Fortunately, however, there are certain factors making for peace, and upon these factors we are able to build. All over the world there is a peace sentiment, a vast, undisciplined, inchoate desire to discover ways and means by which this scourge of war may be lifted. It is not inherently impossible to organise this sentiment, crystallise it, direct it and make it effective. The task is essentially similar to that of organising democracy, for wars increasingly are becoming national wars, in which success depends not upon princes but upon the willingness and enthusiasm of the great slow peoples. The millions who bear the chief burdens of war and derive only its lesser gains are in all countries moving towards self-expression and domination. It is in the end upon these masses, with their inherent prejudices and passions, and not upon diplomats and rulers that any project for peace must be based.
The appeal to these millions though it be couched in terms of morality and sentiment, must be an appeal to interest. What is necessary is to recognise the economic motives that drive such populations to war and to reverse those motives. It does not suffice to preach that wars are never in the interest of the people; the nations know otherwise. It is necessary rather to change conditions so that wars will in actual fact lose their economic value to nations. Peace must be made not only to appear but actually to be in the interest of the peoples of the world.
The popular horror of war, the growing sense of its immense costs, the slowly maturing sympathy between individual members of hostile nations form the substantial groundwork upon which an opposition to war in general is based. Added to these are the waning of the romanticism of war and the growth of a sense of its mechanical (rather than human) quality. The present war has immensely increased this opposition. It has disenchanted the world. In all countries millions of men now realise that wars must be fought not alone by adventurous youths, who do not put a high value upon life, but by husbands and fathers and middle-aged men, who are somewhat less susceptible to the glamorous appeal of battle. They are beginning to recognise that wars are not won by courage alone but by numbers, by money, by intimidation, by intrigue, by mendacity and all manner of baseness. The lies spread broadcast throughout the world and the money spent by Germans and Allies to bribe Bulgarian patriots are quite as great factors in deciding the issue of the war as the valour of the poilus at Verdun. In a moral sense war has committed suicide.
This increasing comprehension of war's real nature and of war's new manifestations is leading the peoples to demand the right to decide for themselves when and how war is to be declared and to take part in negotiations which may lead up to war. The power to provoke wars is the last bulwark of autocracy; when the nation is in danger (and in present circumstances it is always in danger), democracy goes by the board. Let the Socialists and Liberals in all countries declaim as they will against armies, navies, imperialism, colonialism, and international friction, let Members of Parliament ask awkward questions in the House, the answer is always the same, "It is a matter of national safety. To reply to the question of the honourable gentleman is not in the public interest." Against this stone wall the efforts of organisations like the British "Union of Democratic Control" break ineffectually.
The Socialists have also failed, at least externally. Identifying the war-makers and imperialists with those classes to which they were already opposed in internal politics, the Socialists sought to make good their democratic antagonism to war. They opposed armies and proposed disarmament; they threatened national strikes in case aggressive wars were declared; they fought with a sure democratic instinct against every manifestation of militarism. In the crisis, however, they failed. They failed because their conception of war was too narrow, arbitrary and doctrinaire. They perceived the upper class interest in war but failed to recognise, or rather obstinately ignored, the national interest. When at last the nation was threatened, the Socialists and peace-makers not only closed ranks with those who desired war, but even lent a willing ear to proposals of annexation (for purposes of national security) and agreed to other international arrangements likely to be the cause or at least the occasion of future wars.
The general will for peace we have with us already; what is to-day most necessary is the knowledge and insight which will direct this will to the attempted solution of the causes of war. Towards this knowledge the present war has contributed. Never before have so many men recognised the strength of the economic impulses driving nations into the conflict. The war, it is true, has intensified national hatreds by its wholesale breach of plighted agreements; it has increased terror and distrust; it has sown broadcast the seeds of future wars by a series of secret, but known, agreements, creating a new Europe even more unstable than was the Europe of 1914. On the other hand, it has forced men to open their eyes to the real facts of war, and to recognise that wars will continue until the motives for war are reversed, until conditions are created in which nations may realise their more moderate hopes of development without recourse to fighting.
It is upon this recognition, upon this guide to the blind passion for peace, that any league for peace must be based. Such a league can probably not be immediately constructed and permanently maintained. It depends upon the slow growth of an international mind, upon a willingness, not indeed to sacrifice national interests but to recognise that national interests may be made to conform with the larger interests of humanity. It means the fulfilment not the destruction of nationality. It requires for its realisation the breaking of two chains, an inner chain which binds the nation to the will of a selfish minority class, an outer chain which binds its national interest to war.
How such a league will come about it is perhaps premature to discuss. In the immediate future we are likely to have not a true league of peace but rather a league of temporarily satisfied powers, seeking their group interest in the status quo and pursuing their common aims at the expense of excluded nations in much the same spirit in which a single nation now pursues its separate interest. Such a grouping of interested nations is likely to be only temporary, as dissensions will arise and new alignments be made comprising the nations formerly excluded. It is bound to break up when the status quo becomes intolerable to several of its members. On the other hand the spirit of such an organisation might not impossibly change. The league of satisfied nations might discover that it was to its real interest, or might be compelled by outer pressure, to make concessions to the excluded nations, and finally to admit them on certain terms. Such a development would be comparable to that by which autocracies have gradually become constitutional monarchies and republics.
But, however the League is formed, two things are essential to its continued existence. One is the acceptance of principles of international regulation, tending to reduce the incentive and increase the repugnance to war, in other words a measure of international agreement, secured either by an international body having legislative power, or in the beginning by a series of diplomatic arrangements as at present. The second essential is a machinery for enforcing agreements. Such machinery cannot be dispensed with. Peace cannot come by international machinery alone; neither can it come without machinery.
Peace between nations, like peace within a nation, does not depend upon force alone. Unless the effective majority of the nations (or of the citizens) are reconciled to the system to be enforced, unless they desire peace, whether international or internal, the application of force will be impossible. On the other hand, peace is equally impossible without force. If no compulsion can be applied the smallest minority can throw the world into war.