A characteristic expedient is pointed out by the well-known Belgian professor of political economy, de Molinari, in an article published in the Times.
He shows, in the first place, how solidarity among the civilized States of the world has lately increased in a marvellous degree, for not long ago the foreign trade of a civilized nation and the capital invested in other States was of very small importance. Each country produced nearly all the requisites for its own consumption, and employed its capital in its own undertakings. In 1613, the whole of England's imports and exports amounted to only five million pounds sterling. A hundred years later, indeed, the united foreign trade of the whole of Europe did not amount to so much as the present foreign trade of little Belgium. Still more unimportant were the foreign loans. Holland was the only country whose capitalists lent to foreign Governments, and persons were hardly to be found who ventured to put their money into industrial undertakings in foreign lands, or even beyond the provinces in which they dwelt. Consequently at that time a neutral State suffered little or no injury when two States were at war. A quarrel between France and Spain or Germany then did no more harm to English interests than a war between China and Japan would do now.
At present it is quite otherwise. Trade and capital have in our day become international. While the foreign traffic of the civilized world two hundred years ago did not exceed one hundred millions sterling, it runs up now to about five thousand millions; and foreign loans have augmented in the same degree. In every country there is a constantly increasing portion of the population dependent for its subsistence upon relations with other peoples, either for the manufacture or exportation of goods, or for the importation of foreign necessaries. In France a tenth part of the population is dependent in this way upon foreign countries, a third in Belgium, and in England probably not far from a third.
So long as there is peace, this increasing community of interests is a source of well-being, and advances civilization; but if a war breaks out, that which was a blessing is turned into a common ill. For, not to mention the burden which preparations for defence impose upon the neutral nations, they suffer from the crisis which war causes in the money market, and from the cessation or curtailing of their trade with the belligerent powers.
From these facts, de Molinari deduces a principle of justice—Neutral States have the right to forbid a war, as it greatly injures their own lawful interests.
If two duellists fight out their quarrel in a solitary place, where nobody can be injured by their balls or swords, they may be allowed without any great harm to exercise their right of killing. But if they set to work to shoot one another in a crowded street, no one can blame the police if they interfere, since their action exposes peacable passers-by to danger. It is the same with war between States. Neutral States would have small interest in hindering war, if war did not do them any particular harm; and under those circumstances their right to interfere might be disputed. But when, as is now the case, war cannot be carried on without menacing a great and constantly increasing portion of the interests of neutrals, yes, even their existence, their right to come in and maintain order is indisputable.
The worst is that, after all, the belligerent nation itself never decides its own fate. That is settled by a few politicians and military men, who have quite other interests than those of business. It is often done by a single man; and it may be said without exaggeration, that the world's peace depends upon the pleasure of three or four men, sovereigns or ministers, who can any day, at their discretion, let slip all the horrors of war. They can thereby bring measureless misery and ills upon the whole civilized world's peaceable industries, not excepting even those of neutral nations, with whom they have nothing to do. The most absolute despots of the rude old times had no such power.
Self-interests of purely political nature give the neutral States, especially the smaller ones, the right to do what they can to prevent war between other powers; because it is an old experience that war among the great powers readily spreads itself to the little ones.
De Molinari states further that the neutral States may so much the more easily ward off all this evil, as they have not only the right, but also the power, if they would set themselves to do it.
Thereupon he unfolds his proposition:—