How little reality there is in Mr. Dickinson’s contention may be seen by analyzing his concrete proposals. Apart from the shattering of the great illusion of the governmental mind by a propaganda, he suggests a settlement of Europe on the basis of nationality, capped by a League of Europe to maintain the peace.
Governmental theory not mere illusion.
Now there are all sorts of reasons for trying to found States on nationality, and the only reason against the proposal is the reason on which Mr. Dickinson’s article is built. He tells us on one page that “ordinary people, in the course of their daily lives, do not think at all in terms of the state.” Then what difference does it make to people of the same nationality that they should be under different governments, and how is the world’s peace to be assured by gathering into one State people who do not care about the State? Either the people have an interest in the State or they have not, but surely it is futile for Mr. Dickinson to argue in one place against the German contention that their emigrants are “lost,” and in another that the Danes of Schleswig-Holstein should go back to Denmark. And what does he mean by telling us that in the event of an Austro-German victory “Italy and the Balkans will be pillaged to the benefit of Austria, and Russia rolled back—though that would be all to the good—from her ambition to expand in the West.” Is Mr. Dickinson also afflicted with the “governmental mind,” that he should talk of “benefit” to Austria and pronounce it good that “Russia” be rolled back? What does he mean by telling us that “the English and the French must not take the German colonies, or the Russians the Baltic coast, the Balkans, or Constantinople,” for what difference does it make, except to the “governmental mind,” who exercises political power!
Mr. Dickinson ignores crucial problems.
As for the League of Europe, surely no one here would wish to obstruct the plan. But if the League is to be based on nothing more realistic than an absence of governmental thinking, it will be a very precarious league. Every argument advanced by Mr. Dickinson is based on the assumption of absolute free trade in the world, yet in his plan of peace he says not one syllable about how tariffs and discriminations and monopolies are to be wiped out. The conflict between Germany and England is world-wide, yet Mr. Dickinson is thinking only of rectified frontiers in Europe.
When he proposes so readily a League of Europe with a police force to carry out its jurisdiction, has he considered the possibility of civil war within the League? If Germany and Austria rebelled against the League, they would presumably be attacked on all sides. But they are now attacked on all sides. We had on this continent a league of States with a central government, a Supreme Court, and an army. In 1861 some of the States seceded, and the struggle which followed, called a Civil War, was a terrible conflict. Has Mr. Dickinson faced the fact that a League of Europe would be based on the status quo, would be a sort of legalization of every existing injustice? And how does he propose to amend peacefully the constitution of Europe if some nation objects too seriously?
The New Republic, Jan. 2, 1915.