POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
BEFORE THE WAR. By Viscount Haldane. Cassell. 7s. 6d. net.
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE. By John Maynard Keynes, C.B., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Macmillans. 8s. 6d. net.
These two books must rank among the most important documents yet produced which bear upon the antecedents and the consequences of the war in so far as British policy is involved. Lord Haldane was for many years War Minister, and during the critical period of Anglo-German relations he was also a sort of supplementary Foreign Secretary whose influence over the most important department of Foreign Affairs was very great, partly because of the weight his opinion carried with Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith, and partly because of his special knowledge of Germans and Germany. His book has a double subject as it has a double object. He outlines the main elements and the principal stages in our policy versus Germany before the war, and he sketches what was done during his administration to perfect the organisation of our Army. He defends our national policy (there are interesting sidelights thrown by his personal experiences with the Emperor and among the governing classes of Prussia) on the ground that we did the best we could when we combined an earnest effort to prevent war with a resolution to be ready for it; and in his personal apologia he argues, in effect, that in the circumstances (we must not forget that the nation as a whole, and Parliament in particular, viewed military expenditure with a very jealous eye) his régime did the utmost that could have been expected. It is now commonly conceded, even by those who distrusted Lord Haldane's views in foreign affairs, and those who were bitterly against him because of his refusal to adopt universal military service, that he did a great work at the War Office. What he says about the efficiency of his Expeditionary Force ("If the warrior looked slender he was at least as well prepared for the ring as science could make him") must be universally admitted; and with his great work in that department must be coupled the creation of the Territorial Force. On the point of compulsory service Lord Haldane defends himself by saying that in 1912 the General Staff was allowed to investigate "the question whether we could or could not raise a great army." "The outcome was embodied in a report made to me by Lord Nicholson, himself a soldier who had a strong desire for compulsory service and a large army. He reported, as the result of a prolonged and careful investigation, that, alike as regarded officers and as regarded buildings and equipment, the conclusion of the General Staff was that it would be in a high degree unwise to try, during the period of unrest on the Continent, to commence a new military system." We might have become "seriously weaker before we had a chance of becoming stronger," and an enemy might have sprung on us. "I quite agreed, and not the less because it was highly improbable that the country would have looked at anything of the sort." We imagine that the one thing which should (in the light of our subsequent experience) have been done and was not done (though lack of money would have been a severe limitation to the actual accumulation of large stores, whether of rifles or of clothing) was to prepare a scheme whereunder the material for a greatly expanded force would be easily and rapidly obtained immediately an emergency had arisen.
Lord Haldane has many interesting obiter dicta. He insists on the need (never more necessary than now) for politicians to understand the meaning of the words they use, and the nature of the main conceptions which are entertained by the nation, and those which dominate their own minds. He says that his opinion of the German people remains unchanged. "They were very much like our own people, except in one thing. This was that they were trained simply to obey, and to carry out whatever they were told by their rulers. I used, during numerous unofficial tours in Germany, to wander about incognito, and to smoke and drink beer with the peasants whenever I could get the chance. What impressed me was the little part they had in directing their own government, and the little they knew about what it was doing." Lord Haldane dates this habit of mind back to the days of Frederick the Great; but is there not something to be said for the view that it is to be traced back through the period of the religious wars into the baronial Middle Ages?
Lord Haldane's conclusion is that "the question is not one simply of the letter of a treaty, but is one of the spirit in which it is made.... The foundations of a peace that is to be enduring must, therefore, be sought in what is highest and most abiding in human nature." These sentiments are eloquently supported by Mr. Maynard Keynes, who resigned his position at the Peace Conference (where he represented the Treasury) because he felt that the negotiations were not being inspired by that spirit and by those high and abiding ideals. His argument, which is supported by very acute reasoning, is that the economic clauses of the Treaty threaten the ruin of our interlocked economic civilisation; and, with the skill of an artist, he strengthens the gloom of his tale by giving in introductory chapters a tragic setting: a concourse of statesmen, oblivious of the greatness of the issues involved, men of mechanical or cunning minds, men obstinate and narrow, ruthless and cynical, adroit and cunning, intriguing, hoodwinking, whilst their world was rolling towards the precipice. The issues he considers, the arguments he advances, are far too controversial to be entered into here: but it is a book which states one point of view far more powerfully than it has been stated anywhere else and, as such, should be read, if only to be answered. We take it that beyond the public questions which engage the author's mind there must have been a personal one (which is also, however, a public one) which must have caused him much disquiet: the question how far a civil servant, whilst the events under discussion are still in progress, is morally entitled to divulge things he would not have seen save in his official capacity. He may—this we suppose is beyond dispute—resign and conduct argument on the basis of facts known to the public; but should he watch statesmen at private assemblies, judge their characters by what he sees there, and then come out and attempt to blow them sky-high? We suppose that Mr. Keynes, who is no doubt convinced that his estimates are sound and that the whole future of the world may depend upon people realising what he believes to be the truth, would say that there was a conflict of obligations, and that the larger one had overcome the lesser. But we do think that there is room here for investigation and definition by a political philosopher with some practical experience. The problem is not a simple one.
A HANDBOOK OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. By Sir Geoffrey Butler. With an Introduction by Lord Robert Cecil. Longmans. 5s. net.
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE LEAGUE. By Eustace Percy. Hodder & Stoughton. 6s. net.
It would hardly be possible to find two more different books on the same subject than these two. Hence it is extraordinarily instructive to read them together. Sir Geoffrey Butler is an academic international lawyer, a lecturer in International Law and Diplomacy in the University of Cambridge. He is therefore well qualified for the task which he has undertaken, a short and elementary treatise, "which tries to place the League in its historical perspective." He traces the history of international relations and shows that the League is a development of the idea of a Concert of Europe as opposed to the idea of a Balance of Power. He then explains the constitution and machinery of the League as it appears in the Paris Covenant, gives the text of the Covenant, and adds a commentary or explanation of its various clauses. Sir Geoffrey does not possess a light or facile pen, and occasionally his meaning is singularly obscure. The book is academically cautious and unoriginal, but it sticks to its object, which is to explain the kind of international instrument which the victorious statesmen fashioned in Paris. Hence it will be useful to those who do not possess technical knowledge but wish to understand the significance of the clauses, or bare bones, of the Covenant.
Lord Eustace Percy is not concerned with bare bones, but with the flesh and blood which may or may not one day clothe the skeleton which the victorious Powers produced at Paris. No one could call the author or his book cautious; they are always trying to get back to fundamentals. To Lord Eustace the Covenant of the League is a "revolution," and he endeavours to show the revolution in British policy which it implies—the ultimate, fundamental responsibilities which, with the signature of the Covenant, the nation and its statesmen assumed. In order to do this, he not only examines the League and Covenant; he gives a most interesting account of the previous international position and policy of Britain, the United States, and the chief Continental Powers; he analyses and criticises the terms of the Paris peace treaties; he deals with Labour unrest; the epidemic of revolution, Bolshevism. The whole forms a restless, brilliant, and often paradoxical essay on international relations. Its great merit is that the natural reaction to it in the reader is thought. It is true that the author's own political thinking is frequently much less deep than it would appear to be on a cursory examination; but at least if he cannot himself go to any great depths, he always tries to go as deep as he can, and he carries his reader below the obvious surface of political platitudes. His method is to appear at first to go almost to the extreme limits of "progressiveness" and unorthodoxy, and then, by the help of a paradox, to double on his tracks and to show that after all the "progressives" are out of date, and nothing much could have been done other than has been done. Thus he begins by writing about such terms of the Peace as the Saar, the Balkans and Austria, Shantung, the Adriatic, and the economic clauses, in language which we might expect from the extreme Left, and then, when the reader is beginning to feel that he has been robbed of his last illusion, he is headed back from despair with the paradox that "in a sense, the strength of the Treaty lies in its weakest parts—in those provisions which are the least workable in practice."
For some tastes there will be too much of this kind of paradox in this book. Lord Eustace is, perhaps, at his best when he is dealing either with past history or with the immediate subject of his book, the Responsibilities of the League. The League, in his view, is "the one novel contribution made to the settlement by the Conference at Paris"; it creates the conditions and machinery necessary if the family of nations is to realise a "policy of joint responsibilities," and to deal continuously in a spirit of friendly co-operation with "the standing common interests of nations." This thesis is explained, worked out, and illustrated with very great ability. Lord Eustace obviously considers that those who framed the Covenant produced the best international framework and machinery which at the moment it was possible for practical statesmanship to produce. Those who expected or asked for more are, in his opinion, impractical idealists, or, what is worse, they do not see that the whole object of the League is to continue and develop the existing international system of absolutely sovereign States. His treatment of this extremely difficult and important question of sovereignty is the least satisfactory part of his handling of the League. He holds that the doctrine of communal society "applied to the League of Nations clearly rules out first of all any encroachment upon the sovereignty of its members." But sovereignty does not consist solely, as he seems to imply, in "the claim of the State against any of its members," and surely the League might limit or "encroach upon" the sovereignty of its members without necessarily creating a Super-State. It is a pity that Lord Eustace has not dealt more thoroughly with this question, for it is vital to another important opinion held by him, namely, that the League must be the enemy of and bulwark against Bolshevik or Communist Governments.
THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. By J. Ramsay Macdonald. Swarthmore Press. 10s. 6d. net.
This is not a mere list of criticisms and reminiscences written by a carpet-bagger. Mr. Macdonald was in India as a member of the last Public Services Commission. He has studied numerous official and unofficial books and documents, and has met and heard the views of representatives of all classes and schools of political thought. He has stayed with Provincial Governors, Indian leaders, district officers, and heads of native institutions, such as the Gurukul of Hardwar and the Rabindranath Tagore school at Bholpur.
The result is a book of great interest, written with an insight and moderation which will commend it to many who do not agree with all its conclusions. It was written, Mr. Macdonald tells us, before the Montagu-Chelmsford Report was published; but it is none the worse for this. References and comments on the Report have been added, and every line may be read with profit alike by the extreme reformer, the moderate constitutionalist and the firm conservative.
Mr. Macdonald begins with an account of the rise of Nationalism and a sketch of the history of European penetration and the advance of the East India Company in India. This enables the British reader at once to understand the remainder of the book, and places him in possession of a store of knowledge which may help to foster that interest in India and her problems so lacking in British electors and politicians alike.
The pronouncement of August, 1917, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, and the passing of the Government of India Act of 1919 are first steps towards the establishment of self-government for India; but the real difficulty to be solved is the representation of the mass of the people. Mr. Macdonald holds that "The democratic forms of the West are not the only forms in which democracy can take shape.... India is not a nation of equal citizens so much as an organisation of co-operating social functions." The question of diversity of race and language will remain even when primary education has become general, and Mr. Macdonald might have made clearer his views of the lines on which genuine popular representation can be secured. He does, indeed, in his account of the 50,000,000 "outcastes" of India give us a dim vision of his hopes that with education will come leaders of ability to represent them; but this does not solve the main problem of ascertaining and giving expression to the will of the people. With the Councils and reformed administration India will be somewhat in the position of England in 1832, and whether she is to develop under British tutelage, or to be left to work out her own salvation under her own bourgeois Government, is a question which statesmen will be called on to decide in the near future.
The chapters on finance and on religion and Nationalism are among the best in the book, while the pithy accounts of the ceaseless toil of a Lieutenant-Governor and of a District Officer should disabuse the minds of those who have been accustomed to regard Indian civilians as comfortable overpaid loafers.