The Unfinished Programme of Democracy

by Richard Roberts

III

Upon this whole subject there is little to be said which is not already perfectly clear to those who have given it any serious thought. Two courses are open, and only two, to modern democracies. They may choose to retain the traditional dogmas of national sovereignty and “honour,” and the current acceptances of the business system, or they may resolve upon a break with the past. The consequences of the first choice are perfectly evident from the state into which the world has been brought by its operation in the near past. It implies the retention of a privileged class with interests to be defended at home and abroad; it will work out in competitive commerce and as a natural corollary in competitive armaments. And competitive armaments soon or late mean war. It has already been pointed out how the doctrine of military “preparedness” must inevitably retard and arrest the realisation of democratic liberty within the nation, but it must farther be recognised that any general retention of military establishments, under the conditions of modern industry, must eventuate in the total destruction of democracy and civilisation. The other choice means a deliberate and progressive attempt to organise the intercourse of nations upon a basis of reciprocity and co-operation. Even though the consequences of such an attempt may be at present uncertain and problematical, it may at least be asserted that they cannot be worse than those which have so tragically ensued from the former tradition.

Indeed, we have already come to a state of the world in which the former tradition has long ceased to correspond to actuality. So long as the means of communication remained elementary and slow, it was possible for nations to live more or less independent lives and it was in their interest to become self-sufficing and self-contained. They were sufficiently far from one another to meet only in the event of border brawls or of predatory excursions on a large scale on the part of a strong neighbour against a weaker. But with the modern development of the means of communication a policy of isolation has become utterly impossible. The world has become a neighbourhood; and national interests are inextricably intertwined. When President Wilson said in 1916 that the European War was the last great war out of participation in which it would be possible for the United States to remain, he was speaking with this particular circumstance in mind; and not even his foresight was sufficient at that time to see that the day of isolation was already over. In six months, the United States was engulfed in the bloody maelstrom. The policy of national isolation is obsolete; and the persons who advocate military preparedness and protective tariffs are “back numbers.” These atavistic policies are no longer possible except at the cost of the incalculable impoverishment of the nation which adopts them. The nation that shuts others out also shuts itself in and will slowly perish from an inbreeding mind and an ingrowing energy. For the barrier against mutual confidence and goodwill which is military preparedness, and the barrier against reciprocal trade, which is a protective tariff, hinder much more than the exchanges of friendship and trade. They hinder that exchange of spiritual, intellectual and cultural goods which are on any radical analysis more essential to a people’s growth and wealth than its trade.

Even as things are, those barriers are not sufficient to prevent a certain mutuality in trade and in culture. Neither the German tariff could keep Sheffield steel out of Germany, nor does the United States tariff keep Bradford cloth out of America, and in the region of intellectual and cultural interests the commerce has attained in recent times a considerable briskness. But in the present state of the world, why should a nation still cling to the illusion that it is a source of strength to be self-contained? It is simply silly to continue to live on homemade goods and homemade ideas when one’s neighbours are ready to supply those which they are in a position to produce better than ourselves, and to supply them freely on a basis of fair exchange; and it is no compensation for the consumption of second-rate goods that it helps to increase the bank balance of a few of one’s countrymen, especially when these few countrymen who are thus profited can out of their profits procure the superior foreign article which they put out of the reach of the rest.

The organisation of the world upon a basis of international reciprocity becomes a necessity by reason of the proximity into which modern means of communication have thrown the peoples. The process is indeed already afoot and in spite of hindrances will inevitably grow in power and range; and we are only anticipating events when we set out to organise the nations on a foundation of mutuality. The process is, however, not without its difficulties; and the conditions which are necessary in order to create a league of nations bound together by a principle of reciprocity may be passed in brief review.

IV

First of all it is necessary that the last vestige of imperial dominion should disappear. A nation which is held unwillingly within a particular political unity should be emancipated and be set up in independence. Real reciprocity is only possible on a foundation of common freedom, and it is a pre-requisite of any scheme of world federation that any so-called “subject” nation which puts in a claim to independence should have its claim conceded at sight. The whole conception of reciprocity is denied when a nation is dragged into the scheme at the tail of another. At the same time it should be made clear that an independence thus recognised does not carry with it the prerogative of a sovereignty of the traditional kind. Independence is to mean autonomy in domestic affairs but not independent action in external affairs. Reciprocity implies joint action in matters of international interest; and in so much as the working of a reciprocal scheme implies the power of authoritative action by some superior joint council, it is clear that there must be a cession of such portion of national sovereignty as is implied in the joint transaction of international affairs. Nor is this to be a rule merely for the lesser or the newly emancipated nations. Clearly it must be a rule for all nations great or small which enter into the arrangement. It is supposed that the nations will be found unready to make this surrender; in which case it is in no need of demonstration that a League of Nations is impossible save only for the purely negative business of adjusting difficulties and settling disputes. That indeed were a great gain, even though from the nature of the case it would in all probability be only temporary. Nations still boasting sovereignty would soon or late be tempted to take matters into their own hands in the event of adjustments and settlements which proved unsatisfactory. But in point of fact there is no difficulty at all about this cession of sovereignty except in the minds of incurable jingoes or legal doctrinaires. The thing has been done and is in practice on a large scale already. That vast unity called the United States of America became and remains possible only because independent states have voluntarily ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to a federal authority; and there is no objection other than that of chauvinistic prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually prevent the creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a greatly extended United States of America as well.

But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground that it is the organisation of a people in the interests of its material welfare and power;[^[48]] and insomuch as the nation finds its focus in the sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A league of nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of states, of governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a league would tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and policies rather than the broader matters of human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a league of nations will be able to divest itself from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in the traditional order. No league has any chance of permanence which does not break wholly with the current conventions of international business; and the only hope of such a break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various countries of their own representatives on the council of the league. The league must be democratically controlled; and that with as much direct democratic power as such expedients as proportional representation and recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe are so incurably steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have to do with any future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue, the diplomatic finesse in which they have been expert are incongruous with the democratic principle; and it is necessary in the interest of international understanding that they should be put out of commission with all decent haste. The kind of domestic organisation for foreign business which a league of nations requires differs toto coelo from the existing institution; and it will have to be built from the bottom up.

[48]. See Atlantic Monthly, March, 1917, p. 291.

A league of peoples requires plain dealing in the open; but there is nothing gained even then if there be no public apprehension of the nature of the business in hand. Hitherto, the common man has displayed but a flickering interest in the external affairs of his country; and this vast and important region has been left the monopoly of a comparatively small coterie of people who have made the shunning of publicity a fine art. This circumstance is bound up with the fact that speaking generally these persons have consistently belonged to the prosperous classes; and the conventions of the diplomatic tradition have made it a preserve of people possessing considerable independent incomes. It is needless to observe how inevitably the whole service must be vitiated by this anti-democratic discrimination. The established system is secured by employing in it only those whose upbringing and education have instilled into them the spirit of class superiority and ascendency. The Foreign Offices of Europe have from the nature of the case been the breeding ground of jingoism and chauvinism. The principle of democratic control in foreign affairs, both by the public discussion of international business and by the thorough democratisation of Foreign Offices is a sine qua non not alone of democracy at home but of any such league of peoples as may be established.