Now, such a collective control of belligerence and international relations is the obvious common sense settlement of the present world conflict, it is so manifest, so straight-forward that were it put plainly to them it would probably receive the assent of nineteen sane men out of twenty in the world. This, or some such thing as this, they would agree, is far better than isolations and the perpetual threat of fresh warfare.
But against it there work forces, within these people and without, that render the attainment of this generally acceptable solution far less probable than a kind of no-solution that will only be a reopening of all our hostilities and conflicts upon a fresh footing. Some of these forces are vague and general, and can only be combated by a various and abundant liberal literature, in a widely dispersed battle in which each right-thinking man must do as his conscience directs him. There are the vague national antagonisms, the reservations in favor of one's own country's righteousness, harsh religious and social and moral cant of the Carlyle type, greed, resentment, and suspicion. The greatest of these vague oppositions is that want of faith which makes man say war has always been and must always be, which makes them prophesy that whatever we do will become corrupted and evil, even in the face of intolerable present evils and corruptions.
When at the outbreak of the war I published an article headed "The War That Will End War," at once Mr. W.L. George hastened to reprove my dreaming impracticability. "War there has always been." Great is the magic of a word! He was quite oblivious to the fact that war has changed completely in its character half a dozen times in half a dozen centuries; that the war we fought in South Africa and the present war and the wars of mediaeval Italy and the wars of the Red Indians have about as much in common as a cat and a man and a pair of scissors and a motor car—namely, that they may all be the means of death.
If war can change its character as much as it has done it can change it altogether; if peace can be kept indefinitely in India or North America, it can be kept throughout the world. It is not I who dream, but Mr. George and his like who are not yet fully awake, and it is their somnolence that I dread more than anything else when I think of the great task of settlement before the world.
It is this rather hopeless, inert, pseudo-sage mass of unbelievers who render possible the continuation of war dangers. They give scope for the activities of the evil minority which hates, which lives by pride and grim satisfactions, and which is therefore anxious to have more war and more. And it is these inert half-willed people who will obstruct the disentanglement of the settlement from diplomatic hands. "What do we know about the nuance of such things?" they will ask, with that laziness that apes modesty. It is they who will complain when we seek to buy out the armaments people. Probably all the private armament firms in the world could be bought up for seventy million pounds, but the unbelievers will shake their heads and say: "Then there will only be something else instead."
Yet there are many ungauged forces on the side of the greater settlement. Cynicism is never more than a half-truth, and because man is imperfect it does not follow that he must be futile. Russia is a land of strange silences, but it is manifest that whatever the innermost quality of the Czar may be, he is no clap-trap vulgar conqueror of the Wilhelm-Napoleon pattern. He began his reign, and he may yet crown his reign, with an attempt to establish peace on a newer, broader foundation. His religion, it would seem, is his master and not his servant. There has been no Russian Bernhardi.
And there has been much in America, much said and much done, since the war broke out that has surprised the world. I may confess for myself, and I believe that I shall speak for many other Europeans in this matter, that what we feared most in the United States was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to America and democracy. The result of reading endless various American newspapers and articles, of following the actions of the American Government, of talking to representative Americans, is to realize the existence of a very clear, strong national mentality, a firm, self-controlled, collective will, far more considerable in its totality than the world has ever seen before.
We thought the United States would be sentimentally patriotic and irresponsible, that they would behave as though the New World was, indeed, a separate planet, and as though they had neither duties nor brotherhood in Europe. It is quite clear, on the contrary, that the people of the United States consider this war as their affair also, and that they have the keenest sense of their responsibility for the general welfare of mankind.
So that as a second chance, after the possibility of a broad handling of the settlement by the Czar, and as a very much bigger probability, is the insistence by America upon her right to a voice in the ultimate settlement and an initiative from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of British national conduct to be commonplace to the pitch of dullness, and all the stifled intelligence of Great Britain will beat in vain against the national passion for the ordinary. Britain, in the guise of Sir Edward Grey, will come to the congress like a family solicitor among the Gods. What is the good of shamming about this least heroic of Fatherlands? But Britain would follow a lead; the family solicitor is honest and well-meaning. France and Belgium and Italy are too deeply in the affair, or without sufficient moral prestige, for a revolutionary initiative in international relationship.
There is, however, a possible third source from which the proposal for a world congress might come, with the support of both neutrals and belligerents, and that is The Hague. Were there a man of force and genius at The Hague now, a man speaking with authority and not as the scribes, he might thrust enormous benefits upon the world.