But it is not safe for the League of Nations to wait until difficulties ripen into quarrels. There must be some wider power of inquiry and settlement vested in a representative Council of the Nations. This will in substance mean a legislative power. For peace cannot be secured by adopting a purely statical view of the needs and rights of nations in relation to one another. New applications of the principles of political “autonomy” and of “the open door” will become necessary, and some international method of dealing with them is essential. So there emerges the necessity of extending the idea of a League of Peace into that of an International Government.
The new era of internationalism requires the replacement of the secret diplomacy of Powers by the public intercourse of Peoples through their chosen representatives. If the Peace which ends this war is to be durable, it must be of a kind to facilitate the setting-up of these new international arrangements. No timid, tentative quarter measures will suffice. Courage and faith are needed for a great new extension of the art of government....
“Armed peace” must not be renewed.
Almost everybody hopes that, when this war is over, it will be possible to secure the conditions of a lasting peace by reducing the power of militarism and by setting the relations between nations on a better footing. To watchers of the present conflict it seems an intolerable thought that, after the fighting is done, we should once more return to a condition of “armed peace,” with jealous, distrustful, and revengeful Powers piling up armaments and plotting singly or in groups against their neighbors until Europe is plunged into another war more terrible, more bloody, and more costly than this. Yet nothing is more certain than that this will happen unless the Peoples which are so vitally concerned are able to mobilize their powers of clear thought, sane feeling, and goodwill in carefully considered plans for a cooperative policy of nations.
The peril of “crushing” Germany.
The first great obstacle to the performance of this task is the state of mind of those who seem to think that all that is required is “to crush German militarism,” and that, this incubus once removed, the naturally pacific disposition of all other nations will dispose them to live together in amity. It is not easy to induce such persons to consider closely what they mean by “crushing German militarism,” or how its destruction, whatever it does mean, would secure the peace of Europe, we will not say in perpetuity, but for a single generation. But let us suppose the most complete success for the arms of the Allies, the slaughter or the capture of great German forces, the invasion of Germany, and the dictation of terms of peace by the Allies at Berlin. Such terms as were imposed might cripple her military power of aggression or revenge for some years. But would it kill what we know as German militarism? If our accepted political analysis be right, the German militarism that must be crushed is not an army and a navy, but a spirit of national aggression, proud, brutal, and unscrupulous, the outcome of certain intellectual and moral tendencies embodied in the “real” politics and the “real” culture of the nation. Can we seriously suppose that this evil spirit will be exorcised by a crushing defeat on land and sea, followed by a humiliating peace? If Germany could be permanently disabled from entertaining any hopes of recovering her military strength, or from exercising any considerable influence in the high policy of Europe, her feelings of resentment and humiliation might perhaps be left to rankle in impotence, or to die out by lapse of time. But nothing which the Allies can do to Germany will leave her in such long-lasting impotence. Even if stripped of her non-Teutonic lands and populations, she will remain a great Power—great in area, population, industry, and organizing power—and no temporary restrictions or guarantees can long prevent her from once more developing a military strength that will give dangerous meaning to her thirst for vengeance. Whether the hegemony of Prussia over a confederation of German States (possibly including Austria) be retained or not, Europe can have no security that the same passions which stirred France to the most strenuous efforts to recover her military strength after 1870 will not be similarly operative throughout Germany. We cannot feel sure that the experience of the most disastrous war will effectively destroy the hold of Prussianism, and that the efficiency of intellect and will which constitute that power will not be able to reassert their sway over a broken Germany.
Not German militarism but militarism in general must be broken.
The fear of such a revival of German strength will remain ever-present in her neighbors, and will compel them to maintain great military preparations. A beaten Germany, with a ring of military Powers round her, watching every phase of her recovery with suspicion, and always liable to quarrel among themselves, will not give peace to Europe. Even, therefore, if we assign to Germany a monopoly of the spirit of aggressive militarism, European peace is not secured by crushing Germany. A saner review of the situation, however, will recognize that Germany has no such monopoly of the spirit of aggression, though that spirit has in her recent policy found its most formidable and most conscious expression. If the craving for a colonial Empire with “places in the sun” was, as seems likely, the principal factor in the aggressive designs of Germany, can we confidently assert that no other State has in the past harbored such designs, or may not harbor them again? The expansive Imperialism of Great Britain, France, Russia, and even more recently of Japan, gives the lie to any such assertion. Pan-Slavism is in spirit identical with the Pan-Teutonism which has contributed to this débâcle, and Great Britain and France are already sated with the overseas Empire which Germany was craving. History shows that, in every militarist State, aggressive and defensive motives and purposes are present together in different degrees at all times. While, therefore, we may reasonably think that the aggressive militarism of Germany held increasing sway in the political direction of that Empire during recent years, and was the direct efficient cause of the present conflict, we cannot hold that, with the defeat or even the destruction of the military and naval power of Germany, militarism would tend to disappear from the European system, and that the relations between nations would henceforth undergo so radical a change as to secure the world against all likelihood of forcible outbreaks in the future.
Real problem, to change inner attitudes of nations.
Clearly, it is not German militarism alone, but militarism in general that must be broken. The real question is how to change the inner attitude of nations, their beliefs and feelings towards one another, so as to make each nation and its rulers recognize that it is no longer either desirable or feasible to seek peculiar advantages for itself by bringing force to bear upon another nation.