The objective should be a real council of the nations with at first very limited powers, rather an expansion of an alliance of three Powers against three, into a league of six Powers, designed to act against any one recalcitrant member which might threaten the peace of the whole. To this ideal, indeed, the pronouncement of Mr. Asquith in his Dublin speech has already pointed, while it is noteworthy that Sir Edward Grey himself seems in a significant passage of one of his despatches to admit the failure of the balance principle and to indicate that the nations must “start afresh” on the basis of a general council. This passage is as follows:
“If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present crisis safely passed, my own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have desired this and worked for it as far as I could through the last Balkan crisis; and Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but if this present crisis, so much more acute than any Europe has gone through for generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible some more definite rapprochement between the Powers than has been possible hitherto.”
It is from some such simple beginning, pursued with good will and perseverance by all parties, that the nations may hope to arrive at a system of cooperation to replace the system of hostile alliances, the fruits of which are the present war.
It is essential, of course, if the negotiations of such a council are to be lifted out of the atmosphere of diplomatic intrigue which the secrecy of negotiations always involves, that its deliberations be public. Publicity will at one and the same time be a guarantee of openness, of good faith, and of democratic control.
IV
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.
Armaments, the instrument of diplomacy, must be reduced.
The theory of the “Balance of Power” and secret diplomacy are two factors which, in combination, make for war.
Two other factors intimately connected with these ensure its certainty. They are: a constant progression in expenditure upon armaments, and the toleration of a private armament interest.