“Give us the right to choose, free and unfettered, and—wait and see.”
It is the least they can claim or that the British Government can give in its own interests as well as those of the Irish. It would be an act of faith such as few Governments in history have shown themselves capable of performing; but there are national and international situations where only a supreme act of faith will suffice.
And this is one of those.
CONCLUSION
And the fruits of these wanderings abroad are—what?
For two hours I sat in the old-world garden of an English manor house pondering the answer to that question. Old-fashioned and variegated flowers in every colour of the rainbow massed themselves around the moss-covered rocks, climbed the walls, and peeped out of the crevices and corners, throwing out strong, sweet scents of the wallflower and the jasmine. The shadow on the sundial crept slowly round its withered face. Tall elm trees sheltered the noisy crows. A bold cuckoo competed with the lark for our attention and regard. A typical English scene, suggestive of peace and plenty; so entirely different from any scene in the torn and stricken lands of Europe.
The twofold character of my work abroad has been told in these pages. The physical relief of suffering goes on through the American Relief agencies, the Society of Friends and the Save the Children Fund. The utmost that can be done is but a drop in the bucket of Europe’s overwhelming needs. It is only the first dressing of wounds, which cannot be cured except by probing to the cause and clearing away the poison. This is not the business of philanthropy when the cause is political. An exaggerated sympathy, which is the very essence of charitable enterprise, could even hinder the work of political and economic recovery by an uninformed emphasis of the patient’s suffering and a forgetfulness of his guilt. A stable internationalism can be built only upon a universal recognition of partnership in the guilt which has laid the world so low. But in such internationalism lies the hope of the future.
I returned from my travels reinforced a thousand-fold in the conviction of the necessity of internationalism if the world is to be saved; with this in addition, that the present problem for mankind is not to persuade the world to internationalism. It is rather to teach it the right kind of internationalism. Internationalism of one sort or another is as inevitable as the rising of the sun. The League of Nations is the second embodiment of an idea which held great masses of men and women before even the first, the Workers’ International, was born. This idea can be safely trusted to persist and grow in spite of every menace, because it is in the direct line of political and economic evolution. It is the next inevitable step in the march of ordered progress.
In the realms of art, science, invention, commerce, industry, economics and finance nationalism is languishing towards its inevitable decay—if it is not already dead. Political internationalism is destined to crown the structure of the world society of the future as surely as the night follows the day.
But what kind of political internationalism is it to be? That is the question. Heaven forbid that it should be the anti-nationalism of Lenin, wrongly called internationalism, which will prevail over the earth. That would be to menace too alarmingly the truly valuable differences amongst men. The characteristic differences of nations should be, with very great reluctance and only for sufficient reason, sought to be obliterated. The variety in dress, manners, customs, speech of the various races and nations is the very spice of the world’s life which gives it all its flavours. Difficulties of language, so fruitful of the misunderstandings which create wars, should be overcome by the provision of larger educational opportunities rather than by the establishment of one universal tongue. Esperanto is a wise and simple device to facilitate discussion between men and nations; but the compulsory study of French, German and English in the elementary schools would be of greater value to mankind than a knowledge of the most useful of languages manufactured for a purpose, and not born of a living nation’s intellectual and spiritual growth. A knowledge of languages would add a richness and beauty to life which might well give place to the boasted utilitarianism of most British curricula.