VII
The necessity and the logic of the case leads us therefore, to expect the creation of an international organisation which shall have certain positive functions in addition to the negative task of mitigating the causes of international friction and the adjustment of differences. The hope of the permanence of the League lies in its positive activities rather than in its purely negative offices. Moreover, the just rationing of food and raw material would of itself so considerably diminish the possibility of international misunderstanding, that we may look to the extension of the positive and integrative functions of the League while the need of purely mediatorial activity would naturally decrease. Nor have we exhausted the matters in which the need of the nations requires action and organisation of a constructive and positive kind. At the present time it is plain that some of the peoples newly liberated are not in a position to conduct their affairs without outside assistance. Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, for instance, must be guided and protected for some time to come; and while the peoples of these countries might choose to be placed under the wing of one or other of the existing “great” powers, it is not open to argument that such a connection should be under an arrangement which secured the accountability of the protecting power to an international body. If Great Britain becomes foster-mother to Palestine, or France to Syria, the agreement should be so formulated that this relationship is always subject to revision at the hands of the League of Peoples. The case with the native populations in the former German colonies is still more clear. Africa, in especial, has suffered unspeakable things from the imperialistic rivalries of the European nations; and its whole future development is bound up with a guarantee that its territory and its peoples shall be immune from invasion and exploitation at the hands of nations with selfish purposes. This again points to the institution of a system of international tutelage and supervision. It goes without saying, of course, that any such international action should consist not only of protection and tutelage, but of education into self-government. The question as to the mode in which this international supervision should be exercised is secondary. The proposal that it should be made effective by means of international commissions is met with the objection that international commissions have proved to be a failure in practice. In some cases this is doubtless true; but it is not the whole truth. The Danube Commission and the Postal Union furnish examples of successful management by international commission. But there is no need to mix up the question of international supervision with the method of rendering it effective. There appears to be no inconsistency in maintaining that the method of international commission would be most fruitful in some instances, while the method of devolving the work upon a single nation suitably placed for doing it would be more advantageous in other cases. In those instances, where a weak or backward people is capable of appreciating the alternatives, there is no reason why the choice should not be left to the people themselves.
One of the further consequences of the contraction of the world is that health has become an international question. The days when a plague could be confined to a city are over.[[51]] The recent spread of the so-called “Spanish” influenza is an instance which proves how indissolubly bound together the world has come to be. And the system of national quarantines has to be superseded by an international organ for the localisation and the extirpation of diseases which like the bubonic and the pneumonic plagues are capable of easy and destructive diffusion; and for the removal of those conditions of filth and insanitation in any part of the world to which these scourges owe their origin. It is likely, moreover, that the great increase in pulmonary and venereal diseases as by-products of the war require international handling if their worst consequences are to be averted.
[51]. If, indeed, there ever were any such days. In 1665, the Great Plague was brought from London to Eyam, a little Derbyshire town, in a parcel of cloth consigned to the local tailor!
It will also belong to the proposed international body to oversee and improve the facilities for travel and transport. Obviously this is largely a question of keeping the seas an open highway for traffic. The phrase “the freedom of the seas” has a special connotation in current discussions which is apt to obscure the real point at issue. The claim made by the German Government for the establishment of the “freedom of the seas” seemed and was intended to imply that British naval supremacy had constituted a hindrance to sea-borne trade in normal times. No one with any historical knowledge would be able to consent to that judgment. British naval supremacy has been in no sense a limitation upon the “freedom of the seas” in times of peace. The seas have always been free in modern times; and so far from its having been restricted by British naval supremacy, a good case may be made out for the contrary view. The safety of the high seas is possibly more connected with the efficiency of the British navy than a superficial judgment might allow. The freedom of the seas only comes in question in war time; and if we are minded to eliminate war from the world the whole problem loses its relevancy anyhow, except in so far that some measure of police surveillance may continue to be necessary. In the meantime it should be remembered that the insular position of Great Britain has created the necessity in past times for a strong navy in order to secure the freedom of the seas for its own commerce; but it is not to be maintained for a moment that it has in recent times used its supremacy to limit the freedom of other commerce. Even if the policing of the high seas should be placed by the international authority in the hands of Great Britain, its past record shows that it may be trusted; and in any case its own interest in the free and unimpeded passage of commerce upon the seas is a guarantee that it would discharge its office effectually.
Still, it is probably not desirable that the control of the seas should be devolved upon a single power. The universal interests of the nations in the franchise of the ocean highways make it necessary that their protection be an international obligation. This part of the problem should, however, present no insuperable difficulty. In practice the high seas are to all intents and purposes already neutralised. Our difficulties arise when we come to the question of narrow inter-ocean waterways. The most conspicuous, though perhaps not the most important, case of this type, is the water connecting the Black and the Ægean Seas; and the obvious solution lies in the permanent neutralisation of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles. There is no difficulty involved in the institution of an international commission to carry this project into effect. This particular outlet affects so many nations that it is intolerable that it should remain the particular property of a single nation; and the only possible alternative is this of neutralisation under international commission. The straits of Gibraltar present a different though a no more difficult problem. With the development of modern ordnance, the military and political importance of the Rock of Gibraltar has virtually disappeared; and its value is chiefly that of a naval base and coaling station. It is difficult to see what purpose under modern conditions the retention of a kind of British sovereignty in the Straits serves. In the days when the route to India had to be protected, it was of course another story; and there is really no reason why the Straits of Gibraltar—as well as all other narrow waterways—should not be neutralised in perpetuity under international guarantee. The experience of the present war in the matter of submarine attacks on merchant ships in the Mediterranean showed how ineffectual any guardianship of the Straits is likely to be in the future; and the same thing is true of all waterways which are not sufficiently narrow to be swiftly barred against entrance by submarine craft.
The most thorny part of this problem lies in the question of the two great inter-ocean canals, Suez and Panama. These two passages are now held by single powers though they are governed in such a way as to give virtual equality of use to the seacraft of all nations. Apart from the profits which accrue to the possessing nations from the charges upon traffic, it is difficult to see what advantage the arrangement possesses. It is in the interest of the possessing nations to encourage the general use of the canals, so much so, indeed, that it has been found expedient by the United States to renounce the idea of preferential treatment to its own shipping in the Panama Canal. Probably not much would be immediately gained by the neutralisation of these canals, though it is likely that the pressure of circumstances may lead to such an event at a later time. Nevertheless, any international authority would find it necessary to secure that craft of all nations should have free and equal access to the canals at all times.
But the facilitation of international traffic is not an affair of the water only. It is no less essential that the great trunk railroads should be effectually co-ordinated. The British project of an “all-red route” round the world is an instance of the kind of co-ordination that is required. The Interstate Railroad Commission of the United States supplies the idea at another angle. The convenient international transport of persons and commodities, the regulation of time-schedules, of fares and freights, is surely part of the subject matter of a League of Nations. It has long been seen that the roads of a nation are its arteries and veins; and the provision of cheap and easy transit for persons and things may well become one of the most potent factors in the cohesive energy of a League of Nations.
Enough has already been said upon the conditions of international trade which are requisite to the project of a League of Peoples. Invidious protective tariffs, “favoured nation” clauses, preferential arrangements of any kind must work injuriously to the process of integration. That these devices are also injurious to the nations which utilise them is of less moment to us at this point than their effect in creating rivalry and antagonism. To secure a genuine and universal reciprocity in trade should be one of the aims of the league, as it will also be one of the primary conditions of its consolidation and growth.