THE CONSTITUTION OF A LEAGUE
Force for defense vs. force for aggression.
The problem of the League of Peace is actually the problem of the use of force. Force internationally expressed is measured in armaments. The chief discussion which has been waged for the past decade between the pacifists and militarists has been over the question of armaments. The militarists claim that armaments insure national safety. The pacifists declare they inevitably lead to war. Both disputants insist that the present war furnishes irrefutable proof of their contentions.
As is usual in cases of this kind the shield has two sides. The confusion has arisen from a failure to recognize the threefold function of force:
1. Force used for the maintenance of order—police force.
2. Force used for attack—aggression.
3. Force used to neutralize aggression—defense.
Police force is almost wholly good.
Offense is almost wholly bad.
Defense is a necessary evil, and exists simply to neutralize force employed for aggression.
The problem of the peace movement is how to abolish the use of force for aggression, and yet to maintain it for police purposes. Force for defense will of course automatically cease when force for aggression is abolished.
The chief problem then of a League of Peace is this: Shall the members of the League “not only keep the peace themselves, but prevent by force if necessary its being broken by others,” as ex-President Roosevelt suggested in his Nobel Peace Address delivered at Christiania, May 5, 1910? Or shall its force be exercised only within its membership and thus be on the side of law and order and never on the side of arbitrary will or tyranny? Or shall it never be used at all? Whichever one of these conceptions finally prevails the Great War has conclusively demonstrated that as long as War Lords exist defensive force must be maintained. Hence the League must be prepared to use force against any nations which will not forswear force. Nevertheless a formula must be devised for disarmament. For unless it is a law of nature that war is to consume all the fruits of progress disarmament somehow and some way must take place. How then can the maintenance of a force for defense and police power be reconciled with the theory of disarmament?
The principles for a League of Peace.
In this way: Let the League of Peace be formed on the following five principles:
First. The nations of the League shall mutually agree to respect the territory and sovereignty of each other.
Second. All questions that cannot be settled by diplomacy shall be arbitrated.
Third. The nations of the League shall provide a periodical assembly to make all rules to become law unless vetoed by a nation within a stated period.
Fourth. The nations shall disarm to the point where the combined forces of the League shall be a certain per cent. higher than those of the most heavily armed nation or alliance outside of the League. Detailed rules for this pro rata disarmament shall be formulated by the Assembly.
Fifth. Any member of the League shall have the right to withdraw on due notice, or may be expelled by the unanimous vote of the others.
The advantages that a nation would gain in becoming a member of such a league are manifest. The risk of war would be eliminated within the League. Obviously the only things that are vital to a nation are its land and its independence. Since each nation in the League will have pledged itself to respect the territory and the sovereignty of every other, a refusal to do so will logically lead to expulsion from the League. Thus every vital question will be automatically reserved from both war and arbitration. All other questions are of secondary importance and can readily be arbitrated.
By the establishment of a periodical assembly a method would be devised whereby the members of the League could develop their common intercourse and interests as far and as fast as they could unanimously agree upon ways and means. As any law could be vetoed by a single nation, no nation could have any fear that it would be coerced against its will by a majority vote of the other nations. By such an assembly the League might in time agree to reduce tariffs and postal rates and in a thousand other ways promote commerce and comity among its members.
Rights and duties within the League.
As a final safeguard against coercion by the other members of the League, each member will have the right of secession on due notice. This would prevent civil war within the League. The right of expulsion by the majority will prevent one nation by its veto power indefinitely blocking all progress of the League.
But it will be said that all these agreements will have no binding effect in a crisis. A covenant is a mere “scrap of paper” whose provisions will be violated by the first nation which fancies it is its interest to do so. In order to show that their faith is backed up by deeds, however, the nations on entering the League agree to disarm to a little above the danger point, and put all their defensive power under a federal authority. This is the real proof of their conversion to the peace idea.
Co-operation for protection.
Thus the nations which join the League will enjoy all the economic and political advantages which come from mutual cooperation and the extension of international friendship and at the same time will be protected by an adequate force against the aggressive force of the greatest nation or alliance outside the League. The League therefore reconciles the demand of the pacifists for the limitation of armaments and eventual disarmament and the demand of the militarists for the protection that armament affords. Above all the establishment of such a league will give the liberal parties in the nations outside the League an issue on which they can attack their governments so as sooner or later to force them to apply to the League for membership. As each one enters there will be another pro rata reduction of the military forces of the League down to the armament of the next most powerful nation or alliance outside it; until finally the whole world is federated in a brotherhood of universal peace and armies and navies are reduced to an international police force.
Hamilton Holt, “The Way to Disarm,” Independent, Sept. 28, 1914.