But this means an agreement of the nature of a treaty; a mere Presidential declaration, which means some later President might set aside or some newly elected Senate reverse, is not enough. If the reader will study the position of Australia and of the British commitments in Eastern Asia, he will see why it is not enough. Britain is not strong enough to risk being left alone as the chivalrous protector of a weak, if renascent, China. She has her own people in Australia to consider. And besides, Britain alone—as the protector of China—after all that has happened in the past.... It is moral as well as material help in sustaining the new understanding that the British will require.
The plain fact of the Pacific situation is that there are only three courses before the world—either unchallenged Japanese domination in Eastern Asia from now on, or a war to prevent it soon, or an alliance of America, Britain and Japan, with whatever government China may develop, and with the other powers concerned, though perhaps less urgently concerned—an alliance of all these, for mutual restraint and mutual protection. And it is an equally plain fact, though “Tact” cries “Hush!” at the words, that the tradition of America for a hundred years, a tradition which was sustained in her refusal to come into the League of Nations, has been against any such alliance.
George Washington’s advice to his countrymen to avoid “permanent alliances” for the balance of power and suchlike ends, and Jefferson’s reiterated council to his countrymen to avoid “entangling alliances” have been interpreted too long as injunctions to avoid any alliances whatever, entangling or disentangling. The habit of avoiding association in balance-of-power schemes and the like has broadened out into a general habit of non-association. But alliances which are not aimed at a common enemy but only at a common end were not, I submit, within the intention of George Washington.
At any rate, I do not see how the disarmament proposals of Mr. Secretary Hughes can possibly he accepted without a Pacific settlement, nor how that settlement can be sustained except by some sort of alliance, meeting periodically in conference to apply or adapt the settlement to such particular issues as may arise. If America is not prepared to go as far as that, then I do not understand the enthusiasm of America for the Washington Conference. I do not understand the mentality that can contemplate world disarmament without at least that much provision for the prevention of future conflicts.
And similarly, I do not see how any effectual disarmament is possible in Europe or how any dealing with the economic and financial situation there can be possible unless America is prepared to bind itself in an alliance of mutual protection and accommodation with at least France, Germany, Britain and Italy to sustain a similar series of conferences and adjustments. At the back of the French refusal to disarm there is a suppressed demand for a protective alliance. That is an entirely reasonable demand. The form of this alliance that the French have demanded hitherto is an entangling alliance, an alliance of America and Britain and France against, at least, Germany and Russia. The necessary alliance to which France and Britain will presently assent, and which America will come to recognize as the only way to its peacemaking aims, will be against no one; it is an alliance of an entirely beneficial character, an alliance not to entangle but to release.
The disposition of the European delegations and of the British and foreign writers at Washington to treat the idea of America making treaties of alliance as outside the range of possibility, as indeed an idea tabu, seems to me a profoundly mistaken one. It is “Tact” in its extremest form. I have heard talk of the “immense inertia” of political dogmas held for a hundred years. For “immense inertia” I would rather write “expiring impulse.” The policy of non-interference in affairs outside America was an excellent thing, no doubt, for a young Republic in the self-protective state; it is a policy entirely unworthy of a Republic which has now become the predominant state in the world.
XIX
AN ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS
The futility of the idea of a limitation of armaments or any limitation of warfare as a possible remedy for the present distresses of mankind, without some sort of permanent settlement of the conflicts of interest and ambition which lie at the root of warfare, has grown clearer and clearer with each day’s work of the Washington Conference. And the conviction that no permanent settlement is conceivable without a binding alliance to sustain it also grows stronger each day. For security and peace in the Pacific an alliance of at least America, Britain and Japan is imperative, and Britain cannot play her part therein unless Europe is safe also, through a binding alliance of at least France, Germany, Britain and America. To arrest the economic decadence of the world a still wider bond is needed.
So the inflexible logic of the situation brings us back to the problem of a world alliance and a world guarantee, the problem of which the League of Nations was the first attempted solution. The conference is being forced toward that ampler problem again, in spite of the severe restrictions of its agenda. After President Wilson’s “League” comes President Harding’s “Association.” Senator Borah, in alarm, emerges from the silence he has hitherto kept during the conference to declare that this “Association” is only another name for the “League.” On that we may differ from him. Association and League are alike in seeking to organize the peace of the world but in every other respect they are different schemes, differing in aims, scope and spirit.
The primary difference is that, while the League was a very clearly defined thing, planned complete from the outset, a thing as precise and inalterable as the United States Constitution, the Harding project is a tentative, experimental thing, capable of great adaptations by trial and corrected error, a flexible and living thing that is intended to grow and change in response to the needs of our perplexing and incalculable world.