I submit that it is not premature for those who are concerned with the future of our race to consider the necessity of three chief things:
(1) The complete abandonment and prohibition now of the enlistment and military use of the African native population.
(2) The application of the principle of the “open door” and equal trading opportunities for all comers in the regions between the Sahara and the Zambesi.
(3) A more organized care of the native African population by a tightening up of the existing restrictions upon the arms and drink trades and the development of some sort of elementary education throughout Africa that will give these very various and largely still untried peoples a chance of showing what latent abilities they have for self-government and participation in the general human common weal.
For my own part, it seems to me that any real “League of Nations,” any effective “Association of Nations,” must necessarily supersede the existing “empires” and imperial systems and take over their alien “possessions” and that one commission embodying the collective will of all the efficient civilized nations of the world is the only practicable form of security for all those parts of Africa incapable or not yet capable of self-government.
XXVI
THE FOURTH PLENARY SESSION
Washington, Dec. 12.
The reader will have seen verbatim reports of the speeches at the fourth plenary session of the Washington Conference and he will know already what decisions were handed out to us from the more or less secret session that prepared them for us.
There has been a good deal of discussion here about the secret sessions and a certain indignation at their secrecy that I do not share. It is a matter of decency rather than concealment that men speaking various languages, representing complicated interests and feeling their way toward understandings, should not be exposed to embarrassing observation and comment until they have properly hammered out what they have to say. It is far better to digest conclusions under cover and to present the agreed-upon conclusion. This is no offense against democracy, no conspiracy against publicity. The mischief of secrecy lies in secret treaties and secret understandings and not in protected interchanges. There is no sound objection to secret bargaining in committee provided that finally the public is informed of the agreement arrived at and of all the considerations in the bargain.
The conclusions announced are important enough in themselves; but to all who care for the peace of the world they are far more important in the vista of possibilities they open up. Certain notable precedents are established. The four Root resolutions do put very clearly those ideals of withdrawal and abstinence which must become the universal rule of conduct between efficient and politically confused or enfeebled states if the peace of the world is to be preserved. That is the new way in international politics. It is the beginning of the end of all Asiatic imperialisms.