The most important remedy as yet attempted is the provision in the Covenant of the League of Nations, that all treaties shall be made public. No greater encouragement, indeed, could be given to the growth of confidence and the destruction of baneful suspicions and fears, throughout international life, than if it were possible to assure the nations of the world that all engagements imposing international obligations of any kind whatsoever would be made known immediately upon their conclusion. This provision of the Covenant has already gone into force, and numerous new treaties have been submitted, even by governments who are not as yet members of the League. But certain governments have delayed compliance in cases where treaties are known to have been made secretly. As there is no specific sanction for this provision in the Covenant, and as actually binding agreements can be made without taking the form of a treaty or convention, this remedy is not in itself powerful enough to remove the evil. If two or three states are willing to keep an engagement secret at the risk of later incurring a certain amount of opprobrium when the fact is discovered, there is no means as yet available for obliging them to abandon such course. Nevertheless, this provision of the Covenant constitutes a great advance in the work of placing the public business of the world on the only sound basis, and cultivating that confidence upon which depends the future immunity of mankind from constant danger of suffering and destruction. It will, however, not be a real remedy until the nations agree actually to outlaw all secret agreements as a conspiracy against the general welfare and safety.

The other important advance made in the Covenant is found in the provisions for the investigation of any cause of conflict before hostilities shall be resorted to. If after the first shock of excitement, which accompanies the revelation of a serious international crisis, public opinion can be given a certain space of time to inform itself, then it may indeed be hoped that a different temper will control the giving of the fateful doom of war. As Count Czernin has stated, on the night of August 4, 1914, between the hours of nine and midnight the decision as to whether England would come into the war, lay with the German Government. A system under which such tremendous issues have to be decided in such a manner, is absurd to the verge of insanity.[E]

[E] A German writer puts the blame for the outbreak of the war on the telegraph. He says that if there had been no telegraphic communication between the capitals, the fatal crisis would not have arisen; there would have been time for reflection and a decision to make war would never have been taken in blood.

While the above arrangements, if they could be effectively carried out, would undoubtedly serve to moderate the evils which now result from the conduct of international affairs on so narrow a basis, yet it is difficult to expect from them more than relatively superficial results. It is only if a new spirit can be developed among the nations, and if the absolutist conception of the state as far as it still remains, can be transformed into something more consonant with the complexity and delicacy of human relationships, that we may hope to hail the dawn of a new era. It would be as great a transformation as that which separates the Pagan from the Christian ideal. Mankind is still somewhat blinded by the glitter and pageantry of the absolutist state; the pride of power manifests itself now particularly in foreign intercourse. When Portugal became a republic, it desired at first to abolish the entire diplomatic establishment, and to allow all international business to be done by the consuls. That proposal may have resulted from an instinctive feeling that there was something incompatible between a really free community, and the sense of absolute power embodied in diplomacy.

A change can be brought about only when the underlying unity of mankind is more intensely felt and when the common interests in science, commerce, industry and the universal language of art are valued at their true importance to the welfare of the people of all nations. Joint effort in the constructive work of developing resources, particularly in the tropics, will make it possible for vastly increased populations to live in comfort on their present sites, without the need of crowding each other. A higher valuation of humanity, a more just proportion in the influence permitted different interests, a keener scrutiny of traditions and watch-words—all this is necessary. Men and women to-day feel an intense apprehension, when they think of the fate of their children in a world in which the unreasoning prejudices and unenlightened practices that have recently again come to the fore in international life should prevail, leaving mankind in a dazed confusion, and pushing the people from time to time into wholesale slaughter with ever more horrible instruments of destruction. They feel also that if secret policies, engendering fears and suspicion, are to continue to be the dominant factor, then all improvement in human welfare, education and science, will have to be in a large measure postponed to the preparation of constantly more formidable engines of death. One cannot but remember the worst imprecations of the Greek tragic poets and philosophers, on the miserable destiny of man. In fact, if we should have to believe that no better way could be found to manage the vital interests of mankind, a great natural catastrophe, which would extinguish once and for all the miserable breed on this planet, would almost appear in the light of a redemption.

But we cannot believe that the peoples of the world will be so foolish as to allow themselves to remain in this condition and not to find their way to a reorganization of public affairs which will make such a haphazard and perilous situation impossible. It seems plain that the idea of the state and of state action will have to be transformed in accordance with the greater self-consciousness of humanity which has developed in the last century, or the desire to scrap the political state and to find some more adequate and natural form of organization will rapidly gain in strength. Meanwhile, there is a need of the formation of a great freemasonry of all publicists, political men and teachers of the people, united in the resolve to know and make known the essential elements in current international affairs, to arouse the public to a sense of the importance of these matters to their every-day life, and to support the men more directly responsible for the conduct of foreign policy, with an intelligent, searching, reasonable and broad public opinion.

XIV
RECENT AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Up until a recent date Americans could contemplate the play of secret diplomacy in Europe and Asia with a feeling of entire aloofness, as belonging to a political society which had neither need nor inclination to utilize such methods. Our unmenaced continental position, the natural protection and separation implied in distance and ocean boundaries, and the conscious intention of keeping clear of international entanglements, all contributed to make the foreign policy of the United States entirely public and straightforward. The fathers of the Constitution had established the sound principle that treaties are the law of the land. This not only involves mature consideration of a treaty before it is made, but publicity as well. The American people have known at all times what obligations had been incurred, and the world had the same information. There has been no room for guesswork and suspicion.

The instructions which were issued to John Jay when he was sent as special envoy to England in 1794 lay down the following rule of conduct: “It is the President’s wish that the characteristics of an American minister should be marked on the one hand by a firmness against improper compliances, and on the other by sincerity, candor, truth and prudence, and by a horror of finesse and chicane.” These straightforward words began a tradition which has ever since animated the American diplomatic service. When after the Spanish war, under Secretary Hay, American diplomacy entered more fully into world-wide problems than in any previous era, the expression “the new diplomacy” was currently used in a laudatory sense to designate what Hay had implied when in a public address he had declared the Golden Rule to be the cardinal principle of American diplomacy—an ideal which makes secrecy and intrigue unnecessary.