not going to be paid for by any such rearrangement of material goods. It can only be paid for in a readjustment of the conditions them- selves. " We have filled our cities," said Plato once to the Athenians, ** with docks and arsenals and such trash— but what have we done for * sophrosyne ' 2 and righteousness?" ' Herbert A. Gibbons, ''The Map of Europe.'^ 2 Sometimes translated ''temperance," in the sense of a proper order among all the elements of the soul — perhaps " poise." 56 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE I would like here to apply an agiricultural simile. In the old conditions of economic *' Peace/' that ended in Aug|ust 1 9 1 4, we were developing the world's resources by the " ex- tensive " process ; we now need an " intensive " process. For this we need also an internal change of method. Whether we look at the colonial possessions of the belligerent Powers, or at the development of the United States within the American Customs Union, the process is much the same ; it has so far been ** extensive," and as such wasteful. This collecting of colonies and dependencies on the old dynastic model— that is to say, of tributes, and titles, and lands, without reference to the people that dwell in them, or the life that is built up in them— has been revealed by the war as a thing that ought to cease. It is the method of the schoolboy gathering postage stamps. He collects Poland, Morocco, Persia, the Transvaal, the Cameroons, the Philippines, licks them and sticks them into his album. Beyond a light- TO ENFORCE PEACE $7 hearted grab there is little intelligence in the process. In England, this boyish, genial activity used to be associated with the great name of Rudyard Kipling, and was idealized as "taking up the white man's burden." Its best justification was that it betokened an industrial process— the discovery, for instance, of some raw material for productive purposes, and as such helped in the working out of Democracy, for Democracy in the twentieth century is an industrial rather than a political process ; but our schoolboy politicians often failed to understand this, and doubtless the war has taught them. By the English the argument of ** Free Trade and the Open Door " was used in justification of the British method of collecting; by the Germans, the '* higher State -regulated Order " in justifica- tion of the German. But if an "intensive" process is to be substituted for an " extensive " process, if this "intensive" process— the higher development as I believe it— is to follow the breakdown of mechanical indus- 58 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE trialism that we have witnessed in the war, then the old terms ** Protection " and '* Free Trade " seem to lose their meaning ; for the only Protection that would be justifiable would be the Protection of a qualitative as distinct from a quantitative standard, and such Pro- tection might become a social duty. The Germans may be wrong in the view they hold, that their conduct and administra- tion of industry has reached a higher stage than the English or the American, but they are entitled to a fairer consideration than they get. We can give them credit for it without accepting also the militarist inference that, if their industrial evolution is more advanced than ours, it must be extended by force of arms on other communities. Meantime, our question, How is the war —how is all this waste to be paid for? remains unanswered. We all admit that the war is waste. But that waste may be doing away with a worse kind of waste gjoing on in times of Peace. Much of TO ENFORCE PEACE 59 what appears waste in the war may be the Hberation of talent. If we are right in beheving that the breakdown of the industrial system implies the bringing of a new idealism, enterprise, and creative spiritual force into life, then we may have before us a condition not unlike that which followed the French Revolution. The ancien regime broke down, not in France only. Youth and talent were liberated. It was young men who won the battles of Europe in the Napoleonic war, and after the war was over the old complicated life of caste and privilege could not be pieced together again. So, in this effort to determine waste, we get back to the old conundrum. What is and what is not productive labour? It was the problem that baffled Mill and Ruskin, and which economists, whether English or Ger- man, have not yet solved. Many younger writers and scientists, a certain section of the Socialists, many of the artists and poets —Morris, for instance— even a few politicians 6o THE AMERICAN LEAGUE more couragjeous tKan the average, have held that the quantitative standard in industry is false. We— for I count myself among these —hold that the process by which goods made for sale, not for service, are pressed upon the public by advertisement, and the cease- less method of forcing new markets, is an unsound process. We hold that the factory system, which the uncontrolled development of machinery has called into being, does not meet the goreater human needs, that it leads to waste, to luxury, to extravagance, that it is rooted in poverty, that, in short, it does not face the ethical question, What is and what is not productive labour ? " Nations," says Laurence Housman, " whose wealth and industries are built up out of the hard and grinding mechanical labour of millions are not capable in any true sense of holding great possessions, for at their very root is an enormous mass of poverty— impoverished blood, impoverished brain, and impoverished spirit." TO ENFORCE PEACE 6i We then demand, and we are fighting for, a new standard in industry that shall be qualitative, not quantitative ; and we say this must be envisaged, not merely in the product, the particular industrial commodity, but in the producer himself, the man who is at the back of the product, whether aided or not by a machine. We say the time is now ripe for a discrimination between what is and what is not productive, between such mechanism as is sound and life-giving, and such as is un- sound and life -destroying!. We demand a reinterpretation of industrial ethics. Looked at in the light of these new economics, the war comes right home to America, for of this waste, luxury, and extravagjance, built up on a basis of poverty, America is the citadel. So at least many Europeans believe. The greatness of the country, its spaciousness, its free lands, virgin forests, and untouched minerals, have so far cloaked the extrava- gance, and kept the poverty out of sight, but it is there all the same in the slum areas 62 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE of the great cities, in the Halstead Streets and the Boweries. There are not wanting at this moment wise and thoughtful Ameri- cans—I could name them— who are crying out at the impoverished blood, the im- poverished brain, the impoverished spirit of their countrymen. The citizen of the United States, for the most part unconscious until quite recently that there has been any ethical problem at all, thinks he has only gpt to go on running his factories, importing ever fresh alien races to drive them, it doesn't much matter what they produce, and, for aught he cares, men in Europe can go on killing each other. He has not realized that the industrial system of which he is so proud is part of the European war process. Then suddenly there came the Lasitania catas- trophe, and opened his eyes. There was no particular reason or logic in this, but it just had that effect. To many it meant "con- version." It brought home the lesson of waste. TO ENFORCE PEACE 63 We in Europe, in 1915, were faced witK a condition of affairs when, in order to make arnns, munitions, and fighting men, we had to drop everything else— in other words, to give up all waste, luxury, and extrava- gance in order to perfect the instruments of destruction. But we only substituted one form of waste for another. In Europe the lesser giave place to the greater form of waste. In America the lesser form continues. America, indeed, by the increasing output of munitions and implements of death, became the productive arsenal of Europe. Ethically the two forms of waste are one, and it has been with American mechanism that the war has been fought out. The war, then, is the climax of a bankrupt economic system ; it will not be paid for in any of the old ways. Rather will it lead to a changing of values, and that means a readjustment of mechanical standards . In certain islands of the Southern Seas there was for many g«enerations a bitter warfare 64 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE among the tribes. The theory of the effec- tiveness of Force was held, and consistently- acted on ; and at the end of each bout of fighting and bloodshed a settlement was made in cowries, because cowries had value. Then suddenly, owing to the coming of a new intelligence— the missionaries called it " a change of heart "-—cowries lost their value, because new values were introduced into life. The new values made the old fighting of no more account. It was no longer worth while. Society had discovered a new objec- tive. And so, when the war comes to be paid for, we shall find that the indemnities, which we once mentally assessed in cowries, will be translated into other values. A favourite phrase of Sidney Webb and the Eabian Socialists is ** the Standard of Life." It has been too narrowly used as the standard of life set by the Trade Unions, and the wages established by combined action in the different industries. There is much more in it than that. It is at the back of TO 1ENF0RCE PEACE 65 the anti -emigrant legislation recently pro- posed in the United States. It was implied by President Wilson when he vetoed that legislation as being no real test of character. It is at the root of all modern movements towards Eugienics, towards co-operation in Agriculture, towards a new life for the Arts. But we in England, who for the last decade or so have been working at one or other of these things, seeking to shape the finer standard of life, have been borne down by the weight of our social problems. These problems, which are bound— an unbearable burden— upon us in England and Ireland, are to a large extent the result of that other burden of Empire we have so far carried. The brains, the energy, the vital capital or life force, which we should have devoted to raising the standard at home, we have dis- tributed over the earth. It has been part of our " extensive " process. Yet here, facing us, are the problems. Everybody knows them, but few have the courage to speak 66 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE boldly or honestly about them : our ill- organized industry ; our arts enslaved to mechanism ; the timidity of our educational experiments, their want of faith in Democ- racy ; our drink monopoly, with its beerage, its tied houses, its seats in the House of Lords, and its social pressure upon the licensing magistrates ; our sweated agri- cultural labour (in my county before the war broke out the wages were 13s. a week, and the children could get no milk) ; our venal and sensational Press, with its Bottom- leys and Harmsworths ; our squalid cities and the monstrous disgrace of their poverty, fecklessness, and dirt. These are the ugly facts in modern English life. They do but reflect a political con- dition of which most thinking Englishmen are ashamed. The smug self-satisfaction of official Liberalism ; the perverse stupidity of our Conservatives, their obtuseness to any new ideas and to all constructive purpose ; the narrowness of Labour, and its incapacity TO ENFORCE PEACE 67 to admit the finer conditions of life ; the rigidity of Fabian and official Socialism, with its blindness to the human and individual wants in man ; these— before the war— were the besetting sins of English political thought, or want of thougiht. Pray God the war may purge us of them I Are things so different in America? It is not for an Englishman to say, but there are readings in between the lines. I have tried to interpret the new democratic purpose, to decipher it in those moments of keener thinking and feeling that came to the Americans, as they came, with the war, to us in Europe. Writing just before the war of this democratic purpose and the new values it is bringing into life, one of the ablest exponents of the younger political philosophy puts thus the thought I want to express : " The sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste, the dogma of sin, obedience to authority— the rock of ages, in fact, has been blasted for us. Those who 68 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE are young to-day are born into a world in whicK the foundations of the older order survive only in habits or by default. So Americans can carry through their purposes when they have them. If the American Stand- patter is still powerful among us, it is because we have not learned to use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American Con- servative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic purpose should be." ^ And for me, looking at America with English eyes, and believing absolutely in the fundamental Democracy for which both countries stand, democratic purpose with its new values will mean this : the incentive of joy as a substitute in life for the incentive of profit, the reorganization of the basic industries in the interest of the community rather than of the private owner, the reorgani- zation of all industry in such a manner that it will no longer hinder personal freedom in its highest personal invention, fancy, imagi- » Walter Lippman, " Drift and Mastery." TO ENFORCE PEACE 69 nation. I say that democratic purpose will mean this. I see signs that, in America, this is aheady what it is beginning to mean. But before we can do these things we have in America, as in Europe, to aboHsh the trade of war, as the militarists and the makers of armament, whether in Prussia or elsewhere, have taught it us. And we have all of us, Americans as well as Europeans, to accept responsibility for the organized policing and defence of the world. This, as we have seen, is the object of the League to Enforce Peace. And what are the signs in America? What token have we that this translation from the old into the new values has begun ? For here enters democratic purpose. Where I, as an Englishman, join issue with Lowes Dickinson is in his over-emphasis of the point that in America and for the American " religion is business." It may be true of the great majority ; it is not true of the leaven that is changing the lump. A new democratic pur- pose is at work that Lowes Dickinson misses. 70 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE What does " business " imply to the Eng- lishman, and what to the American? The former still has at the back of his mind the gentleman's view that there is about business something! a little unclean, necessary perhaps but sordid. -He still has the feudal tradition that there are nobler things. Perhaps he is still right. This other something, this " lower " consideration, the Englishman assumes ought not to enter into life. In that assumption he is surely wrong. The American sees it differently. For him life does not hold the Englishman's classifica- tions. For him business Is what you live by. Everybody has a business ; if he hasn*t, he ought to have. The importance of this distinction, when we try to find the ethical clue that shall guide national conduct, is obvious. I appreciate the dignity of the English attitude, the gentleman's attitude, but I think the American a finer one. It accepts more boldly life as a whole. It says? " Here are the facts, now what are we going TO ENFORCE PEACE 71 to do with them?" It makes possible their more direct and general application to the people's life. It is tiresome for the poet or the soldier to have to admit that his shirt needs washing, but we gain nothing by the British assumption that the laundress is not also a member of the community. Business is ''what you live by," and what we have to ennoble is life ; not this life, or that life, the soldier's life or the poet's life, but all life. Few people who know America but are conscious of the profound ethical chang^e that has taken place in the last ten years. The conduct of ** big business " has been touched by a sense of trust. There has 'come, not so much a righteousness as a sense of national and personal responsibility. These great corporations may at times be unwieldy, or have no basis in real needs— be what I should call non-productive ; but their character is changing. Perhaps we see it most clearly in their conduct by the paid organizer, the 72 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE public servant, the man who administers but does not own. It is in " big busmess " grown more ordered, more standardized, less com- petitive, that the new ethic begins to express itself. And this logical working out of mechanical power manifests itself in many- ways. One observes it in the manners and behaviour of the people in the street. You are not thought a " d fool " any more, as you were fifteen or twenty years ago, if you do not know the latest mechanical tip, or how to jump on to a street car in the right way. With this education in standard- ized mechanism has come something even more important. People in America are be- ginning to think about and value the personal functions of life ; what, broadly, we mean by the Arts. The imaginative, the finer, the non -mechanical things are beginning to draw apart from " big business," from the things that are standardizable, and are demanding their right of expression. They have not got far yet, except perhaps in architecture, where TO ENFORCE PEACE 73 they are directly rooted in mechanical power, but they are there. They are insisting that in a democratic community they too shall be heard. Together with this has come the Woman's Suffrage Movement, of vital sig- nificance at just this point, that it is turning people's thoughts again to personal things— the home, and its meaning in life as against the factory of mechanism. Now, this ethical change is not merely American ; it is universal, or rather it is the result of the application of mind to mechanical power. It is American only in so far as the political and social condition of the United States has given it greater possibilities and greater scope in America. We see it also in England, in Germany, ^ and in France. In each country it acts differently. What in this interpretation of the new American spirit I am concerned with is that it entails upon the country the duty of acting consistently. It ^ See, for instance, '' Huber und Cox, Ein zeitgenos- sisches Gesprach," von Bernhard Guttmann, 1916. 74 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE has revealed a moral responsibility. Democ- racy has discovered a duty before the world. Do we believe in a democratic purpose, or do we only pretend that we believe? The sinking of the Lasitania was like the holding up of a mirror. Everybody was askings, •' What is it we are ? What ought we to do ? " And when President Wilson took the people into his confidence, and as good as asked them to help him determine what was the duty of Democracy, those of us who saw it that way— and there were one or two Eng- lishmen in Washington in June 1915 who did — were deeply touched by the intense significance of his words. -" Duty," he said, "for a nation, is made up of so many complicated elements that no man can determine it. No group of men without wide common counsel can possibly determine what the duty of the day is. That is the strength of a Democracy, because there daily arises in the gjreat body of a Democracy the expression of an untrammelled opinion TO ENFORCE PEACE 75 which seems to fill the air with its sugges- tions of duty ; and those who stand at the Head of affairs have it as their bounden duty to endeavour to express in their own actions those things that seem to rise out of the conscience, and hope, and purpose of the great body of the people themselves/* THE GREATER EUROPE IN AMERICA IV THE GREATER EUROPE IN AMERICA There is yet another way in which demo- cratic purpose is helping in America, through her industriahsm, to shape Euro- pean destiny. The war has shown two principles at work : the segregation of nationalities in Europe, the amalgamation of nationalities in the United States. Perhaps they are really one, but they seem to us to be two. We know that we need them both — the fusion as well as the differentia- tion ; for we need not only the democratic idealism for which America stands, and which draws these Slavs, Celts, Germans, Czechs, Magyars, Uatins, and Scandinavians 79 8o THE AMERICAN LEAGUE to the promised land, but the racial culture for which Europe stands, and which they bring with them. And the chief fault of Germany in all men's eyes has been that she was blind to this — the racial culture of other peoples lesser than her own — blind and arrogant, even as we were in the case of Ireland. She will suffer, as we all shall, from the hubris of her materialism. This amalgamation has been the great achieve- ment of the United States. It is not yet com- plete ; lit is certainly not yet understood by the Americans themselves ; it has been brought about less by political than by economic forces. The standardizing of mechanical power has been the chief means of bring- ing the peoples together. Civic transport and trans -continental travel on the one hand, the one -cent paper on the other, have been the agencies. But these achievements have been bought at a price : the weakening of nervous force on the one hand, superficial thinking on the other. The new democratic TO ENFORCE PEACE 8i purpose will make good the defects, and it is for the younger generation to show the way. Few things in America have, in the last year or two, been more significant than the cleavage of opinion between the old and the young. The younger generation, men and women, are thinking! differently from their fathers. Theirs is no more the isolated, other -world America of colonial and Revo- lution days. With the new values has come to them a new sense of duty to Democracy ; they no longer hold the somewhat chilling and austere attitude of New England and Pennsylvania ; there is something about them, not cosmopolitan but rather the word we elected to use before — international. Theirs is a larger, a more charitable spirit —the outcome of industrial Democracy. The reaction upon Europe of the ** coming home " of the industrials who return while engaged in their task of making the new America is already beginning to be felt. When a few more thousands of these Slavs, 6 82 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE Czechs, Latins, Teutons, Scandinavians, Celts, Magyars return, their influence will be profound, and it will be in the cause of racial fusion. They will act as a political solvent to aggressive nationalism— much as the American -Irish have acted as a solvent to our ultra-English nationalism in Ireland. Further, they will, in the New World, have made the discovery that it is not necessary for neighbouring peoples to settle their difficulties by means of war. They have already been strong enough to arrest American action in the present war with a pacifism, unintelligent perhaps, but, if we are to believe in Democracy, instinctively right. It is only in Massachusetts and in England that the fiction is still credited of a German propaganda strong enough to sway American purpose. Those of us who, like myself, have travelled far and wide over the States, especially in the year 191 5, know that it was not a united and drilled intelligence acting on the orders of Bernsdorfif and TO ENFORCE PEACE 83 Reventlow that held the Americans aloof, but quite other motives. At their root was the conviction that war for the settlement of international or economic difficulties was obsolete — the French peasant's conviction, Cest trop bete la guerre. This conviction did not prevent the Americans from making, a profitable affair out of supplying muni- tions for a cause that was to them, on the whole, a just cause. The reasoning may have been unsound ; it certainly went with a pricking of conscience ; it was muddle- headed ; but there was in it also a feeling that we were at the end of a cycle, that the time for a new international dispensation had come. The League to Enforce Peace was the first statement of this belief. In August 1916 Mr. Asquith re-defined the objects of the war in these words : ** An equal level of opportunity and of independ- ence as between small States and great States— as between the weak and the strong —safeguards, resting upon the common will 84 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE of Europe — and I hope not of Europe alone — against aggression, against international covetousness, against bad faith", against wanton recourse in case of dispute to the use of force and the disturbance of the peace, and, finally, as the result of all, a great partnership of nations federated to- gether in the joint pursuit of a freer and fuller life for countless millions who by their efforts and by their sacrifices, generation after generation, maintain the progress and enrich the inheritance of humanity.'* This is not only oratory. It is an attempt to ex- press for industrial Democracy something akin to the idea for which the mediaeval Church stood in the " unity of Christen- dom/' Above all, it is an appeal to the youngjer generation— not alone of Europe but of the greater Europe in America. Translated into the language of practical politics, it is an endorsement of the pro- gramme of the American League to Enforce Peace, which we considered in Chapter II, TO ENFORCE PEACE 85 and of President Wilson's speecK of May 28, 1916. 'Here, then, is a political call to the young, voiced by the responsible leaders both in England and in America. And indeed between the young men and women of England and America the war has created an imperishable link, forged of the " idea " they have in common. Terrible though the war has been, few doubted the good done to the young men in drill, in discipline, in self-sacrifice. The young women gained even more, for thousands of them, deprived by competitive mechanism of their natural functions in life, found themselves in a greater service. To all came the ** look of dedication." The nations pulled themselves together, cleaned themselves up, organized themselves in a hundred ways never dreamt of before . All that was to the good ; but let us not imagine that it was the result of war. It was the result of the enthusiasm behind an idea. Some men hold that war 86 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE alone can breed such enthusiasm. But it is not so, nor can they prove their case in history. On the contrary, history shows us war, but in continually diminishing ratio. The things true valour's exercised about Are poverty, restraint, captivity, Banishment, loss of children, long disease ; The least is death . . . And as all knowledge, when it is removed, Or separate from justice, is call'd craft, Rather than wisdom ; so a mind affecting Or undertaking dangers, for ambition, Or any self-pretext not for the public, Deserves the name of daring, not of valour. And over-daring is as great a vice As over-fearing.* Thus spoke a great Elizabethan dramatist, and his play was hissed ofT the stage because it was an attack on private war. Perhaps even President Wilson's wise but, for the moment, inaptly chosen phrase, ** A nation may be too proud to fight," will yet be justified in history. To my thinking, it » Ben Jonson, " The New Inn." TO ENFORCE PEACE 87 is the young men and women of America who are not in the war, and the many others in Europe — our conscientious objec- tors, for instance — who are in it, and none the less inspired with the same idea, that are destined finally to disprove an ancient lie. The preamble of the American League to Enforce Peace — let us read it again — seems to give us the clue, to re -state on a larger plane Ben Jonson's words : ** Always peace has been made and kept, when made and kept at all, by the superior power of the superior numbers acting in unity for the common good/' There is a nobler intelli- gence in the world that can see and embody the greater life in cities reformed, in the extinction of poverty, in the mitigation of disease, in the purifying of industrialism, in the chivalry and rivalries of sport, in the perils and conquests of Nature. In such things is the moral equivalent for war. The younger generation of America, in so far as it is an aristocracy of merit, intelli- 88 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE gence, and ideas, rather than of money or old tradition, is close to ours, and may well have appreciated it when our English boys went into battle, Lincoln's words on their lips : " With malice towards none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in." With almost equal sublimity an Engllish Tommy, writing home, from the trenches, put it thus in the vernacular : " We must finish this job ; and this is going to be the last war. Don't you make no mistake about it — no more of this bloody rot for the kids— and chance it ! '* During the years 1 9 1 5 and 1 9 1 6 there was in England a deep disappointment with the United States. One met it on all hands. I never shared the English view, but it was not difficult to understand. The English- man, unacquainted with American conditions, and bewildered by American politics, said : ** We are fighting your battle, and you do TO ENFORCE PEACE 89 not see. We are carrying on the principles you profess to stand for, and you give no sign. When Belgium was invaded and the Hague Convention violated you raised no protest.*' The Englishman did not realize the deep undercurrent of sympathy there was for the cause of the Allies in America, and if in the end the response of the United States to their call is the League of Nations to Enforce Peace, this attitude of austere neutrality will have been amply justified* Early in 1915 the question was put to Sir Edward Grey : '* What is the moral sup- port of the United States worth towards the saner, the more idealistic settlement of Europe?" and he replied: "It might be infinite if it were only effective." But when pressed to say what he meant by '* effec- tive " his answer was : " That is for the Americans themselves to find out — it is not for us to suggest." The answer, indeed — the discovery when it is made — will be ethical. It must come 90 THE AMERICAN LEAGUE from within, by way of the heart. For this we need patience, we need peace — a long peace — a gradual Erlduterung and under- standing. It will take years to forget the agony of Europe, but the way lies through the hearts of the young. Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs, And folds over the world its healing wings. The answer is in the slow and conscious realization of democratic purpose : in Europe through the understanding by the different peoples of what they mean to one another in segregation — the principle of nationality ; in America through the understanding of what they mean to one another in fusion. Democratic purpose is the same for both. The United States are no longer the thirteen States, English, Irish, Dutch, in rebellion — the States of Puritan, Huguenot, and Quaker TO ENFORCE f^EA<:K:- /• 91 sentiment — but the greater United States, the offspring of Europe's industrial Democracy. If they succeed, not only in coming before the world with the constructive policy of the American League of Nations to Enforce Peace, but in imposing it, by virtue of its reasonableness, upon mankind, they will have achieved the greatest conquest in human history. We might end with an Oriental parable. There were once three ragamuffin pedlars, and they peddled on the same patch, pick- ing up scraps. Two of them fell out, and started to fight. The third went on pick- ing up scraps ; and as he did so one of the fighters trod on his coat and rent it, and the other kicked him in the hand so that the blood came. He cried out — ** I want to peddle in peace — that's my right." " Then you'd better clear off to another patch," said one. ** There is none," said the peaceful pedlar. 92 AMSiril^if Li^UE FOR PEACE " Then you'd better take off your coat," said the other. " Tve no interest in your dirty fight," said he. ** Then don't get in our way ! " cried both together. He started thinking. ** Am I to take this lying down," said he to himself, ** or am I to get a bigger stick and be a bigger fool than the others? " Then it occurred to him that if peddling was to continue, fighting on the patch in future had better stop. '* I must think of some plan," he said ; and he got very hot and uncomfortable, for having, like the others, been accustomed all his days to picking up scraps, thinking had not been much in his line. From the point of view of peddling, as he and his two friends understood it, it had not entered into the scheme of things. He is thinking hard now. When the others stop fighting perhaps they will do likewise. OTHER BOOKS hy THE SAME AUTHOR AND OBTAINABLE OF HIM 37 CHEYNE WALK, LONDON, S.W. CHAPTERS IN WORKSHOP RECONSTRUCTION AND CITIZENSHIP. 1894. THE TREATISES OF CELLINI ON METALWORK AND SCULPTURE. 1898. AN ENDEAVOUR TOWARDS THE TEACHINGS OF JOHN RUSKIN AND WILLIAM MORRIS. 1901. AMERICAN SHEAVES AND ENGLISH SEED CORN. 1901. THE MASQUE OF THE EDWARDS. 1902. THE LAST RECORDS OF A COTSWOLD COM- MUNITY. 1904. THE ESSEX HOUSE SONG BOOK. 1905. ECHOES FROM THE CITY OF THE SUN (a book of poems). 1905. SOCIALISM AND POLITICS : A Study in the Re- adjustment of Values. 1906. A BOOK OF COTTAGES AND LITTLE HOUSES. 1906. CONRADIN (a ballad). 1908. CRAFTSMANSHIP IN COMPETITIVE INDUSTRY. 1908 MODERN ENGLISH SILVERWORK. 1909. THE PRIVATE PRESS: A Study in Idealism. 1909. THE TRUST DEED OF THE GUILD OF ^^ HANDICRAFT. 1909. THE BUILDING OF THELEMA (a romance of the workshops). 1910. SHOULD WE STOP TEACHING ART? 1912. THE HAMPTONSHIRE EXPERIMENT IN EDU- CATION. 1914. Practical Pacifism and its Adversaries: ^^is it Peace, } ?' By Dr. SEVERIN NORDENlOFT Crown Spo. 4/. 6(/. net. In addition to making definite suggestions as to the lines on which the Peace Movement should go to work after the war — suggestions which are both obvious and practical — the book contains a reprint of a pamphlet written by an upper-class native of Schleswig, with footnote criticisms by a Prussian scholar of unbiassed vievv^s, which renders very sensational and personal testimony to the terrible di-^content and bitter rage which a conquered nation feels in its humiliating position of subjection — thus proving beyond all doubt that the chief obstacle that the Peace Movement has to face is this unnatural denial to the conquered people of the Rights of Peace. The Deeper Causes of LIIC VV ar HOVELAQUE With an Introduction by SIR WALTER RALEIGH Crowti %vo. Cloth. 2ND IMPRESSION, zs. 6d. net. Postage ^d. '* This is one of the most thoughtful and suggestive books that the great war has inspired." — Aberdeen Journal. The Future of Democracy By H. M. HYNDMAN Crown ^vo. zs. 6d. net. Tostage ^d. "Well worth reading." — Manchester Courier. "Written vvnth all his old force and lucidity." — Yorkshire Post. The Coming Scrap of Paper By EDWARD W. EDSALL Crozvn SvOj CM. zs. 6d. net. Postage \d. " One of the most interesting and illuminative of recent financial essays, set forth with skill and lucidity." — Financial News. The True Cause of the Commercial Difficulties of Great Britain By CECIL BALFOUR PHIPSON Edited by Mark B. F. Major and Edward W. Edsall Crotvn Svo. is. 6d. net^ This work discloses an unconsidered (but surprisingly obvious) factor in the fiscal controveisy, showing that since the internationalization of gold the principles of Free Trade have ceased to operate, and that for their restoration Great Britain must regain the use of a purely national money standard, such as she used prior to 1874, vvhen her commercial prosperity was phenomenal. The required change having almost been effected by the development of the cheque system, the Government have only to complete it by demonetizing gold and issuing the Treasury notes as sole legal tender. Economic Conditions 18 15 and 1 9 14 By H. R. HODGES, B.Sc. (Econ.) Crown Svo. is. 6d. net. A book of facts concerning a century's progress in the material welfare of the people of England, comparing their economic position and power, occupations and remuneration at the end of one great European war and the outbreak of a greater. The book, with its interesting tables and diagrams, gives a clear picture of the improvement, and it will also refresh the memories of the conditions and outlook of the people in the last days of peace. The Healing of Nations By EDWARD CARPENTER 4TH Edition. Crown ^vo, C/oth, is. 64. net. Paper, is. net. Postage \d, " Profoundly interesting. Well worth most careful attention."— -06sfnw. 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