IV
First of all it is necessary that the last vestige of imperial dominion should disappear. A nation which is held unwillingly within a particular political unity should be emancipated and be set up in independence. Real reciprocity is only possible on a foundation of common freedom, and it is a pre-requisite of any scheme of world federation that any so-called “subject” nation which puts in a claim to independence should have its claim conceded at sight. The whole conception of reciprocity is denied when a nation is dragged into the scheme at the tail of another. At the same time it should be made clear that an independence thus recognised does not carry with it the prerogative of a sovereignty of the traditional kind. Independence is to mean autonomy in domestic affairs but not independent action in external affairs. Reciprocity implies joint action in matters of international interest; and in so much as the working of a reciprocal scheme implies the power of authoritative action by some superior joint council, it is clear that there must be a cession of such portion of national sovereignty as is implied in the joint transaction of international affairs. Nor is this to be a rule merely for the lesser or the newly emancipated nations. Clearly it must be a rule for all nations great or small which enter into the arrangement. It is supposed that the nations will be found unready to make this surrender; in which case it is in no need of demonstration that a League of Nations is impossible save only for the purely negative business of adjusting difficulties and settling disputes. That indeed were a great gain, even though from the nature of the case it would in all probability be only temporary. Nations still boasting sovereignty would soon or late be tempted to take matters into their own hands in the event of adjustments and settlements which proved unsatisfactory. But in point of fact there is no difficulty at all about this cession of sovereignty except in the minds of incurable jingoes or legal doctrinaires. The thing has been done and is in practice on a large scale already. That vast unity called the United States of America became and remains possible only because independent states have voluntarily ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to a federal authority; and there is no objection other than that of chauvinistic prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually prevent the creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a greatly extended United States of America as well.
But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground that it is the organisation of a people in the interests of its material welfare and power;[[48]] and insomuch as the nation finds its focus in the sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A league of nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of states, of governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a league would tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and policies rather than the broader matters of human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a league of nations will be able to divest itself from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in the traditional order. No league has any chance of permanence which does not break wholly with the current conventions of international business; and the only hope of such a break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various countries of their own representatives on the council of the league. The league must be democratically controlled; and that with as much direct democratic power as such expedients as proportional representation and recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe are so incurably steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have to do with any future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue, the diplomatic finesse in which they have been expert are incongruous with the democratic principle; and it is necessary in the interest of international understanding that they should be put out of commission with all decent haste. The kind of domestic organisation for foreign business which a league of nations requires differs toto coelo from the existing institution; and it will have to be built from the bottom up.
[48]. See Atlantic Monthly, March, 1917, p. 291.
A league of peoples requires plain dealing in the open; but there is nothing gained even then if there be no public apprehension of the nature of the business in hand. Hitherto, the common man has displayed but a flickering interest in the external affairs of his country; and this vast and important region has been left the monopoly of a comparatively small coterie of people who have made the shunning of publicity a fine art. This circumstance is bound up with the fact that speaking generally these persons have consistently belonged to the prosperous classes; and the conventions of the diplomatic tradition have made it a preserve of people possessing considerable independent incomes. It is needless to observe how inevitably the whole service must be vitiated by this anti-democratic discrimination. The established system is secured by employing in it only those whose upbringing and education have instilled into them the spirit of class superiority and ascendency. The Foreign Offices of Europe have from the nature of the case been the breeding ground of jingoism and chauvinism. The principle of democratic control in foreign affairs, both by the public discussion of international business and by the thorough democratisation of Foreign Offices is a sine qua non not alone of democracy at home but of any such league of peoples as may be established.
It follows as a corollary that there should be a systematic education of the people in foreign affairs. Popular ignorance would nullify any advantage which accrued from the democratisation of the control and the conduct of international business. For the control and conduct would under such conditions pass back into the hands of specialists and experts and interested parties. This popular education does not fail to be considered in detail at this point. But it may be questioned whether it can be effectively sustained unless in some form or another foreign relations can be made a permanent issue of domestic politics. Perhaps we may come to the point of instituting the popular election of the persons in whom the responsibility of foreign business shall be vested. At the present time it is only rarely, and then but in a subordinate way, that questions of foreign policy enter into the issues of an election; and until some means is devised of educating the public mind in the subject-matter of foreign relations, this condition will continue.