II.—AMERICA'S FUTURE ATTITUDE
In my last article I attempted to show how deeply must America feel, sooner or later, and for good or evil, the moral and material results of the upheavals in Europe and the new tendencies that will be generated by them. I attempted to show, too, how impossible it is for us to escape our part of all the costs, how we shall pay our share of the indemnities, and how our children and children's children may be affected even more profoundly than we ourselves.
The shells may not hit us, yet there is hardly a farmhouse in our country that will not, however unconsciously, be affected by these far-off events. We may not witness the trains of weary refugees trailing over the roads, but (if we could but see the picture) there will be an endless procession of our own farmers' wives with a hardened and shortened life and their children with less ample opportunities.
And our ideals of the future will in some measure be twisted by the moral and material bankruptcy of Europe. Those who consider at all carefully the facts hinted at in my last article—too complex to be more than hinted at in the space available—will realize that the "isolation" of America is an illusion of the map, and is becoming more so every day; that she is an integral part of Occidental civilization whether she wishes it or not, and that if civilization in Europe takes the wrong turn we Americans would suffer less directly but not less vitally than France or Britain or Germany.
All this, of course, is no argument for departing from our traditional isolation. Our entrance into the welter might not change things or it might change them for the worse or the disadvantages might be such as to outweigh the advantages. The sensible question for America is this: "Can we affect the general course of events in Europe—in the world, that is—to our advantage by entering in; and will the advantage of so doing be of such extent as to offset the risks and costs?"
Before answering that question I want to indicate by very definite proposals or propositions a course of action and a basis for estimating the effect. I will put the proposal with reference to America's future attitude to Europe in the form of a definite proposition thus:
That America shall use her influence to secure the abandonment by the powers of Christendom of rival group alliances and the creation instead of an alliance of all the civilized powers having as its aim some common action—not necessarily military—which will constitute a collective guarantee of each against aggression.
Thus when Germany, asked by the Allies at the prospective peace to remove the menace of her militarism by reducing her armaments, replies, "What of my protection against Russia?" Christendom should, with America's help, be in a position to reply: "We will all protect you against Russia, just as we would all protect Russia against you."
The considerations which support such a policy on America's part are mainly these: First, that if America does not lend the assistance of her detachment from European quarrels to such an arrangement, Europe of herself may not prove capable of it. Second, that if Europe does not come to some such arrangement the resulting unrest, militarism, moral and material degeneration, for the reasons above indicated and for others to be indicated presently, will most unfavorably affect the development of America, and expose her to dangers internal and external much greater than those which she would incur by intervention. Third, that if America's influence is in the manner indicated made the deciding factor in the establishment of a new form of world society, she would virtually take the leadership of Western civilization, and her capital become the centre of the political organization of the new world State. While "world domination" by military means has always proved a dangerous diet for all nations that have eaten of it heretofore, the American form of that ambition would have this great difference from earlier forms—that it would be welcomed instead of being resisted by the dominated. America would have given a new meaning to the term and found a means of satisfying national pride, certainly more beneficial than that which comes of military glory.
I envisage the whole problem, however, first and last in this discussion on the basis of America's interest; and the test which I would apply to the alternatives now presenting themselves is simply this: What on balance is most advantageous, in the broadest and largest sense of the term, in its moral as well as its material sense, to American interest?
Now I know full well that there is much to be said against the step which I think America should initiate. I suppose the weight of the reasons against it would be in some such order as the following: First, that it is a violation of the ancient tradition of American statecraft and of the rule laid down by Washington concerning the avoidance of entangling alliances. Second, that it may have the effect which he feared of dragging this country into war on matters in which it had no concern. Third, that it will militarize the country, and so, Fourth, lead to the neglect of those domestic problems upon which the progress of our nation depends.
I will take the minor points first and will deal with the major consideration presently.
First, I would remind the reader of what I pointed out in the last article, that there is no such thing as being unaffected by the military policies of Europe, and there never has been. At this present moment a campaign for greatly increased armaments is being waged on the strength of what is taking place in the Old World, and our armaments are directly and categorically dictated by what foreign nations do in the matter. So that it is not a question in practice of being independent of the policies of other nations; we are not independent of their policies.
We may refuse to co-operate with them, to have anything to do with them. Even then our military policy will be guided by theirs, and it is at least conceivable that in certain circumstances we should become thoroughly militarized by the need for preparing against what our people would regard as the menace of European military ambitions. This tendency, if it became sufficiently acute, would cause neglect of domestic problems hardly less mischievous than that occasioned by war.
In my last article I touched upon a quite possible turn of the alliance groupings in Europe—the growing influence of Russia, the extension of that influence to the Asiatic populations on her borders, (Japan and Russia are already in alliance,) so that within the quite measurable future we may be confronted by a military community drawing on a population of 500,000,000 souls, autocratically governed and endowed with all the machinery of destruction which modern science has given to the world. A Russo-Chino-Japanese alliance might on behalf of the interest or dignity of one of the members of such a group challenge this country in some form or another, and a Western Europe with whom we had refused to co-operate for a common protection might as a consequence remain an indifferent spectator of the conflict.
Such a situation would certainly not relieve us from the burdens of militarism merely because we declined to enter into any arrangement with the European powers. As a matter of fact, of course, this present war destroyed the nationalist basis of militarism itself. The militarist may continue to talk about international agreement between nations being impossible as a means of insuring a nation's safety, and a nation having no security but the strength of its own arms, but when it actually comes to the point even he is obliged to trust to agreement with other nations and to admit that even in war a nation can no longer depend merely upon the strength of its arms; it has to depend upon co-operation, which means an agreement of some kind with other nations as well.
Just as the nations have by forces stronger than their own volition been brought into industrial and commercial co-operation, so, strangely enough, have they been brought by those same forces into military co-operation. While the warrior and militarist have been talking the old jargon of nationalism and holding international co-operation up to derision as a dream, they have themselves been brought to depend upon foreigners. War itself has become internationalist.
There is something of sardonic humor in the fact that it is the greatest war of history which is illustrating the fact that even the most powerful of the European nations must co-operate with foreigners for its security. For no one of the nine or ten combatants of the present war could have maintained its position or defended itself alone. There is not one nation involved that would not believe itself in danger of destruction but for the help of foreigners; there is not one whose national safety does not depend upon some compact or arrangement with foreign nations. France would have been helpless but for the help of Britain and of Russia. Russia herself could not have imposed her will upon Germany if Germany could have thrown all her forces on the eastern frontier. Austria could certainly not have withstood the Russian flood single handed. Quite obviously the lesser nations, Serbia, Belgium, and the rest, would be helpless victims but for the support of their neighbors.
And it should be noted that this international co-operation is not by any means always with similar and racially allied nations. Republican France finds itself, and has been for a generation, the ally of autocratic Russia. Australia, that much more than any other country has been obsessed by the yellow peril and the danger from Japan, finds herself today fighting side by side with the Japanese. And as to the ineradicable hostility of races preventing international co-operation, there are fighting together on the soil of France as I write, Flemish, Walloons, and negroes from Senegal, Turcos from Northern Africa, Gurkhas from India, co-operating with the advance on the other frontier of Cossacks, and Russians of all descriptions. This military and political co-operation has brought together Mohammedan and Christian; Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox; negro, white and yellow; African, Indian, and European; monarchist, republican, Socialist, reactionary—there seems hardly a racial, religious, or political difference that has stood in the way of rapid and effective co-operation in the common need.
Thus the soldier himself, while defending the old nationalist and exclusive conceptions, is helping to shrink the spaces of the world and break down old isolations and show how interests at the uttermost ends of the earth react one upon the other.
But even apart from this influence, as already noted, America cannot escape the military any more than she has escaped the commercial and financial effects of this war. She may never be drawn into active military co-operation with other nations, but she is affected none the less—by a demand for a naval programme immensely larger than any American could have anticipated a year since, by plans for an enormously enlarged army.
That, it will be argued, is the one thing needed—to be stronger than our prospective enemy. And, of course, any enemy—whether he be one nation or a group—who really does contemplate aggression, would on his side take care to be stronger than us. War and peace are matters of two parties, and any principle which you may lay down for one is applicable to the other. When we say "Si vis pacem, para bellum" we must apply it to all parties. One eminent upholder of this principle has told us that the only way to be sure of peace is to be so much stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you. Apply that to the two parties and you get this result—here are two nations or two groups of nations likely to quarrel. How shall they keep the peace? And we say quite seriously that they will keep the peace if each is stronger than the other.
This principle, therefore, which looks at first blush like an axiom, is, as a matter of fact, an attempt to achieve a physical impossibility and always ends, as it has ended in Europe on this occasion, in explosion. You cannot indefinitely pile up explosive material without an accident of some sort occurring; it is bound to occur. But you will note this: that the militarist—while avowing by his conduct that nations can no longer in a military sense be independent, that they are obliged to co-operate with others and consequently depend upon some sort of an arrangement, agreement, compact, alliance with others—has adopted a form of compact which merely perpetuates the old impossible situation on a larger scale! He has devised the "balance of power."
For several generations Britain, which has occupied with reference to the Continent of Europe somewhat the position which we are now coming to occupy with regard to Europe as a whole, has acted on this principle—that so long as the powers of the Continent were fairly equally divided she felt she could with a fair chance of safety face either one or the other. But if one group became so much stronger than the other that it was in danger of dominating the whole Continent, then Britain might find herself faced by an overwhelming power with which she would be unable to deal. To prevent this she joined the weaker group. Thus Britain intervened in Continental politics against Napoleon as she has intervened today against the Kaiser.
But this policy is merely a perpetuation on a larger scale of the principle of "each being stronger than the other." Military power, in any case, is a thing very difficult to estimate; an apparently weaker group or nation has often proved, in fact, to be the stronger, so that there is a desire on the part of both sides to give the benefit of the doubt to themselves. Thus the natural and latent effort to be strongest is obviously fatal to any "balance." Neither side, in fact, desires a balance; each desires to have the balance tilted in its favor. This sets up a perpetual tendency toward rearrangement, and regroupings and reshufflings in these international alliances sometimes take place with extraordinary and startling rapidity, as in the case of the Balkan States.
It is already illustrated in the present war; Italy has broken away from a definite and formal alliance which every one supposed would range her on the German side. There is at least a possibility that she may finally come down upon the Anglo-Franco-Russian side. You have Japan, which little more than a decade ago was fighting bitterly against Russia, today ranged upon the side of Russia.
The position of Russia is still more startling. In the struggles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Britain was almost always on the side of Russia; then for two generations she was taught that any increase of the power of Russia was a particularly dangerous menace. That once more was a decade ago suddenly changed, and Britain is now fighting to increase both relatively and absolutely the power of a country which her last war on the Continent was fought to check. The war before that which Great Britain fought upon the Continent was fought in alliance with Germans against the power of France. As to the Austrians, whom Britain is now fighting, they were for many years her faithful allies. So it is very nearly true to say of nearly all the combatants respectively that they have no enemy today that was not, historically speaking, quite recently an ally, and not an ally today that was not in the recent past an enemy.
These combinations, therefore, are not, never have been, and never can be permanent. If history, even quite recent history, has any meaning at all, the next ten or fifteen or twenty years will be bound to see among these tan combatants now in the field rearrangements and permutations out of which the crushed and suppressed Germany that is to follow the war—a Germany which will embrace, nevertheless, a hundred million of the same race, highly efficient, highly educated, trained for co-ordination and common action—will be bound sooner or later to find her chance.
If America should by any catastrophe join Britain or any other nation for the purpose of maintaining a "balance of power" in the world, then indeed would her last state be worse than her first. The essential vice of the balance of power is that it is based upon a fundamentally false assumption as to the real relationship of nations and as to the function and nature of force in human affairs. The limits of the present article preclude any analysis of most of the monstrous fallacies, but a hint can be given of one or two.
First, of course, if you could get such a thing as a real "balance of power"—two parties confronting one another with about equal forces—you would probably get a situation most favorable to war. Neither being manifestly inferior to the other, neither would be disposed to yield; each being manifestly as good as the other, would feel in "honor" bound to make no concession. If a power quite obviously superior to its rival makes concessions the world may give it credit for magnanimity in yielding, but otherwise it would always be in the position of being compelled to vindicate its courage. Our notions of honor and valor being what they are, no situation could be created more likely to bring about deadlocks and precipitate fights. All the elements are there for bringing about that position in which the only course left is "to fight it out."
The assumption underlying the whole theory of the balance of power is that predominant military power in a nation will necessarily—or at least probably—be exercised against its weaker neighbors to their disadvantage. Thus Britain has acted on the assumption that if one power dominated the Continent, British independence, more truly perhaps British predominance in the world would be threatened.
Now, how has a society of individuals—the community within the frontiers of a nation—met this difficulty which now confronts the society of nations, the difficulty that is of the danger of the power of an individual or a group? They have met it by determining that no individual or group shall exercise physical power or predominance over others; that the community alone shall be predominant. How has that predominance been secured? By determining that any one member attacked shall be opposed by the whole weight of the community, (exercised, say, through the policeman.) If A flies at B's throat in the street with the evident intention of throttling him to death, the community, if it is efficient, immediately comes to the support of B.
And you will note this: that it does not allow force to be used for the settlement of differences by anybody. The community does not use force as such at all; it merely cancels the force of units and determines that nobody shall use it. It eliminates force. And it thus cancels the power of the units to use it against other units (other than as a part of the community) by standing ready at all times to reduce the power of any one unit to futility. If A says that B began it, the community does not say, "Oh, in that case you may continue to use your force; finish him off." It says, on the contrary, "Then we'll see that B does not use his force; we'll restrain him, we won't have either of you using force. We'll cancel it and suppress it wherever it rears its head." For there is this paradox at the basis of all civilized intercourse: force between men has but one use—to see that force settles no difference between them.
And this has taken place because men—individually—have decided that the advantage of the security of each from aggression outweighs the advantage which each has in the possible exercise of aggression. When nations have come to the same decision—and not a moment before—they will protect themselves from aggression in precisely the same way—by agreeing between them that they will cancel by their collective power the force of any one member exercised against another.
I emphasize the fact that you must get this recognition of common interest in a given action before you can get the common action. We have managed it in the relations between individuals because, the numbers being so much greater than in the case of nations, individual dissent goes for less. The policeman, the judge, the jailer have behind them a larger number relatively to individual exceptions than is the case with nations. For the existence of such an arrangement by no means implies that men shall be perfect, that each shall willingly obey all the laws which he enforces. It merely implies that his interest in the law as a whole is greater than his interest in its general violation.
No man for a single day of his life observes all the Ten Commandments, yet you can always secure a majority for the support of the Ten Commandments, for the simple reason that while there are a great many who would like to rob, all are in favor of being protected against the robber. While there are a great many who would like on occasion to kill, all are in favor of being protected against being killed. The prohibition of this act secures universal support embracing "all of the people all of the time"; the positive impulse to it is isolated and occasional—with some individuals perhaps all the time, but with all individuals only some of the time, if ever.
When you come to the nations, there is less disproportion between the strength of the unit and the society. Hence nations have been slower than individuals in realizing their common interest. Each has placed greater reliance on its own strength for its protection. Yet the principle remains the same. There may be nations which desire for their own interest to go to war, but they all want to protect themselves against being beaten. You have there an absolutely common interest. The other interest, the desire to beat, is not so universal; in fact, if any value can be given whatever to the statement of the respective statesmen, such an interest is non-existent.
There is not a single statesman in Christendom today who would admit for a moment that it is his desire to wage war on a neighboring nation for the purpose of conquering it. All this warfare is, each party to it declares, merely a means of protecting itself against the aggression of neighbors. Whatever insincerity there may be in these declarations we can at least admit this much, that the desire to be safe is more widespread than the desire to conquer, for the desire to be safe is universal.
We ought to be able, therefore, to achieve, on the part of the majority, action to that end. And on this same principle there can be no doubt that the nations as a whole would give their support to any plan which would help to secure them from being attacked. It is time for the society of nations to take this first step toward the creation of a real community; to agree, that is, that the influence of the whole shall be thrown against the one recalcitrant member.
The immensely increased contact between nations which has set up a greater independence (in the way hinted at in my last article) has given weight to the interest in security and taken from the interest in aggression. The tendency to aggression is often a blind impulse due to the momentum of old ideas which have not yet had time to be discredited and disintegrated by criticism. And of organization for the really common interest—that of security against aggression—there has, in fact, been none. If there is one thing certain it is that in Europe last July the people did not want war; they tolerated it, passively dragged by the momentum of old forces which they could not even formulate. The really general desire has never been organized; any means of giving effect to a common will—such as is given it in society within the frontiers—has never so far been devised.
I believe that it is the mission of America in her own interest to devise it; that the circumstances of her isolation, historical and geographical, enable her to do for the older peoples—and herself—a service which by reason of their circumstances, geographical and historical, they cannot do for themselves.
The power that she exercises to this end need not be military. I do not think that it should be military. This war has shown that the issues of military conflict are so uncertain, depending upon all sorts of physical accidents, that no man can possibly say which side will win. The present war is showing daily that the advantage does not always go with numbers, and the outcome of war is always to some extent a hazard and a gamble, but there are certain forces that can be set in operation by nations situated as the United States, that are not in any way a gamble and a hazard, the effect of which will be quite certain.
I refer to the pressure of such a thing as organized non-intercourse, the sending of a country to moral, social, economic Coventry. We are, I know, here treading somewhat unknown ground, but we have ample evidence to show that there do exist forces capable of organization, stronger, and more certain in their operation than military forces. That the world is instinctively feeling this is demonstrated by the present attitude of all the combatants in Europe to the United States. The United States relatively to powers like Russia, Britain, and Germany is not a great military power, yet they are all pathetically anxious to secure the good-will of the United States.
Why?
It can hardly be to save the shock to their moral feelings which would come from the mere disapproval of people on the other side of the world. If any percentage of what we have read of German methods is true, if German ethics bear the faintest resemblance to what they are so often represented to be, Germany must have no feeling in the political sphere to be hurt by the moral disapproval of the people of the United States. If German statesmen are so desperately anxious as they evidently are to secure the approval and good-will of the United States it is because they realize, however indistinctly, that there lie in the hands of the United States powers which could be loosed, more portentous than those held by the masters of many legions.
Just what these powers are and how they might be used to give America greater security than she could achieve by arms, to place her at the virtual head of a great world State, and to do for mankind as a whole a service greater than any yet recorded in written history, must be left to the third and concluding article of this series.