The model is the nation itself. Internal peace is preserved in a civilized and virile nation by the establishment of constitutional safeguards and of institutions of government. Not all the individuals of a nation can be trusted to keep the peace. The non-peaceable are held in check by laws and by the provisions made for the execution of the laws. To this end nations have legislative bodies, executives and courts. The executives have placed under their command armies and police forces to restrain the wicked. With all the machinery of executives and courts and police forces crime is not entirely prevented, nor violence suppressed. People are assaulted and murdered, but in a well-ordered nation the infractions of the law are trifling as compared with the aggregate of peaceful life.
So in a World-State. War and violence might not be entirely prevented, but the aggregate of peaceful life would be so extended as to save civilization and permit moral and material progress. Mr. Wells well says:
The course of human history is downward and very dark indeed unless our race can give mind and will, now unreservedly in unprecedented abundance, to the stern necessities that follow logically from the aircraft bomb and the poison gas and that silent, invisible, unattainable murderer, the submarine.
The way to achieve a World-State was clearly pointed out by the Cleveland World Court Congress. It is doubtful if any other method is workable than to begin with the establishment of a World Supreme Court for Judicial Settlement backed by ample physical force to curb unruly nations. No one contends that such a tribunal can be made effective without the coöperation of the first class powers, or a decisive majority of them. The task of the United States, after the conclusion of the present bloody war, will be to bring these great nations together in a world-conference to perfect the plan for a World-State.
CHINA AND JAPAN
“Japan has seized this time, when the European powers are engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for existence, to begin the work of the consolidation of the yellow races. Japanese statesmen have explained her position as that of mediator between the West and the East. Japan does not desire to be the mediator between the West and the East. She wants to be the East.”
This is the conclusion reached by Samuel G Blythe, in a recent magazine article discussing the demands made by Japan upon China on the 18th of January last. The original demands were somewhat modified before acceptance by China, but in their modified form they virtually give Japan the hegemony of China. China accepted under a tacit threat of war, because China was militarily too weak to resist Japan, and because China knew that she could not look for help at this juncture either from Great Britain or the United States. The British Empire is engaged in a struggle for its own existence: The United States, in a military sense, is almost as weak as China, and faces too many possibilities of complications with some or all of the European powers to make it safe to allow its attention to be diverted by the possibility of war with Japan.
There is no reason to believe that Japan has any aggressive designs upon the United States. In fact, the execution of her design of becoming, as Mr. Blythe expresses it, “The East,” bids fair to occupy her attention to such an extent as to preclude the idea of Japan seeking trouble with this country. But that Japan would stand on the defensive and resist with her full military power any attempt on our part to intervene in behalf of China, goes without saying. If we have war with Japan we shall have to carry the war to Japan, and that, in the present condition of world affairs, is unthinkable.
In the present cynical attitude of the white and so-called Christian nations toward each other, it is not surprising that a heathen nation like Japan should resolve to take advantage of her superior physical strength to push her own interests. She claims to be a civilized nation, and so do Christian nations engaged in the great European war claim to be civilized. But their civilization is not allowed to stand in the way of their ambitions. It is natural that Japan should aspire to be the controlling power of Asia. She is the only Asiatic power that is fit for such a task or that could hope to accomplish such a design.
For Japan to hold her hand now and restrain her ambition when the folly of the great European nations has offered her an opportunity which may never occur again, would be an act of extreme self-abnegation even on the part of a Christian. Can we expect a higher standard of world-ethics from a heathen? Looking the situation squarely in the face, we may expect to see Japan set her foot upon the neck of China and subdue that country politically and economically to her will, for China has no power of organized resistance. We may then expect to see Japan set up a sort of Monroe Doctrine of Asia. She will undoubtedly allow Great Britain to retain India, as Great Britain is already established there, just as we allow Great Britain to retain Canada—but Japan will say to Europe and America, “Hands off!” as to new acquisitions in Asia. She will probably not attempt to interfere with the United States in the Philippines, but if we should make up our minds to abandon the Philippines, Japan might extend her protection over the Filipino Republic to prevent it coming under the influence of any other great power.