The Council, taking account of the geographical situation and circumstances of each State, shall formulate plans for such reduction for the consideration and action of the several Governments.
Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at least every ten years.
After these plans shall have been adopted by the several Governments the limits of armament therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concurrence of the Council.
The article goes on to recognize that private munition factories are objectionable, and must somehow be dealt with, and to lay down that all members must interchange "full and frank information" about their armaments and programmes. And the next article constitutes a permanent Commission to advise the Council on the execution of the provisions of Article VIII and other similar matters.
The cautious language of the Covenant on this subject is due to the inherent difficulty of the subject itself. It would be absurd to lay down that every member of the League must disband its forces forthwith; the League could hardly undertake to go to war in order to compel some strong Power to disarm. And it is obvious that different nations need different degrees of armament. The chief difficulty is that disarmament ought in justice and prudence to be simultaneous all round. It is only by the compulsion of a lost war that Germany has been compelled to disarm while her enemies stand round her with large armies, and even in Germany the process is evidently very difficult to enforce. Too many rifles and machine guns have got loose in private hands. No League could compel Poland or Rumania to disarm while the Red Army of Russia stood waiting across the frontier; or compel Great Britain to disarm while the northwest frontier of India is constantly attacked, while the Bolsheviks are in Persia and British officials are besieged in Mesopotamia. This difficulty will remain even when the world begins to settle down and the countries of Europe are no longer governed by their War Offices. On the other hand, economic pressure, as well as Liberal feeling, will make for the reduction of armies and navies. It may be difficult to get volunteers for military service, and it will certainly be dangerous to impress conscripts. There will be a stronger and more genuine popular demand for disarmament than for most of the desirable provisions of the League Covenant, and Governments dependent on the popular will may find their hands forced. But in the main disarmament must depend on the restoration of confidence; though probably it is true in most cases that if the disarmament comes first the confidence will follow.
II. Markets and Food
The second of these great causes of war, protection and the competition for markets, has somewhat changed its aspect since the comparative exhaustion of the world supplies of food and raw material. Before the war, nations chiefly wanted to sell. Markets were the great object of ambition, and tariff walls the great means of offence. Great Britain, of course, kept her doors everywhere open to the trade of the world. It is one of the decisive marks to her credit in the apportionment of the comparative guilt of the nations in preparing that international atmosphere which made the war of 1914 possible. But if she had chosen at any moment to close her doors, she could have injured grievously every other great nation throughout the globe; and the British Tariff Reform Campaign was one of the excuses used by the German Government to frighten their people into a war spirit. When Austria wished to ruin Serbia she simply put a prohibitive duty on the import of pigs.
Now, since the war, what most nations want is not in the first place markets; it is food and raw materials. They have not, of course, abolished their tariffs, but their first anxiety is to be able to buy food. Austria does not want to keep out Serbian pigs. She begs for them, and Serbia will not let her have them. The most consistently and narrowly protectionist nations, like France or Australia, no longer concentrate on forbidding their neighbours to sell to them. On the contrary, they refuse to sell food and raw material to their neighbours. The policy of keeping the food and raw materials of the British Empire for British consumption is already widely advocated and has powerful champions in the Government. As long as it is confined to palm kernels, this policy, though bad from almost every point of view, is not fatal. But if ever it were to be carried consistently through, it would mean war. The British Empire holds such a vast extent of the earth's surface that it has inevitably given hostages to fortune. So huge an empire can only be tolerated if it behaves tolerably. If we keep to ourselves and use for our own profit all the overwhelmingly large stores of food and raw material which by our vast annexations of territory we now control, thereby reducing other nations first to a stagnation of trade and then to starvation, the natural and inevitable answer to such a proceeding would seem to be a world crusade for our destruction.
This is the chief point, apparently, in which the influence of what is called "capitalism" seems to be a direct cause of war. Great capitalists, or those impersonal organizations of capital which seem likely now to supersede the individual capitalist, are normally strong influences for peace. They need peace for the success of their undertakings and are in danger of ruin if war breaks out. But they do at times stand to gain enormous sums by concessions and monopolies and by control over materials which are the subject of an intense demand from great masses of people. And no doubt one way in which they will seek to get these monopolies and controls is by putting pressure on Governments for so-called patriotic reasons to exclude foreign competition. This is a very real danger.
The Covenant of the League of Nations has not dared to insist on free trade. Obviously it could not, since the majority of the member nations are against free trade. But it does lay down certain rules to check aggressive protection.