In time of war, prepare for peace.
This country (Great Britain) is at war, and has for the moment one overwhelming preoccupation: to render safe our national inheritance.
The Union of Democratic Control has been founded for the purpose of trying to secure for ourselves and the generations that succeed us a new course of policy which will prevent a similar peril ever again befalling our Empire. Many men and women have already joined us holding varying shades of opinion as to the origins of the war. Some think it was inevitable, some that it could and should have been avoided. But we believe that all are in general agreement about two things: First, it is imperative that the war, once begun, should be prosecuted to a victory for our country. Secondly, it is equally imperative, while we carry on the war, to prepare for peace. Hard thinking, free discussion, the open exchange of opinion and information are the duty of all citizens to-day, if we are to have any hope that this war will not be what most wars of the past have been—merely the prelude to other wars.
The program.
Our contribution to this necessary discussion are the principles put forward for consideration by the Union of Democratic Control.
The Union of Democratic Control has been created to insist that the following policy shall inspire the actual conditions of peace, and shall dominate the situation after peace has been declared:
1. No Province shall be transferred from one Government to another without consent by plébiscite or otherwise of the population of such Province.
2. No Treaty, Arrangement, or Undertaking shall be entered upon in the name of Great Britain without the sanction of Parliament. Adequate machinery for ensuring democratic control of foreign policy shall be created.
3. The Foreign Policy of Great Britain shall not be aimed at creating Alliances for the purpose of maintaining the “Balance of Power”; but shall be directed to the establishment of a Concert of the Powers and the setting up of an International Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public, part of the labor of such Council to be the creation of definite Treaties of Arbitration and the establishment of Courts for their interpretation and enforcement.
4. Great Britain shall propose as part of the Peace settlement a plan for the drastic reduction by consent of the armaments of all the belligerent Powers, and to facilitate that policy shall attempt to secure the general nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, and the control of the export of armaments by one country to another.